History (from
Greek
ἱστορία -
historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge
acquired by investigation") is the study of the human
past, with special attention to the written record.
Scholars who write about history are called
historians. It is a field of research which uses a
narrative to examine and analyse the
sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate
objectively the patterns of
cause and effect that determine events. Historians
debate the nature of history and its usefulness. This includes
discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a
way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present. A
famous quote by the philosopher
George
Santayana has it that "Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it." The stories common to a particular
culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the legends
surrounding
King Arthur) are usually
classified as
cultural heritage
rather than the "disinterested investigation" needed by the
discipline of history.
Etymology
The word
history comes from
Greek ἱστορία (
historia),
from the
Proto-Indo-European
*wid-tor-, from the
root
*weid-, "to know, to see". This root is also present in
the English words
wit,
wise,
wisdom,
vision, and
idea, in the
Sanskrit word
veda, and in the
Slavic word
videti and
vedati, as well as others. (The asterisk before a word
indicates that it is a hypothetical construction, not an attested
form.)
The
Ancient Greek word ,
historía, means "inquiry, knowledge acquired by
investigation". It was in that sense that
Aristotle used the word in his ,
Peri Ta Zoa
Ηistoriai or, in Latinized form,
Historia Animalium.
The term is derived from ,
hístōr meaning
wise
man,
witness, or
judge.
We can see early
attestations of in Homeric Hymns,
Heraclitus, the Athenian
ephebes' oath, and in Boiotic
inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness", or
similar). The spirant is problematic, and not present in
cognate Greek
εἴδομαι - eídomai ("to appear"). The form
ἱστορεῖν - historeîn, "to inquire", is an
Ionic derivation, which spread first in
Classical Greece and ultimately over all of
Hellenistic
civilization.
It was still in the Greek sense that
Francis Bacon used the term in the late 16th
century, when he wrote about "
Natural
History". For him,
historia was "the knowledge of
objects determined by space and time", that sort of knowledge
provided by
memory (while
science was provided by
reason, and
poetry was provided
by
fantasy).
The word entered the
English
language in 1390 with the meaning of "relation of incidents,
story". In
Middle English, the
meaning was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning
"record of past events" arises in the late 15th century. In German,
French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, the same word is
still used to mean both "history" and "story". The adjective
historical is attested from 1661, and
historic
from 1669.
Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" is
attested from 1531. In all
European
languages, the substantive "history" is still used to mean both
"what happened with men", and "the scholarly study of the
happened", the latter sense sometimes distinguished with a capital
letter, "History", or the word
historiography.
Description
Since historians are observers and participants, the works they
produce are written from the perspective of their own time and
sometimes with due concern for possible lessons for their own
future. In the words of
Benedetto
Croce, "All history is contemporary history". History is
facilitated by the formation of a 'true discourse of past' through
the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to
the human race. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to
the institutional production of this discourse.
All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form
constitute the historical record. The task of historical discourse
is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to
the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the
constitution of the historian's archive is a result of
circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of
certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to
represent the 'true past').
The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the
humanities and other times as part of the
social sciences. It can also be seen
as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating
methodologies from both. Some individual historians strongly
support one or the other classification. In modern
academia, history is increasingly classified as a
social science. In the 20th century,
French
historian Fernand Braudel revolutionized the study of
history, by using such outside disciplines as
economics,
anthropology, and
geography in the study of global history.
Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either
in writing or by passing on an oral tradition, and have attempted
to answer historical questions through the study of written
documents and oral accounts. For the beginning, historians have
also used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In
general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into
three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is
physically preserved, and historians often consult all three. But
writing is the marker that separates history from what comes
before.
Archaeology is a discipline that is
especially helpful in dealing with buried sites and objects, which,
once unearthed, contribute to the study of history. But archaeology
rarely stands alone. It uses narrative sources to complement its
discoveries. However, archaeology is constituted by a range of
methodologies and approaches which are independent from history;
that is to say, archaeology does not "fill the gaps" within textual
sources. Indeed, Historical Archaeology is a specific branch of
archaeology, often contrasting its conclusions against those of
contemporary textual sources. Mark Leone, the excavator and
interpreter of historical Annapolis in New Jersey (a town on east
coast), has sought to understand the contradiction between textual
documents and the material record, demonstrating the possession of
slaves and the inequalities of wealth apparent via the study of the
total historical environment, despite the ideology of "liberty"
inherent in written documents at this time.
