Townsend's Historical Enterprise

Townsend’s analysis of the historical enterprise was both original and satisfying in terms of the professionalization of history as a whole. The book in its entirety was written well, and Townsend’s variety of sources made his argument all the more convincing. The depiction of history as a discipline form the late 19th into the 20th century flowed in an almost chaotic matter, but Townsend seemed to have literary control over his thesis points. Along with this, Townsend’s usage of quantitative data and charts made his argument clearer and concise. Although Townsend dealt with a plethora of statistics, he was able to organize them nicely into readable graphs and charts.

Despite the book being enjoyable, Townsend’s chronology became slightly distorted as he discussed each historical institution. The bulk of the material covered by Townsend was dense and fairly hard to keep track of, thus the importance of writing within the bounds of a flowing chronology was necessary. For instance, Townsend’s explanations and examples of “new history” in his book are easy to understand, yet they come at rather random times throughout the book. It seems as if Townsend was to condense his writing into a timeline and not a thematic breakdown, he could have avoided confusion and redundancies.

After having read the book, my understanding and appreciation of history as a profession and the academy increased. The early stages of the AHA and the need for formal organization was interesting, especially because it tried to copy the scientific model put forward by the leading academic scientists of the 19th century. In an all too foreseeable manner, it turned out that history as a discipline needed to create its own mold for organization and implementation in the United States.

As a whole, the book was enjoyable and definitely eye opening for myself as a first year graduate student of history. The arguments by Townsend read as ultimately incontestable, and his scholarship has put forth a previously overlooked aspect of American History.