Historiography

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Historiography . It is the written record of History , the memory fixed by humanity itself with the writing of its own past. The term comes from historiographer, and this one from the Greek ἱστοριογράφος (historiographs), from deστορία (history) and -γράφοάφ (graphs), from the root of γράφειν (graphin: ‘to write’): the one who writes (or describes) the History of where it turns out that history is the object of historiography Historiography is the art of writing it, but also the science of history. Historiography, more simply, is the way history has been written. In a broad sense, historiography refers to the methodology and practices of the writing of history. In a more specific sense, it refers to writing about the story itself.

Summary

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  • 1 Other definitions
  • 2 Structure of history: cultures and civilizations
  • 3 Historiography as meta-history
  • 4 Modern Age
  • 5 Contemporary Age
  • 6 Sources

Other definitions

There would be no history without historiography. That is, what distinguishes the phenomenon we call history is that it consists of a process of self-awareness, of reflection on oneself. And historiography is the most elaborate form of that consciousness. Otherwise, consciousness is determined by the past and our doing in the present depends on that historical consciousness. And it is precisely that doing with conscience, that human doing, that is called history; otherwise it would be mere biology .

Therefore, history can be defined as a vast and complex process of genesis, growth and organization through which humanity becomes aware of itself and its situation in the world, and the individual emerges as a person before nature and nature. own story.

  • History as a vast and complex processSomething that happens in time and has, therefore, an asymmetric, vector character, whose scope encompasses the entire human species and in which multiple and diverse elements intervene.
  • Furthermore, history, like the life from which it comes, is growth. It is enough to prove it by comparing the billions of individuals that today populate planet Earth with the few thousand of the first Paleolithic cultures. Of course growth can be said in other senses; but it seems that this mode of growth is the most evident and easy to evaluate.
  • ‘ The story, therefore, is organizing human life, making it clear to the observed greater differentiation of functions, and organizations and institutions dealing with them, in modern postindustrial societies to the side of the primitive communities of hunters , which translates into an increasing complexity of social life.
  • History as consciousness: The continuous development of the human and natural sciences, and the dissemination of knowledge and information to ever wider layers of the population, sufficiently explain this aspect of the historical evolution.

History as personalization: In history the individual is painfully conquering the right to be recognized and considered by himself, as a human being, and not as a passive member of a superior structure, as a stranger (this is what today we call Human Rights ). Prophets and philosophers have long ago taught that all people have the right to be considered as such, that we are all children of the same God, and today there are many territories in which legal, political and ideological theory assumes this recognition; but its realization is always incomplete (perhaps because its achievement has that character of a utopian horizon that has so often inspired philosophers and prophets).

Historiography, more simply, is the way history has been written. In a broad sense, historiography refers to the methodology and practices of the writing of history. In a more specific sense, it refers to writing about the story itself.

Structure of history: cultures and civilizations

History is a one-way process, that is, vector (from simple to complex, etc.); But this movement is not uniform or homogeneous, but takes shape in space and time in cultures and civilizations, which constituted by way of ramifications of the great trunk of History to which today, when History becomes Universal, planetary or global, they return to the tributary way. Both constitute the response (the material and formal means developed by the human community to maintain and improve their living conditions) that certain human groups have given to the problem of life in society, valid insofar as it made possible the duration of these communities until its dissolution or integration into subsequent ones. Thus, he uses the term

  • CULTURE for the peoples that have not yet achieved the urban revolution, and that of
  • CIVILIZATION to designate the achievements, both material and spiritual, of those peoples who have already surpassed it

This difference usually implies another: The peoples that have remained or remain in the stage of culture interpret reality through myths (mythical thought) and have a cyclical conception of time; On the other hand, the peoples that access civilization, without renouncing myths, develop science (scientific thought) as an instrument to explain the real and a vector idea of ​​time, which, applied to their own reality, results in the appearance of historical consciousness, historiography and history. Therefore, if the object of historiography is history , we must add that the study of history is specified in the study of civilizations.

Historiography as meta-history

History is a science whose object of study is the past of humanity, a question on which most, but not all historians agree; It has to be subjected to the scientific method , which although it cannot be applied to all extremes of the experimental sciences, it can do so at a level comparable to the so-called social sciences . See also: methodology and methodology in the social sciences A third confluent concept when defining history as a source of knowledge is the “theory of history”, which can also be called “historiology” (a term coined by José Ortegaand Gasset). Its role is to study “the structure, laws and conditions of historical reality. It is impossible to end the polysemy and the superposition of these three terms, but simplifying to the maximum it can be defined:

  • history as the events of the past,
  • historiography as the science of history,
  • historiology as its epistemology.

