Historiography

Introduction
History of historiography
- Ancient historiography
  - The first histories
    - Egypt and Mesopotamia
    - China
  - Hebrew traditions
  - Greek historiography
    - Herodotus
    - Thucydides
  - Roman historiography
    - Polybius
    - Diodorus, Sallust, and Livy
    - Tacitus
    - Suetonius and Plutarch
- Medieval historiography
  - The early Christian conception of history
  - Augustine
  - Early Germanic and English histories
  - Chronicles and hagiographies
  - New forms
- Islamic historiography
  - Al-Ṭabarī and Rashīd al-Dīn
  - Ibn Khaldūn
- History in the Renaissance
  - Petrarch
  - Lorenzo Valla
  - Flavio Biondo and Leonardo Bruni
  - Niccolò Machiavelli
  - Francesco Guicciardini
  - Giorgio Vasari
- Early modern historiography
  - Church history
    - Centuriae Magdeburgenses and Annales Ecclesiastici
    - Paolo Sarpi
  - Legal history
    - Guillaume Budé and François Hotman
    - François Baudouin and Jean Bodin
    - Étienne Pasquier
    - The Bollandist Fathers and Jean Mabillon
- Enlightenment historiography
  - Science and skepticism
  - Montesquieu and Voltaire
  - Edward Gibbon
- Romantic historiography
  - Johann Gottfried von Herder
  - Giambattista Vico
  - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  - Jules Michelet
  - Historiography in England
  - Historiography in the United States
- History becomes academic
  - Johann Christoph Gatterer and the Göttingen scholars
  - Leopold von Ranke
- New histories
  - Germany
  - France
  - The United States
  - Marxist historiography
- Contemporary historiography
Branches of history
- History of the arts
- Biography and psychohistory
- Diplomatic history
- Economic history
- Intellectual history
- Military history
- Political history
- History of science
- Social and cultural history
- Women’s history
- World history
Methodology of historiography
- The historian’s sources
- From explanation to interpretation
- The presentation of history

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

Histoire de la Nouvelle France

Oracle bone inscriptions

15th-century German Bible illustration showing Moses leading a group of Israelites between parted green waves of the Red Sea, with Hebrew text above.

St. Mark depiction in illuminated manuscript

Engraving of Petrarch wearing a laurel wreath and a robe, holding a closed book in his left hand.

Portrait of Niccolo Machiavelli by Santi di Tito shows Machiavelli in black and red robes, holding a document, against a plain background.

Mosaic portrait of Emperor Justinian I with a jeweled crown and halo, from the 6th-century Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy.

At a Glance

Herodotus, detail of a Roman herm probably copied from a Greek original of the first half of the 4th century bce; in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples.

historiography summary

Related Questions

Histoire de la Nouvelle France — Histoire de la Nouvelle France Title page of Histoire de la Nouvelle France (1609; History of New France) by Marc Lescarbot.

Historiography

history

Written by

Richard T. Vann

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Nov. 1, 2026 •History

Historiography, the writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical examination. The term historiography also refers to the theory and history of historical writing. Modern historians aim to reconstruct a record of human activities and to achieve a more profound understanding...

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