Ancient 's
History of the Peloponnesian War. Understanding the past appears to be a universal human need, and the telling of history has emerged independently in civilizations around the world. What constitutes history is a philosophical question (see
philosophy of history). The earliest
chronologies date back to
Mesopotamia and
ancient Egypt, though no historical writers in these early civilizations were known by name.
Systematic historical thought emerged in
ancient Greece, a development that became an important influence on the writing of history elsewhere around
the Mediterranean region. The earliest known critical historical works were
The Histories, composed by
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 – c. 425
BCE) who later became known as the "father of history" (
Cicero). Herodotus attempted to distinguish between more and less reliable accounts and personally conducted research by travelling extensively, giving written accounts of various
Mediterranean cultures. Although Herodotus' overall emphasis lay on the actions and characters of men, he also attributed an important role to divinity in the determination of historical events.
Thucydides largely eliminated divine causality in his account of the war between Athens and Sparta, establishing a rationalistic element that set a precedent for subsequent Western historical writings. He was also the first to distinguish between cause and immediate origins of an event, while his successor
Xenophon ( – 355 BCE) introduced autobiographical elements and character studies in his
Anabasis. (–1444), the historian who first divided history into the three eras of
Antiquity, the
Middle Ages, and
Modern times. The
Romans adopted the Greek tradition. While early Roman works were still written in Greek, the
Origines, composed by the Roman statesman
Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE), was written in Latin, in a conscious effort to counteract Greek cultural influence.
Strabo (63 BCE –
CE) was an important exponent of the Greco-Roman tradition of combining geography with history, presenting a descriptive history of peoples and places known to his era.
Livy (59 BCE – 17 CE) records the rise of
Rome from
city-state to
empire. His speculation about what would have happened if
Alexander the Great had marched against Rome represents the first known instance of
alternate history. In
Chinese historiography, the
Classic of History is one of the
Five Classics of
Chinese classic texts and one of the earliest narratives of China. The
Spring and Autumn Annals, the official chronicle of the State of Lu covering the period from 722 to 481 BCE, is among the earliest surviving Chinese historical texts arranged on
annalistic principles.
Sima Qian (around 100 BCE) was the first in China to lay the groundwork for professional historical writing. His written work was the
Shiji (
Records of the Grand Historian), a monumental lifelong achievement in literature. Its scope extends as far back as the 16th century BCE, and it includes many treatises on specific subjects and individual biographies of prominent people and also explores the lives and deeds of commoners, both contemporary and those of previous eras. 's
Ecclesiastical History of the English People Christian historiography began early, perhaps as early as
Luke-Acts, which is the
primary source for the
Apostolic Age. Writing history was popular among Christian monks and clergy in the
Middle Ages. They wrote about the history of Jesus Christ, that of the Church and that of their patrons, the dynastic history of the local rulers. In the
Early Middle Ages historical writing often took the form of
annals or
chronicles recording events year by year, but this style tended to hamper the analysis of events and causes. An example of this type of writing is the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which were the work of several different writers: it was started during the reign of
Alfred the Great in the late ninth century, but one copy was still being updated in 1154.
Muslim historical writings first began to develop in the seventh century, with the reconstruction of the Prophet
Muhammad's life in the centuries following his death. With numerous conflicting narratives regarding Muhammad and his
companions from various sources, scholars had to verify which sources were more reliable. To evaluate these sources, they developed various methodologies, such as the
science of biography,
science of hadith and
Isnad (chain of transmission). They later applied these methodologies to other historical figures in the
Islamic civilization. Famous historians in this tradition include
Urwah (d. 712),
Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 728),
Ibn Ishaq (d. 761),
al-Waqidi (745–822),
Ibn Hisham (d. 834),
Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870) and
Ibn Hajar (1372–1449).