There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized,
including chronologically,
culturally,
territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually
exclusive, and significant overlaps are often present, as in "The
International Women's Movement in an Age of Transition, 1830–1975."
It is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the
very specific and the very general, although the modern trend has
been toward specialization. The area called
Big History resists this specialization, and
searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been
studied with some practical or
theoretical
aim, but also may be studied out of simple intellectual
curiosity.
History and prehistory
The
history of the world is the
memory of the past experience of
Homo sapiens sapiens around the
world, as that experience has been preserved, largely in written
records. By "prehistory", historians mean the recovery of knowledge
of the past in an area where no written records exist, or where the
writing of a culture is not understood.
Human history is marked both by a gradual
accretion of discoveries and
inventions, as well
as by
quantum leaps —
paradigm shifts,
revolutions — that comprise epochs in the
material and spiritual evolution of humankind. By studying
painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts, some information
can be recovered even in the absence of a written record. Since the
20th century, the study of prehistory is considered essential to
avoid history's implicit exclusion of certain civilizations, such
as those of
Sub-Saharan Africa
and
pre-Columbian America. Historians
in the West have been criticized for focusing disproportionately on
the
Western world. In 1961, British
historian
E. H.
Carr wrote:
- The line of demarcation between prehistoric and historical
times is crossed when people cease to live only in the present, and
become consciously interested both in their past and in their
future. History begins with the handing down of tradition;
and tradition means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the
past into the future. Records of the past begin to be kept
for the benefit of future generations.
Such a definition would include within the scope of history peoples
such as
Australian
Aboriginals and New Zealand
Maori who,
before contact with Europeans, already possessed a strong interest
in the past and maintained oral records transmitted to succeeding
generations.
Historiography
Historiography has a number of related meanings. Firstly, it can
refer to how history has been produced: the story of the
development of
methodology and
practices (for example, the move from short-term biographical
narrative towards long-term thematic analysis). Secondly, it can
refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical
writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s"
means "Works of medieval history written during the 1960s").
Thirdly, it may refer to why history is produced: the
Philosophy of history. As a
meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past,
this third conception can relate to the first two in that the
analysis usually focuses on the
narratives,
interpretations,
worldview, use of
evidence, or method of presentation of other
historians. Professional historians also
debate the question of whether history can be taught as a single
coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives.
Philosophy of history
|
History's
philosophical questions
- What is the proper unit for the study of the human past — the
individual? The polis? The civilization? The culture? Or the nation
state?
- Are there broad patterns and progress? Are there cycles? Is
human history random and devoid of any meaning?
|
Philosophy of history is an
area of
philosophy concerning the
eventual significance, if any, of
human
history. Furthermore, it speculates as to a possible
teleological end to its development—that is, it
asks if there is a design, purpose, directive principle, or
finality in the processes of human history. Philosophy of history
should not be confused with historiography, which is the study of
history as an academic discipline, and thus concerns its methods
and practices, and its development as a discipline over time. Nor
should philosophy of history be confused with the
history of philosophy, which is the
study of the development of philosophical ideas through time.
Professional historians debate the question of whether history is a
science or a liberal art. The distinction is artificial, as many
view the field from more than one perspective. Recent argument in
support for the transformation of history into science have been
made by
Peter Turchin in an article
titled "Arise
Cliodynamics" in the
journal "Nature".
Historical methods
Historical
method basics
The following questions are used by historians in modern work.
- When was the source, written or unwritten, produced
(date)?
- Where was it produced (localization)?
- By whom was it produced (authorship)?
- From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
- In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
- What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?
The first four are known as higher
criticism; the fifth, lower
criticism; and, together, external criticism. The sixth and
final inquiry about a source is called internal
criticism. |
The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by
which
historians use
primary sources and other evidence to
research and then to write
history.
