Title:Approaches (Types) of History

1Approaches (Types) of History2 The question of how a historian approacheshistorical events is one of the most importantquestions within historiography. It is commonly recognized by historians that, inthemselves, individual historical facts are notparticularly meaningful. Such facts will only become useful when assembledwith other historical evidence, and the processof assembling this evidence is understood as aparticular historiographical approach.

3 "Fields of history" refers to the categoriesprofessional historians use to classify theirbroad areas of work within the overall disciplineof history. Some of these categories (e.g., cultural history,social history, intellectual history) refer tohistorical method rather than specific topic ofstudy, while others coincide or partially overlapwith the practical classification of history bytopic.

4Approaches to History5The Annales School The Annales School is a school of historicalwriting named after the French scholarly journalAnnales d'histoire conomique et sociale (latercalled Annales. Economies, socits,civilisations, then renamed in 1994 as Annales.Histoire, Sciences Sociales) where it was firstexpounded. Annales school history is best known forincorporating social scientific methods intohistory.

6 The Annales was founded and edited by Marc Blochand Lucien Febvre in 1929, while they wereteaching at the University of Strasbourg, France. These authors quickly became associated with thedistinctive Annales approach, which combinedgeography, history, and the sociologicalapproaches to produce an approach which rejectedthe predominant emphasis on politics, diplomacyand war of many 19th century historians.

7 Instead, they pioneered an approach to a study oflong-term historical structures (la longue dure)over events. Geography, material culture, and what laterAnnalistes called mentalits, or the psychologyof the epoch, are also characteristic areas ofstudy. An eminent member of this school, Georges Duby,wrote in the forward of his book Le dimanche deBouvines that the history he taught relegated the sensational to the sidelines andwas reluctant to give a simple accounting ofevents, but strived on the contrary to pose andsolve problems and, neglecting surfacedisturbances, to observe the long and medium-termevolution of economy, society and civilization."

8 Marc Bloch was shot by the Gestapo during theGerman occupation of France in World War II, andFebvre carried on the Annales approach in the1940s and 1950s.

9 It was during this time (1930s-1940s) that hementored Fernand Braudel, who would become one ofthe best known exponents of this school. Braudel's work came to define a 'second' era ofAnnales historiography and was very influentialthroughout the 1960s and 1970s, especially forhis work on the Mediterranean region in the eraof Philip II of Spain. While authors such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie andJacques Le Goff continue to carry the Annalesbanner, today the Annales approach has been lessdistinctive as more and more historians do workin cultural history and economic history.

10BIG HISTORY11 Big History examines history on a large scaleacross long time frames through amulti-disciplinary approach. Big History gives a focus on the alteration andadaptations in the human experience. Big History is a discrete field of historicalstudy that arose in the late 1980s. It is related to, but distinct from, worldhistory, as the field examines history from thebeginning of time to the present day and is thuscloser to the older concept of universal history.

12(No Transcript)13(No Transcript)14 The first courses in Big History wereexperimental ones taught in the late 1980s byJohn Mears at Southern Methodist University(Dallas, Texas) and by David Christian atMacquarie University (Australia), and morerecently at San Diego State University. Since then, a number of other universities haveoffered similar courses.

15 The first book in Big History was published in1996 by Fred Spier entitled, The Structure of BigHistory From the Big Bang until Today, whichoffers an ambitious defense of the project andconstructs a unified account of history acrossall time scales.

16 Another notable text in Big History is DavidChristian's Maps of Time An Introduction to BigHistory, which explores history from the firstmicro-seconds of the Big Bang, to the creation ofthe solar system, to the origins of life onearth, the evolution of humans, the agriculturalrevolution, modernity, and the 20th century. Christian examines large-scale patterns andthemes, and provides perspective of time scales. It was David Christian who coined the term BigHistory in an effort to place human historywithin the context of the history of life, theearth, and the universe.

17Cliometrics18Cliometrics Cliometrics refers to the systematic use ofeconomic theory and econometric techniques tostudy economic history. The term was originally coined by Jonathan R.T.Hughes and Stanley Reiter in 1960 and refers toClio, who was the muse of history and heroicpoetry in Greek mythology. This term is also sometimes used referring tocounterfactual history.

