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History vocabulary · Historiography and Historical Thinking

Historiography

Meaning in history, with examples

/hɪˌstɔːriˈɒɡrəfi/nounCommon term

In history, historiography means: The writing of history, and especially the study of how historians have written about a subject over time, which sources they used and how their views changed.

In Turkish: tarih yazımı, tarihçilik, historiyografi

How it is used

A key word in university history. Students write a historiography essay or chapter that reviews the debate on a topic, and people speak of Marxist, nationalist or feminist historiography, or of the historiography of the French Revolution.

Example sentences

  1. Your first chapter should review the historiography of the Tanzimat reforms.

  2. Ottoman historiography changed a great deal as the archives became easier to use.

Common collocations

  • Ottoman historiography
  • Marxist historiography
  • review the historiography
  • a historiographical debate
  • national historiography
  • historyThe study of past events, especially those of human societies, and the written account that historians produce from the evidence they find.
  • historianA person who studies and writes about the past, usually by examining sources, comparing evidence and offering an interpretation of events.
  • interpretationA particular explanation of what past events meant or why they happened, based on the evidence and on the historian's questions and point of view.
  • revisionismThe re-examination of accepted views of the past in the light of new evidence or questions; the word can also mean distorting well-established facts for political ends.
  • secondary sourceA work that discusses or interprets the past using other evidence and was written after the events, such as a history book, journal article or biography.

More terms: Historiography and Historical Thinking

Practise with graded reading

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