Herodotus of
Halicarnassus (484 BC – ca.425 BC) has
generally been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, his
contemporary
Thucydides (ca. 460 BC – ca.
400 BC) is credited with having first approached history with a
well-developed historical method in his work the
History of the Peloponnesian
War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus and other religious
historians, regarded history as being the product of the choices
and actions of human beings, and looked at cause and effect, rather
than as the result of divine intervention. In his historical
method, Thucydides emphasized chronology, a neutral point of view,
and that the human world was the result of the actions of human
beings. Greek historians also viewed history as
cyclical, with events regularly recurring.
There were
historical traditions and sophisticated use of historical method in
ancient and medieval China
. The
groundwork for professional historiography in
East Asia was established by the
Han Dynasty court historian known as
Sima Qian (145–90 BC), author of the
Shiji (
Records of the Grand
Historian). For the quality of his timeless written work, Sima
Qian is posthumously known as the Father of
Chinese Historiography. Chinese
historians of subsequent dynastic periods in China used his
Shiji as the official format for
historical texts, as well as for
biographical literature.
Saint Augustine was influential
in
Christian and
Western thought at the beginning of the
medieval period. Through the Medieval and
Renaissance periods, history was often studied
through a
sacred or religious
perspective. Around 1800, German philosopher and historian
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
brought
philosophy and a more
secular approach in historical study.
In the preface to his book, the
Muqaddimah (1377), the
Arab historian and
early sociologist,
Ibn Khaldun, warned of seven mistakes that he
thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he
approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The
originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural
difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant
historical material, to distinguish the principles according to
which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly,
to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational
principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun
often criticized "idle
superstition and
uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he
introduced a
scientific method to
the study of history, and he often referred to it as his "new
science". His historical method included role of
state,
communication,
propaganda and
systematic bias in history, However Ibn
Khaldun had no followers and established no school; his work was
unknown in the west until the 19th century and had no influence
there.
In the West historians developed modern methods of historiography
in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and Germany.
The 19th century historian with greatest influence on methods was
Leopold von Ranke in
Germany.
In the 20th century, academic historians focused less on epic
nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation
or individuals, to more objective and complex analyses of social
and intellectual forces. A major trend of historical methodology in
the 20th century was a tendency to treat history more as a
social science rather than as an
art, which traditionally had been the case. Some of the
leading advocates of history as a social science were a diverse
collection of scholars which included
Fernand Braudel,
E. H. Carr,
Fritz Fischer,
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,
Hans-Ulrich Wehler,
Bruce Trigger,
Marc
Bloch,
Karl Dietrich
Bracher,
Peter Gay,
Robert Fogel,
Lucien
Febvre and
Lawrence Stone. Many
of the advocates of history as a social science were or are noted
for their multi-disciplinary approach. Braudel combined history
with geography, Bracher history with political science, Fogel
history with economics, Gay history with psychology, Trigger
history with archeology while Wehler, Bloch, Fischer, Stone, Febvre
and Le Roy Ladurie have in varying and differing ways amalgamated
history with sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics.
More recently, the field of
digital
history has begun to address ways of using computer technology
to pose new questions to historical data and generate digital
scholarship.
In opposition to the claims of history as a social science,
historians such as
Hugh
Trevor-Roper,
John Lukacs,
Donald Creighton,
Gertrude Himmelfarb and
Gerhard Ritter argued that the key to the
historians' work was the power of the
imagination, and hence contended that history
should be understood as an art. French historians associated with
the
Annales School introduced
quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of typical
individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of
cultural history (cf.
histoire des mentalités).
Intellectual historians such as
Herbert Butterfield,
Ernst Nolte and
George
Mosse have argued for the significance of ideas in history.
American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on
formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups.
Another genre of
social history to
emerge in the post-WWII era was
Alltagsgeschichte (History of
Everyday Life). Scholars such as
Martin
Broszat,
Ian Kershaw and
Detlev Peukert sought to examine what
everyday life was like for ordinary people in 20th century Germany,
especially in the
Nazi period.