19 Cliometrics, originated in 1958 with the work ofAlfred Conrad and John Meyer with the publicationof "The Economics of Slavery in the Ante-BellumSouth," in the Journal of Political Economy.

20 The cliometric revolution actually began in themid-1960s and was particularly ugly because mosteconomic historians were either historians oreconomists who had very little connection tomathematical techniques or statistics.

21Comparative History22 Comparative history is the comparison betweendifferent societies at a given time or sharingsimilar cultural conditions. Proponents of this approach include Americanhistorians Barrington Moore and Herbert E.Bolton British historians Arnold Toynbee andGeoffrey Barraclough and German historian OswaldSpengler.

23 Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889 1975) was a Britishhistorian whose twelve-volume analysis of therise and fall of civilizations, A Study ofHistory, 1934-1961, was a synthesis of worldhistory, a metahistory based on universal rhythmsof rise, flowering and decline, which examinedhistory from a global perspective.

24 Toynbee presented history as the rise and fall ofcivilizations, rather than the history ofnation-states or of ethnic groups. He identified his civilizations according tocultural and religious rather than nationalcriteria.

25 Historians generally accept the comparison ofparticular institutions (banking, women's rights,ethnic identities) in different societies, butsince the hostile reaction to Toynbee in the1950s, generally do not pay much attention tosweeping comparative studies.

26Cultural History27 Cultural history (from the German termKulturgeschichte), at least in its commondefinition since the 1970s, often combines theapproaches of anthropology and history to look atpopular cultural traditions and culturalinterpretations of historical experience.

28 Cultural history involves the records andnarrative descriptions of past knowledge,customs, and arts of a group of people. Cultural history encompasses the continuum ofevents occurring in succession leading from thepast to the present and even into the futurepertaining to a culture.

29 Cultural history, as a discipline, records andinterprets past events involving human beingsthrough the social, cultural, and politicalmilieu of or relating to the arts and mannersthat a group favors. Cultural history studies and interprets therecord of human societies by denoting the variousdistinctive ways of living built up by a group ofpeople under consideration. Cultural history involves the aggregate of pastcultural activity, such as ceremony, class inpractices, and the interaction with locales.

30 Jacob Burckhardt (1818 1897) was a Swisshistorian of art and culture, fields which hehelped found. Siegfried Giedion described Burckhardt'sachievement in the following terms "The great discoverer of the age of theRenaissance, he first showed how a period shouldbe treated in its entirety, with regard not onlyfor its painting, sculpture and architecture, butfor the social institutions of its daily life aswell Burckhardt's best known work is The Civilizationof the Renaissance in Italy (1860).

31 Burkhardt's historical writings did much toestablish art history as an academic discipline,and also have literary value in their own right. His innovative approach to historical researchemphasized the value of culture and art whenanalyzing the social and political trendsunderlying historical events. Jacob Burckhardt helped found cultural history asa discipline.

32 Cultural history overlaps in its approaches withthe French movements of histoire des mentalitsand the so-called new history, and in the U.S. itis closely associated with the field of Americanstudies. Most often the focus is on phenomena shared bynon-elite groups in a society, such as carnival,festival, and public rituals performancetraditions cultural evolutions in humanrelations (ideas, sciences, arts, techniques)and cultural expressions of social movements suchas nationalism.

33Political History34 Political history is the narrative and analysisof political events, ideas, movements, andleaders. It is usually structured around the nation state. It is distinct from, but related to, other fieldsof history such as social history, economichistory, and military history.

35 Generally, political history focuses on eventsrelating to nation-states and the formalpolitical process. According to Hegel, Political History "is an ideaof the state with a moral and spiritual forcebeyond the material interests of its subjects itfollowed that the state was the main agent ofhistorical change" This contrasts with, for instance, socialhistory, which focuses predominantly on theactions and lifestyles of ordinary people, orpeople's history, which is historical work fromthe perspective of common people.

