I'm assuming something like that as well. It would make sense, since the study of language and the history of languages was very important back then. Still: Somebody must know of a good paper or book or something that elaborates on these general notions - maybe they know themselves.

Might it be possible that there is more than one opposing theory? The name or names of such theories might be inferred by thinking back who criticised the theory of great man and what they themselves proposed. One answer that was already given might then be called "marxist theory of history".

@iayork Do you by any chance remember the name of the reference manager you used back then?

Interesting that this was still happening so recently! Thanks for your comment. I hope you don't mind my asking: So requests for reprints came from people with whom you were not familiar before? Kinda like today you can request a pdf of an article if you send people an email and they often just send you the file? Who handled the shipping of those requests? Did you have to mail them yourself?

Thanks. I was talking about natural history, not about history in our modern sense. I am aware that philology, chronology and antiquarianism were the predecessors of our modern humanities. The list of the encyclopaedias was interesting. I'm still not sure, though which of those were available in medieval europe.