History

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This article is about the academic discipline. For a general history of human beings,
see History of the world. For other uses, see History (disambiguation).

Herodotus (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC), often considered the "father of history"

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.[1]
—George Santayana

History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning 'inquiry; knowledge acquired by

investigation')[2] is the past as it is described in written documents, and the study thereof.
[3][4]
 Events occurring before written records are considered prehistory. "History" is
an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery,
collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these
events. Scholars who write about history are called historians.
History also includes the academic discipline which uses a narrative to examine and
analyse a sequence of past events, and objectively determine the patterns of cause and
effect that determine them.[5][6] Historians sometimes debate the nature of history and its
usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of
providing "perspective" on the problems of the present. [5][7][8][9]
Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as
the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends,
because they do not show the "disinterested investigation" required of the discipline of
history.[10][11] Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian is often considered within the
Western tradition to be the "father of history", or by some the "father of lies", and, along
with his contemporary Thucydides, helped form the foundations for the modern study of
human history. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-
focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or
 approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and
Autumn Annals, was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-
century BC texts have survived.
Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history
which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study
of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of
certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught
as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is
a major discipline in university studies.

Contents

 1Etymology
 2Description
 3History and prehistory
 4Historiography
 5Historical methods
o 5.1Marxian theory
 6Areas of study
o 6.1Periods
 6.1.1Prehistoric periodisation
o 6.2Geographical locations
 6.2.1Regions
o 6.3Military history
o 6.4History of religion
o 6.5Social history
 6.5.1Subfields
o 6.6Cultural history
o 6.7Diplomatic history
o 6.8Economic history
o 6.9Environmental history
o 6.10World history
o 6.11People's history
o 6.12Intellectual history
o 6.13Gender history
o 6.14Public history
 7Historians
 8Judgement
 9Pseudohistory
 10Teaching
o 10.1Scholarship vs teaching
o 10.2Nationalism
o 10.3Bias in school teaching
 11See also
o 11.1Methods
 o 11.2Topics
o 11.3Other themes
 12References
 13Further reading
 14External links

Etymology

History by Frederick Dielman (1896)

The word history comes from the Ancient Greek ἱστορία[12] (historía), meaning 'inquiry',

'knowledge from inquiry', or 'judge'. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in
his History of Animals.[13] The ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric
Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions (in a legal
sense, either 'judge' or 'witness', or similar). The Greek word was borrowed into
Classical Latin as historia, meaning "investigation, inquiry, research, account,
description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical narrative,
recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative". History was borrowed from Latin
(possibly via Old Irish or Old Welsh) into Old English as stær ('history, narrative, story'),
but this word fell out of use in the late Old English period. [14] Meanwhile, as Latin
became Old French (and Anglo-Norman), historia developed into forms such
as istorie, estoire, and historie, with new developments in the meaning: "account of the
events of a person's life (beginning of the 12th century), chronicle, account of events as
relevant to a group of people or people in general (1155), dramatic or pictorial
representation of historical events (c. 1240), body of knowledge relative to human
evolution, science (c. 1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (c. 1462)". [14]
It was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time
the loan stuck. It appears in the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse, but seems to have
become a common word in the late 14th century, with an early attestation appearing
in John Gower's Confessio Amantis of the 1390s (VI.1383): "I finde in a bok compiled |
To this matiere an old histoire, | The which comth nou to mi memoire". In Middle
English, the meaning of history was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning
"the branch of knowledge that deals with past events; the formal record or study of past
events, esp. human affairs" arose in the mid-15th century. [14] With the Renaissance,
older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis
Bacon used the term in the late 16th century, when he wrote about "Natural History".
For him, historia was "the knowledge of objects determined by space and time", that
sort of knowledge provided by memory (while science was provided by reason,
and poetry was provided by fantasy).[15]
In an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like
Chinese (史 vs. 诌) now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in
general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages,
which are solidly synthetic and highly inflected, the same word is still used to mean both
'history' and 'story'. Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" is attested from
1531. In all European languages, the substantive history is still used to mean both "what
happened with men", and "the scholarly study of the happened", the latter sense
sometimes distinguished with a capital letter, or the word historiography.[13] The
adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669.[16]

