George III and the Historians

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The reign of George III has been the subject of important researches in recent decades, but in no other region of history has the need for enlightenment been so apparent. The present work attempts to take the general reader and the student a little further than usual into the workshop of the historian, examining the sources of myths and errors, the kind of inferences that we are made from the evidence and the various kinds of thinking that insert themselves into the procedures of the historian.

When an important historical theme calls for reconsideration it is useful to examine the way in which the whole historiography of the subject has developed. A considerable section of the book deals, therefore, with the history of the way in which historians have treated George III, and the factors that affected their interpretations. The claim that a complete break must be made with earlier historical writing, the question of the difference which the study of the "structure of politics" must make to the interpretation of the narrative history of the reign, and the necessity of distinguishing what is really new in the modern versions of the story, make it all the more important that we should take our bearings afresh in the history of the historiography of the subject.

Finally, the modern school of writers on George III, under the leadership of Sir Lewis Namier, are so important that they ought to be subjected to critical examination, and a third section of the present work is devoted to that purpose. Only through such criticism can we prevent ourselves from being the slaves of mere authority—the slaves, sometimes, of an authority that we do not understand.