Dr Sohail Ansari

  My formulation is correct. If someone introduces a new historical explanation, it should be supported appropriately. The important distinction is: Every claim does not require the same amount of evidence. A direct definitional consequence needs almost none. A complex causal explanation needs considerably more.

  Why “independent evidence”? Compare: “The theory is correct because the theory says so.” That is circular. Now: “The theory predicts X, and independent historical records show X.” That is much stronger. Here independent means the evidence does not merely derive from the same assumption you are trying to establish. For example: Theory: Legal freedom increases labor mobility. Independent evidence: Census records show increasing movement of formerly tied workers into industrial employment. The census evidence provides an independent basis for assessing the theory.

  Published in an inaccessible venue A valuable article might appear in: a little-known journal, a journal in another language, an obscure regional publication, an archive with limited distribution. Its quality does not necessarily correspond to its visibility.

   A Unfashionable field An area may temporarily attract little scholarly attention. Example: Suppose historians become heavily interested in nationalism but pay little attention to rural labor history. A very good book about rural labor may receive little attention. B. Does not fit current research fashions A field may currently favor one theoretical framework. For example, suppose most scholars are studying history through gender analysis, while someone produces an excellent institutional analysis of property law. The work may receive less attention because it does not fit what scholars currently regard as an important research question.

  “Rediscovered” and the loose meaning Suppose: Economist A in 1920 develops a theory about labor markets. Then: Historian B in 2020 independently develops an explanation of nineteenth-century labor transformation that happens to use a similar mechanism. It would be misleading to say that B “rediscovered A's historical explanation” if B had never encountered A. A better description is: Historian B independently developed a similar analytical idea and later connected it to historical evidence. “Rediscovered” is therefore sometimes used loosely to mean that an older idea becomes independently recognized or becomes useful again. The quotation marks were meant to signal that this is not literal rediscovery.

  “Does this theoretical mechanism fit the historical evidence?” This means: Does the explanation provided by the theory actually correspond to what happened historically? Suppose an economist proposes: When labor becomes legally mobile, employers can recruit workers through wage contracts. A historian then examines nineteenth-century records. They might ask: Did workers actually move? Were wage contracts used? Did employers hire workers directly? Did labor mobility increase? Did factories increasingly depend upon wage labor? If the historical evidence corresponds to the theoretical mechanism, the historian can apply the theory to the historical case. If it does not, the historian should not simply apply it. So yes: the theory may fit the historical evidence, or it may not.