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The Victorian historian E. A. Freeman (1823–92), following Thomas Arnold, promoted the innovative idea of the “unity of history,” according to which history was a linked, recurring cycle without the artificial boundary of periods. In recent research, however, it is little noticed that, along with this “unity” theory, Freeman also emphasized the ruptures and the divisions in history. It is even less noticed that Freeman devised a unique periodization, which abolished AD 476 as the date marking the fall of Rome. Thus the very idea of the “unity of history” seems to contradict the use of periods. The former stressed a historical continuum while the latter denoted historical ruptures. This article argues that Freeman's notion of “race” could, in most cases, solve the apparent tension between these two “divergent” ideas (unity versus periods). Nevertheless, it is also argued that in some exceptional cases Freeman identified other factors besides race (e.g. religion) as transforming the innate racial belonging and the predestined course of history.

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Go to Armenia, and you will not find an Armenian. They, too, are an expatriated nation, like the Hebrews…The Armenian has a proverb: ‘In every city of the East I find a home.’ They are everywhere; the rivals of my people, for they are one of the great races, and little degenerated: with all our industry, and much of our energy… Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred; or, The new crusade (1847)