Historiography

Historiography is writing about rather than of history. Historiography is a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past. The analysis usually focuses on the narrative, interpretations, worldview, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians. The term can also be used of a body of historical writing, e.g. "medieval historiography."

Defining historiography

Conal Furay and Michael J. Salevouris define "historiography" as "the study of the way history has been and is written—the history of historical writing... When you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians." (The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide, 1988, p. 223, ISBN 0882959824)

Although questions of method have always concerned historians, the modern study of historiography can be said to have its beginnings with E. H. Carr's 1961 work What is History? (ISBN 0333977017) and his challenge to the traditional belief that the study of the methods of historical research]] and writing were unimportant. His work remains in print to this day, and is common to many postgraduate programs of study in both the United States and in Great Britain.

Much critical historiography in the 1960s focused, for example, on the exclusion of the roles of women, minorities, and labor from written histories of the USA. According to these historiographers, because historians in the 1930s and 1940s were themselves products of their times, their models of who was "important" to history reflected the cultural attitudes of that period, i.e. a bias towards well-connected white males. Many historians from that point onward devoted themselves to what they saw as more accurate representations of the past, casting a light on those who had been previously disregarded as non-noteworthy.

The study of historiography demands a critical approach that goes beyond the mere examination of historical fact. Historiographical studies consider the source, often by researching the author, his or her position in society, and the type of history being written at the time. Historiography that is considered controversial or extreme is often pejoratively labeled as historical revisionism.

An example

A primary source is an artifact of a particular point in time. In the 1850s, for example, many slaveowners in the United States kept diary|diaries and journals about their day-to-day activity. The historian Kenneth Stampp looked at these documents for information about the life of a slaveowner in the 1850s, and also derived information from them on the life of the slaves on the plantation. He used the documents as primary sources. The book he created, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, is a secondary source, a work produced through the analysis of primary sources. If another historian argues that Stampp's history ignores the economic history of slavery, or that Stampp's work overly emphasizes one aspect of slave life, then this historian is using Stampp's book — originally produced as a secondary source — as a primary source, an artifact of study. This new work which criticizes a secondary source, is a work of historiography.

Basic issues studied in historiography

Some of the basic questions considered in historiography are:

Who wrote the source (primary or secondary)?
For primary sources, we look at the person in his or her society, for secondary sources, we consider the theoretical orientation of the approach for example, Marxist or Annales School, ("total history"), political history, etc.
What is the authenticity, authority, bias/interest, and intelligibility of the source?
What was the view of history when the source was written?
Was history supposed to provide moral lessons?
What or who was the intended audience?
What sources were privileged or ignored in the narrative?
By what method was the evidence compiled?
In what historical context was the work of history itself written?

Some recent controversies

The use of particular styles of historiography has a great impact on the conclusions of historians and much controversial history stems from this problem. In recent American history writing, some controversies based on disputed historiography include whether dynastic Egypt was a black, African civilization; whether the Olmec civilization was founded by black Africans; the periodization of European history; rate of exploitation of African-Americans during and after slavery; the role of whiteness in U.S. labor struggles; and the attitude of "good Germans" toward the Holocaust.

Foundation of important historical Journals (Selection)

1859 Historische Zeitschrift (Germany)
1876 Revue Historique (France)
1895 American Historical Review (USA)
1929 Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations
1952 Past & present: a journal of historical studies (Great Britain)

1953 Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Germany)

1956 Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria (Nigeria)

1960 Journal of African History (Cambridge)
1960 Technology and culture : the international quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology (USA)
1975 Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft (Germany)
1982 Subaltern Studies (Oxford University Press)
1986 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20.und 21. Jahrhunderts, new title since 2003: Sozial.Geschichte. Zeitschrift für historische Analyse des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. (Germany)
1990 L’Homme. Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft (Austria) +
1993 Historische Anthropologie

Styles of Historiography

Annales School
Big History
Deconstruction
Diplomatic history
Historiophoty
Historiosophy
History from below
Marxist analysis
Metahistory
Microhistory
Numismatics
Oral history
Paleography
Political history
Postmodernism
Prosopography
Psychohistory
Revisionism
Social history
Universal History
World History

Literature

Philosophy of history:

Frank Ankersmit (ed), A New Philosophy of History, 1995, ISBN 0226021009
E. H. Carr, What is History? 1961, ISBN 039470391X
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 1936, ISBN 0192853066
Geoffrey Elton, The Practice of History, 1969, ISBN 0631229809
Richard J. Evans In Defence of History, 1997, ISBN 3579108642
Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History, 1991, ISBN 0415304431
Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History, 1970, ISBN 0333109414
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 2002, ISBN 0582772540
W.H. Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History, 1951.
Hayden White, The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, 1987, ISBN 0801841151

Broad histories of historical writing:

Michael Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0415285577
Michael Bentley, Modern Historiography: An Introduction, 1999 ISBN 0415202671
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, 1994, ISBN 0226072789
Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Polity Press, Oxford, 1992
Mark T. Gilderhus, History and Historiographical Introduction, 2002, ISBN 0130448249
Susan Kinnell, Historiography: An Annotated Bibliography of Journal Article, Books and Dissertations, 1987, ISBN 0874361680
Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundation of Modern Historiography, 1990, ISBN 0520078705

Regional or thematic:

Marc Ferro, Cinema and History, Wayne State University Press, 1988
Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, Harvard UP 1998
Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds its Past: Placing Women in History, New York: Oxford University Press 1979
Roland Oliver, In the Realms of Gold: Pioneering in African History, University of Wisconsin Press 1997
Peter Novick, The Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession, 1988
Christopher Saunders, The making of the South African past : major historians on race and class, Totowa, N.J. : Barnes & Noble, 1988
Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice, Harvard UP 2000

Teaching History

James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Touchstone Books 1996

Journals

Cromohs - cyber review of modern historiography
History and Theory
History of Historiography

External links

Feminist historiography 1968-1993 a bibliography
Philosophy of History introduced at The Galilean Library
Scientific Historiography, explained in an interview with Aviezer Tucker at the Galilean Library

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