Marxist historians such as
Eric Hobsbawm,
E. P. Thompson,
Rodney
Hilton,
Georges Lefebvre,
Eugene D. Genovese,
Isaac Deutscher,
C. L. R. James,
Timothy Mason,
Herbert Aptheker,
Arno J. Mayer and
Christopher Hill have
sought to validate
Karl Marx's theories by
analyzing history from a Marxist perspective. In response to the
Marxist interpretation of history, historians such as
François Furet,
Richard Pipes,
J. C. D. Clark,
Roland Mousnier,
Henry Ashby Turner and
Robert Conquest have offered anti-Marxist
interpretations of history.
Feminist
historians such as
Joan Wallach
Scott,
Claudia Koonz,
Natalie Zemon Davis,
Sheila Rowbotham,
Gisela Bock,
Gerda
Lerner,
Elizabeth
Fox-Genovese, and
Lynn Hunt have
argued for the importance of studying the experience of women in
the past. In recent years,
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 1997 book
In Defence of History,
Richard
J. Evans, a
professor of modern history at Cambridge University
, defended the worth of history. Another
defence of history from post-modernist criticism was the Australian
historian
Keith Windschuttle's
1994 book,
The Killing of History.
Areas of study
Periods
Historical study often focuses on events and developments that
occur in particular blocks of time. Historians give these
periods of time names in order to allow
"organising ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by
historians. The names given to a period can vary with geographical
location, as can the dates of the start and end of a particular
period.
Centuries and
decades are commonly used periods and the time they
represent depends on the
dating system
used. Most periods are constructed retrospectively and so reflect
value judgments made about the past. The way periods are
constructed and the names given to them can affect the way they are
viewed and studied.
Geographical locations
Particular
geographical locations can
form the basis of historical study, for example,
continents,
countries and
cities. Understanding why historic events
took place is important. To do this, historians often turn to
geography. Weather patterns, the water
supply, and the landscape of a place all affect the lives of the
people who live there. For example, to explain why the ancient
Egyptians developed a successful civilization, you must look at the
geography of Egypt. Egyptian civilization was built on the banks of
the Nile River, which flooded each year, depositing soil on its
banks. The rich soil could help farmers grow enough crops to feed
the people in the cities. That meant everyone did not have to farm,
so some people could perform other jobs that helped develop the
civilization.
World
World history is the study of major civilizations over the last
3000 years or so. It has led to highly controversial
interpretations by
Oswald Spengler
and
Arnold J. Toynbee, among others. World history is
especially important as a teaching field. It has increasingly
entered the university curriculum in the U.S., in many cases
replacing courses in Western Civilization, that had a focus on
Europe and the U.S. World history adds extensive new material on
Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Regions
- History of Africa begins with
the first emergence of modern human beings on the continent,
continuing into its modern present as a patchwork of diverse and
politically developing nation states.
- History of the Americas
is the collective history of North and South America, including
Central America and the Caribbean.
- History of North
America is the study of the past passed down from generation to
generation on the continent in the Earth's northern and western
hemisphere.
- History of Central
America is the study of the past passed down from generation to
generation on the continent in the Earth's western hemisphere.
- History of the
Caribbean begins with the oldest evidence where 7,000-year-old
remains have been found.
- History of South
America is the study of the past passed down from generation to
generation on the continent in the Earth's southern and western
hemisphere.
- History of Antarctica
emerges from early Western theories of a vast
continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far
south of the globe.
- History of Australia
start with the documentation of the Makassar
trading with Indigenous Australians on Australia's north
coast.
- History of New Zealand
dates back at least 700 years to when it was discovered and settled
by Polynesians, who developed a distinct Māori culture centred on
kinship links and land.
- History of the
Pacific Islands covers the history of the islands in the
Pacific Ocean.
- History of Eurasia is the
collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions:
the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe,
linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe of Central Asia
and Eastern Europe.
- History of Europe describes
the passage of time from humans inhabiting the European continent
to the present day.
- History of Frisia is the study
of the rich history and folklore of the Frisians and their languages, battles, culture,
cuisine, and so forth.
