History

History is the account of the human past. It also refers to the academic discipline of researching, usually studying written, oral, or archaeological sources, as well as of communicating the results of such research.

Views of history

History has been perceived differently by people in different times and cultures. Ancient societies, such as the Babylonians and the Hellenic Greeks tended to think of history as a circle. As time progressed, events would repeat themselves, although under different circumstances.

By contrast, medieval and renaissance scholars and chroniclers viewed history as a progression through a sequence of different ages, starting with the creation of the world and ending with the second coming of Christ and the judgment of mankind. It was usually believed that there were seven such ages.

Academic history

The study of history as an academic field dates to the 19th century, when historians developed scientific methods for studying source materials. They also adopted a new objectivist ideal of history that broke with earlier approaches. The new role of the historian was to show history "as it actually happened", and not to pass judgment or impose his own views on the sources. Key figures in this development were the German historians Leopold von Ranke and Theodor Mommsen. A different Anglo-Saxon historical tradition evolved in the early to mid-20th century, based on the works and theories of, among others, E. H. Carr and Geoffrey Elton.

In the early 20th century, the French Annales School, which among others numbered the historians Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel and Marc Bloch, was notable by introducing social scientific methods and turning away from the traditional focus on political and diplomatic history.

In recent years, the traditional academic approach history has come under attack from the post-modernist school, inspired by theories especially from literary and cultural studies.

Christian history

In his 1949 presidential address to the American Historical Association, Yale Professor Kenneth Scott Latourette promoted the value of taking a Christian approach to the last two millennia. He argued:

As the influence of Jesus has spread geographically, various results have followed which are evidence that the transforming power which Christians claim for it is at work….Through the expansion of Western peoples and their culture, mankind has for the first time been brought together. To the degree that this is the result of the influence of Jesus it is a partial implementation of the dream of the unity of mankind which is a feature of the Christian understanding of history. The struggle to regulate and eventually to eliminate the wars which make our shrinking globe so perilous a neighborhood owes much to Jesus….Such attempts at world-wide co-operation as the League of Nations and the United Nations are demonstrably to some extent from him.

Much clearer is the decisive part which Jesus has had in the efforts to combat slavery and other forms of the exploitation of men by their fellows….The list is long of the Spanish and Portuguese laymen and clergy who, inspired and sustained by their Christian faith, labored to guard the non-Europeans in the colonies in both hemispheres from the callous selfishness of their fellow countrymen. The place of his Christian faith in impelling Wilberforce in his campaign against the Negro slave trade is well known. So, too, is the role of the Quakers, Samuel Hopkins, and those touched by the Finney revival, consciences made sensitive by commitment to the Christian faith, in the movement for the emancipation of Negro slaves in the United States. We are all aware of the efforts of the Christian missionary, David Livingstone, to curb the slave trade in Africa itself. Less familiar is the share of such Christian missionary leaders as John Philip and Cardinal Lavigerie in the campaign against African slavery. Christianity has been one of the most potent forces making for the liberation and advance of the depressed classes of India. Jesus was a major inspiration of Gandhi. In land after land he has contributed to the emancipation of women. In the impact of Occidental upon non-Occidental peoples Christian missions and other agencies inspired by him have made for improved medical care, for public health, for better methods of agriculture, and for schools and universities better adapted to the new day than were their predecessors. Increasingly these features of the influence of Jesus have been spreading and now in varying measure embrace mankind.

See also

• Economic history
• Military history

References

• Evans, Richard J.: In Defence of History (London, 1997)
• Iggers, Georg I.: Historiography in the Twentieth Century. From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hannover, 1997)
• Jenkins, Keith: Re-Thinking History (London, 1991)