Lawrence Stone

Lawrence Stone (December 4, 1919-June 16, 1999) was a British historian of early modern Britain. He is noted for his work on the English Civil War, and marriage.

Related Topics:
December 4 - 1919 - June 16 - 1999 - Early modern - English Civil War - Marriage

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He was born in Epsom, Surrey and received his education at Charterhouse School (1933-1938), the Sorbonne (1938) and at Oxford (1938-1940 & 1945-1946). During World War Two, Stone served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve.

Related Topics:
Epsom, Surrey - Charterhouse School - Sorbonne - Oxford - World War Two - Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve

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Stone served as a professor at the University of Oxford between 1947-1963, and at Princeton University from 1963-1990.

Related Topics:
University of Oxford - Princeton University

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Stone best known books were The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 and

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The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800. In the former, Stone made a detailed quantitative study of every conceivable piece of data relating to the economic activities of the English aristocracy to conclude that there was a major economic crisis for the nobility in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the latter, Stone used the same quantitative methods to study family life. Stone's conclusion there was little love in English marriages before the 18th century left him open to devastating counter-attack from medievalists who pointed that Stone ignored the medieval period and there is ample evidence that there were many loving marriages before 1700. By the 1980s, Stone had abandoned his thesis.

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Stone was a major advocate of using the methods of the social sciences to study history. Stone argued that using quantitative methods to assemble data could lead to useful generalizations about different periods in time. Howevever, Stone never argued in favor of creating "laws" of history in the manner of Karl Marx or Arnold J. Toynbee. In Stone's view, at most one could do was to create generalizations about a particular century and no more. Stone was very much interested in studying the mentalité of people in the early modern period along the lines of the Annales School, but Stone rejected Fernand Braudel's geographical theories as too simplistic. Along the same lines, Stone was much fond of combining history with anthropology and offering "thick description" in the manner of Clifford Geertz.

Related Topics:
Karl Marx - Arnold J. Toynbee - Annales School - Fernand Braudel - Anthropology - Clifford Geertz

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Stone's work was very controversial. To some, he was a radical trail-brazer, but to more conservative-minded historians, Stone's methods were a disgrace to the historical profession.

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