History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia,
meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation")
is the study of the past as it is described
in written documents. Events occurring before
written record are considered prehistory.
It is an umbrella term that relates to past
events as well as the memory, discovery, collection,
organization, presentation, and interpretation
of information about these events. Scholars
who write about history are called historians.
History can also refer to the academic discipline
which uses a narrative to examine and analyse
a sequence of past events, and objectively
determine the patterns of cause and effect
that determine them. Historians sometimes
debate the nature of history and its usefulness
by discussing the study of the discipline
as an end in itself and as a way of providing
"perspective" on the problems of the present.Stories
common to a particular culture, but not supported
by external sources (such as the tales surrounding
King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural
heritage or legends, because they do not show
the "disinterested investigation" required
of the discipline of history. Herodotus, a
5th-century BC Greek historian is considered
within the Western tradition to be the "father
of history", and, along with his contemporary
Thucydides, helped form the foundations for
the modern study of human history. Their works
continue to be read today, and the gap between
the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused
Thucydides remains a point of contention or
approach in modern historical writing. In
East Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and
Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from
as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century
BC texts survived.
Ancient influences have helped spawn variant
interpretations of the nature of history which
have evolved over the centuries and continue
to change today. The modern study of history
is wide-ranging, and includes the study of
specific regions and the study of certain
topical or thematical elements of historical
investigation. Often history is taught as
part of primary and secondary education, and
the academic study of history is a major discipline
in university studies.
== Etymology ==
The word history comes ultimately from Ancient
Greek ἱστορία (historía), meaning
"inquiry", "knowledge from inquiry", or "judge".
It was in that sense that Aristotle used the
word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι
(Perì Tà Zôa Ηistoríai "Inquiries about
Animals"). The ancestor word ἵστωρ is
attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus,
the Athenian ephebes' oath, and in Boiotic
inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge"
or "witness", or similar).
The Greek word was borrowed into Classical
Latin as historia, meaning "investigation,
inquiry, research, account, description, written
account of past events, writing of history,
historical narrative, recorded knowledge of
past events, story, narrative". History was
borrowed from Latin (possibly via Old Irish
or Old Welsh) into Old English as stær ('history,
narrative, story'), but this word fell out
of use in the late Old English period.Meanwhile,
as Latin became Old French (and Anglo-Norman),
historia developed into forms such as istorie,
estoire, and historie, with new developments
in the meaning: "account of the events of
a person's life (beginning of the 12th century),
chronicle, account of events as relevant to
a group of people or people in general (1155),
dramatic or pictorial representation of historical
events (c. 1240), body of knowledge relative
to human evolution, science (c. 1265), narrative
of real or imaginary events, story (c. 1462)".It
was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed
into Middle English, and this time the loan
stuck. It appears in the thirteenth-century
Ancrene Wisse, but seems to have become a
common word in the late fourteenth century,
with an early attestation appearing in John
Gower's Confessio Amantis of the 1390s (VI.1383):
"I finde in a bok compiled | To this matiere
an old histoire, | The which comth nou to
mi memoire". In Middle English, the meaning
of history was "story" in general. The restriction
to the meaning "the branch of knowledge that
deals with past events; the formal record
or study of past events, esp. human affairs"
arose in the mid-fifteenth century.With the
Renaissance, older senses of the word were
revived, and it was in the Greek sense that
Francis Bacon used the term in the late sixteenth
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).In an expression of the linguistic
synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy,
English like Chinese (史 vs. 诌) now designates
separate words for human history and storytelling
in general. In modern German, French, and
most Germanic and Romance languages, which
are solidly synthetic and highly inflected,
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 ==
Historians write in the context of their own
time, and with due regard to the current dominant
ideas of how to interpret the past, and sometimes
write to provide lessons for their own society.
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 at 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 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. From
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. For
example, Mark Leone, the excavator and interpreter
of historical Annapolis, Maryland, USA; 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. 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.
This definition includes within the scope
of history the strong interests of peoples,
such as Indigenous Australians and New Zealand
Māori in the past, and the oral records maintained
and transmitted to succeeding generations,
even before their contact with European civilization.
== 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,
world view, 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 ==
Philosophy of history is a branch 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.
== Historical methods ==
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
(c. 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, 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 Records of the Grand Historian
(Shiji). For the quality of his 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 also laid the groundwork for the observation
of the role of state, communication, propaganda
and systematic bias in history, and he is
thus considered to be the "father of historiography"
or the "father of the philosophy of history".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 great
men, 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 archaeology 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 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 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.
