Choosing the history of statistics and operations research as a casestudy, several ways of setting the development of 20th century appliedmathematics into a social context are discussed. It is shown that there isample common ground between these contextualizations and several recent research programs in general contemporary history. It is argued that a closer cooperation between general historians and historians ofmathematics might further the integration of the internalist andexternalist approaches within the historiography of mathematics.