Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:15, 5 February 2008

History is the study of the past, focused on human activity and leading up to the present day. This study is facilitated by the formation of a 'true discourse of past'. The modern discipline of History is dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse. More precisely, history is the continuous, systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time, in relation to humanity. Those who study it as a profession are called historians. This emphasis on the 'human' has made human subjects central to the narratives of the classical discourse of modern history. Consequently, history has assumed a sense which is broader than being solely the true narratives of human past. History is not just the past as an object of systematic knowledge or the discipline that produces knowledge out of that object; history also carries a sense that is implicit in the expression 'making history'. Thus History often signifies the production of events having transformative potentials that ushers in the future. This is how a temporal schema connecting the past, the present, and the future is foregrounded through the signifier history. The historical temporality is grounded within the idea of autonomous human subjects endowed with historical subjectivity which aids them in the production of events and at once helps them to record and narrate past events as history.

All events that are remembered and preserved in some form (that cannot be invalidated as unhistorical or that otherwise remain amenable to historical discourse) constitute the historical record. Events that had supposedly occurred before the advent of written communication are therefore dubbed "pre-history". The self-assigned task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can contribute to the production of truthful accounts of past.Thus 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'). Some historians study universal history. Others focus on certain methods, such as chronology, demography, historiography, genealogy, paleography, or cliometrics, or on certain areas, such as History of Brazil (1889–1930), History of China, or History of Science.

Etymology

The word history is derived from the Ancient Greek Template:Polytonic, historía, meaning "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative." The Latin form was historia, "narrative, account." In Old French, the word "estoire" was coined by Brigitte Gasson. 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" in the sense of Herodotus arises in the late 15th century. In German, French, and indeed, most languages of the world other than English, this distinction was never made, and the same word is used to mean both "history" and "story".

Broad discipline

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 modern academia, history is increasingly classified as a social science. In the 20th century the study of history was revolutionized by French historian Fernand Braudel, by using such outside disciplines as economics, anthropology, and geography in the study of global history.

Traditionally, historians have attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents, although historical research is not limited merely to these sources. Writing is a marker that separates history from what comes before.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. Archaeology is a discipline which is especially helpful in dealing with buried sites and objects which, once unearthed,can contribute to history writing. But Archaeology rarely stands alone since it utilizes narrative contents of prevalent histories to build up its theories. Historians frequently emphasize the importance of written records, which would limit history to times after the development of writing. This emphasis has led to the term prehistory to refer to any period of human history predating surviving written records.There are a variety of ways in which history can be organized, including chronologically, culturally, territorially and topically. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, and significant overlaps are often present, as in "The Argentine Labor Movement in an Age of Transition, 1930–1945." 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 development, transmission, and transformation of cultural practices and events are the subject of history.The idea of prehistory is a late development in history of thought. It is an attempt to qualitatively mark off the origin of history from the origin of earth.The separability of these two origins emerged as modern Geology proved that the age of earth is considerably older than what has been understood from Biblical literature.With time the idea of creation, as depicted in the Bible, came to be refuted and the origin of civil (human) history was chronologically separated from the origin of natural history. Since writing emerged at different times throughout the world, and since some kinds of written records are more perishable than others, a distinction between prehistory and history is often made. In the 20th century, the division between history and prehistory has been considered problematic. Criticism arose because of 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.

Historiography

Historiography has a number of related meanings. It can refer to the history of historical study, its methodology and practices (the history of history). It can also refer to a specific body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "medieval history written during the 1960s"). Historiography often stands as a substitute for Historiosophy or the Philosophy of History. Lately all of these terms have been supplanted by the term historical theory or the "theory of History". Ewa Domanska amongst others has used this term repeatedly in her book "Encounters". 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. The difference- between theory of history/historiosophy/historiography on one hand and history as in historical events and processess studied through producing valid historical statements at the level of particular on the other- could be seen as the ontico-ontological difference as it functions within the domain of historical discourse.

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. A Historiographical Operation geared to sift valid historical statements from the larger domain of statements is indispensable for the production of 'true discourse of past'. This discourse is necessarily produced by strict adherence to a stipulated method. In other words, historical truth itself can be called an effect of the method of historiographical production.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BC – ca.425 BC) has generally been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, it is his contemporary Thucydides (ca. 460 BC – ca. 400 BC) who is credited with having begun the scientific approach to history 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 reoccurring.

