How to Know People by Their Hands

Older social history, that is, before 1960, included topics that did not fit into the mainstream historiography of political, military, diplomatic and constitutional history. Without a central theme, it often discussed political movements, like Populism, that were considered "social". The concept of "people’s history" was often so Marxist that non-Marxists would not read it. Social history was set apart from political history, intellectual history and the history of great personages. The English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw it as a link between economic and political history.