History

History (from the Greek ἱστορία) is the discipline studying the record of past events, usually for the purpose of documenting them or examining and drawing conclusions and explanations for them. Events that happened to humans before writing was adopted are generally considered prehistory and are usually handled by archaeologists. This article discusses historiography--that is, the writing of history by scholars and specialists.

Source material

Historians, the writers of history, have always focused their attention on written sources documenting past events.

Advances in historical research capabilities and techniques allowed historians to examine a wider variety of written and non-written sources, such as literary sources, coins, inscriptions on buildings and monuments.

Historical research methods

The historical research method takes three distinct stages: gathering of source material, estimating the source material value to the issue at hand, and deciding what happened.

With the first stage, historians try to collect all the source material available. With the second, a decision is made as to the value of each source. Usually, primary sources, such as a manuscript written at the time of the events, is considered more valuable than a secondary (e.g., a book written by another historian) or tertiary (e.g., an encyclopaedia) source.

Most historians will also apply other considerations, such as the relevance of source material to the subject, the historian's estimation regarding the reliability of the sources, or the amount of new information the source material adds. For example, a book about the Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet might be considered important by a historian dealing with the history of the English theatre, but will be of little importance to another historian, studying Verona in the 16th century.

The third and most crucial stage involves writing down the historical narrative, as the historian understands it. This stage almost always involves some type of decision on the part of the historian as to the degree of veracity of some depiction of the historical narrative, and rejection or playing down of alternative narratives.

Some historians, most especially in ancient historical account, tend to lay out or summarily describe the various narrative or contentions and usually determine, explain or hint which is truer in their view. Other historians just mention when relating some facts or opinions that are point in contention amongst sources or other historians. With some points, where making such a decision is hard or impossible, some historians may leave the point undecided or speculate as to what actually happened.

Historical methods

For more information, see: Historical method.

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history.

Ibn Khaldun laid down the principles for the historical method in his book Muqaddimah, but was lost 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 (Author

In the 20th century, historians avoided epic nationalistic narratives, favoring more specialized studies looking as social, economic, political or intellectual forces. French demographic historians introduced quantitative history, using broad data to track the lives of average groupigs. Other French historians were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalités). American historians following Frederick Jackson Turner emphasized the frontier and sectionaism, while Charles beard and C. Vann Woodward looked for conflicts of economic interest. After 1960 neoabolitionist historians inspired by the American civil rights movement emphasized moralistic stories, with racism as the evil that trimphed or was defeated. The "new social history" took a comprehensive approach to include every man, woman and child, often using census, court and tax records. After the 1970s 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. In his book In Defence of History, Richard J. Evans, a professor of modern history at Cambridge University, defended the worth of history.

Value

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, the strengths and weaknesses of various political, economic, and social systems, and the effects of factors such as 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 British statesman, 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.

References

Ernst Breisach. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (2007)
M. Bentley. Modern Historiography: An Introduction. (1999)
M. Bentley. Companion to Historiography (2003)
Peter Burke. French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-89 (1991)
Evans, Richard J.; In Defence of History; W. W. Norton (2000), ISBN 0-393-31959-8
Eric Foner, ed. New American History (1997)
Richard Hofstadter. Progressive Historians: Turner Beard Parrington (1969)
Georg G. Iggers. Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (2005)
Q. Edward Wang and Georg G. Iggers, eds. Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. (2005)

History

Contents

Source material

Historical research methods

Historical methods

Value

See also

References

Navigation menu

History

Source material

Historical research methods

Historical methods

Value

See also

References

Navigation menu

Search