Why historians disagree
Two careful historians can read the same archive and reach different conclusions. They may ask different questions, give weight to different sources, or work from different ideas about what drives change: individuals, ideas, economics, the environment or culture. New evidence, such as a newly opened archive or an archaeological find, can also overturn older views. Historiography teaches you to notice these choices in the books you read, and in your own writing.
Early historians
Several ancient writers set patterns that lasted for centuries:
- Herodotus, writing in Greek in the fifth century BCE, wrote an inquiry into the wars between the Greeks and the Persian Empire. He collected stories from many places and often reported more than one version.
- Thucydides, an Athenian of the same century, wrote about the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. He stressed careful inquiry and political causes over divine ones.
- Sima Qian, writing under the Han dynasty in China, compiled the Records of the Grand Historian, a model for later Chinese official histories.
- Ibn Khaldun, a North African scholar, wrote the Muqaddimah in the 1370s, an introduction to history that analyzed how dynasties rise and decline.
The professional discipline
History became a university profession in the nineteenth century. The German historian Leopold von Ranke is often linked with this change. He and his followers stressed research in archives, close criticism of documents and an effort to describe the past on its own terms. Seminars, footnotes and doctoral training spread from German universities to Europe and the United States.
Major schools and approaches
| Approach | Main focus | Typical sources |
|---|---|---|
| Political and diplomatic history | States, rulers, wars and treaties | Government papers, diplomatic letters |
| Marxist history | Economic structures and class conflict as drivers of change | Wage, price and land records, labor sources |
| The Annales school | Long-term structures: geography, climate, demography, mentalities | Parish registers, price series, landscapes |
| Social history, "history from below" | Ordinary people, work, family and community | Court records, census returns, oral history |
| Cultural history | Meanings, beliefs, symbols and identities | Images, rituals, printed texts, objects |
| Global and environmental history | Connections across regions, and humans' relationship with nature | Trade data, climate evidence, comparative studies |
The Annales school takes its name from a French journal founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. Fernand Braudel, a later leader of the group, wrote about the Mediterranean world across very long time spans. In Britain, E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963) became a landmark of history from below. Microhistory, which studies a single person, village or event in great depth, grew from the 1970s. A well-known example is Carlo Ginzburg's study of a sixteenth-century Italian miller questioned by the Inquisition.
How to compare two interpretations
- State each historian's main argument in one sentence.
- Identify the evidence each one relies on most.
- Note when and where each was writing, and what debates they were answering.
- Find the real point of disagreement. Is it about facts, about causes, or about what matters most?
- Decide which argument the evidence supports better, and say why.
Examiners reward explanation: why an interpretation took the shape it did, and how well it holds up against another. A list of historians' names on its own earns little.
Reading secondary sources well
Read the introduction and conclusion of a scholarly book first: that is usually where the argument lives. Look at the notes and bibliography to see what kind of evidence underpins it. Check the publication date and ask what has been found or argued since. A useful classic for beginners is E. H. Carr's What Is History? (1961), which is still widely assigned and still widely argued with.
Historiography FAQ
Is historiography the same as history?
No. History is the study of the past. Historiography is the study of how historians have studied and written about it.
Is revisionist history a bad thing?
In academic use, revision is normal: historians revise older views when new evidence or questions appear. The word is sometimes used loosely for distortion, which is a different thing. Judge any interpretation by its evidence and reasoning.
Do I need historiography for AP exams?
AP exams do not require you to name historians, but they reward the same skill: explaining and weighing different interpretations of the past. College courses usually expect named historiography in essays.