The term historiography refers to the human activity of preserving history in writing, where all the events surrounding an important event for the development of current civilization will be detailed. It is a field fully focused on the history recorded by this medium, which has been the center of controversy and debate among intellectuals, because it has not yet been determined whether it is an art or a science, whether they complement each other or not.
What is historiography
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It refers to the discipline associated with history and the theory of history, which consists of the practice of literary and humanistic theory, which is based on the study of historical facts as comprehensible objects. Historiography is the science that is dedicated to studying and analyzing how the historical events of man have been recorded over time.
It is understood as the science that makes history about how the human being has evolved over time, especially if one takes into account that the methods, forms, objects of study and interests have varied in each era and space.
Originally, this word comes from “historiographer” (ἱστοριογράφος in Greek), whose meaning falls on: “the one who describes or writes history”. So the concept of historiography points towards the art of writing history and the science of studying it.
Origin of historiography
It arises almost exactly when history does, since the latter is very close to the appearance of writing. Even so, human interest in studying their past would not come until later, when the beauty of evolution was discovered. The ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece, and Egypt were the most concerned with detailing all the events that surrounded their kingdoms.
The origin dates back to ancient Greece, specifically in Ionia (now Asiatic Greece) towards the end of the 6th century BC, in the context of the appearance of philosophy and the trend towards rational thought that prevailed at the time. That is why Greek thinkers begin to see the world from a rational and logical point of view, leaving behind mystical explanations to explain things and appealing more to reason.
This discipline studies and exposes, according to certain principles and methods, the events and facts that belong to the past time and that constitute the development of humanity from its origins to the present moment. With a set of techniques and theories related to the study, analysis and interpretation of history with bibliographic and critical study of the texts written about the authors who have dealt with these matters.
Evolution of historiography
In principle, classical historiography is expressed as the obtaining of truthful data on historical events, but which also need to be interpreted and contextualized. This treatment of information depended on the ideology of the historian, and in ancient Greece it was first understood that these events were more than just accounts of an event.
Hellenistic historiography, for example, had as its great exponent the historian Polybius (200-118 BC), who was also the first to write about world history when writing about the creation of the Roman Empire. He was the one who created the great historical cycles, and for him history should have practical utility from which lessons for the future could be drawn.
During this time and until the Renaissance, the concepts are basically the same, and the historian Jean Bodin (1529-1596) adds the idea that history depends on human will.
Another important aspect during this period was that history became simple chronicles of what was happening, to something more explanatory with the appearance of the illustration for this purpose, thus beginning the contemporary historiography of the 19th century.
However, it is worth saying that the historiographic currents are orientations to start the study of history as a science, developed from the 19th century on. Although in the 5th century BC Herodotus referred to history as a human act of narrating events from the past, it was only until the late 18th century that the philosophers of the time accepted that history could be studied like any other science, through a method.
Positivism affirmed that to approach history it was necessary to look for the real, precise and true data, and for this reason it insisted on finding first-hand sources.
Historical Materialism would arrive with Karl Marx, since he considered that history was not constituted only by facts, nor by categories, nor by the protagonists of these facts. Also, historical materialism speaks of the evolution of societies from the following elements:
- Structuralism: this historiographic current is very close to historical materialism, but is interested in events that last over time.
- Historicism: historicism considers all reality as the product of a historical evolution, which is why the past is fundamental. For the study of history, he prefers official written documents and is not interested in the interpretation of the researcher.
- School of the Annales: the School of the Annales was born in France and rescued man as the protagonist of the story. In this way the use of sciences such as anthropology, economics, geography and sociology became necessary for the understanding of historical facts.
- Quantitativeism: this trend was born in the decade of the 80s of the 20th century and marked two trends in the study of history:
1.- Cliometry, which uses quantitative models to explain the past.
2.- The structural-quantitative history, which uses statistics to understand the behavior of historical events in specific periods.
With the arrival of the XXI century the previous currents have blurred and there is a tendency to return to the narrative, breaking the rigid and formal schemes and in coherence with the form that the sciences have taken under postmodernism.
Historiography characteristics
Among the main characteristics of historiography, the following stand out:
- It is a speech that is presented as a narrative or written narrative.
- It is an intellectual discipline developed by specialists.
- It has its own method.
- It is produced by individuals determined by their personal, family and social circumstances.
- It always has an ideological charge associated with it.
- It is not objective.
