Historiography and Historical Research Methods

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the definitions, key scholars, and schools of thought in the development of historiography and modern historical research.

Historiography

The writing of critical historical narrative.

Historian

A scholar who writes a critical historical narrative and interprets historical events based on a conceptual framework.

Epigraphy

The study of inscriptions.

Numismatics

The study of coins.

Genealogy

The study of lineage.

Sumer civilisation

An ancient civilisation in Mesopotamia where the tradition of recording historical events, such as names of kings and battles, dates back to $4500\,B.C.E.$

Modern Historiography

A style of history writing based on scientific principles, using anthropocentric questions supported by reliable evidence to present a graph of mankind's journey.

Herodotus

A Greek historian of the $5^{th}$ century $B.C.E.$ who first used the term 'History' for his book entitled 'The Histories'.

René Descartes ($1596-1650$)

The scholar who insisted on verifying the reliability of historical documents and wrote the book 'Discourse on the method'.

Voltaire ($1694-1778$)

The French scholar, originally named François-Marie Arouet, who is considered the founder of modern historiography for including social traditions, trade, and economy in historical study.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ($1770-1831$)

A German philosopher who insisted that historical reality should be presented in a logical manner and authored 'Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences' and 'Reason in History'.

Dialectics

Hegel's method of analysis based on opposites, such as True-False or Good-Bad, to understand the true nature of an event.

Thesis

The theory proposed at the beginning of the dialectics method of analysis.

Antithesis

A theory proposed in the dialectics method that is contrary to the initial thesis.

Synthesis

The process of arriving at a new thesis that includes the gist of both the thesis and the antithesis after a thorough logical discussion.

Leopold von Ranké ($1795-1886$)

A historian of Berlin University who criticized imaginative narration and authored 'The Theory and Practice of History' and 'The Secret of World History'.

Karl Marx ($1818-1883$)

A scholar who formulated the thesis that human history is the history of class struggle, shaped by the ownership of means of production.

Das Kapital

A treatise written by Karl Marx which is one of the most referred books in the world regarding class struggle and means of production.

Annales School

A school of historiography started by French historians at the onset of the $20^{th}$ century that focuses on climate, local people, agriculture, and collective psychology.

Feminist Historiography

The restructuring of history from the perspective of women, emphasizing their role in employment, trade unions, and family life.

Simone de Beauvoir

A French writer whose works helped establish the fundamentals of feminism and the need for restructuring history from a female perspective.

Michel Foucault ($1926-1984$)

A French historian who authored 'Archaeology of Knowledge' and emphasized explaining the transitions in history rather than chronological order.

Archaeology of Knowledge

The name Michel Foucault gave to his method of historical analysis, which subjects unacknowledged areas like prison administration and medicine to research.