Description

The title page to The Historians' History of the World

Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current
dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for
their own society. In the words of Benedetto Croce, "All history is contemporary history".
History is facilitated by the formation of a "true discourse of past" through the production
of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race. [17] The modern
discipline of history is dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse.
All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the
historical record.[18] The task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can
most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the
constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive
by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to
represent the "true past").
The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the humanities and at
other times as part of the social sciences.[19] It can also be seen as a bridge between
those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some individual
historians strongly support one or the other classification. [20] In the 20th century,
French historian Fernand Braudel revolutionized the study of history, by using such
outside disciplines as economics, anthropology, and geography in the study of global
history.
Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing
on an oral tradition, and have attempted to answer historical questions through the
study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have also
used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources of
historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is
said, and what is physically preserved, and historians often consult all three. [21] But
writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.
Archaeology is a discipline that is especially helpful in dealing with buried sites and
objects, which, once unearthed, contribute to the study of history. But archaeology
rarely stands alone. It uses narrative sources to complement its discoveries. However,
archaeology is constituted by a range of methodologies and approaches which are
independent from history; that is to say, archaeology does not "fill the gaps" within
textual sources. Indeed, "historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archaeology,
often contrasting its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources. For
example, Mark Leone, the excavator and interpreter of historical Annapolis, Maryland,
USA; has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents and the
material record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth
apparent via the study of the total historical environment, despite the ideology of
"liberty" inherent in written documents at this time.
There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized, including
chronologically, culturally, territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually
exclusive, and significant overlaps are often present, as in "The International Women's
Movement in an Age of Transition, 1830–1975." It is possible for historians to concern
themselves with both the very specific and the very general, although the modern trend
has been toward specialization. The area called Big History resists this specialization,
and searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been studied with some
practical or theoretical aim, but also may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity. [22]

History and prehistory

Part of a series on

Human history
and prehistory

↑ before  Homo   (Pliocene epoch)

Prehistory
(three-age system)
Stone Age

Lower Paleolithic
 Homo
 Homo erectus
Middle Paleolithic 

Early  Homo sapiens

Upper Paleolithic

Behavioral modernity

Epipaleolithic

Neolithic 

Cradle of civilization

Protohistory

Chalcolithic

Bronze Age
 Near East
 Europe
 India
 China
Bronze Age collapse

Iron Age
 Near East
 Europe
 India
 East Asia
 West Africa

Recorded history

Ancient history
 Earliest records
 Protohistory
Post-classical
history

Modern history
 Early
 Later
 Contemporary
 ↓ Future   (Holocene
epoch)

 v
 t
 e
Further information: Protohistory
The history of the world is the memory of the past experience of Homo sapiens
sapiens around the world, as that experience has been preserved, largely in written
records. By "prehistory", historians mean the recovery of knowledge of the past in an
area where no written records exist, or where the writing of a culture is not understood.
By studying painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts, some information can be
recovered even in the absence of a written record. Since the 20th century, the study of
prehistory is considered essential to avoid history's implicit exclusion of certain
civilizations, such as those of Sub-Saharan Africa and pre-Columbian America.
Historians in the West have been criticized for focusing disproportionately on
the Western world.[23] In 1961, British historian E. H. Carr wrote:
The line of demarcation between prehistoric and historical times is crossed when people
cease to live only in the present, and become consciously interested both in their past
and in their future. History begins with the handing down of tradition; and tradition
means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the past into the future. Records of the
past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations. [24]
This definition includes within the scope of history the strong interests of peoples, such
as Indigenous Australians and New Zealand Māori in the past, and the oral records
maintained and transmitted to succeeding generations, even before their contact with
European civilization.

Historiography
Main article: Historiography
The title page to La Historia d'Italia

Historiography has a number of related meanings. Firstly, it can refer to how history has
been produced: the story of the development of methodology and practices (for
example, the move from short-term biographical narrative towards long-term thematic
analysis). Secondly, it can refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical
writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "Works of
medieval history written during the 1960s"). Thirdly, it may refer to why history is
produced: the Philosophy of history. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past,
this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the
narratives, interpretations, world view, use of evidence, or method of presentation of
other historians. Professional historians also debate the question of whether history can
be taught as a single coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives. [25][26]

Historical methods
Further information: Historical method

A depiction of the ancient Library of Alexandria

Historical method basics

The following questions are used by

historians in modern work.

1. When was the source, written or

unwritten, produced (date)?
2. Where was it produced
(localization)?
3. By whom was it produced
(authorship)?
4. From what pre-existing material
was it produced (analysis)?
5. In what original form was it
produced (integrity)?
 6. What is the evidential value of its
contents (credibility)?
The first four are known as historical
criticism; the fifth, textual criticism; and,
together, external criticism. The sixth and
final inquiry about a source is called internal
criticism.

