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PeriodsMain article: Periodization Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular blocks of time. Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians.[30] The names given to a period can vary with geographical location, as can the dates of the start and end of a particular period. Centuries and decades are commonly used periods and the time they represent depends on the dating system used. Most periods are constructed retrospectively and so reflect value judgments made about the past. The way periods are constructed and the names given to them can affect the way they are viewed and studied.[31] Geographical locationsParticular geographical locations can form the basis of historical study, for example, continents, countries and cities. Understanding why historic events took place is important. To do this, historians often turn to geography. Weather patterns, the water supply, and the landscape of a place all affect the lives of the people who live there. For example, to explain why the ancient Egyptians developed a successful civilization, studying the geography of Egypt is essential. Egyptian civilization was built on the banks of the Nile River, which flooded each year, depositing soil on its banks. The rich soil could help farmers grow enough crops to feed the people in the cities. That meant everyone did not have to farm, so some people could perform other jobs that helped develop the civilization. WorldMain article: World history See also: History of the world World history is the study of major civilizations over the last 3000 years or so. It has led to highly controversial interpretations by Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee, among others. World history is especially important as a teaching field. It has increasingly entered the university curriculum in the U.S., in many cases replacing courses in Western Civilization, that had a focus on Europe and the U.S. World history adds extensive new material on Asia, Africa and Latin America. RegionsHistory of Africa begins with the first emergence of modern human beings on the continent, continuing into its modern present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. History of the Americas is the collective history of North and South America, including Central America and the Caribbean. History of North America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's northern and western hemisphere. History of Central America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's western hemisphere. History of the Caribbean begins with the oldest evidence where 7,000-year-old remains have been found. History of South America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's southern and western hemisphere. History of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. History of Australia start with the documentation of the Makassar trading with Indigenous Australians on Australia's north coast. History of New Zealand dates back at least 700 years to when it was discovered and settled by Polynesians, who developed a distinct Māori culture centred on kinship links and land. History of the Pacific Islands covers the history of the islands in the Pacific Ocean. History of Eurasia is the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions: the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. History of Europe describes the passage of time from humans inhabiting the European continent to the present day. History of Asia can be seen as the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe. History of East Asia is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation in East Asia. History of the Middle East begins with the earliest civilizations in the region now known as the Middle East that were established around 3000 BC, in Mesopotamia (Iraq). History of South Asia is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation in the Sub-Himalayan region. History of Southeast Asia has been characterized as interaction between regional players and foreign powers. Military historyMain article: Military history Military history concerns warfare, strategies, battles, weapons, and the psychology of combat. The "new military history" since the 1970s has been concerned with soldiers more than generals, with psychology more than tactics, and with the broader impact of warfare on society and culture.[32] History of religionMain article: Religious history The history of religion has been a main theme for both secular and religious historians for centuries, and continues to be taught in seminaries and academe. Leading journals include Church History, Catholic Historical Review, and History of Religions. Topics range widely from political and cultural and artistic dimensions, to theology and liturgy.[33] Every major country is covered,[34] and most smaller ones as well. Social historyMain article: Social history Social history, sometimes called the new social history, is the field that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies and institutions for coping with life.[35] In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments. In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%.[36] In the history departments of British universities in 2007, of the 5723 faculty members, 1644 (29%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 1425 (25%).[37] The "old" social history before the 1960s was a hodgepodge of topics without a central theme, and it often included political movements, like Populism, that were "social" in the sense of being outside the elite system. Social history was contrasted with political history, intellectual history and the history of great men. English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw it as the bridging point between economic and political history, reflecting that, "Without social history, economic history is barren and political history unintelligible."[38] While the field has often been viewed negatively as history with the politics left out, it has also been defended as "history with the people put back in."[39] SubfieldsThe chief subfields of social history include: Demographic history Black history History of education Ethnic history Family history Labor history Rural history Urban history Cultural historyMain article: Cultural history Cultural history replaced social history as the dominant form in the 1980s and 1990s. It typically combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at language, popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of a group of people. How peoples constructed their memory of the past is a major topic. Cultural history includes the study of art in society as well is the study of images and human visual production (iconography).[40] Diplomatic historyMain article: Diplomatic history Diplomatic history, sometimes referred to as "Rankian History"[41] in honor of Leopold von Ranke, focuses on politics, politicians and other high rulers and views them as being the driving force of continuity and change in history. This type of political history is the study of the conduct of international relations between states or across state boundaries over time. This is the most common form of history and is often the classical and popular belief of what history should be. Economic historyMain article: Economic history Although economic history has been well established since the late 19th century, in recent years academic studies have shifted more and more toward economics departments and away from traditional history departments.[42] Environmental historyMain article: Environmental history Environmental history is a new field that emerged in the 1980s to look at the history of the environment, especially in the long run, and the impact of human activities upon it.[43] World historyMain article: World history World history is primarily a teaching field, rather than a research field. It gained popularity in the United States,[44] Japan[45] and other countries after the 1980s with the realization that students need a broader exposure to the world as globalization proceeds. The World History Association publishes the Journal of World History every quarter since 1990.[46] The H-World discussion list[47] serves as a network of communication among practitioners of world history, with discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and book reviews. People's historyMain article: People's history A people's history is a type of historical work which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people. A people's history is the history of the world that is the story of mass movements and of the outsiders. Individuals or groups not included in the past in other type of writing about history are the primary focus, which includes the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor, the nonconformists, and the otherwise forgotten people. This history also usually focuses on events occurring in the fullness of time, or when an overwhelming wave of smaller events cause certain developments to occur. HistoriometryMain article: Historiometry Historiometry is a historical study of human progress or individual personal characteristics, by using statistics to analyze references to eminent persons, their statements, behavior and discoveries in relatively neutral texts. Gender historyMain article: Gender history Gender history is a sub-field of History and Gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. It is in many ways, an outgrowth of women's history. Despite its relatively short life, Gender History (and its forerunner Women's History) has had a rather significant effect on the general study of history. Since the 1960s, when the initially small field first achieved a measure of acceptance, it has gone through a number of different phases, each with its own challenges and outcomes. Although some of the changes to the study of history have been quite obvious, such as increased numbers of books on famous women or simply the admission of greater numbers of women into the historical profession, other influences are more subtle. Public historyMain article: Public history Public history describes the broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings. Public history practice has quite deep roots in the areas of historic preservation, archival science, oral history, museum curatorship, and other related fields. The term itself began to be used in the U.S. and Canada in the late 1970s, and the field has become increasingly professionalized since that time. Some of the most common settings for public history are museums, historic homes and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives, film and television companies, and all levels of government. |
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