Thus, the process of recovering one's own history is necessary for the formation of that "consciousness of the past", of the "historical consciousness", the foundation of the "consciousness of identity". Therefore, the teaching of history is important, since its objective is to approach the didactics of this subject in the compulsory educational stages as something more than academic knowledge without social value.
Examples from historiography
In the analysis of the treaty, the following examples are presented:
Medieval ecclesiastical historiography
This medieval historiography refers to the religious one that developed during the Middle Ages in Europe, which originated its own style in this discipline in its way of telling and transmitting the history that was generated at the time. Its forerunner was Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 AD), who is considered the father of ecclesiastical history.
Medieval historiography made use of narrative discourse and its primary objective was to transmit the possible information that could be collected for future generations, among which were wars or biographies.
Contemporary Historiography
This occurred at the beginning of the 19th century when applying scientific methods to the collection of historical facts. It is from then on, on the scene of various ideological movements such as the French Revolution, when history begins to be taught in schools as a subject of academic interest.
History and historiography of psychology
In the Ancient Age there was the belief that mental disorders were due to the possession of demons or spirits, and were treated with incantations to which healing effects were attributed.
Between centuries V and IV a. Philosophers like Socrates and Plato made contributions that would be key to the development of psychology, in addition to philosophy. While Socrates exposed the foundations of the scientific method, Plato conceived the body as the vehicle of the soul, really responsible for human behavior.
Likewise, the doctor Hippocrates dedicated himself to physical and mental illnesses using the inductive method and attributed them to imbalances in mood or bodily fluids. This tradition would be picked up by Rome: the work of Galen, who developed that of Hippocrates, is one of the best examples of the Greek influence on Roman thought.
Feminist historiography
Feminist historiography arises from the feminist movements of the 1960s, proposing the female subject as a possible and legitimate object of study for historiography.
Thus began the discussion around the masculinized spaces by official history, making it clear that the historical construction in force up to that moment avoided the representation of power relations between subjects in various fields, but especially in what hierarchies implied. constructed sexual relations, which placed men as the true protagonists of history, when it comes to historical processes centered on military or political figures, men and elites (a typical example of this would be the fathers of the Nation), which resulted in, the omission of women as historical subjects, which left a misleading figure of the universal human being.
German historiography
It is evidenced in the willingness to explore traditional positions and initiate methodological innovations. In this way it has been possible to overcome the methodological underdevelopment, existing in 1945, and overcome the classic positions of a national historicism.
On the other hand, the innovative positions of the 1950s and 1960s, with their clearly reformist approaches, seem to have stalled in the 1970s and 1980s, and a revival of supposedly outdated historicist positions could be registered in the last decade.
Although the historical sciences are presented today in Germany as a discipline with a wide range of methodological and political positions, there is not a widely accepted consensus on the role of history in a modern industrial society and on its methodological foundations.
English Historiography
England is the largest and most populous territory in the United Kingdom. Inhabited by Celtic peoples since the 5th century BC. C., was colonized by the Romans between 43 d. C. and beginning of the fifth century Since then it was invaded by a series of Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons and Jute) who expelled the Celts, partially Romanized, towards Wales, Scotland, Cornwall and French Great Britain.
In the 10th century, after resisting a series of Viking attacks, England was politically unified. After the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603 and the union with Scotland in 1707, it is less appropriate to differentiate the history of England from that of the rest of the United Kingdom.
Historiography of Mexico
The historiography of Mexico has a series of events that occurred in the territory from the appearance of the first civilizations in the region, almost 4000 years ago, to the processes of conquest by Spain, colonial life, war, independence, foundation and development of the Mexican Republic as we know it today.
However, the historiography of Mexico is particularly interesting due to its richness in terms of pre-Columbian nations, which were a mosaic at that time and which provide it with a prodigious ancestral heritage, which contrasts with the society built by three centuries of history.
The modern nation of Mexico has been republican from 1940 to the present. It adores its troubled past through its national symbols, such as the National Anthem, used since 1854 but proclaimed as such in 1943 by President Manuel Ávila Camacho, and its complex political, social and cultural tradition is preserved through the attempt at coexistence between the survivors, aboriginal peoples and the modern Western Republic.
Frequently Asked Questions about Historiography
What does historiography mean?
Set of techniques and theories related to the study, analysis and way of interpreting history.What steps does historiography use for its research?
Use the following steps:- First, the definition of the topic and its delimitation.
- Second, the analysis or criticism of these sources (distinguishing two forms: external criticism and internal criticism).
- Finally, the historiographic synthesis (which is the final product of historiography).