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by

which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write
history.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BC – ca.425 BC)[27] has generally been acclaimed as
the "father of history". However, his contemporary Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 400 BC)
is credited with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method
in his work the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus,
regarded history as being the product of the choices and actions of human beings, and
looked at cause and effect, rather than as the result of divine intervention (though
Herodotus was not wholly committed to this idea himself). [27] In his historical method,
Thucydides emphasized chronology, a nominally neutral point of view, and that the
human world was the result of the actions of human beings. Greek historians also
viewed history as cyclical, with events regularly recurring.[28]
There were historical traditions and sophisticated use of historical method in ancient
and medieval China. The groundwork for professional historiography in East Asia was
established by the Han dynasty court historian known as Sima Qian (145–90 BC),
author of the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji). For the quality of his written work,
Sima Qian is posthumously known as the Father of Chinese historiography. Chinese
historians of subsequent dynastic periods in China used his Shiji as the official format
for historical texts, as well as for biographical literature. [citation needed]
Saint Augustine was influential in Christian and Western thought at the beginning of the
medieval period. Through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, history was often
studied through a sacred or religious perspective. Around 1800, German philosopher
and historian Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel brought philosophy and a
more secular approach in historical study.[22]
In the preface to his book, the Muqaddimah (1377), the Arab historian and early
sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians
regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of
interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of
another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the
principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly,
to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a
culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and uncritical
acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a scientific method to the study
of history, and he often referred to it as his "new science". [29] His historical method also
laid the groundwork for the observation of the role
of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history,[30] and he is thus
considered to be the "father of historiography" [31][32] or the "father of the philosophy of
history".[33]
In the West, historians developed modern methods of historiography in the 17th and
18th centuries, especially in France and Germany. In 1851, Herbert
Spencer summarized these methods:
From the successive strata of our historical deposits, they [Historians] diligently gather
all the highly colored fragments, pounce upon everything that is curious and sparkling
and chuckle like children over their glittering acquisitions; meanwhile the rich veins of
wisdom that ramify amidst this worthless debris, lie utterly neglected. Cumbrous
volumes of rubbish are greedily accumulated, while those masses of rich ore, that
should have been dug out, and from which golden truths might have been smelted, are
left untaught and unsought[34]
By the "rich ore" Spencer meant scientific theory of history. Meanwhile, Henry Thomas
Buckle expressed a dream of history becoming one day science:
In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been
explained and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal
laws. This have been done because men of ability and, above all, men of patient,
untiring thought have studied events with the view of discovering their regularity, and if
human events were subject to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar
results[35]
Contrary to Buckle's dream, the 19th-century historian with greatest influence on
methods became Leopold von Ranke in Germany. He limited history to “what really
happened” and by this directed the field further away from science. For Ranke, historical
data should be collected carefully, examined objectively and put together with critical
rigor. But these procedures “are merely the prerequisites and preliminaries of science.
The heart of science is searching out order and regularity in the data being examined
and in formulating generalizations or laws about them.” [36]
As Historians like Ranke and many who followed him have pursued it, no, history is not
a science. Thus if Historians tell us that, given the manner in which he practices his
craft, it cannot be considered a science, we must take him at his word. If he is not doing
science, then, whatever else he is doing, he is not doing science. The traditional
Historian is thus no scientist and history, as conventionally practiced, is not a science. [37]
In the 20th century, academic historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives,
which often tended to glorify the nation or great men, to more objective and complex
analyses of social and intellectual forces. A major trend of historical methodology in the
20th century was a tendency to treat history more as a social science rather than as
an art, which traditionally had been the case. Some of the leading advocates of history
as a social science were a diverse collection of scholars which included Fernand
Braudel, E. H. Carr, Fritz Fischer, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Hans-Ulrich
Wehler, Bruce Trigger, Marc Bloch, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Peter Gay, Robert
Fogel, Lucien Febvre and Lawrence Stone. Many of the advocates of history as a social
science were or are noted for their multi-disciplinary approach. Braudel combined
history with geography, Bracher history with political science, Fogel history with
economics, Gay history with psychology, Trigger history with archaeology while Wehler,
Bloch, Fischer, Stone, Febvre and Le Roy Ladurie have in varying and differing ways
amalgamated history with sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics.
Nevertheless, these multidisciplinary approaches failed to produce a theory of history.
So far only one theory of history came from the pen of a professional Historian.
[38]
 Whatever other theories of history we have, they were written by experts from other
fields (for example, Marxian theory of history). More recently, the field of digital
history has begun to address ways of using computer technology to pose new questions
to historical data and generate digital scholarship.
In sincere opposition to the claims of history as a social science, historians such
as Hugh Trevor-Roper, John Lukacs, Donald Creighton, Gertrude
Himmelfarb and Gerhard Ritter argued that the key to the historians' work was the
power of the imagination, and hence contended that history should be understood as an
art. French historians associated with the Annales School introduced quantitative
history, using raw data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the
establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalités). Intellectual historians such
as Herbert Butterfield, Ernst Nolte and George Mosse have argued for the significance
of ideas in history. American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on
formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. Another genre of social
history to emerge in the post-WWII era was Alltagsgeschichte (History of Everyday
Life). Scholars such as Martin Broszat, Ian Kershaw and Detlev Peukert sought to
examine what everyday life was like for ordinary people in 20th-century Germany,
especially in the Nazi period.
Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, Rodney Hilton, Georges
Lefebvre, Eugene Genovese, Isaac Deutscher, C. L. R. James, Timothy Mason, Herbert
Aptheker, Arno J. Mayer and Christopher Hill have sought to validate Karl Marx's
theories by analyzing history from a Marxist perspective. In response to the Marxist
interpretation of history, historians such as François Furet, Richard Pipes, J. C. D.
Clark, Roland Mousnier, Henry Ashby Turner and Robert Conquest have offered anti-
Marxist interpretations of history. Feminist historians such as Joan Wallach
Scott, Claudia Koonz, Natalie Zemon Davis, Sheila Rowbotham, Gisela Bock, Gerda
Lerner, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Lynn Hunt have argued for the importance of
studying the experience of women in the past. In recent years, postmodernists have
challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is
based on the personal interpretation of sources. In his 1997 book In Defence of
History, Richard J. Evans defended the worth of history. Another defence of history from
post-modernist criticism was the Australian historian Keith Windschuttle's 1994
book, The Killing of History.
Marxian theory
Main article: Marx's theory of history
The Marxist theory of historical materialism theorises that society is fundamentally
determined by the material conditions at any given time – in other words, the
relationships which people have with each other in order to fulfill basic needs such as
feeding, clothing and housing themselves and their families.
[39]
 Overall, Marx and Engels claimed to have identified five successive stages of the
development of these material conditions in Western Europe.[40] Marxist
historiography was once orthodoxy in the Soviet Union, but since the collapse of
communism there in 1991, Mikhail Krom says it has been reduced to the margins of
scholarship.[41]

