Essential History Terminology: Definitions and Concepts

Essential History Terminology

This document defines key terms used in the study of history.

Core Concepts

• Provenance: Origin of the source.
• Orthodox: Established/understood interpretation of events.
• Revisionist: Questions orthodox view and looks for a revised interpretation.
• Anachronistic: An approach that judges a culture or event using standards that didn't apply to them.
• Hindsight: Treats historical events as inevitable; a deterministic approach.
• Sacrosanct: A point of view considered proven and above debate and criticism.
• Iconoclastic: A revisionist approach which challenges orthodox, sacrosanct interpretations (e.g., A.J.P. Taylor's view on Hitler and WW2).
• Deterministic: Individuals have little influence on the outcome of events.
• Nihilistic: Random events determine history.
• Structuralist: (Deterministic) Institutional structures determine history.
• Agency (Human Agency): An individual or group has the ability to make rational choices and can impose those choices on the external environment.
• Ahistorical: Something that is not historically correct.
• Anachronism: An error in chronology (placing something in a period that it doesn't belong).

Historiographical Approaches

• Constructionalist: Someone who believes historians construct history and can construct a reasonable argument about the past.
• Counter-Factual Claim: A hypothetical claim that attempts to predict what might have happened if the circumstances were different.
• Cultural History: A type of history that combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and interpret cultural works (media).
• Deconstructionalist: Someone who does not believe that a historian can accurately figure out the past by examining written or spoken sources. They believe there are an infinite number of interpretations and doubt that language can adequately convey past reality.
• Determinism: Every event, thought, behavior, decision, action is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences (implies inevitability).
• Dialectic: Two conflicting forces or arguments come together in conflict.
• Document: Historical source.
• Empiricism: Theory that knowledge arises from experience (primary sources).
• Emplotment: Idea that history can be essentially divided based on plot (Hayden White: Metahistory).
• Historicity: Act of analyzing a work or cultural text in the historical context in which it was created.
• Idealism: Theory that ideas (opposed to material forces) make history.
• Interpretation: Explanation of the meaning of something.
• Materialism: Methodological approach to the study of economy, society, and history that explains historical developments as results of economic activity -> economic forces shape history.
• Meta-narrative: Big ideas that help us understand developments, experiences, knowledge e.g., humans are always progressing.
• Objectivity: Historians can interpret the past truly unbiased.