Periodization

Periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide historical time into discrete named blocks.

Introduction

Periodization is a complex problem in history. History is in fact continuous, and so all systems of periodization are to some extent arbitrary. Almost every dynamic age is an "age of transition" as the cliché has it. It is nevertheless necessary to divide up history in order to make sense of the past and to articulate changes over time. Furthermore different nations and cultures experience different histories, and so will require different models of periodization. Periodizing labels are being challenged and redefined all the time. Thus an historian may claim that there was no such thing as the Renaissance, while others will defend the concept.

The reasons for this are complex. Periodizing blocks will inevitably overlap, or even seemingly contradict one another. Furthermore, certain periodizing concepts only apply under specific conditions. Others refer to historical events ('the Inter-War years: 1918–1939'), yet others are defined by decimal numbering systems ('the 1960s', '17th Century'). Others are named from influential or talismanic individuals ('the Victorian Era', 'the Edwardian Era', 'the Napoleonic Era').

Approaches to history that understand the story of human life as having a purpose, which believe that it is possible to judge progress towards the realization of that purpose by applying certain criteria to historical data find periodization useful. Different periods of history can be judged as representing progress or as representing regression in terms of achieving the goal of history. Religious or theological understandings of history, for example, that regard human history as moving towards a human-divine partnership, or towards human redemption or towards restoration of what was lost in an original Fall, will be interested in adjudicating whether any progress towards such a goal was made during a particular period of history. Criteria applied would include asking whether people lived fruitful lives, whether family life flourished, whether there was division or equality in society, whether the created order was treated with respect or exploited, whether disputes were settled peacefully or with violence. A Marxist view of history also posits progress, away from class struggle and the dominance of a capitalist elite, towards a class-less egalitarian society. The Marxist end of history, which is utopian, has some similarity with religious views that history will culminate in a perfect society, in a unified world of peace under God.

Usage

Some of these usages will also be geographically specific. This is especially true of periodizing labels derived from individuals or ruling elites, such as the Jacksonian Era in America, the Meiji Era in Japan, or the Merovingian Period in France. Cultural terms may also have a limited reach. Thus the concept of the 'Romantic period' may be meaningless outside of Europe and European-influenced cultures. Likewise, 'the 1960s', though technically applicable to anywhere in the world according to Common Era numbering, has a certain set of specific cultural connotations in certain countries. For this reason it may be possible to say such things as 'The 1960s never occurred in Spain.' This would mean that the sexual revolution, counterculture, youth rebellion and so on never developed during that decade in Spain's conservative Roman Catholic culture and under Francisco Franco's fascist regime. Likewise it is possible to claim, as the historian Arthur Marwick has, that 'the 1960s' began in the late 1950s and ended in the early 1970s. His reason for saying this is that the cultural and economic conditions that define the meaning of the period covers more than the accidental fact of a 10 year block beginning with the number 6. This extended usage is termed the 'long 1960s'. This usage derives from other historians who have adopted labels such as the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (1789–1914) to reconcile arbitrary decimal chronology with meaningful cultural and social phases. Similarly an Eighteenth Century may run 1714–1789. Eric Hobsbawm has also argued for what he calls the 'Short Twentieth Century', encompassing the period from the First World War through to the end of the Cold War. What today may chronologically be called 'modern' will be the 'middle ages' in another thousand years, when a new label would be needed for what is often now called the 'middle ages'.

Similar problems attend other labels. Is it possible to use the term 'Victorian' outside of Britain? It sometimes is used when it is thought that its connotations usefully describe the politics, culture and economic conditions characteristic of the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless periodizing terms often have negative or positive connotations which may affect their usage. This would include 'Victorian', which is often used negatively to suggest sexual repression, class conflict, heavy industry and so on. Other labels such as 'Renaissance' have strongly positive characteristics. As a result, these terms will sometimes be extended in meaning. Thus the 'English Renaissance' is virtually identical in meaning to the 'Elizabethan Period'. However the Carolingian Renaissance is said to have occurred during the reign of the Frankish king Charlemagne. There is a space of approximately seven hundred years between these two renaissances. Other examples include the 'American Renaissance' of the 1820s-60s, referring mainly to literature, and the 'Harlem Renaissance' of the 1920s, referring mainly to literature but also to music.