Enlightenment During the
Age of Enlightenment, the modern development of historiography through the application of scrupulous methods began. 's works of history are an excellent example of
Enlightenment era history writing. Painting by
Pierre Charles Baquoy. French
philosophe Voltaire (1694–1778) had an enormous influence on the art of history writing. His best-known histories are
The Age of Louis XIV (1751), and
Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). "My chief object," he wrote in 1739, "is not political or military history, it is the history of the arts, of commerce, of civilization – in a word, – of the human mind." He broke from the tradition of narrating diplomatic and military events, and emphasized customs, social history, and achievements in the arts and sciences. He was the first scholar to make a serious attempt to write the history of the world, eliminating theological frameworks, and emphasizing economics, culture, and political history. 's
Decline of the Roman Empire (1776) was a masterpiece of late 18th-century history writing. At the same time, philosopher
David Hume was having a similar impact on history in
Great Britain. In 1754, he published the
History of England, a six-volume work that extended from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. Hume adopted a similar scope to Voltaire in his history; as well as the history of Kings, Parliaments, and armies, he examined the history of culture, including literature and science, as well.
William Robertson, a Scottish historian, and the
Historiographer Royal published the
History of Scotland 1542 – 1603, in 1759 and his most famous work,
The history of the reign of Charles V in 1769. His scholarship was painstaking for the time and he was able to access a large number of documentary sources that had previously been unstudied. He was also one of the first historians who understood the importance of general and universally applicable ideas in the shaping of historical events. The apex of Enlightenment history was reached with
Edward Gibbon's, monumental six-volume work,
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published on 17 February 1776. Because of its relative objectivity and heavy use of
primary sources, at the time its methodology became a model for later historians. This has led to Gibbon being called the first "modern historian". The book sold impressively, earning its author a total of about £9000. Biographer
Leslie Stephen wrote that thereafter, "His fame was as rapid as it has been lasting."
19th century The tumultuous events surrounding the
French Revolution inspired much of the historiography and analysis of the early 19th century. Interest in the 1688
Glorious Revolution was also rekindled by the
Great Reform Act of 1832 in England.
Thomas Carlyle published his magnum opus, the three-volume
The French Revolution: A History in 1837. The resulting work had a passion new to historical writing.
Thomas Macaulay produced his most famous work of history,
The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, in 1848. His writings are famous for their ringing prose and for their confident, sometimes dogmatic, emphasis on a progressive model of British history, according to which the country threw off superstition, autocracy and confusion to create a balanced constitution and a forward-looking culture combined with the freedom of belief and expression. This model of human progress has been called the
Whig interpretation of history. In his main work
Histoire de France, French historian
Jules Michelet coined the term
Renaissance (meaning "Re-birth" in
French language), as a period in Europe's cultural history that represented a break from the Middle Ages, creating a modern understanding of humanity and its place in the world. The nineteen-volume work covered French history from
Charlemagne to the outbreak of the
Revolution. Michelet was one of the first historians to shift the emphasis of history to the common people, rather than the leaders and institutions of the country. Another important French historian of the period was
Hippolyte Taine. He was the chief theoretical influence of French
naturalism, a major proponent of
sociological positivism and one of the first practitioners of
historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. One of the major progenitors of the history of
culture and
art, was the Swiss historian
Jacob Burckhardt Burckhardt's best-known work is
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). According to
John Lukacs, he was the first master of cultural history, which seeks to describe the spirit and the forms of expression of a particular age, a particular people, or a particular place. By the mid-19th century, scholars were beginning to analyse the history of institutional change, particularly the development of constitutional government.
William Stubbs's
Constitutional History of England (3 vols., 1874–78) was an important influence on this developing field. The work traced the development of the English constitution from the Teutonic invasions of Britain until 1485, and marked a distinct step in the advance of English historical learning.
Karl Marx introduced the concept of
historical materialism into the study of world-historical development. In his conception, the economic conditions and dominant modes of production determined the structure of society at that point. Previous historians had focused on the cyclical events of the rise and decline of rulers and nations. Process of
nationalization of history, as part of
national revivals in the 19th century, resulted with separation of "one's own" history from common
universal history by such way of perceiving, understanding and treating the past that constructed history as history of a nation. A new discipline,
sociology, emerged in the late 19th century and analyzed and compared these perspectives on a larger scale.
Professionalization in Germany established history as a professional academic discipline in Germany. The modern academic study of history and methods of historiography were pioneered in 19th-century German universities.
