Many academics are nowadays much concerned with protecting and respecting what is called the 'voice' of certain groups in society. We have begun to realize that our voices are particular and biased, and that they can can drown out others. John Milloy, in his introduction to A National Crime, is very careful to position himself with relation to his research, "this history...is...written by a non-Aboriginal person...one who has never felt racism or suffered the purposeful denigration of identity" (Milloy, xvii). Respecting this fact, Milloy focuses his project on exploring, from his white position, "our history...our swallowing of the land and its First Nations peoples..." (Milloy, xviii), and avoids attempting to tell that part of the story "that can be told only by people who have had those experiences." (Milloy, xviii).

Hitchcock's way of writing on the other hand, has done quite the opposite. His work on 'the poor' of eighteenth century London is an attempt to turn his modern, non-poor academic attention to the task of teasing out the "most person and internal worlds" of the his subjects (Hitchcock, p.239). This is what he calls "History from Below," but I would prefer to call it more frankly a "History of Below." I am inclined to agree with Hitchcock that the voices of the 200-years past have long ago passed into shadow, and that we can thus describe them with impunity; yet, our self-assurance of our academic entitlement to study of and speak for them is rooted in contemporary political conditions. Certainly if reparations for the psychological and physical harm caused by eighteenth-century urban poverty were on the table, one might feel less inclined to cavalierly arrogate to ourselves the voice of 'the poor.'