SOURCE: A preface to The Era of Tyrannies, by Élie Halévy, translated by R. K. Webb, Anchor Books, 1965, pp. vii-xvii.

In the following preface to his translation of The Era of Tyrannies, Webb discusses the method of Halévy's sociological writing.

Élie Halévy (1870-1937) is best known to American and English readers for his contributions to our knowledge of English history from the end of the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, contributions with a scope, power, and influence unmatched by the work of any English historian of the period. But the English-speaking world has remained largely unaware of Halévy's equally strong interest in socialism. His brief early study of the English Ricardian socialist Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869), though published in 1903, appeared in translation only in 1956. The lectures on the history of European socialism which Halévy alternated with his lectures on nineteenth-century England at the...