== Marxian theory of history ==
The Marxist theory of historical materialism
theorises that society is fundamentally determined
by the material conditions at any given time
– in other words, the relationships which
people have with each other in order to fulfill
basic needs such as feeding, clothing and
housing themselves and their families. Overall,
Marx and Engels claimed to have identified
five successive stages of the development
of these material conditions in Western Europe.
Marxist historiography was once orthodoxy
in the Soviet Union, but since the collapse
of communism there in 1991, Mikhail Krom says
it has been reduced to the margins of scholarship.
== 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 beginning 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.
==== Prehistoric periodisation ====
The field of history generally leaves prehistory
to the archaeologists, who have entirely different
sets of tools and theories. The usual method
for periodisation of the distant prehistoric
past, in archaeology is to rely on changes
in material culture and technology, such as
the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age and
their sub-divisions also based on different
styles of material remains. Here prehistory
is divided into a series of "chapters" so
that periods in history could unfold not only
in a relative chronology but also narrative
chronology. This narrative content could be
in the form of functional-economic interpretation.
There are periodisation, however, that do
not have this narrative aspect, relying largely
on relative chronology and, thus, devoid of
any specific meaning.
Despite the development over recent decades
of the ability through radiocarbon dating
and other scientific methods to give actual
dates for many sites or artefacts, these long-established
schemes seem likely to remain in use. In many
cases neighbouring cultures with writing have
left some history of cultures without it,
which may be used. Periodisation, however,
is not viewed as a perfect framework with
one account explaining that "cultural changes
do not conveniently start and stop (combinedly)
at periodisation boundaries" and that different
trajectories of change are also needed to
be studied in their own right before they
get intertwined with cultural phenomena.
=== 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.
According to Jules Michelet in his book Histoire
de France (1833), "without geographical basis,
the people, the makers of history, seem to
be walking on air." 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,
studying the geography of Egypt is essential.
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. There is also the case of climate,
which historians like Ellsworth Huntington
and Allen Semple, cited as a crucial influence
on the course of history and racial temperament.
==== 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 starts 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 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 India 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 concerns warfare, strategies,
battles, weapons, and the psychology of combat.
The "new military history" since the 1970s
has been concerned with soldiers more than
generals, with psychology more than tactics,
and with the broader impact of warfare on
society and culture.
=== History of religion ===
The history of religion has been a main theme
for both secular and religious historians
for centuries, and continues to be taught
in seminaries and academe. Leading journals
include Church History, The Catholic Historical
Review, and History of Religions. Topics range
widely from political and cultural and artistic
dimensions, to theology and liturgy. This
subject studies religions from all regions
and areas of the world where humans have lived.
=== Social history ===
Social history, sometimes called the new social
history, is the field that includes history
of ordinary people and their strategies and
institutions for coping with life. In its
"golden age" it was a major growth field in
the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still
is well represented in history departments.
In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion
of professors of history in American universities
identifying with social history rose from
31% to 41%, while the proportion of political
historians fell from 40% to 30%. In the history
departments of British universities in 2007,
of the 5723 faculty members, 1644 (29%) identified
themselves with social history while political
history came next with 1425 (25%).
The "old" social history before the 1960s
was a hodgepodge of topics without a central
theme, and it often included political movements,
like Populism, that were "social" in the sense
of being outside the elite system. Social
history was contrasted with political history,
intellectual history and the history of great
men. English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw
it as the bridging point between economic
and political history, reflecting that, "Without
social history, economic history is barren
and political history unintelligible." While
the field has often been viewed negatively
as history with the politics left out, it
has also been defended as "history with the
people put back in."
==== Subfields ====
The chief subfields of social history include:
Demographic history
History of education
Ethnic history
History of the family
Labour history
Rural history
Urban history
American urban history
Women's historySmaller specialties include:
History of childhood
Gender history
=== 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.
Cultural history includes the study of art
in society as well is the study of images
and human visual production (iconography).
=== Diplomatic history ===
Diplomatic history focuses on the relationships
between nations, primarily regarding diplomacy
and the causes of wars. More recently it looks
at the causes of peace and human rights. It
typically presents the viewpoints of the foreign
office, and long-term strategic values, as
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. Historian Muriel Chamberlain notes
that after the First World War, "diplomatic
history replaced constitutional history as
the flagship of historical investigation,
at once the most important, most exact and
most sophisticated of historical studies."
She adds that after 1945, the trend reversed,
allowing social history to replace it.
=== Economic history ===
Although economic history has been well established
since the late 19th century, in recent years
academic studies have shifted more and more
toward economics departments and away from
traditional history departments. Business
history deals with the history of individual
business organizations, business methods,
government regulation, labour relations, and
impact on society. It also includes biographies
of individual companies, executives, and entrepreneurs.
