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 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 discussed his principles of 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 History: studies ancients tribes and empire, since Mesopotamia, passing trough Persia, Egypt, until Greece and the Roman Empire - with special emphasis in these two last. See also Classics.

• Medieval History: Deals with the period usually called Middle Age (between ~500-1453) especially in Europe and the Middle East. It includes the early Middle Ages (once called "the Dark Ages"), and the later Middle Ages. Major themes include the Church, the Holy Roman Empire, agricultural change, the Crusades, and intellectual and cultural trends

• Modern History. "Early modern history" covers Europe about 145o to 1648, with spcial attention to warfare, science and technology, the rise of the nation state (especially England, France, Spain, Prussia and Russia), and explorations of the Atlantic World. "Modern History" (since 1648) covers a vast array of topics.

• 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:

• Comparative history looks for similarities and differences between societies or civilizations; Arnold J. Toynbee made it fashionable in 1940s, but has been in decline ever since as historians prefer specialized research topics
• Political History: It is the study of political institutions, theories, leadership and practical politics. Since the 1980s much of political history has migrated to Political Science.
• Diplomatic history: deals with international relations. Both historians and politicial scientists are involved.
• Military History: The study of military practice and theory; wars and battles; technology; organization of armies, leadership and soldiers; also Naval History. Much of the field is handled by non-academics and amateurs, as military history has a marginal status in most research-oriented history departments.
• Economic History: Covers topics from agriculture, technology and business organization, and includes population studies and the reconstruction of economic indicators (like GDP). One important new branch is Business history. Since the 1970s much of economic history, as well as History of economic thought, has migrated from history departments and journals to economics - while marxist interpretations of history, still practised today, have mostly predominant an economic orientation.
• Social History: It is the study of ordinary people. It was revolutionized in the 1960s by the introduction of sophisticated quantitative and demographic methods, as well as models from sociology such as social mobility. The New Social History emerged in the 1960s to dominate professional scholarship. see also Social History, U.S..
  • Annales School, the French approach to social history, emphasizing geography and "mentalités"
• Labor history, deals with labor unions and the social history of workers. Seee for example Labor Unions, U.S., History

• Cultural history: Uses linguistic and cultural evidence to explore the inner psychology of societies. This became a dominant theme in the 1960s, especially influenced by careful analysis of exactly how key words were used. For example, the study of Republicanism.

• History of Ideas is a field founded in U.S. by Arthur Lovejoy, dealing with the inner history of ideas. It contrasts with the intellectual history promoted by Merle Curti that stresses the links between ideas and social and economic forces.
  • History of Science - History of scientific thought and technique.
• Urban history, deals with cities, and became of importance in the 1970s
• World History, a teaching field (rather than a research field), developed by historians of Asia and Latin America to provide a counterpoint to the "Western Civilization" emphasis that dominated history teaching after 1920.

Field Closely Related to History

• Antiquarianism uses historical data without the theoretical structure of historiography, to look at topics that happen to interest the amateur because of proximity, age and accumulated myth.
• Archaeology

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. The use of history to study the rise and fall of nation-states or ccivilizations, in the style of Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968), or Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), has fallen out of fashion, as most no longer have faith that such a project is possible. However William H. McNeill (1917- ), a Toynbee student, has tried his hand at it, and World History is in fashion.

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.

Bibliography

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