36Diplomatic History37 Diplomatic history, sometimes referred to as"Rankian History in honor of Leopold von Ranke,focuses on politics, politicians and other highrulers and views them as being the driving forceof continuity and change in history. This type of political history is the study ofthe conduct of international relations betweenstates or across state boundaries over time. This is the most common form of history and isoften the classical and popular belief of whathistory should be.

38 Diplomatic history is the past aggregate of theart and practice of conducting negotiationsbetween accredited persons representing groups ornations. It is the continuum of events occurring insuccession leading from the past to the presentand even into the future regarding diplomacy, theconduct of state relations through theintercession of individuals with regard to issuesof peace-making, culture, economics, trade andwar. Diplomatic history records or narrates eventsrelating to or characteristic of diplomacy.

39 The first "scientific" political history waswritten by Leopold von Ranke in Germany in the19th century. An important aspect of political history is thestudy of ideology as a force for historicalchange. One author asserts that "political history as awhole cannot exist without the study ofideological differences and their implications.

40 Studies of political history typically centeraround a single nation and its political changeand development. Some historians identify the growing trendtowards narrow specialization in politicalhistory during recent decades "while a collegeprofessor in the 1940s sought to identify himselfas a "historian", by the 1950s "Americanhistorian" was the designation.

41 From the 1970s onwards, new movements sought tochallenge traditional approaches to politicalhistory. The development of social history and women'shistory shifted the emphasis away from the studyof leaders and national decisions, and towardsthe role of ordinary citizens.

42 By the 1970s "the new social history" beganreplacing the older style. Emphasis shifted to a broader spectrum ofAmerican life, including such topics as thehistory of urban life, public health, ethnicity,the media, and poverty. As such, political history is sometimes seen asthe more 'traditional' kind of history, incontrast with the more 'modern' approaches ofother fields of history.

43Ethnohistory44 Ethnohistory is the study of ethnographiccultures and indigenous customs by examininghistorical records. It is also the study of the history of variousethnic groups that may or may not exist today.

45 Ethnohistory uses both historical andethnographic data as its foundation. Its historical methods and materials go beyondthe standard use of books and manuscripts. Practitioners recognize the utility of maps,music, paintings, photography, folklore, oraltradition, ecology, site exploration,archaeological materials, museum collections,enduring customs, language, and place names.

46 Ethnohistorians have learned to use their specialknowledge of the groups they study, linguisticinsights, and the understanding of culturalphenomena in ways that make for a more in-depthanalysis than the average historian is capable ofdoing based solely on written documents producedby and for one group. They try to understand culture on its own termsand according to its own cultural code.

47 Ethnohistory differs from otherhistorically-related methodologies in that itembraces emic perspectives as tools of analysis. The field and it techniques are well suited forwriting histories of Indian peoples because ofits holistic and inclusive framework.

48Gender History49 Despite its relatively short life, Gender History(and its forerunner Women's History) has had arather significant effect on the general study ofhistory. Since the 1960s, when the initially small fieldfirst achieved a measure of acceptance, it hasgone through a number of different phases, eachwith its own challenges and outcomes, but alwaysmaking an impact of some kind on the historicaldiscipline.

50Great Man Theory of History51 The Great man theory is a theory held by somethat aims to explain history by the impact of"Great men", or heroes highly influentialindividuals, either from personal charisma,genius intellects, or great political impact.

52 For example, a scholarly follower of the GreatMan theory would be likely to study the SecondWorld War by focusing on the big personalities ofthe conflict Sir Winston Churchill, AdolfHitler, Benito Mussolini, Franklin DelanoRoosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Hideki Tojo, etc. andview all of the historical events as being tieddirectly to their own individual decisions andorders.

53 It is often linked to 19th century commentatorand historian Thomas Carlyle, who commented that"The history of the world is but the biography ofgreat men." The Great Man approach to history was mostpopular with professional historians in the 19thcentury a popular work of this school is theEncyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911)which contains lengthy and detailed biographiesabout the great men of history, but very fewgeneral or social histories. This heroic view of history was also stronglyendorsed by some philosophical figures such asHegel, Nietzsche, and Spengler, but it fell outof favor after World War II.

