I know this is really simple (and something I've gone over heaps of times) - but can someone please define the different types of history - e.g. modern, post-modern etc?? My teacher never actually explicitly taught it, so I'm trying to study but v confused!
Hey,
Medieval/Early modern: Chronicling the working out of God’s purpose in the world.
Enlightenment: A process from ignorance to truth, intellectual mood was a key feature, was anti-religious as they had a confidence in reasons. Human nature was universal, unchanging and unhistorical.
Romantic: Similar timing to the Enlightenment however a reaction against it, about free expression, creativity and anti-reason, sees history as a thing of beauty not science. See the past as exciting and different, purpose was to find out about the past as something to cherish and preserve.
Scientific (e.g Ranke): Apply methods learnt as a philologist to the study of historical texts in order to achieve objectivity. Helped establish history as a separate discipline from philosophy. Introduced methods, such as source analysis to determine whether a text was true or corrupted by later interpretations.
Empiricism: Experience, which is based on observation and experimentation, is the source of knowledge.
Whig: A British political party whose origin laid in constitutional monarchism opposed to absolute monarchy. Presents the past as an inevitable progression towards liberty and enlightenment. Shows emotions and thoughts of the past.
Nationalist: Assumed the ‘nation-state’ was the primary object of historical study. Historians aim was to study the origins, development of states and their relations with one another.
Relativist: The ‘aspect of things’ changed with the position of the observer. Historians were guided as to what was important in the past, by their present concerns. Therefore, truth is related to the person who wrote it or the time in which it was written.
Total history: A total history of one place at one time, incorporating mentalities, the event and the long term as well as combining with other disciplines such as anthropological, econometric, demographic and more traditional political history.
Public History: Forms of historical representation which are produced outside the academy, either directly addressing a large general audience, or for public, often governmental purposes. Public historians wish to provide history that is accessible and easy to understand by everybody. Examples of public history include museums, historical films, radio, television, historical sites, commemorations, and re-enactments. Public historians believe that anyone can write history. Conversely, academic historians with degrees/qualifications in history and have written books on their subjects (not for a general public audience).
Modernism: Human reason can lead to truth/reality by a logical process. History is progressing, creating scientific laws of behaviour, the belief in morality and ‘eternal truth’. Modernism was rejected due to the horrors of the machine guns of WW1 and the atomic bombs of WW2.
Structuralism: Language reflects our thoughts and the reality around us. Language has a set of laws/structure. Words have an encompassing reality and meanings of words represent different realities for people.
Post-Modernism: A deliberate rejection of modernism. The belief that here is no objective truth, instead knowledge is about creating and maintaining power-relationships. Language is central to our understanding of anything and language is fluid where meanings change and mean different things to different people. Goes as far to say that history is fiction.
Post-structuralism: Questions the stability of meaning and recognises that signifiers and signs are not fixed. Meaning constantly changes so we can only ground our signifiers according to what they are not (e.g cat is not a dog). Therefore, this leads to a constant endless cycle of deferral.
Big History: Looks at the history of humanity as a whole and aims to explain how everything came to be and where everything is going. It is a reaction against post-modernism.
Hope this helps!!