I want to know the answer to the following question:
What methods, applied to the study of history, led to the perception of the Middle Ages as a time of recession and crisis?
All the background I'm provided with is that "Yet it was his Dutch colleague, Johan Huizinga, who was primarily responsible for popularising the pessimistic view of the Late Middle Ages, with his book The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919).". Is that enough to answer the question?
Answer: no