54History of Ideas55 The history of ideas is a field of research inhistory that deals with the expression,preservation, and change of human ideas overtime. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to,or a particular approach within, intellectualhistory. Work in the history of ideas may involveinterdisciplinary research in the history ofphilosophy, the history of science, or thehistory of literature.

56 In Sweden, the history of ideas has been adistinct university subject since the 1930s, whenJohan Nordstrm, a scholar of literature, wasappointed professor of the new discipline atUppsala University. Today, several universities across the worldprovide courses in this field, usually as part ofa graduate program.

57Marxist History58 Marxist or historical materialist historiographyis a school of historiography influenced byMarxism. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography arethe centrality of social class and economicconstraints in determining historical outcomes. Marxist historiography has made contributions tothe history of the working class, oppressednationalities, and the methodology of historyfrom below.

59 Marxist history is generally teleological, inthat it posits a direction of history, towards anend state of history as classless human society. Marxist historiography, that is, the writing ofMarxist history in line with the givenhistoriographical principles, is generally seenas a tool. Its aim is to bring those oppressed by history toself-consciousness, and to arm them with tacticsand strategies from history it is both ahistorical and a liberatory project.

60 Historians who use Marxist methodology, butdisagree with the mainstream of Marxism, oftendescribe themselves as marxist historians (with alowercase M). Methods from Marxist historiography, such asclass analysis, can be divorced from theliberatory intent of Marxist historiography suchpractitioners often refer to their work asmarxian or Marxian.

61Microhistory62 Microhistory is a branch of the study of history. First developed in the 1970s, microhistory is thestudy of the past on a very small scale. The most common type of microhistory is the studyof a small town or village. Other common studies include looking atindividuals of minor importance, or analyzing asingle painting. As the roots of major events are grounded in theactions of villagers these studies often havemuch larger ramifications. Microhistory is an important component of the"new history" that has emerged since the 1960s. It is usually done in close collaboration withthe social sciences, such as anthropology andsociology.

63Military History64 Military history is composed of the events in thehistory of humanity that fall within the categoryof conflict. This may range from a melee between two tribes toconflicts between proper militaries to a worldwar affecting the majority of the humanpopulation. Military historians record (in writing orotherwise) the events of military history.

65Oral History66 Oral history is a method of historicaldocumentation, using interviews with livingsurvivors of the time being investigated. Contemporary oral history involves recording ortranscribing eyewitness accounts of historicalevents. Some anthropologists started collectingrecordings (at first especially of NativeAmerican folklore) on phonograph cylinders in thelate 19th century.

67 In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration(WPA) sent out interviewers to collect accountsfrom various groups, including survivingwitnesses of the American Civil War, Slavery, andother major historical events. The Library of Congress also began recordingtraditional American music and folklore ontoacetate discs. With the development of audio tape recordingsafter World War II, the task of oral historiansbecame easier.

68Post-Modern History69 Postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-rangingset of developments in critical theory,philosophy, architecture, art, literature, andculture, which are generally characterized aseither emerging from, in reaction to, orsuperseding, modernism. Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo) wasoriginally a reaction to modernism (not "post" inthe purely temporal sense of "after"). Largely influenced by the disillusionment inducedby the Second World War, postmodernism tends torefer to a cultural, intellectual, or artisticstate lacking a clear central hierarchy ororganizing principle and embodying extremecomplexity, contradiction, ambiguity, anddiversity.

70 Post-modernity is a derivative referring tonon-art aspects of history that were influencedby the new movement, namely the evolutions insociety, economy and culture since the 1960s. The term was coined in 1949 to describe adissatisfaction with modern architecture, leadingto the postmodern architecture movement. Later, the term was applied to several movements,including in art, music, and literature, thatreacted against modern movements, and aretypically marked by revival of traditionalelements and techniques.

71Prosopography72 Prosopography, in historical studies, is aninvestigation of the common backgroundcharacteristics of a historical group, whoseindividual biographies may be largelyuntraceable, by means of a collective study oftheir lives. Prosopography is an increasingly importantapproach within historical research.

