The word history comes from historía (Ancient Greek: ἱστορία, romanized: historíā, lit. 'inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge'[17]). It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his History of Animals.[18] The ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and in Boeotic 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.[19] 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)".[19]
It was from Anglo-Norman that history was brought into Middle English, and it has persisted. It appears in the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse, but seems to have become a common word in the late 14th 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-15th century.[19] 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 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).[20]
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". 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, or the word historiography.[18][further explanation needed] The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669.[21]
The title page to The Historians' History of the World
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.[22] 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.[23] 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"). Part of the historian's role is to skillfully and objectively use the many sources from the past, most often found in the archives. The process of creating a narrative inevitably generates debate, as historians remember or emphasize different events of the past.[24]
The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the humanities, other times part of the social sciences.[25] It can be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some historians strongly support one or the other classification.[26] In the 20th century the Annales school revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines as economics, sociology, and geography in the study of global history.[27]
Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an oral tradition, and attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have 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.[28] But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.
Archaeology is especially helpful in unearthing buried sites and objects, which contribute to the study of history. Archeological finds rarely stand alone, with narrative sources complementing its discoveries. Archeology's methodologies and approaches are independent from the field of history. "Historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archeology which often contrasts its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources. For example, Mark Leone, the excavator and interpreter of historical Annapolis, Maryland, US, has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents idealizing "liberty" and the material record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth made apparent by the study of the total historical environment.
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 intersections are present. It is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the very general, though the 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 may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity.[29]
Further information: Protohistory
Human history 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.[30] 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.[31]
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.
Main article: Historiography
The title page to La Historia d'Italia
Historiography has a number of related meanings.[32] 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 toward 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").[32] 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. Historians debate whether history can be taught as a single coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives.[33][34]
Further information: Historical method
A depiction of the ancient Library of Alexandria Historical method basics The following questions are used by historians in modern work.
The first four are known as historical criticism; the fifth, textual 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 write history.
Herodotus, from the 5th-century BC,[35] has been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, his contemporary Thucydides is credited with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method in the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, regarded history as the product of the choices and actions of humans, and looked at cause and effect, rather than the result of divine intervention (though Herodotus was not wholly committed to this idea himself).[35] In his historical method, Thucydides emphasized chronology, a nominally neutral point of view, and that the human world was the result of human actions. Greek historians viewed history as cyclical, with events regularly recurring.[36]
There was sophisticated use of historical method in ancient and medieval China. The groundwork for professional historiography in East Asia was established by court historian Sima Qian (145–90 BC), author of the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) and posthumously known as the Father of Chinese historiography. 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.[29]
In the preface to his book, the Muqaddimah (1377), the Arab historian and early sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, warned of 7 mistakes he thought historians 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 to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data". He introduced a scientific method to the study of history, and referred to it as his "new science".[37] His method laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history,[38] and so is considered to be the "father of historiography"[39] [40] or the "father of the philosophy of history".[41]
In the West, historians developed modern methods of historiography in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and Germany. In 1851, Herbert Spencer summarized these methods:"From the successive strata of our historical deposits, they [historians] diligently gather all the highly colored fragments, pounce upon everything that is curious and sparkling and chuckle like children over their glittering acquisitions; meanwhile the rich veins of wisdom that ramify amidst this worthless debris, lie utterly neglected. Cumbrous volumes of rubbish are greedily accumulated, while those masses of rich ore, that should have been dug out, and from which golden truths might have been smelted, are left untaught and unsought."[42] By the "rich ore" Spencer meant scientific theory of history. Meanwhile, Henry Thomas Buckle expressed a dream of history becoming one day a science: "In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been explained and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal laws. This has been done because men of ability and, above all, men of patient, untiring thought have studied events with the view of discovering their regularity, and if human events were subject to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results.[43] Contrary to Buckle's dream, the 19th-century historian with greatest influence on methods became Leopold von Ranke in Germany. He limited history to "what really happened" and by this directed the field further away from science. For Ranke, historical data should be collected carefully, examined objectively and put together with critical rigor. But these procedures "are merely the prerequisites and preliminaries of science. The heart of science is searching out order and regularity in the data being examined and in formulating generalizations or laws about them."[44]
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