Areas of study
Particular studies and fields

These are approaches to history; not listed

are histories of other fields, such as history
of science, history of
mathematics and history of philosophy.

 Ancient history: the study from the

beginning of human history until the
Early Middle Ages.
 Atlantic history: the study of the
history of people living on or near the
Atlantic Ocean.
 Art history: the study of changes in
and social context of art.
 Comparative history: historical
analysis of social and cultural entities
not confined to national boundaries.
 Contemporary history: the study of
recent historical events.
 Counterfactual history: the study of
historical events as they might have
happened in different causal
circumstances.
 Cultural history: the study of
culture in the past.
 Digital history: the use of
computing technologies do massive
searches in published sources.
 Economic history: the use of
economic models fitted to the past.
 Intellectual history: the study of
ideas in the context of the cultures that
produced them and their development
over time.
 Maritime history: the study of
maritime transport and all the
connected subjects.
 Modern history: the study of the
Modern Times, the era after the Middle
Ages.
 Military history: the study of
warfare and wars in history and what is
 sometimes considered to be a sub-
branch of military history, Naval
history.
 Palaeography: study of ancient
texts.
 People's history: historical work
from the perspective of common
people.
 Political history: the study of
politics in the past.
 Psychohistory: study of the
psychological motivations of historical
events.
 Pseudohistory: study about the past
that falls outside the domain of
mainstream history (sometimes it is an
equivalent of pseudoscience).
 Social history: the study of the
process of social change throughout
history.
 Women's history: the history of
female human beings. Gender history is
related and covers the perspective of
gender.
 World history: the study of history
from a global perspective, with special
attention to non-Western societies.