Because of these various positive and negative connotations, some periods are luckier than others regarding their names, although this can lead to problems such as the ones outlined above. The conception of a 'rebirth of Classical Latin learning is first credited to an Italian poet Petrarch, the father of the Renaissance, a term that was not coined until the 19th century, but the conception of a rebirth has been in common use since Petrarch's time. The dominant usage of the word Renaissance refers to the cultural changes that occurred in Italy, and which culminated in the High Renaissance at around 1500. This concept applies dominantly to the visual arts, referring to the work of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Secondarily it is applied to other arts, but it is disputed whether it is useful to describe a phase in economic, social and political history. Most professional historians (defined as paying members of organizations devoted to the propagation of history in higher education, like the American Historical Association, now refer to the historical period commonly known as the Renaissance as 'the Early Modern Period'. There has been no substantive change in the courses taught or books published to correspond to the change in period nomenclature, but this in part reflects differences between social history and cultural history. The timeframe is also slightly different, in that 'Renaissance' tends to refer to events over a much longer and generally earlier period than 'Early Modern'.

Notable periods

The term Middle Ages also derives from Petrarch. He was comparing his own period to the Ancient or Classical world, seeing his time as a time of rebirth after a dark intermediate period, the Middle Ages. The idea that the Middle Ages was a 'middle' phase between two other large scale periodizing concepts, Ancient and Modern, still persists. It can be sub-divided into the Early, High and Late Middle Ages. The term Dark Ages is no longer in common use among modern scholars because of the difficulty of using it neutrally, though some writers have attempted to retain it and divest it of its negative connotations. The term 'Middle Ages' and especially the adjective medieval can also have a negative ring in colloquial use ("the barbaric treatment of prisoners in such-and-such a prison is almost medieval") but this does not carry over into academic terminology. However other terms, such as Gothic architecture, used to refer to a style typical of the High Middle Ages have largely lost the negative connotations they initially had, acquiring new meanings over time.

The Gothic and the Baroque were both named during subsequent stylistic periods when the preceding style was unpopular. The word 'Gothic' was applied as a pejorative term to all things Northern European and, hence, barbarian, probably first in the generation of Francois Rabelais (1493 - 1553 C.E.), the French writer who criticized established authority through his comic writing. The word 'baroque' (probably) was used first in late 18th century French about the irregular natural pearl shape and later about an architectural style perceived to be 'irregular' in comparison to the highly regular Neoclassical architecture of that time. Subsequently these terms have become purely descriptive, and have largely lost negative connotations. However the term 'Baroque' as applied to art (for example Rubens) refers to a much earlier historical period than when applied to music (Händel, , Johann Sebastian Bach). This reflects the difference between stylistic histories internal to an art form and the external chronological history beyond it.

In many cases people living through a period are unable to identify themselves as belonging to the period that historians may later assign to them. This is partly because they are unable to predict the future, and so will not be able to tell whether they are at the beginning, middle or end of a period. Another reason may be that their own sense of historical development may be determined by religions or ideologies that differ from those used by later historians.

It is important to recognise the difference between self-defined historical periods, and those which are later defined by historians. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a general belief that culture, politics and history were entering a new era - that the new century would also be a new era in human experience. This belief was repeated at the beginning of the 21st century, though in a very different way. Other cultural and historical phases have only been described many years, or even centuries, later.

Many commonly used periodizations will need to be re-thought in the future - say in 500 years time, calling the 20th and 21st centuries modern and the 11th and 12th 'the Middle Ages' will no longer make any sense.

