The scope of history

Abstract

most people see history in terms of separate periods (whether, for example, classical, medieval or modern), with each typified by a different way of life. At the same time, the study of history is often characterised as solely concerned with recovering facts about the past. Seen in this way, history is like a book, with each chapter charting a different phase or epoch of human development: the rise and fall of Greece and Rome; the emergence of the Catholic Church; the heraldry and Crusades of the Middle Ages; the Renaissance and Reformation; or the technology and social change of the Industrial Revolution. In similar fashion, popular perceptions of the process of historical change are founded on the idea of progress, a belief that each new era brings to human society a more sophisticated sense of being.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backwards to their ancestors.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)