73 Prosopographical research has the aim of learningabout patterns of relationships and activitiesthrough the study of collective biography, andproceeds by collecting and analyzingstatistically relevant quantities of biographicaldata about a well-defined group of individuals. A uniform set of criteria needs to be applied tothe group in order to achieve meaningful results.

74Psycohistory75 Psychohistory is the study of the psychologicalmotivations of historical events. It combines the insights of psychotherapy withthe research methodology of the social sciencesto understand the emotional origin of the socialand political behavior of groups and nations,past and present. This field of study is considered by some to havesignificant differences from the mainstreamfields of history and psychology.

76 Psychohistory derives many of its insights fromareas that are perceived to be ignored byconventional historians as shaping factors ofhuman history, in particular, the effects ofchildbirth, parenting practice, and child abuse. The historical impact of incest, infanticide andchild sacrifice are also considered.

77 There are three inter-related areas ofpsychohistorical study. The History of Childhood - which looks at suchquestions as How have children been raised throughout history How has the family been constituted How and why have practices changed over time The changing place and value of children insociety over time How and why our views of child abuse and neglecthave changed Psychobiography - which seeks to understandindividual historical people and theirmotivations in history. Group Psychohistory - which seeks to understandthe motivations of large groups, includingnations, in history and current affairs. In doing so, psychohistory advances the use ofgroup-fantasy analysis of political speeches,political cartoons and media headlines since thefantasy words therein offer clues to unconsciousthinking and behaviors.

78Quantitative History79 Quantitative History is an approach to historicalresearch that makes use of quantitative,statistical and computer tools. It is considered a branch of social sciencehistory and has favorite journals, such asHistorical Methods, Social Science History, andthe Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

80Social History81 Social history is a area of historical studyconsidered by some to be a social science thatattempts to view historical evidence from thepoint of view of developing social trends. In this view, it may include areas of economichistory, legal history and the analysis of otheraspects of civil society that show the evolutionof social norms, behaviors and more. It is distinguished from political history,military history and the so-called history ofgreat men.

82 While proponents of history from below and theFrench annales school of historians haveconsidered themselves part of social history, itis seen as a much broader movement amonghistorians in the development of historiography. Unlike other approaches, it tries to see itselfas a synthetic form of history not limited to thestatement of so-called historical fact butwilling to analyze historical data in a moresystematic manner. A question in social history is whether themasses follow the leaders or whether it is theother way around.

83 An example of social history can be seen in theAmerican Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and1960s. Typical history would focus on the who, what,when and where whereas social history focuses onthe causes of the movement itself. Social historians would pose such questions as,"Why did the movement come about when it did?",and "What specific elements fostered the growth?""What elements hindered the development?" This approach is favored by scholars because itallows for a full discussion on the sometimesless studied aspects. By understanding the past, we can begin tounderstand who we are now.

84Whig HistoryPositivist History85 Whig historiography perceives the past as ateleological progression toward the present. In general, Whig historians look for and favourthe rise of constitutional government, personalfreedoms and scientific progress in anyhistorical period. The term is often used pejoratively to denote anyhistorian that adopts such positions, but it alsoconnotes a specific set of British historians whoembodied Whig ideals. Its antithesis can be seen in certain kinds ofcultural pessimism.

86World History87 World History is a field of historical study thatemerged as a distinct academic field in the1980s. It examines human history from a globalperspective.

88 Unlike most history writing of the 19th and mostof the 20th centuries, which focused onnarratives of individuals, and on national andethnic perspectives, World History looks forcommon patterns that emerge across all cultures. World historians use a thematic approach, withtwo major focal points integration (howprocesses of world history have drawn people ofthe world together) and difference (how patternsof world history reveal the diversity of thehuman experience).

89 The study of world history is in some ways aproduct of the current period of acceleratedglobalization. This period is tending both to integrate variouscultures and to highlight their differences. The advent of World History as a distinct fieldof study was heralded in the 1980s by thecreation of the World History Association and ofgraduate programs at a handful of universities.

90 Over the past 20 years, scholarly publications,professional and academic organizations, andgraduate programs in World History haveproliferated. It has become an increasingly popular approach toteaching history in United States high schoolsand colleges. Many new textbooks are being published with aWorld History approach.