Internal migration remains one of the most important issues in European social history. Our entire concept of community and of social life rests on certain assumptions about residential stability, yet these assumptions have only been inadequately tested for most historical periods and in most places. We now know that previously accepted characterizations of the stable peasant community are erroneous, for numerous studies have documented the great population flux in much of western Europe in preindustrial times (Schofield, 1970; Tilly, 1978). Yet, for the most part, our ideas about life in communities of the past tend to rest on an assumption of a bedrock of residential stability to which the limited population movement is anchored.

Historical social mobility research has played an important part in the coming-of-age of “the new social history” as an active arena for empirical social research. The contribution of this social mobility research tradition can be traced in part to its success in providing three critical elements that lie at the heart of most coherent social science research traditions. These critical elements include the following: 1) the identification of important substantive questions that are susceptible to empirical analysis; 2) the identification of data sources that can provide empirical information relevant to these questions, and 3) the provision of a set of methodological operations and research practices that link substantive questions to the results of empirical analysis. The importance of Thernstrom’s (1964, 1973) landmark works on historical mobility in providing these fundamental elements is reflected in the widespread adoption of his research design by subsequent empirical studies of occupational mobility in historical settings.

In the reichstag election of June 1920, Germany’s Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) more than doubled its 1919 vote, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) declined precipitously. Coming only nineteen months after the establishment of a German republic, the election indicated widespread discontent with the governments led by the Social Democrats, who had assumed power in November 1918. In Essen, located in the center of the Ruhr and dominated by coal mines and the giant Krupp works, the SPD was almost eliminated as a political force (Essen, Amt für Statistik und Wahlen, n.d.).

It is an article of faith for social scientists that substantive considerations should guide the choice of research topics and dictate the selection of analytic tools, never the reverse. Most scholars share a certain disdain for colleagues who learn a new statistical technique and then apply it willy-nilly to every set of data within reach. Although we would not want, in general, to quarrel with the venerable maxim that technique should be the slave and not the master of substance, exceptions exist. In the Middle Ages a tremendous amount of scientific and creative energy was invested in the attempt to transform base metals into gold—surely an activity of great substantive interest but, ultimately, no payoff. On the other hand, vast new areas of scientific achievement were opened when someone built a better telescope and turned it on the stars or when cathode ray equipment, developed for other purposes, led to the discovery of X-rays. As Thomas Kuhn (1962) notes, increased precision in instrumentation is usually undertaken to test hypotheses under an existing paradigm. Yet these technical advances in measurement occasionally lead to surprising anomo-lies that open up entirely new substantive areas.

Application of social scientific methods and approaches to the study of history has always been the subject of considerable and often acrimonious debate. In recent years, however, the terms of the debate have taken a somewhat different and, to some of us, surprising turn. Notes of pessimism and defensiveness have entered the arguments of practitioners; some feel the need to repeat the once useful polemics of twenty odd years ago; and there is talk of the intrinsic limitations of the general enterprise. At the same time, the traditionalist camp announces with a measure of glee that the tides of social scientific history are on the wane.