Outside of Europe, 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, 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.

Other historians of note who have advanced the historical methods of study include Leopold von Ranke, Lewis Bernstein Namier, Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, G.M. Trevelyan, A.J.P. Taylor and Ram Sharan Sharma. In the 20th century, historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or individuals, to more realistic chronologies. French historians introduced quantitative history, using broad data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalités). American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. 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 book In Defence of History, Richard J. Evans, a professor of modern history at Cambridge University, defended the worth of history.

Scientific views

In 1910, American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a "theory of history" based on the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy. This, essentially, is the use of the arrow of time in history.

Areas of study

Periods

Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur particular blocks of time. Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising ideas and classifacatory generalisations" can 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 judgements 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.

Military history

Military history concentrates on the study of conflicts that have happened in human society. This includes the examining wars, battles, military strategies and weaponry.

See also

Related disciplines

• Archaeology: the systematic study of our human past, based on the investigation of material culture and context, together forming the archaeological record.
• Archontology: study of historical offices and important positions in state, international, political, religious and other organizations and societies.

Notes and references

1. ^ Whitney, W. D. (1889). The Century dictionary; an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language. New York: The Century Co. Page 2842.
2. ^ WordNet Search - 3.0, "History".
3. Scott Gordon and James Gordon Irving, The History and Philosophy of Social Science. Routledge 1991. Page 1. ISBN 0415056829
4. Ritter, H. (1986). Dictionary of concepts in history. Reference sources for the social sciences and humanities, no. 3. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Page 416.
5. Michael C. Lemon (1995).The Discipline of History and the History of Thought. Routledge. Page 201. ISBN 0415123461
6. archaeological.org
7. ^ Graham, Gordon (1997). "Chapter 1". The Shape of the Past. Oxford University.
8. Jack Goody (2007) The Theft of History (from Google Books)
9. ^ Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. and Jeremy A. Sabloff (1979). Ancient Civilizations: The Near East and Mesoamerica. Benjamin-Cummings Publishing. pp. p. 5. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
10. Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. and Jeremy A. Sabloff (1979). Ancient Civilizations: The Near East and Mesoamerica. Benjamin-Cummings Publishing. pp. p. 6. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
11. Adams, Henry. (1986). History of the United States of America During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson (pg. 1299). Library of America.
12. Adams, Henry. (1910). A Letter to American Teachers of History. Google Books, Scanned PDF. Washington.
13. Marwick, Arthur (1970). The Nature of History. The Macmillian Press LTD. pp. p. 169. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
14. Tosh, John (2006). The Pursuit of History. Pearson Education Limited. pp. pp. 168-169. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

Further reading

• Ram Sharan Sharma; India's Ancient Past, 2005, Oxford University Press.
• Works by Arnold J. Toynbee at Project Gutenberg
• Asimov, Isaac; Asimov's Chronology of the World; Harper Collins, 1991, ISBN 0062700367.
• Durant, Will & Ariel; The Lessons of History; MJF Books, 1997, ISBN 1-56731-024-9.
• Durant, Will & Ariel; The Story of Civilization; 11 vols., Simon & Schuster.
• Evans, Richard J.; In Defence of History; W. W. Norton (2000), ISBN 0-393-31959-8
• Gonick, Larry; The Cartoon History of the Universe; Doubleday, vol. 1 (1990) ISBN 0-385-26520-4, vol. II (1994) ISBN 0-385-42093-5, W. W. Norton, vol. III (2002) ISBN 0-393-05184-6.
• Wells, H. G.; An Outline of History; Reprint Services Corporation (1920), ISBN 0-7812-0661-8.
• The World Almanac and Book of Facts (annual); World Almanac Education Group; 2005 ISBN 0886879450

External links

Further reading

• Williams, H. S. (1907). The historians' history of the world. (ed., This is Book 1 of 25 Volumes; PDF version is available)
• Wells, H. G. (1921). The outline of history, being a plain history of life and mankind. (ed., This is Book 1 of multi-volume set.)

General Information

• Internet History Sourcebooks Project See also Internet History Sourcebooks Project. Collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use.
• WWW-VL: History Central Catalogue first history on the WWW, located at European University Institute
• BBC History Site

• History
• Social sciences