In The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, published in 1929, the historian Lewis Namier meticulously examined the patronage, clientele and funding of parliamentary life at the end of the eighteenth century, with all the corruption and ambition attendant on the attempt to gain entry to the House of Commons. While he was dispassionately studying the British aristocracy, Namier himself was already a Zionist who believed wholeheartedly in the national ideals of the Jewish people.

In the fateful summer of 1939, another young historian published a book that was to constitute a milestone. This was The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme. Both Syme and Namier dismissed the importance of ideas and principles, stressing the role played by oligarchic ties in both eighteenth-century British policies and the decline of the Roman Republic after the accession of Augustus. They regarded politics as essentially an arena of endless jousting, exposed to the cynical and unscrupulous manipulations of factions and their leaders. With rare historical insight, both Syme and Namier depicted the tapestry of family ties, economic interests, alliances and rivalries that bound the ruling class, using what has come to be called prosopography, the study of the common background of the ruling class in a given period by examining the biographies of its members.

On 3 September 1939, the historian Edward Hallett Carr found himself on the horns of a dilemma.