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.

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

• Antiquarianism, the collection and study of old artifacts, such as antiques; also, an interest in topics because they are old; not usually considered part of historiography
• Atlantic History: a recent trend; studies the interaction of Europe, Africa and North America and South America, especially before 1800
• Cultural history: the study of culture in the past, or the use of cultural sources; this became a dominant theme in the 1990s, especially using linguistic evidence (exactly how key words were used)
• Demographic history, studies entire populations with census data and demographic models; emphasis on births, deaths, family structure and dynamic trends
• Diplomatic history: the study of international relations in the past.
• Economic History: the study of economic structures and behavior, especially with use of modern economic models
• Family history, studies the structure and behavior of ordinary families, with emphasis on the strategies for survival and success; includes studies of marriage, childhood, and old age; closely tied to demographic history
• Genealogy, the identification of ancestors using census and local records; genealogists use the same materials as social historians, to quote different goals; genealogy is not usually considered part of historiography
• Labor history, deals with labor unions and the social history of workers
• Military History: The study of military practice and theory; wars and battles; technology; organization of armies, leadership and soldiers; also Naval History.
• Oral History: creating new information by structured interviews with participants
• Paleography: study of ancient texts to detect forgeries and lines of transmission
• Political history: the study of political institutions, theories, leadership and practical politics.
• Psychohistory: study of the psychological motivations of historical actors, often with emphasis on childhood
• Quantitative history use of statistical data and methods, especially in demographic, economic and political history
  • Prosopography: the statistical or systematic collection of facts about all the individuals in a given leadership group.
• History of Science - History of scientists and their theories
  • • History of Biology
    • History of Medicine
• Social History: the study of ordinary individuals; the "New Social History" emerged in the 1960s to dominate professional scholarship; by the 1990s it had given way to Cultural History
  • see also Social History, U.S.
• World History: the study of history from a global perspective, with emphasis on Asia and, to a lesser degree, Latin America and Africa; became fashionable in 1980s partly to replace the teaching of "Western Civ" (i.e. surveys focused on the tradition from Greece and Rome, through Europe).

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

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• 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
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• 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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• Granatstein, J. L. Who Killed Canadian History? (1998). attacks postmodernism and new social history
• Gransden, Antonia. Historical Writing in England: c.550-c.1307 (1996) online edition
• Hofstadter, Richard. Progressive Historians: Turner Beard Parrington (1969)
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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