Historiography

Historiography is the study of how history itself is written. Rather than recounting past events directly, it examines the methods historians use, the sources and research techniques they rely on, and the theoretical approaches through which they interpret documents. The term is also used for the whole body of historical writing on a particular subject, such as the historiography of China or of the Second World War. As a literary genre it covers the narrative histories, critical studies and reflective surveys in which authors argue about how the past should be told. The tradition is usually traced to Herodotus and his Histories in fifth century BC Greece, with parallel traditions in Rome, China, the medieval Islamic world, Christian Europe and East Asia, followed by the Enlightenment historians and the professional university scholarship of the nineteenth century. Later movements added social, cultural and memory studies, and debate continues over how far historians are shaped by their own groups and loyalties.