The 15 branches of History: what they are and what they study

History is the discipline that studies the events that have happened throughout the past. Although it studies the past in its entirety, whether or not there are human beings, history traditionally focuses on some of the contexts, situations or experiences that are properly human.

There are many branches of history, and below we will see some of the best knownsuch as the history of art, the history of religion or universal history.

• Related article: "The 10 branches of Social Sciences"

What is History?

History is a social science that deals with the study of the past, traditionally that of humanity.. As a discipline, history deals with any period in the past, with or without human beings present, but there is a consensus that its symbolic beginning occurred with the appearance of writing and, therefore, there began to be a more or less reliable written record of the events. What comes before the appearance of writing is called "prehistory" but is also considered part of history.

The people who are experts in history are the historians and among the most important of all times we have Herodotus and Thucydides, being the first called the father of history for his way of studying and explaining events historical. The methods of both historians have shaped and shaped history as the discipline we know today.

There are many branches of history and, in fact, we could say that there is one for practically any of the areas that can come to mind. To mention a few, we can talk about military, social, cultural, diplomatic, religious, intellectual, gender history, history public… Likewise, it is very important not to confuse the branches of history with its aspects, which are mainly the following two:

1. Historiography

Historiography is the set of techniques and methods of review, analysis and production of knowledge about history.

2. historiology

Historiology, also known as "Theory of History", encompasses the set of explanations and methods to deduce and understand why and how certain historical events occur.

The main branches of History: a summary of its objectives and its themes

As we have commented, there are many branches of history, having one for practically any type of human area. The main and most commonly studied are the following:

1. military history

Military history places special emphasis on war strategies, battles, weapons, the psychology of combat and any phenomenon related to the course of a war that has been of great importance historical.

Relatively recently, in the 1970s, there was a paradigm shift in military history. It is from then on that attention begins to be paid more to soldiers instead of generals and more to military psychology than to tactics. In addition, they began to study how war impacts society and its culture.

2. History of cartography

Cartography is more a branch of geography although it is directly related to history. The history of cartography is interested in the methods of spatial representation of the planet, that is, how the world has been represented on maps, atlases and planispheres along the history.

3. history of religion

The history of religion studies the forms of religious and mystical manifestation that have occurred throughout type of culture throughout its history, relating them and studying their influences and characteristics. ANDstudies how creeds have developed and evolved along with their political, cultural and artistic dimensions, either focusing on his theology or analyzing the liturgy.

4. social history

Social history focuses on ordinary people, their experiences and strategies, and how their actions have fostered changes in political institutions. Social history is considered a bridge branch between several others such as political, intellectual, economic history and many more.

This branch of history it had a golden age during the 1960s and 1970s and, today, it has a great presence in every history and sociology faculty. Before its heyday, social history was a mix of diverse subjects, often including political movements such as populism.

• You may be interested in: "The 5 ages of History (and their characteristics)"

5. Intellectual history and ideas

Intellectual history is based on the work of great intellectuals or famous people whose ideas have shaped the world in one way or another. So this branch of history It not only focuses on the figure of important characters but also on their ideological and intellectual paradigms or on "anonymous" ideas in general., regardless of whether they have been good or bad for humanity: Marxism, atheism, nationalism, fascism, republicanism, humanism...

6. history of the genre

Gender history is a branch that looks back from a gender perspective and, in many ways, could be called women's history. It focuses attention on how people have held privileges or have been repressed based on their gender, normally the female gender being the worst off.

7. History of art

Closely related to cultural history, art history focuses attention on artistic forms of expression. This discipline does not focus on a single type of artistic current or the creative representations of a certain ethnic group, but rather deals with the extensive study of any artistic representation from any part of the world and how it has evolved over time time.

8. historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the field of knowledge that is responsible for studying the change of languages ​​over time and the process of linguistic change. This discipline is of great importance in the study of the diachronic evolution of languages ​​and also serves to classify languages ​​based on their common origin.. He also studies the contact between peoples, the routes of expansion and the cultural influences between linguistic communities.

9. diplomatic history

diplomatic history studies the relations between sovereign states. It takes special emphasis on the diplomacy of two or more nations, their international relations, their strategic alliances, their history of common wars or diplomatic conflicts. It also studies the phenomena that lead to peace and respect for human rights.

10. Economic history

Economic history deals with the study the history of individual business organizations, business methods, laws regulating government market, labor relations, large economic systems and the impact of each type of economy in society. Also included in this branch of history is the study of the biography of individual companies, executives, and entrepreneurs.

11. environmental history

Environmental history studies and analyzes human interaction with the environment over time. This branch highlights the active role that nature has had in human history and how the interaction of both has meant changes in both, since the human being is conditioned by the environment and, in turn, the environment is modified by the action human.

environmental history arose in the United States out of the environmental movement during the 1960s and 1970s. To this day, it is still very much in force, being the driving force behind all kinds of movements against climate change and the destruction of forests and large environments to protect.

12. world or universal history

World history, also called global history, universal history or transnational history, deals with study history taking a global perspective and try to find common patterns that occur in all cultures. World history and the works that speak of it present the history of humanity as a whole, as a more or less coherent unit with the occasional difference at the local level..

Any book or work that tries to talk about world history will do so taking as its beginning the appearance of writing until the most recent times. It covers the most important events of each historical period and of all countries, or at least those that have had an enormous impact on making the world the way it is today. Taking a western perspective, universal history is usually divided into three parts: ancient, medieval and modern.

13. cultural history

cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and world history to examine aspects such as language, popular traditions and cultural interpretations of the historical experience of a people and uses records and narrative descriptions of events, customs, iconography and artistic styles.

This branch gained much prominence during the 1980s and 1990s, replacing social history as the dominant branch. It is related to other branches of history since it also touches on aspects such as religion, politics, and socioeconomic aspects of each ethnic group studied.

• You may be interested in: "What is Cultural Psychology?"

14. public history

Public history is an umbrella concept that includes a wide range of professional and public activities carried out by people who have some background in history but work outside of academic settings. They are all those professions and environments that bring history to the general public.

The practice of public history takes its roots in the areas of historical preservation, archival science, oral history, museum maintenance, and other related trades. Among the most common settings where we can find public history we have museums, historic houses, parks theme parks, battlefields, archives, libraries, film and television companies that make documentaries and all levels of the government.

15. Law history

The history of law deals with how throughout the history of humanity the law has been formulated, applied and exercised based on social and institutional perceptions of what was considered a crime or a moral offense. This branch of history investigates legal texts, changes in laws throughout the history of a country, to what extent religion has influenced penal codes (p. g., Sharia)...

Bibliographic references:

• Carr, Edward H. (1985). What is the story? Barcelona: Ariel. ISBN 84-344-1001-X
• Tunon de Lara, Manuel (1985). Why the story? Barcelona: Salvat Open Classroom. ISBN 84-345-7814-X.
• Máxima-Uriarte, J. (2019) What is history? Features.com Extracted from: https://www.caracteristicas.co/historia/