During the Enlightenment, some people who had leisure time chose to study the past. They applied ideas like rationalism and empiricism to the craft of history. These antiquarians were not professional historians, more of hobbyists. But they began to develop a style of history more recognizable to scholars today. This included citing one’s sources for the sake of veracity, using a paucity of perspectives to interrogate a subject, and finding new materials to shed light on previously unknown topics. This led to a swath of lay-historians, most prominent of which was Edward Gibbon, who used some newly dug up sources and a plethora of ancient historians to write his magisterial The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes. Though antiquarians sometimes rose to such venerable heights, they were just making it up as they went along. Historiography Shorts playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjnwpaclU4wXi3h9O4E0a0ZVPGYxAuUTy ------------------------------------------------------------ Here's Gibbon's books: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/375 ------------------------------------------------------------ SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE VIDEOS: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=CynicalCypher88 Support the channel through PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/CynicalHistorian or by purchasing MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/the-cynical-historian LET'S CONNECT: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/cynicalhistorian Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cynicalcypher88 Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CynicalHistory/ Discord: https://discord.gg/Ukthk4U Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cynical_History