Nicholas Henshall (historian)

Nicholas Henshall (3 October 1944 – 16 September 2015) was a historian and secondary school teacher from the United Kingdom who provided impetus to the historiographical debate on absolutism in the 1990s.

Henshall was a teacher at Stockport Grammar School until his retirement, where he headed the history department. He also taught at the University of Manchester. In addition, he edited and published in the popular history journal History Today.

With his 1992 book The Myth of Absolutism, Henshall initiated a debate over the historiographical concept of absolutism, which he attacked head-on as "an impressive subterfuge for sloppy thinking." Henshall's "polemic of the legend killers" has been a powerful one. Using the "polemic of legend killers," he appealed to the term to "please leave the stage." The ensuing debate has led to the discrediting of the term in sections of scholarship; Wolfgang Reinhard, for example, has called it "deconstructed in a way that cannot be reconstructed, so that the term should be dispensed with."

Works

• The Myth of Absolutism. Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy. Longman, London (1992)
• "Early Modern Absolutism 1550–1700. Political Reality or Propaganda?" In: Ronald G. Asch, Heinz Duchhardt (eds.): Der Absolutismus – ein Mythos? Strukturwandel monarchischer Herrschaft in West- und Mitteleuropa (ca. 1550–1700). Böhlau, Köln (1996), pp. 25–53.
• The Zenith of European Monarchy and its Elites. The Politics of Culture, 1650–1750 (European History in Perspective). Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (2010)
• "The Age of the Elites". In: History Today. Vol. 63 (2013)

References

• David Armitage, "Obituary: Nicholas Henshall". In: History Today (16 November 2015)