The philosophy of history is the branch of philosophywhich concerns the meaning of human history, if it has one. It speculates a possible teleological end of its development, that is, it asks if there is a design, purpose, guiding principle or finality in the process of human history. It should not be confused with the three previous concepts, from which it is clearly separated. If its object is truth or should be, if history is cyclical or linear, or there is the idea of ​​progress in it; They are subjects outside the history and historiography proper, which this discipline deals with. An intellectual approach that does not contribute much to understand historical science as such is the subordination of the philosophical point of view to historicity, considering all reality as the product of a historical evolution: that would be the place of historicism, a philosophical current that can be extended to other sciences, such as geography . Once the merely nominal question has been cleared up, the analysis of written history, the descriptions of the past, remains for historiography; specifically of the approaches in the narration, interpretations, worldviews, use of the evidences or documentation and methods of presentation by the historians; and also the study of these, both subjects and objects of science. Historiography, more simply, is the way history has been written. In a broad sense, historiography refers to the methodology and practices of the writing of history . In a more specific sense, it refers to writing about the story itself.

Modern age

 

Francis Bacon

16th century :

  • Humanism
  • Ecclesiastical history , in 1525 the ecclesiastical history of the secular is divided.
  • Textual criticism thanks to paleography and philology , from Lorenzo Balla to the “Donation of Constantine”.
  • Jean Bodin (1529/30 -1596)

 

Rene Descartes

17th century :

  • Francis Bacon (1561 -1626), philosopher of empiricism , in his work Nuevum Organum, develops scientific thought.
  • Catholic-Protestant controversy / Natural laws.
  • René Descartes (1596-1650), scientific reflection.
  • Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), the guide is divine providence.
  • John Locke (1632-1704) empiricist
  • Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) “Dictionnaire historique et critique” 1695-1697

Century XVIII

  • Natural law.
  • Rationality vs anti-rationality.
  • Comparative History
  • The systematic exploration of the world begins

French historiography of the 18th century
He had been concerned about the role of the State, the laws that correspond to it and the type of relationship between the state and society at the time

  • Montesquieu (1689-1755), “The spirit of the laws” where the division of powers applies. He distinguished between general causes, in his theory of causality that explain great historical changes, and particular and accidental causes
  • Voltaire (1694-1778), outstanding value to great personalities. The story has to be total and global (universal).
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 -1778)

 

David hume

British historiography of the 18th century
Based on laying the foundations of the new political system established after 1668

  • David Hume (1711-1776), wrote a “History of England” (Henry VII to the Glorious Revolution), participated in the black legend , “if there is no economic prosperity, there is no progress”
  • William Robertson (1721-1793) providential clergyman.
  • Adam Smith (1723–1790) economist
  • Edward Emily Gibbon (1737-1794) author of History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788, initiator of Byzantinism .

German historiography of the XVIII
The most important university was the University of Gottingen.

  • Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for him Nature is prior to man, he is the intermediary
  • Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), Prussian
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) author of “Phenomenology of the spirit”, “The Logic” in three volumes, and “The philosophy of law”. Had a theological view of history

Contemporary age

 

von Ranke

German historiography of the 19th century

  • Niebuhr (1776-1831)
  • Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), is the father of historicism . Historical method: it was necessary to obtain the possible documents of the subject that we are investigating; then establish the veracity of the document through internal and external criticism; Once the veracity of the document was established, the information they gave us had to be arranged in a chronological, logical and casual line; on the other hand, the historian had to approach this information, without prejudice, in an aseptic way, not conditioned by any ideology, and from there, he had to build a narrative adjusted to the information that these documents provided us.

19th century British historiography

  • Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), author of “The French Revolution” (1837)
  • Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859)
  • Lord Acton (1834-1902)

 

Augustin Thierry

19th century French historiography

  • François Guizot (1787-1874)
  • Augustín Thierry (1795-1856) author of “History of the conquest of England”, tried to demonstrate the main progress of the progress of civil society, together with the class struggle.
  • Jules Michelet (1798–1874). He rejects the conception of history as a sequence of mechanical causes and consequences regarding the place of the great characters.
  • Ernest Renan (1823-1892)
  • Numa Denys Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889), his work “” The Ancient City “. He considers that there is a real separation between the subject that knows and the object that is to be known. The historian cannot fall into a wild exercise of historical reconstruction without documentary support. The story must be based on the criticism of the written documents.