Historiography in the first person: The historian as author in eighteenth-century Belgium

Analyzes the self-referential, hermeneutical aspects of 18th-century Belgian historical writing and identifies a shift in historians' perceptions of, and presentation of, themselves in the text during the 1770's and 1780's. Whereas early-18th-century scholars rarely used the first person in their histories and purported to be merely collecting and reporting the available facts, after the creation of the Imperial Royal Academy of Science and Letters in 1772 historians began to consider themselves scholars who studied the available sources and made their own distinct contributions to the historiographical discussion. In doing so, historians revealed both their scholarly methodologies and elements of their own personalities and characters.