History

• 1. History is often categorized as a humanities discipline because the earlier idea of history is considered as an idea to expose the human condition in the past and from it, the present society can learn something.
• History as an art: history involves the interpretation, the piecing together of the sources of information from the past that a historian gathered; hence, there is a need for “tact” according to Hermann von Helmholtz
• History as a science: history involves methods: gathering the sources of information (written documents) and analyzing the veracity or the truthfulness of the sources’ information; from this roots the idea of history as a discipline
• History is the study and interpretation of the written record of the past human activity
• In ancient civilizations such as Sumeria and Egypt, the earlier form of records can be found on clay tablets, stones, and even bones.
• While the writing of history is an ancient tradition, history as an academic discipline can trace its roots back to the Enlightenment Era when history ceased to be a branch of literature (i.e., in the forms of myths and legends, history was treated as a piece of literature that guides people through its lessons).
• The German Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) was considered the “father of empirical history” since he first proposed to write history based on written records. He used the method of “seminar” where he presented a historical document that the students would discuss.
• Historiography: the study of writing history (or how is history [being] written?)
• Primary sources: a document that contains information from an eyewitness or participant of an event/specific historical biography (these primary sources can be primarily found in the archives or an institution that collects historical sources such as past census records, diaries, etc.)
• Secondary sources: a scholarly work that uses primary sources (e.g., books, articles, etc.)
• These historical sources, particularly the primary sources, undergo historical criticism. Historians do the following criticism of these historical sources:
• External criticism: questions the authenticity of the document (was the document a product of its time, or was it forged?)
• Internal criticism: questions the accuracy of the content (is the author telling accurate information about the time? Can the information collaborate with other primary sources?)
• Annales School tried to construct a social history by veering away from the “official sources”, hence getting information from unofficial sources such as diaries, cultural traditions, etc.
• The Annales school \proposed that historians must be aware of their subjectivity and they should get the help of other social sciences (geography, sociology, economics, etc) to interpret the past
• longue durée - writing of a history of a certain event within a long period (example, 17th through 19th centuries)
• histoire événementielle writing of a history of a certain event within a short period (example, a history of disability during the Marcos administration in the Philippines)
• Bielefeld School Proposed that history should use the methods of social sciences to study the past
• In the US, historians used computers to help them analyze the events of the past
• North America used the quantitative data were collected and used to interpret the past
• Microhistory

  In Germany, there arose another school of thought that influenced the writing of history–the Alltagsgeschichte or the history of everyday life

  In Italy, the idea of microstoria arose, or the idea that history should expose the reality that is closer to the individual subjects
• Diplomatic history: history of international relations among states
• Economic history: history related to the production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services
• Political history: the study of political events, ideas, movements, organs of government, etc.
• Local history: the study of past events in a barangay, municipal, provincial, regional, or city-level
• Gender history: looks at the past from the perspective of gender