History

History (from the Greek ἱστορία) is the study of past human events based on written documents, conventionally divided chronologically into ancient, medieval and modern periods. Academic studies of history attempt to document past events, as well as interpret or explain them according to various methodologies. Prehistory deals with mankind before written records, and is part of Archaeology. Popular history (or "heritage") is related to folklore and concerns memories of the past constructed by a group. Sacred history concerns divinely inspired events and is handled by religion scholars. This article discusses historiography, the writing of history by scholars and specialists. For lists of historians, see the Catalogs section above.

Etymology

The Ancient Greek word ἱστορία, istoría, means "knowledge acquired by investigation, inquiry". In this sense it is used in antique expression "natural history".

In English the word went into two different directions: "story", or chronologically-structured narrative, and "history", or discourse on human events.

Sources used by historians

The main source of information is written text, mainly from political, ceremonial or bureaucratic sources. Other kinds of sources include memoirs, oral interviews, newspaper accounts, and works of art.

Historians distinguish "primary sources" (written sources created by participants), and "secondary sources", which is the interpretation of history by scholars

Ibn Khaldun laid down the principles for the historical method in his book Muqaddimah, but was unknown to scholars and not rediscovered until the 19th century.

Historians of note who have advanced the historical methods of study include Leopold von Ranke, Lewis Bernstein Namier, Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles Beard and E.P. Thompson.

In the 20th century, academic historians avoided epic nationalistic narratives, favoring more specialized studies looking as social, economic, political or intellectual forces. Demographic historians introduced quantitative history, using census data to track the lives of average people. French historians were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (such as the "histoire des mentalités"). In the U.S. "Progressive" historians following Frederick Jackson Turner emphasized the frontier and sectionalism, while those following Charles Beard and C. Vann Woodward looked for conflicts of economic interest. After 1950 intellectual history replaced the older Progressive models. After 1960 neoabolitionist historians inspired by the American civil rights movement emphasized moralistic stories, with racism as the evil that triumphed or was defeated. The "new social history" in the 1970s took a comprehensive approach to include every man, woman and child, often using census, court and tax records. After the 1970s some postmodernists have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources. This approach came under blistering attack by historians such as Granatstein (1998) in Canada, and Windschuttle (2000) in Australia, leading to lively debates.

Types of historical description

The historians have sometimes divided their major field of knowledge in specialized subfields, usually period, place or approach.

Field of History by period and place

• Ancient Classical History: grosso modo, they study of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. See also Classics.

• Ancient Oriental History: Sometimes is the term used by designated the study of other ancient reigns by the time of the classical ones - like the Mesopitamian and the Persian.

• Medieval History: Deals with the period usually called Middle Age (between ~500-1492) in Europe and sometimes also in the Islamic World.

• Modern History

• Contemporary History
  • Atlantic History: a recent trend; studies the interaction of Europe, Africa and North America and South America, especially before 1800

Fields of History by approach

Although there are many different division, varying by country to country, or indeed by uiversity to university, we can make an schematic division in some major fields:

• Political History: It is the study of political institutions, theories, leadership and practical politics. The historian from Annales accused the positivist to just write this kind of history.
  • Diplomatic history: the historical study having as basis the international relations.
  • Military History: The study of military practice and theory; wars and battles; technology; organization of armies, leadership and soldiers; also Naval History.

• Economic History: The most of proeminent name of this field is Karl Marx, for beeen perhaps the first to use economical estimations and statistics to draw an univeral history of the men. But there are different tendences on it, like the english New Economical History, much associated to modern economic models. The economic historians often uses the set of techniques called quantitative history.

• Social History: It is the study of history with emphasis the social reality and the effects in large group of people.The New Social History emerged in the 1960s to dominate professional scholarship. see also Social History, U.S..
  • Labor history, deals with labor unions and the social history of workers

• Cultural history: It is the study history focusing the culture, or by using cultural sources. This became a dominant theme in the 1960s, especially influenced by linguistics (exactly how key words were used).

• History of Ideas is a field founded in U.S. by Arthur Lovejoy, dealing with ideas, concepts or thoughts. After Second Wolrd War, the field has developed mainly in England around Quentin Skinner's group and in Germany, under the way of History of Concepts.
  • History of Science - History of scientific thought. It is mostly often used the approach of History of Ideas, but is also possible a social history of science (see Christopher Hill).

• Microhistory: A relatively recent field, basing its approach not in political debate or economical systems or coletive manifestations but in specifical or individual events.

• Archaeology or Antiquarianism can be also a way of historical apporach, studying a certain epoque based in material culture of that epoque.

National debates

Historians inside a nation often engage in extended debates about the nation's history, and how to teach it. In the case of teaching Japanese history in the schools of Japan, other countries (especially China and South Korea), have officially complained.

Germany

The Historikerstreit

Revisionism

Revisionism is a reversal of opinion, and generally is used for historians who reverse the old "orthodox" or standard interpretation. The first "revisionist" debate came in the 1920s when a new group of historians rejected the thesis that Germany was "guilty" (primarily responsible) for causing the Great War, a proposition that was included in the Treaty of Versailles.

Approaches to valuing historical descriptions

Historians often claim that the study of history teaches valuable lessons with regard to past successes and failures of leaders, military strategy and tactics, economic systems, forms of government, and other recurring themes in the human story. From history we may learn factors that result in the rise and fall of nation-states or civilizations, as explored by Arnold Toynbee. Other historians have explored various political, economic, and social systems, and the effects of factors such as religion, disease, warfare, trade and technology.

One of the most famous quotations about history and the value of studying history, by the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, reads: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel remarked in his Philosophy of History that "What history and experience teach us is this: that people and government never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it." This was famously paraphrased by the Winston Churchill, who said "The one thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history."

An alternative view is that the forces of history are too great to be changed by human deliberation, or that, even if people do change the course of history, the movers and shakers of this world are usually too self-involved to stop to look at the big picture.

Yet another view is that history does not repeat itself because of the uniqueness of any given historical event. In this view, the specific combination of factors at any moment in time can never be repeated, and so knowledge about events in the past can not be directly and beneficially applied to the present.

Such contrasts with regard to "history's value" serve as examples of history as an outlet for intellectual debate, and indeed many, both in and outside of academia, would argue that at least part of history's value lies simply in its ability to provoke such discussion. In turn, this can be seen as cultivating further intellectual interest.

See Also

• Historiography

Bibliography

• Barraclough, Geoffrey, and Michael Burns. Main Trends in History, (1991) online edition
• Bender, Thomas. ed. Rethinking American History in a Global Age (2002) online edition
• Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (2007)
• Bentley, Michael. Modern Historiography: An Introduction. (1999) online edition
• Bentley, Michael. Companion to Historiography (2003), 40 articles on national traditions from ancient to present
• Burke, Peter, French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-89 (1991)
• Cantor, Norman F. Inventing the Middle Ages. (1993)
• Evans, Richard J.; In Defence of History; W. W. Norton (2000), ISBN 0-393-31959-8
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• Galloway, Patricia. Practicing Ethnohistory: Mining Archives, Hearing Testimony, Constructing Narrative. (U. of Nebraska Press, 2006. 454 pp. isbn 978-0-8032-7115-9.)
• Granatstein, J. L. Who Killed Canadian History? (1998). attacks postmodernism and new social history
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• Windschuttle, Keith. The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past. (2000), Australian critique. online edition
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• Zunz, Olivier ed. Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History, (1985) online edition