Periods
Main article: Periodization
Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular
blocks of time. Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising
ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians. [42] The names given to
a period can vary with geographical location, as can the dates of the beginning and end
of a particular period. Centuries and decades are commonly used periods and the time
they represent depends on the dating system used. Most periods are constructed
retrospectively and so reflect value judgments made about the past. The way periods
are constructed and the names given to them can affect the way they are viewed and
studied.[43]
Prehistoric periodisation
The field of history generally leaves prehistory to the archaeologists, who have entirely
different sets of tools and theories. The usual method for periodisation of the
distant prehistoric past, in archaeology is to rely on changes in material culture and
technology, such as the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age and their sub-divisions
also based on different styles of material remains. Here prehistory is divided into a
series of "chapters" so that periods in history could unfold not only in a relative
chronology but also narrative chronology.[44] This narrative content could be in the form
of functional-economic interpretation. There are periodisation, however, that do not
have this narrative aspect, relying largely on relative chronology and, thus, devoid of
any specific meaning.
Despite the development over recent decades of the ability through radiocarbon
dating and other scientific methods to give actual dates for many sites or artefacts,
these long-established schemes seem likely to remain in use. In many cases
neighbouring cultures with writing have left some history of cultures without it, which
may be used. Periodisation, however, is not viewed as a perfect framework with one
account explaining that "cultural changes do not conveniently start and stop
(combinedly) at periodisation boundaries" and that different trajectories of change are
also needed to be studied in their own right before they get intertwined with cultural
phenomena.[45]
Geographical locations
Particular geographical locations can form the basis of historical study, for
example, continents, countries, and cities. Understanding why historic events took place
is important. To do this, historians often turn to geography. According to Jules
Michelet in his book Histoire de France (1833), "without geographical basis, the people,
the makers of history, seem to be walking on air." [46] Weather patterns, the water supply,
and the landscape of a place all affect the lives of the people who live there. For
example, to explain why the ancient Egyptians developed a successful civilization,
studying the geography of Egypt is essential. Egyptian civilization was built on the
banks of the Nile River, which flooded each year, depositing soil on its banks. The rich
soil could help farmers grow enough crops to feed the people in the cities. That meant
everyone did not have to farm, so some people could perform other jobs that helped
develop the civilization. There is also the case of climate, which historians like Ellsworth
Huntington and Allen Semple, cited as a crucial influence on the course of history and
racial temperament.[47]
Regions

 History of Africa begins with the first emergence of modern human beings on the
continent, continuing into its modern present as a patchwork of diverse and
politically developing nation states.
 History of the Americas is the collective history of North and South America,
including Central America and the Caribbean.
o History of North America is the study of the past passed down from
generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's northern and western
hemisphere.
o History of Central America is the study of the past passed down from
generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's western hemisphere.
o History of the Caribbean begins with the oldest evidence where 7,000-
year-old remains have been found.
o History of South America is the study of the past passed down from
generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's southern and western
hemisphere.
 History of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent,
known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe.
 History of Australia starts with the documentation of the Makassar trading with
Indigenous Australians on Australia's north coast.
 History of New Zealand dates back at least 700 years to when it was discovered
and settled by Polynesians, who developed a distinct Māori culture centred on
kinship links and land.
 History of the Pacific Islands covers the history of the islands in the Pacific
Ocean.
 History of Eurasia is the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal
regions: the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, linked
by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
o History of Europe describes the passage of time from humans inhabiting
the European continent to the present day.
o History of Asia can be seen as the collective history of several distinct
peripheral coastal regions, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East linked by
the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe.
 History of East Asia is the study of the past passed down from
generation to generation in East Asia.
 History of the Middle East begins with the earliest civilizations in the
region now known as the Middle East that were established around 3000 BC,
in Mesopotamia (Iraq).
 History of India is the study of the past passed down from
generation to generation in the Sub-Himalayan region.
 History of Southeast Asia has been characterized as interaction
between regional players and foreign powers.
Military history
Main article: Military history
Military history concerns warfare, strategies, battles, weapons, and the psychology of
combat. The "new military history" since the 1970s has been concerned with soldiers
more than generals, with psychology more than tactics, and with the broader impact of
warfare on society and culture.[48]
History of religion
Main article: History of religions
The history of religion has been a main theme for both secular and religious historians
for centuries, and continues to be taught in seminaries and academe. Leading journals
include Church History, The Catholic Historical Review, and History of Religions. Topics
range widely from political and cultural and artistic dimensions, to theology and liturgy.
[49]
 This subject studies religions from all regions and areas of the world where humans
have lived.[50]
Social history