History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history—for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a more general sense, the term history refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, or to individual texts about the past.
Historical research relies on primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians strive to integrate the perspectives of several sources to develop a coherent narrative. Different schools of thought, such as positivism, the Annales school, Marxism, and postmodernism, have distinct methodological approaches.
History is a broad discipline encompassing many branches. Some focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, while others concentrate on particular geographic regions, such as the history of Africa. Thematic categorizations include political history, military history, social history, and economic history. Branches associated with specific research methods and sources include quantitative history, comparative history, and oral history.
History emerged as a field of inquiry in antiquity to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later in the Islamic world. Historical writing evolved throughout the ages and became increasingly professional, particularly during the 19th century, when a rigorous methodology and various academic institutions were established. History is related to many fields, including historiography, philosophy, education, politics, and archaeology.
Definition
As an academic discipline, history is the study of the past with the main focus on the human past. It conceptualizes and describes what happened by collecting and analysing evidence to construct narratives. These narratives cover not only how events developed over time but also why they happened and in which contexts, providing an explanation of relevant background conditions and causal mechanisms. History further examines the meaning of historical events and the underlying human motives driving them.
In a slightly different sense, history refers to the past events themselves. Under this interpretation, history is what happened rather than the academic field studying what happened. When used as a countable noun, a history is a representation of the past in the form of a history text. History texts are cultural products involving active interpretation and reconstruction. The narratives presented in them can change as historians discover new evidence or reinterpret already-known sources. The past itself, by contrast, is static and unchangeable. Some historians focus on the interpretative and explanatory aspects to distinguish histories from chronicles, arguing that chronicles only catalogue events in chronological order, whereas histories aim at a comprehensive understanding of their causes, contexts, and consequences.
History has been primarily concerned with written documents. It focused on recorded history since the invention of writing, leaving prehistory to other fields, such as archaeology. Its scope broadened in the 20th century as historians became interested in the human past before the invention of writing.
Historians debate whether history is a social science or forms part of the humanities. Like social scientists, historians formulate hypotheses, gather objective evidence, and present arguments based on this evidence. At the same time, history aligns closely with the humanities because of its reliance on subjective aspects associated with interpretation, storytelling, human experience, and cultural heritage. Some historians strongly support one or the other classification while others characterize history as a hybrid discipline that does not belong to one category at the exclusion of the other. History contrasts with pseudohistory, a label used to describe practices that deviate from historiographical standards by relying on disputed historical evidence, selectively ignoring genuine evidence, or using other means to distort the historical record. Often motivated by specific ideological agendas, pseudohistorical practices mimic historical methodology to promote biased, misleading narratives that lack rigorous analysis and scholarly consensus.
Purpose Various suggestions about the purpose or value of history have been made. Some historians propose that its primary function is the pure discovery of truth about the past. This view emphasizes the disinterested pursuit of truth as an end in itself, whereas external purposes, associated with ideology or politics, threaten to undermine the accuracy of historical research by distorting the past. In this role, history also challenges traditional myths lacking factual support.
A different perspective suggests that the main value of history lies in the lessons it teaches for the present. This view stems from the idea that an understanding of the past can guide decision-making, for example, to avoid repeating previous mistakes. A related perspective focuses on a general understanding of the human condition, making people aware of the diversity of human behaviour across different contextssimilar to what one can learn by visiting foreign countries. History can also foster social cohesion by providing people with a collective identity through a shared past, helping to preserve and cultivate cultural heritage and values across generations. For some scholars, including Whig historians and the Marxist scholar E. H. Carr, history is a key to understanding the present and, in Carr's case, shaping the future.
Politicians and ideologues have sometimes used history for political or ideological purposes, for instance, to justify the by emphasizing the respectability of certain traditions or to promote change by highlighting past injustices. In extreme forms, evidence is intentionally ignored or misinterpreted to construct misleading narratives, which can result in pseudohistory or historical denialism. Influential examples of denialism of historical events include Holocaust denial, Armenian genocide denial, Nanjing Massacre denial, and Holodomor denial.
Etymology
The word history comes from the Ancient Greek term (), meaning . It gave rise to the Ancient Greek word (), which had a wide meaning associated with inquiry in general and giving testimony. The term was later adopted into Classical Latin as . In Hellenistic and Roman times, the meaning of the term shifted, placing more emphasis on narrative aspects and the art of presentation rather than focusing on investigation and testimony.
The word entered Middle English in the 14th century via the Old French term . At this time, it meant , encompassing both factual and fictional narratives. In the 15th century, its meaning shifted to cover the branch of knowledge studying the past in addition to narratives about the past. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the word history became more closely associated with factual accounts and evidence-based inquiry, coinciding with the professionalization of historical inquiry, a meaning still dominant in contemporary usage. The dual meaning, referring to both mere stories and factual accounts of the past, is present in the terms for history in many other European languages. They include the French , the Italian , and the German .
Methods
The historical method is a set of techniques historians use to research and interpret the past, covering the processes of collecting, evaluating, and synthesizing evidence. It seeks to ensure scholarly rigour, accuracy, and reliability in how historical evidence is chosen, analysed, and interpreted. Historical research often starts with a research question to define the scope of the inquiry. Some research questions focus on a simple description of what happened. Others aim to explain why a particular event occurred, refute an existing theory, or confirm a new hypothesis.
Sources and source criticism To answer research questions, historians rely on various types of evidence to reconstruct the past and support their conclusions. Historical evidence is usually divided into primary and secondary sources. A primary source is a source that originated during the period that is studied. Primary sources can take various forms, such as official documents, letters, diaries, eyewitness accounts, photographs, and audio or video recordings. They also include historical remains examined in archaeology, geology, and the medical sciences, such as artefacts and fossils unearthed from excavations. Primary sources offer the most direct evidence of historical events.
A secondary source is a source that analyses or interprets information found in other sources. Whether a document is a primary or a secondary source depends not only on the document itself but also on the purpose for which it is used. For example, if a historian writes a text about slavery based on an analysis of historical documents, then the text is a secondary source on slavery and a primary source on the historian's opinion. Consistency with available sources is one of the main standards of historical works. For instance, the discovery of new sources may lead historians to revise or dismiss previously accepted narratives. To find and access primary and secondary sources, historians consult archives, libraries, and museums. Archives play a central role by preserving countless original sources and making them available to researchers in a systematic and accessible manner. Thanks to technological advances, historians increasingly rely on online resources, which offer vast digital databases with methods to search and access specific documents.
Source criticism is the process of analysing and evaluating the information a source provides. Typically, this process begins with external criticism, which evaluates the authenticity of a source. It addresses the questions of when and where the source was created and seeks to identify the author, understand their reasons for producing the source, and determine if it has undergone some type of modification since its creation. Additionally, the process involves distinguishing between original works, copies, and deceptive forgeries.
Internal criticism evaluates the content of a source, typically beginning with the clarification of the meaning within the source. This involves disambiguating individual terms that could be misunderstood but may also require a general translation if the source is written in an unfamiliar language. Once the information content of a source is understood, internal criticism is specifically interested in determining accuracy. Critics ask whether the information is reliable or misrepresents the topic and further question whether the source is comprehensive or omits important details. One way to make these assessments is to evaluate whether the author was able, in principle, to provide a faithful presentation of the studied event. Other approaches include the assessment of the influences of the author's intentions and prejudices, and cross-referencing information with other credible sources. Being aware of the inadequacies of a source helps historians decide whether and which aspects of it to trust, and how to use it to construct a narrative.
Synthesis and schools of thought