History is the study of past events, including the way families, groups, nations and whole worlds have come into being. It is a subject that appeals to people who have an interest in the human experience and a desire to learn about their own place in it. The subject also offers a range of skills, from research and analytical thinking to interpreting and communication that can be applied in other areas of life.
Historical knowledge is based on evidence – written records of events and interactions that took place in the past. Historians use a wide variety of sources to uncover the facts about what happened in the past and to try to understand why things did what they did. This evidence can include public statements, private documents, visual materials and numerical data. Historians work to identify and evaluate the quality of this evidence in order to develop as accurate a picture of the past as possible.
The nature of the evidence of history, however, raises a number of questions. It is difficult to believe that any piece of history is totally objective, since it is always shaped by the biases and beliefs of historians and by the dominant ideas of the time. Historians seek to find a balance between their own views and the reality of what they can discover from the available evidence.
Historians also explore how to present a story about the past that is meaningful and useful to contemporary readers. This can include writing articles or books that report the results of their own personal research, as well as putting together textbooks that draw on their own research and the work of others. Developing the ability to analyse and present information in a clear, concise and interesting manner is an important skill for anyone.
There is a history of just about everything and every subject, from the mundane (like lists of who owned what) to the profoundly significant (such as the development of democracy in the Western world). Historians are interested in how and why things happened, which often requires substantial conceptual work and the use of different theories.
Some historians, such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, believe that there is a law of historical development that can be revealed through careful analysis. They think that political events may seem to happen pretty higgledy-piggledy, but there are certain regularities beneath the chaos – cycles, rhythms, the longue duree. Other historians, like Clifford Geertz, are more agnostic about this question and open to the possibility of discovering surprising twists and variations in the histories of India, China, Indonesia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Whatever approach is taken, it is important for historians to free themselves from Eurocentrism.