As a political historian, Gervinus was the antipode of Ranke. Following the principles of F. C. Schlosser, he slighted all documentary history. He had such a deep distrust of all state papers and diplomatic documents that he considered them as most untrustworthy sources for any historical record. He confined himself, therefore, chiefly to taking into account the political events and their results just as they lay on the surface; and, not consulting the state archives for the secret springs which set them in motion, he based his historical narratives almost entirely on his subjective judgment. Many brilliant passages will be found in his general "History of the 19th Century", such as the accounts of the South American and Greek revolutions, and of the July revolution in 1830; and his "Historische Schriften" also contain a number of valuable treatises and essays, which may be said to have paved the way to a new era in the art of writing history.