I was trying to figure that out too. These "great historians" are in opposition to what he calls "scientific" historians, which I assumed meant the Annales School (really into sociology and quantitative data).[1] But I don't know all that much about the historiography of the US (and of course things have changed a lot since Smith wrote this in 1973).
My guess is the great historians were those in the nineteenth and early twentieth century who tended toward writing gigantic broad narratives that academic historians love to pick apart and prove wrong. But that's a guess, partially derived from this 1985 interview.[2]
My guess is the great historians were those in the nineteenth and early twentieth century who tended toward writing gigantic broad narratives that academic historians love to pick apart and prove wrong. But that's a guess, partially derived from this 1985 interview.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_School [2] https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/0702/dpage-f.html