Concept of history

Concept of history

History is the collection of actual past events. The total past events of organized human society form history. Study, approach, and philosophy of history form historiography. It is the duty of a historian to present an impartial account of events and not a biased one.

Old-fashioned historiography was concerned mainly with political, economic, military, and constitutional factors. But in the 20th century, history widened its scope to encompass many social classes and events, and diversity in historiography began. The pluralistic areas of historical research encompass new social history, sports history, the history of food, the history of artistic production (music, dance, drama, cinema), the history of fashion, the history of transportation and communication, visual arts history (painting, photography), architectural history, local history, city history, military history, environmental history, the history of science, technology, and medicine, and women's history. All of these branches have their own genesis, development, and features, but they are linked. Such interconnection gives rise to so-called total history. The historians of the 'Annales' school, initiated by Lucien Febre and Marc Bloch, contributed considerably to the highlighting of total history.

Along with diversification in historiography, we should also examine the practice of making use of historical sources in contemporary Indian historiography. Whereas traditional sources of history were archaeological and literary, modern sources also comprise oral tradition, memoirs, photography, and the internet. In this research, we understand how governmental documents (police, intelligence, and official reports, descriptions, and correspondence), autobiographies and memoirs (e.g., Bipin Chandra Pal's Sattar Batsar, Rabindranath Tagore's Jibansmriti, and Saraladevi Chaudhurani's Jibaner Jharapata), letters, periodicals (e.g., Bangadarshan), and newspapers (e.g., Somprakash) are used in historical research.