Past And Present

Past & Present (past-and-present)

Journal positioning

Past & Present, published by Oxford University Press for the Past and Present Society, is a flagship of social, economic, and cultural history with a defining problem-driven ethos: it favors articles built around a "big question" — a genuine historical problem whose resolution speaks to processes of social change, power, and structure — rather than a self-contained narrative or an additive case study. Its house tradition is comparative, conceptually ambitious, and willing to range across periods and societies when the question demands it; what unites the journal is the conviction that a particular episode should illuminate something broadly significant about how societies work and change. A meticulous local study that never frames its larger stake is a poor fit, however well-sourced. This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing aid. It does not replace the journal's current submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live Past & Present author instructions and style guide.

When to trigger

• The author names Past & Present for a social, economic, or cultural history manuscript and wants a fit/framing check.
• A well-sourced local or specialist study must be re-framed around a larger historical problem and its comparative significance.
• The author is choosing between Past & Present and a generalist venue (AHR) or a period/area-specialist journal.
• The author needs the journal's problem-driven argument bar and desk-reject heuristics.

Scope & topic fit

• Social history of class, community, labor, popular politics, protest, and the structures of everyday power.
• Economic history treated as social process — markets, property, subsistence, inequality — when the stake is interpretive rather than purely quantitative.
• Cultural history of belief, ritual, mentalities, and the symbolic order, read for what it reveals about social relations.
• Comparative and connective history across regions or periods when the comparison drives the argument rather than decorating it.
• Studies of social change — transitions, crises, long-run transformations — that recast a received explanatory model.
• Work that puts a rich body of sources to conceptual work on a defined historical problem, not findings reported for their own sake.

Method & evidence bar

• The contribution is an original argument organized around a real historical problem; name the question and why its answer matters beyond the case.
• Primary-source command is deep and critically handled — archival, quantitative, or cultural evidence read against its silences, not merely catalogued.
• Historiographical positioning is explicit: which interpretive debate the piece enters and how it revises the prevailing model.
• Interpretation is controlled by evidence; large claims about social change are proportioned to what the sources can bear.
• Engagement reaches across subfields, with comparison or wider framing integral to the argument and any social-science concepts used with historical discipline, not as ornament.

Structure & house style

• Long-form scholarly article sustaining a single argument; defer exact word limits and article types to the live guide.
• Chicago notes-and-bibliography style with full footnotes; archival and quantitative citations follow the journal's form.
• Double-blind review: anonymize the manuscript — remove self-identifying citations and acknowledgements — per current policy.
• Prose is argument-led and legible to historians outside the subfield; non-English sources are quoted and translated per policy.
• Tables, figures, or images, where used, require permissions and meet the journal's specifications.