How did Johann Gottfried von Herder influence Leopold von Ranke’s view of history?

Johann Gottfried von Herder was one of the intellectual influences that shaped Leopold von Ranke’s early development as a historian. Herder, a German Romantic poet and philosopher, viewed history as a chronicle of human progress.1

Herder’s work, which opposed the Rationalism prevalent in historiography at the time, offered a deeper understanding of historical existence as a product of the tension between individual development and the broader course of history. This perspective contributed to Ranke’s own belief that history evolves through the separate, independent development of individual men, peoples, and states, which together constitute the process of culture.23

While Ranke was influenced by a variety of thinkers—including Barthold Georg Niebuhr and the philosopher Friedrich Schelling—Herder’s emphasis on the unique historical development of nations helped inform Ranke’s view that social and political principles must vary according to the characteristics of different peoples, rather than relying on abstract, universally valid principles.31