- History of Asia can be seen as
the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal
regions, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East linked by the
interior mass of the Eurasian steppe.
- History of East Asia is the
study of the past passed down from generation to generation in East
Asia.
- History of the Middle
East begins with the earliest civilizations in the region now
known as the Middle East that were established around 3000 BC, in
Mesopotamia (Iraq).
- History of South Asia is
the study of the past passed down from generation to generation in
the Sub-Himalayan region.
- History of Southeast
Asia has been characterized as interaction between regional
players and foreign powers.
Military history
Military history conflicts within
human
society usually concentrating on historical
wars and
warfare, including
battles,
military strategies and
weaponry. However, the subject may range from a melee
between two
tribes to conflicts between proper
militaries to a
world
war affecting the majority of the
human population. Military historians
record the events of military history.
Social history
Social history is
the study of how societies adapt and change over periods of time.
Social history is an area of historical study considered by some to
be a
social science that attempts to
view historical evidence from the point of view of developing
social trends. In this view, it may include areas of
economic history,
legal history and the analysis of other
aspects of
civil society that show the
evolution of social norms, behaviors and more.
Cultural History
Cultural history replaced
social
history as the dominant form in the 1980s and 1990s. It
typically combines the approaches of anthropology and history to
look at language, popular cultural traditions and cultural
interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records
and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of
a group of people. How peoples constructed their memory of the past
is a major topic.
Diplomatic history
Diplomatic history, sometimes
referred to as "
Rankian History" in honor of
Leopold von Ranke, focuses on
politics, politicians and other high rulers and
views them as being the driving force of continuity and change in
history. This type of
political history is the study of
the conduct of
international relations
between states or across state boundaries over time. This is the
most common form of history and is often the classical and popular
belief of what history should be.
People's history
A
people's history is a type of
historical work which attempts to account for historical events
from the
perspective of common people. A
people's history is the history of the world that is the story of
mass movements and of the outsiders. Individuals not included in
the past in other type of writing about history are part of this
theory's primary focus, which includes the
disenfranchised, the
oppressed, the
poor, the
nonconformists, and the otherwise
forgotten people. This theory also usually focuses on events
occurring in the fullness of time, or when an overwhelming wave of
smaller events cause certain developments to occur.
Gender history
Gender history is a sub-field of
History and
Gender studies, which
looks at the past from the perspective of
gender. It is in many ways, an outgrowth of
women's history. Despite its relatively
short life, Gender History (and its forerunner Women's History) has
had a rather significant effect on the general study of history.
Since the 1960s, when the initially small field first achieved a
measure of acceptance, it has gone through a number of different
phases, each with its own challenges and outcomes. Although some of
the changes to the study of history have been quite obvious, such
as increased numbers of books on famous women or simply the
admission of greater numbers of women into the historical
profession, other influences are more subtle.
Pseudohistory
Pseudohistory is a term
applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which
depart from standard
historiographical
conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions.Works
which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative or
disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of
national, political, military and religious affairs, are often
rejected as pseudohistory.
In many
countries, such as Japan
, Russia
, and the
United
States
, the subject taught in the primary and secondary schools under the name "history"
has at times been censored for political reasons. To give
just a few of many examples: in Japan, mention of the
Nanking Massacre has been removed from
textbooks; in Russia under
Stalin, history
was rewritten to conform with
communist
party doctrine; and in the United States the history of the
American Civil War had been
censored to avoid giving offense to white Southerners. This
practice goes back to the earliest recorded times. In Book Three of
The Republic,
Plato recommends that citizens be taught lies in order
to instill patriotism.
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
- Asimov, Isaac; Asimov's Chronology of the World;
Harper Collins, 1991, ISBN 0062700367.
- Carr, E.H. with a new introduction by Richard J. Evans;
What is History?; Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, ISBN
0333977017.
- Durant, Will & Ariel; The Lessons of History; MJF
Books, (1997), ISBN 1567310249.
- Evans, Richard J.; In Defence of History; W. W. Norton
(2000), ISBN 0393319598.
- Tosh, John; The Pursuit of History; Longman (2006),
ISBN 1405823518.
External links
- Further reading
- General Information
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