It is related to economic history; Business
history is most often taught in business schools.
=== Environmental history ===
Environmental history is a new field that
emerged in the 1980s to look at the history
of the environment, especially in the long
run, and the impact of human activities upon
it.
=== World history ===
World history is the study of major civilizations
over the last 3000 years or so. World history
is primarily a teaching field, rather than
a research field. It gained popularity in
the United States, Japan and other countries
after the 1980s with the realization that
students need a broader exposure to the world
as globalization proceeds.
It has led to highly controversial interpretations
by Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee,
among others.
The World History Association publishes the
Journal of World History every quarter since
1990. The H-World discussion list serves as
a network of communication among practitioners
of world history, with discussions among scholars,
announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and
book reviews.
=== 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 or groups not included
in the past in other type of writing about
history are the primary focus, which includes
the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor,
the nonconformists, and the otherwise forgotten
people. The authors are typically on the left
and have a socialist model in mind, as in
the approach of the History Workshop movement
in Britain in the 1960s.
=== Intellectual history ===
Intellectual history and the history of ideas
emerged in the mid-20th century, with the
focus on the intellectuals and their books
on the one hand, and on the other the study
of ideas as disembodied objects with a career
of their own.
=== 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.
=== Public history ===
Public history describes the broad range of
activities undertaken by people with some
training in the discipline of history who
are generally working outside of specialized
academic settings. Public history practice
has quite deep roots in the areas of historic
preservation, archival science, oral history,
museum curatorship, and other related fields.
The term itself began to be used in the U.S.
and Canada in the late 1970s, and the field
has become increasingly professionalized since
that time. Some of the most common settings
for public history are museums, historic homes
and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives,
film and television companies, and all levels
of government.
== Historians ==
Professional and amateur historians discover,
collect, organize, and present information
about past events.They discover this information
through archaeological evidence, written primary
sources from the past and other various means
such as place names. In lists of historians,
historians can be grouped by order of the
historical period in which they were writing,
which is not necessarily the same as the period
in which they specialized. Chroniclers and
annalists, though they are not historians
in the true sense, are also frequently included.
== The judgement of history ==
Since the 20th century, Western historians
have disavowed the aspiration to provide the
"judgement of history." The goals of historical
judgements or interpretations are separate
to those of legal judgements, that need to
be formulated quickly after the events and
be final. A related issue to that of the judgement
of history is that of collective memory.
== 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.
Closely related to deceptive historical revisionism,
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.
== Teaching history ==
=== Scholarship vs teaching ===
A major intellectual battle took place in
Britain in the early twentieth century regarding
the place of history teaching in the universities.
At Oxford and Cambridge, scholarship was downplayed.
Professor Charles Harding Firth, Oxford's
Regius Professor of history in 1904 ridiculed
the system as best suited to produce superficial
journalists. The Oxford tutors, who had more
votes than the professors, fought back in
defence of their system saying that it successfully
produced Britain's outstanding statesmen,
administrators, prelates, and diplomats, and
that mission was as valuable as training scholars.
The tutors dominated the debate until after
the Second World War. It forced aspiring young
scholars to teach at outlying schools, such
as Manchester University, where Thomas Frederick
Tout was professionalizing the History undergraduate
programme by introducing the study of original
sources and requiring the writing of a thesis.In
the United States, scholarship was concentrated
at the major PhD-producing universities, while
the large number of other colleges and universities
focused on undergraduate teaching. A tendency
in the 21st century was for the latter schools
to increasingly demand scholarly productivity
of their younger tenure-track faculty. Furthermore,
universities have increasingly relied on inexpensive
part-time adjuncts to do most of the classroom
teaching.
=== Nationalism ===
From the origins of national school systems
in the 19th century, the teaching of history
to promote national sentiment has been a high
priority. In the United States after World
War I, a strong movement emerged at the university
level to teach courses in Western Civilization,
so as to give students a common heritage with
Europe. In the U.S. after 1980, attention
increasingly moved toward teaching world history
or requiring students to take courses in non-western
cultures, to prepare students for life in
a globalized economy.At the university level,
historians debate the question of whether
history belongs more to social science or
to the humanities. Many view the field from
both perspectives.
The teaching of history in French schools
was influenced by the Nouvelle histoire as
disseminated after the 1960s by Cahiers pédagogiques
and Enseignement and other journals for teachers.
Also influential was the Institut national
de recherche et de documentation pédagogique,
(INRDP). Joseph Leif, the Inspector-general
of teacher training, said pupils children
should learn about historians' approaches
as well as facts and dates. Louis François,
Dean of the History/Geography group in the
Inspectorate of National Education advised
that teachers should provide historic documents
and promote "active methods" which would give
pupils "the immense happiness of discovery."