Leopold von Ranke was a pivotal influence in this regard, and is considered as the founder of modern source-based
history. Specifically, he implemented the seminar teaching method in his classroom and focused on archival research and analysis of historical documents. Beginning with his first book in 1824, the
History of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples from 1494 to 1514, Ranke used an unusually wide variety of sources for a historian of the age, including "memoirs, diaries, personal and formal missives, government documents, diplomatic dispatches and first-hand accounts of eye-witnesses". Over a career that spanned much of the century, Ranke set the standards for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on
primary sources (
empiricism), an emphasis on
narrative history and especially international politics (
aussenpolitik). Sources had to be hard, not speculations and rationalizations. His credo was to write history the way it was. He insisted on primary sources with proven authenticity.
20th century The term
Whig history was coined by
Herbert Butterfield in his short book
The Whig Interpretation of History in 1931, (a reference to the British
Whigs, advocates of the power of
Parliament) to refer to the approach to historiography that presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater
liberty and
enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of
liberal democracy and
constitutional monarchy. In general, Whig historians emphasized the rise of
constitutional government,
personal freedoms, and
scientific progress. The term has been also applied widely in historical disciplines outside of
British history (the
history of science, for example) to criticize any
teleological (or goal-directed), hero-based, and
transhistorical narrative. Butterfield's antidote to Whig history was "...to evoke a certain sensibility towards the past, the sensibility which studies the past 'for the sake of the past', which delights in the concrete and the complex, which 'goes out to meet the past', which searches for 'unlikenesses between past and present'." Butterfield's formulation received much attention, and the kind of historical writing he argued against in generalised terms is no longer academically respectable. 's focus on social history rather than traditional political history was of tremendous influence. The French
Annales School radically changed the focus of historical research in France during the 20th century by stressing long-term social history, rather than political or diplomatic themes. The school emphasized the use of quantification and the paying of special attention to geography. An eminent member of this school,
Georges Duby, described his approach to history as one that relegated the sensational to the sidelines and was reluctant to give a simple accounting of events, but strived on the contrary to pose and solve problems and, neglecting surface disturbances, to observe the long and medium-term evolution of economy, society, and civilisation.
Marxist historiography developed as a school of historiography influenced by the chief tenets of
Marxism, including the centrality of
social class and
economic constraints in determining historical outcomes.
Friedrich Engels wrote
The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which was salient in creating the
socialist impetus in British politics from then on, e.g. the
Fabian Society.
R. H. Tawney's
The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912) and
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), reflected his ethical concerns and preoccupations in
economic history. A
circle of historians inside the
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in 1946 and became a highly influential cluster of British
Marxist historians, who contributed to
history from below and class structure in early capitalist society. Members included
Christopher Hill,
Eric Hobsbawm and
E. P. Thompson.
World history, as a distinct field of historical study, emerged as an independent academic field in the 1980s. It focused on the examination of
history from a global perspective and looked for common
patterns that emerged across all cultures.
Arnold J. Toynbee's ten-volume
A Study of History, written between 1933 and 1954, was an important influence on this developing field. He took a comparative topical approach to independent civilizations and demonstrated that they displayed striking parallels in their origin, growth, and decay.
William H. McNeill wrote
The Rise of the West (1965) to improve upon Toynbee by showing how the separate civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from one another, and thus precipitating still further change as adjustment between traditional old and borrowed new knowledge and practice became necessary.
Historical editing A new advanced specialty opened in the late 20th century: historical editing.
Edmund Morgan reports on its emergence in the United States:It required, to begin with, large sums of money. But money has proved easier to recruit than talent. Historians who undertake these large editorial projects must leave the main channel of academic life. They do not teach; they do not write their own books; they do not enjoy long vacations for rumination, reflection, and research on whatever topic interests them at the moment. Instead they must live in unremitting daily pursuit of an individual whose company, whatever his genius, may ultimately begin to pall. Anyone who has edited historical manuscripts knows that it requires as much physical and intellectual labor to prepare a text for publication as it does to write a book of one's own. Indeed, the new editorial projects are far too large for one man. The editor-in-chief, having decided to forego a regular academic career, must entice other scholars to help him; and with the present [high] demand for college teachers, this is no easy task. ==Education and profession==