This article examines how Norbert Elias and History interacted and appropriated each other to consider the relationship between theory and history. Though Elias is now considered one of the major social theorist of the twentieth century, it was among historians that he first gained recognition and influence. After his rejection of Neo-Kantian philosophy, Elias turned to sociology and drew on history to create his own social theory. During the 1930s, Elias first wrote Court Society as a work of “intensive” history and then completed his magnum opus The Process of Civilization as a study of “sociogenesis and psychogenesis” across centuries. In the 1970s, historians belatedly “discovered” Elias, welcoming him as a precursor and guide to new trends in social and cultural history, while remaining skeptical of his notion of “state formation” and investigating alternate causations. In turn, Elias himself focused much of his later works on elaborating and expanding his theories of “figuration”, “interdependencies”, and “processes”, while historians sought to draw on his theoretical implications without adhering to his grand narrative of “civilization.” The intersecting and diverging of Elias and historians show how theory and history can inform and strengthen each other without necessarily converging. (Amherst College / jcho@amherst.edu)