Master agendas for historical sociology were first set back when Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber asked important questions and offered such fruitful, if varying, answers about the social origins and effects of the European industrial and democratic revolutions. During the twentieth century, the major scholars discussed in the essays collected here have been at the forefront of those carrying forward the traditions of historical sociology launched by the founders. At moments, to be sure, these men may have seemed rather isolated bearers of modes of scholarship that most sociologists considered part of the honored past rather than the vital present and future of the discipline. By now, however, it is clear enough that the stream of historical sociology has deepened into a river and spread out into eddies running through all parts of the sociological enterprise.

Until the 1970s, “historical sociology” was not a phrase one often, if ever, heard in conversations among sociologists in the United States. Of course, major works of comparative history by the likes of Bendix, Eisenstadt, and Moore were widely known and respected. But these works were thought to be peculiar accomplishments. Only unusually cosmopolitan older men, operating in relative isolation from the mainstreams of empirical research in the discipline, were considered capable of producing such major historical works, while ordinary sociologists used quantitative or field-work techniques to study specialized aspects of present-day societies.