The first published history was Anglia Judaica by De Blossiers Tovey in 1738,[1] and no further serious efforts at investigating the topic were made until the end of the nineteenth century.
[2] Unlike many areas of medieval historical research, the activities of the English Jewish community was in certain aspects extremely well documented, as a result of the interests of the crown in determining taxation and resolving disputes.
[3] It continued to be viewed as a relatively marginal concern outside of Jewish studies until the 1940s, when the relevance and importance began to become more obvious in the light of Nazism and the Holocaust.
For Dobson, "the treatment of their Jewish minorities by Edward I, Philip the Fair, and los reyes catolicos, much as those monarchs would have been disconcerted by the thought, is more 'relevant' to our own problems than any other feature of their respective reigns".
[10] The reasons for this are complex, but suggestions include that general histories often concentrate on individuals and their biographical details, hero worship of figures like Edward I,[11] absorption of the prejudices of the primary sources,[12][a] that the issues are too difficult, painful or embarrassing,[14] or that the persecution of Jews by England's monarchs gives the lie to the notion that centralised power of Kings was to the general benefit of the population.