Historiography studies how history is written and passed down, considering the credibility and motives of sources. It distinguishes between oral and written history, placing them in context and identifying cultural or ideological influences. Historians compare accounts to understand events and perspectives. Historiography does not view history as objective, but as a means to understand the producer’s way of life.
Historiography is the study of how history itself is written or passed down through the ages. It takes into consideration the various means by which a historical source is formed, such as the credibility of the sources used, the author’s motives composing the story, and its authenticity. Historiography can be considered a form of metahistory.
The word history comes from the ancient Greek “historia”, which means “investigation, knowledge acquired by investigation”. The existence of historical sources provides valuable information about the past. Historiographers tend to differentiate these sources in terms of written and oral histories. Oral history is more dynamic because it spreads by word of mouth, while written history is fixed and emphasizes the recording of facts.
Historiography tries to place these different sources in a specific context. This means that the historian does not just accept the content of a source verbatim, but traces the source by looking for various motifs in its formation. A historical source can be understood as conceived within a certain perspective and with a precise objective linked to its own production. Historical events can be seen as influenced by the particularities of their recording and presentation. The historiographer acts as a detective of history, trying to unravel the logic of the production of history.
One of the questions that the historian must ask himself is how some facts remain included or excluded from a story. Inclusions or exclusions can be found by comparing different accounts of a single event. By contrasting these sources, one can understand not only the event from a less distorted perspective, but identify the precise perspective of the source’s composer.
According to this perspectivism, historiography outlines the influence of cultural or ideological tropes within a given source. Historiographers can therefore classify history in terms of categories such as a Christian historiography or an ancient Greek historiography. This allows the historian to look for trends in historical writing within a certain framework that illuminates a particular way of writing history. For example, Christian history tends to suggest that there is a grand plan to historical events in its emphasis on the existence of God, while Marxist history suggests an appropriation of history as a history of class struggle. Historiography therefore does not conceive of history as the objective recording of events, but as a means which clarifies the way of life of the producer of the historical source.
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