WHAT ARE HISTORIOGRAPHIC CURRENTS? - LITERATURE - 2025

The historiographical trends are guidelines for the study of history as a science, develop from the nineteenth century. Although in the 5th century BC Herodotus referred to history as a human act of narrating events from the past, it was only until the late 18th century that the philosophers of the time accepted that history could be studied like any other science, through a method.

Historical science was born in Germany, spread to France and from there to the rest of Europe. Until now, historians did not have a clear role in society and were limited to keeping archives or political and ecclesiastical documents.

Considering history as a science made those who dedicated themselves to writing it not only settle for the facts as they occurred, but they had to study the causes, circumstances and the influence of individuals or groups in said events.

With the new look of history as a science, historians became a professional class and various theories and methods were established that today are known as historiographic currents.

Among the most recognized currents are positivism, historicism, historical materialism, structuralism, the French school of the Annales, and a little less popular, quantivism.

Main historiographic trends

Positivism

Auguste Comte, representative of the positivist school.

This historiographic trend began in France in the 19th century, although it was in Germany where it had its main representatives. He affirmed that to approach the story it was necessary to search for the real, precise and true data, and for this he insisted on finding first-hand sources.

The reading of history for positivism had to be done in a linear way, one event occurred after another in continuous progress. History as a science was linked to human evolution, and any event that marked a reversal simply did not exist.

Another relevant aspect in this historiographic trend is that the research consisted of accumulating data; for the historian it was impossible to interpret the information collected because this presupposed a scientific error.

The accumulation of data then made it possible to arrive at universally valid and verifiable historical laws.

The way to learn history from this current was through a unidirectional relationship of the facts; simply one fact produced a new one.

Historical materialism

Karl Marx, thinker born in a province of Prussia (present-day Germany)

Historical materialism is a current that comes with Karl Marx, because he considers that history is not constituted only by facts, nor by categories, nor by the protagonists of these facts.

For Marx, history is nothing other than the result of power relations between those who possess it and the subordinate classes; at the same time these relationships are mediated by the modes of production.

History therefore depends on who sustains the modes of production and how power relations are established, and only with this approach can it be investigated and written.

Historical materialism relates the human being with his environment, understands the way in which individuals satisfy their basic needs and in general studies everything that living in society implies.

Historical materialism accepted economics and sociology for its object of study.

Structuralism

This historiographic current is very close to historical materialism, but it is interested in events that last in time.

From structuralism, a historical fact must be studied as a whole, as a system that has a structure; time is responsible for slowly changing this structure but it does so through conjunctural events that occur in a short time affecting the system.

He is not interested in the singular facts that characterize the traditional narrative, nor in the exceptional facts; instead he prefers everyday events that are repeated over and over again.

Historicism

Leopold von Ranke, representative of historicism

Historicism considers all reality as the product of a historical evolution, which is why the past is fundamental. For the study of history, he prefers official written documents and is not interested in the researcher's interpretation.

In this historiographical current, history is the starting point of man's development and therefore any fact, whether technical, artistic or political, is a historical fact through which human nature can be understood.

Knowledge therefore results from the characteristics of each individual and from social conditions. Thus, historicism does not take into account universal truths simply because each man has his own reality.

School of the Annales

Marc Bloch, one of the founders of the precursor magazine of the School of the Annales

The School of the Annales was born in France and rescued man as the protagonist of the story. In this way the use of sciences such as anthropology, economics, geography and sociology became necessary for the understanding of historical facts.

Under this new perspective, the concept of historical document was expanded, adding to the writings, oral testimonies, images and archaeological remains.

Quantitative

This current was born in the decade of the 80s of the 20th century and marked two trends in the study of history:

1-Cliometry, which uses quantitative models to explain the past.

2-The structural-quantitative history, which uses statistics to understand the behavior of historical events in specific periods.

With the arrival of the XXI century the previous currents have blurred and there is a tendency to return to the narrative, breaking the rigid and formal schemes and in coherence with the form that the sciences have taken under postmodernism.

References

1. Hughes, P. (2010). Paradigms, methods and knowledge. Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice, 2, 35-61.
2. Iggers, GG (2005). Historiography in the twentieth century: From scientific objectivity to the postmodern challenge. Wesleyan University Press.
3. Gill, S. (Ed.). (1993). Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations (Vol. 26). Cambridge University Press.
4. Anderson, P. (2016). In the tracks of historical materialism. Verso Books.
5. Bukharin, N. (2013). Historical materialism: A system of sociology. Routledge. pp 23-46.