Proponents said it was a reaction against
the memorization of names and dates that characterized
teaching and left the students bored. Traditionalists
protested loudly it was a postmodern innovation
that threatened to leave the youth ignorant
of French patriotism and national identity.
=== Bias in school teaching ===
In several countries history textbooks are
tools to foster nationalism and patriotism,
and give students the official line about
national enemies.In many countries, history
textbooks are sponsored by the national government
and are written to put the national heritage
in the most favourable light. For example,
in Japan, mention of the Nanking Massacre
has been removed from textbooks and the entire
Second World War is given cursory treatment.
Other countries have complained. It was standard
policy in communist countries to present only
a rigid Marxist historiography.In the United
States, especially the southern part history
about slavery and the American Civil War are
controversial topics. McGraw-Hill Education
for example, was criticised for describing
Africans brought to American plantations as
"workers" instead of slaves in a textbook.Academic
historians have often fought against the politicization
of the textbooks, sometimes with success.In
21st-century Germany, the history curriculum
is controlled by the 16 states, and is characterized
not by superpatriotism but rather by an "almost
pacifistic and deliberately unpatriotic undertone"
and reflects "principles formulated by international
organizations such as UNESCO or the Council
of Europe, thus oriented towards human rights,
democracy and peace." The result is that "German
textbooks usually downplay national pride
and ambitions and aim to develop an understanding
of citizenship centered on democracy, progress,
human rights, peace, tolerance and Europeanness."
== 
See also ==
=== 
Methods ===
Auxiliary sciences of history
Archival research
Bibliography
Computational history
List of history journals
Popular history
=== Topics ===
Historiography of Argentina
Atlantic history
Historiography of Canada
Classics
Greek historiography
Historiography of Alexander the Great
Roman historiography
Historiography of the fall of the Western
Roman Empire
Historiography of the Cold War
Chinese historiography
Historiography of the French Revolution
Annales School, in France
Historiography of Germany
Bielefeld School, in Germany
Historiography of early Islam
Historiography of Japan
Middle Ages
Dark Ages (historiography)
Historiography of the Crusades
Historiography of Switzerland
Historiography in the Soviet Union
Historiography of the United States
Frontier Thesis
Historiography of the United Kingdom
Historiography of Scotland
Historiography of the British Empire
World history
Historiography of the causes of World War
I
Historiography of World War II
=== Other themes ===
History of the book
Historiography of science
Subaltern Studies, Regarding post-colonial
India
Whig history, History portrayed as the story
of continuous progress
== 
References ==
== Further reading ==
The American Historical Association's Guide
to Historical Literature, 3rd ed., eds. Mary
Beth Norton and Pamela Gerardi (2 vol, Oxford
U.P. 1995) 2064 pages; annotated guide to
27,000 of the most important English language
history books in all fields and topics
Benjamin, Jules R. A Student's Guide to History
(2009)
Carr, E.H., with a new introduction by Richard
J. Evans. What is History? Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2001, ISBN 0-333-97701-7.
Cronon, William. "Storytelling." American
Historical Review 118.1 (2013): 1-19. online,
Discussion of the impact of the end of the
Cold War upon scholarly research funding,
the impact of the Internet and Wikipedia on
history study and teaching, and the importance
of storytelling in history writing and teaching.
Evans, Richard J. In Defence of History. W.
W. Norton & Company (2000), ISBN 0-393-31959-8.
Furay, Conal, and 
Michael J. Salevouris. The Methods and Skills
of History: A Practical Guide (2010)
Kelleher, William. Writing History: A Guide
for Students (2008) excerpt and text search
* Lingelbach, Gabriele. "The Institutionalization
and Professionalization of History in Europe
and the United States." in The Oxford History
of Historical Writing: Volume 4: 1800–1945
4 (2011): 78+ online
Presnell, Jenny L. The Information-Literate
Historian: A Guide to Research for History
Students (2006) excerpt and text search
Tosh, John; The Pursuit of History (2006),
ISBN 1-4058-2351-8.
Woolf D. R. A Global Encyclopedia of Historical
Writing (Garland Reference Library of the
Humanities) (2 vol 1998) excerpt and text
search
Williams, H. S. (1907). The Historians' History
of the World. (ed., This is Book 1 of 25 Volumes;
PDF version is available)
== External links ==
Best history sites .net
BBC History Site
Internet History Sourcebooks Project See also
Internet History Sourcebooks Project. Collections
of public domain and copy-permitted historical
texts for educational use
The History Channel Online
History Channel UK