Origins of Periodization

The origins of periodization is very old and first became part of the Western tradition in the myths of Ancient Greece and The Bible. Virgil spoke of a distant Golden Age and reccurent cycles of history. The Bible outlines a narrative of history from Creation to the End of time. One Biblical periodization scheme commonly used in the Middle Ages was Saint Paul's theological division of history into three ages: the first before the age of Moses (under nature); the second under Mosaic law (under law); the third in the age of Christ (under grace). But perhaps the most widely discussed periodization scheme of the Middle Ages was the Six Ages of the World, where every age was a thousand years counting from Adam to the present, with the present time (in the Middle Ages) being the sixth and final stage.

Understanding History

The debate about whether history has any purpose, whether it is directed by a supra-human reality (as most religions believe) or not, or whether evolution or some form of dialectic (as in Marxist history) operates within history, is also relevant to a discussion of periodization. A secular historian attempting to identify for what, for example, caused a civilization to collapse may look for social, political or even climactic reasons, while a religious scholar may see this as divine punishment for sin. Similarly, a religious or providential understanding of history can interpret certain periods of time as retrogressive, others as progressive or as making restoration for earlier digressions. Martin Luther saw the rise of Islam as divine punishment while others see this as providential, as a means by which many different people have united in a common faith. Unification thought sees parallels between historical periods (the 'law of the providence of parallel periods') during which reparation is made, or indemnity paid, for the failure of a preceding epoch. For example, it sees a parallel between the 2,000 years between Abraham and Jesus and the 2000 years since the birth of Jesus, or between the time the Israelis spent in exile and the Avignon captivity of the Pope. History is thus understood in terms of a struggle between good and evil. The hope of religious faith is that, eentually, despite retrogression, good will triumph. It is possible to draw an analogy between periods in history and periods in the human life span, where process of growth, adjustment and recovery from mistakes occur. Muslims use the rightly guided period (Muhammad's life followed by the first four caliphs as a template to measure how well subsequent Muslim societies lived up to this ideal. The ideal period was God-centered with the temporal and spiritual aspects of life in harmony. Periods of Islamic history that replicate this are judged to have been faithful to Islamic ideals.

Why Categorize at all?

The question why categorize periods of history at all is worth considering, given the inherent problems. Scholars use categories to help to make sense of their data, to aid analysis. Attempts to make sense of history often involve identifying major trends or characteristics of an age, what seems to typify the period or what life was like, indicated by such terms as the industrial revolution or much earlier the agrarian revolution. Periodizations that indicate what the major trend was at a particular time are probably the most helpful. Another problem is that periods, like seasons, may not have a clear beginning and end. However, with an overview we can detect the change of seasons and assign a moment when one ends and another begins, thus while we should avoid assumeing that one period suddenly ends and another suddenly begins they may still be very useful categories. It is also worth noting that the prime movers in any significant period may be very few, even a single individual yet the decisions of a few can make a big difference in the following period for hundreds of years. There is often a "crucial" moment at the change of a period when the new trend (for example, when hunting-gathering gave way to agriculture, or the nomadic lifestyle to settlement in cities, or when autocracies gave way to democracies) conflicts with the old trend. It is difficult to envision history without periodization but historians will need to revise the categories they use as history itself progresses, or as time passes (whether history progresses is, as noted, a topic of debate).

Periodization of Origins

It is easy to confuse the Origins of Periodization with the Periodization of Origins. The Periodization of Origins is an attempt to classify time periods in the distant past for which there is no direct record. As stated in the introduction above, any sort of periodization is subject to qualifications and contentions which should not be taken lightly. Periodization of Origins has its own challenges apart from, say, a periodization which relies on text, which are subtle and philosophically complex.

One tactic for Periodization of the distant past, as in Anthropology, is to rely on events, such as the invention of some tool or the origins of language, which are known to exist, but about which little is known in detail.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Lawrence Besserman, ed., The Challenge of Periodization : Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, 1996, ISBN 0815321031. See Chapter 1 for an overview of the postmodernism position on Periodization.

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