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Political history is the narrative and analysis of political events, ideas, movements, and leaders. Politics: The historical development of economic, legal, and political ideas and institutions, ideologies and movements. In ''The Dictionary of the History of Ideas''. It is usually structured around the Nation State . It is distinct from, but related to, other fields of history such as Social History , Economic History , and Military History . Generally, political history focuses on events relating to , which is historical work from the perspective of common people. DESCRIPTION Diplomatic history, sometimes referred to as "''Rankian History''"Burke, P. (1992). New perspectives on historical writing. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press. Page 3. in honor of Leopold Von Ranke , focuses on Politics , politicians and other high rulers and views them as being the driving force of continuity and change in History . This type of ''political history'' is the study of the conduct of International Relations between states or across state boundaries over time. This is the most common form of history and is often the classical and popular belief of what history should be. Diplomatic history is the past aggregate of the art and practice of conducting negotiations between accredited persons representing groups or nations. It is the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future regarding diplomacy, the conduct of state relations through the intercession of individuals with regard to issues of peace-making, culture, economics, trade and war. Diplomatic history records or narrates events relating to or characteristic of diplomacy. ASPECTS OF POLITICAL HISTORY The first "scientific" political history was written by sought to identify himself as a "historian", by the 1950s "American historian" was the designation."Richard J. Jensen, Historiography of American Political History . In Jack Greene, ed., ''Encyclopedia of American Political History'' (New York: Scribner's, 1984), vol 1. pp 1-25 From the 1970s onwards, new movements sought to challenge traditional approaches to political history. The development of Social History and Women's History shifted the emphasis away from the study of leaders and national decisions, and towards the role of ordinary citizens; "...by the 1970s "the new social history" began replacing the older style. Emphasis shifted to a broader spectrum of American life, including such topics as the history of urban life, public health, ethnicity, the media, and poverty." Brunner, Borgna, "The History of Women's History" As such, political history is sometimes seen as the more 'traditional' kind of history, in contrast with the more 'modern' approaches of other fields of history. Early developments Although much of existing written history might be classified as diplomatic history - Thucydides , certainly, is among other things, highly concerned with the relations among states - the modern form of diplomatic history was codified in the 19th century by Leopold Von Ranke , a German historian. Ranke wrote largely on the history of Early Modern Europe , using the diplomatic archives of the European powers (particularly the Venetians ) to construct a detailed understanding of the history of Europe ''wie es eigentlich gewesen'' ("as it actually happened.") Ranke saw diplomatic history as the most important kind of history to write because of his idea of the "Primacy of Foreign Affairs" (''Primat der Aussenpolitik''), arguing that the concerns of international relations drive the internal development of the state. Ranke's understanding of diplomatic history relied on the large number of official documents produced by modern western governments as sources. Ranke's understanding of the dominance of foreign policy, and hence an emphasis on diplomatic history, remained the dominant paradigm in historical writing through the first half of the twentieth century. This emphasis, combined with the effects of the War Guilt Clause in the Treaty Of Versailles ( 1919 ) which ended the First World War , led to a huge amount of historical writing on the subject of the origins of the war in 1914 , with the involved governments printing huge, carefully edited, collections of documents and numerous historians writing multi-volume histories of the origins of the war. In general, the early works in this vein, including Fritz Fischer 's controversial (at the time) 1961 thesis that German goals of "world power" were the principal cause of the war, fit fairly comfortably into Ranke's emphasis on ''Aussenpolitik''. Modern developments In the course of the 1960 s, however, some German historians (notably Hans-Ulrich Wehler and his cohort) began to rebel against this idea, instead suggesting a "Primacy of Domestic Politics" (''Primat der Innenpolitik''), in which the insecurities of (in this case German) domestic policy drove the creation of foreign policy. This led to a considerable body of work interpreting the domestic policies of various states and the ways this influenced their conduct of foreign policy. At the same time, the middle of the twentieth century began to see a general de-emphasis on diplomatic history. The French '' Annales '' school had already put an emphasis on the role of geography and economics on history, and of the importance of broad, slow cycles rather than the constant apparent movement of the "history of events" of high politics. The most important work of the ''Annales'' school, Fernand Braudel 's ''The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II'', contains a traditional Rankean diplomatic history of Philip II's Mediterranean policy, but only as the third and shortest section of a work largely focusing on the broad cycles of history in the ''longue durée'' ("long term"). The ''Annales'' were broadly influential, leading to a turning away from diplomatic and other forms of political history towards an emphasis on broader trends of economic and environmental change. In the 1960s and 1970s, an increasing emphasis on giving a voice to the voiceless and writing the history of the underclasses, whether by using the quantitative statistical methods of Social History or the more qualitative assessments of Cultural History , also undermined the centrality of diplomatic history to the historical discipline. Nevertheless, diplomatic history has always remained a historical field with a great interest to the general public, and considerable amounts of work are still done in the field, often in much the same way that Ranke pioneered in the middle years of the 19th century. MAJOR WORKS OF POLITICAL HISTORY cf. Fraktur (typeface) . SEE ALSO ;General: Historiography , People's History , International History , International Relations , United States Diplomatic History , Timeline Of United States Diplomatic History ;People: Heinrich Von Bünau , John William, Baron Ripperda , Wigbolt Ripperda , Friedrich Heinrich Geffcken , Louis-Philippe Of France , Hannis Taylor , Louis Napoleon , Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford De Redcliffe ;Things: Imperial Court , Monroe Doctrine , War Hawk , Diplomatic Representative , Dollar Diplomacy , Diplomatic Agent , Son Altesse Royale , " Precedence Among ", Uti Possidetis , Diplomatic Privilege s, Envoy Extraordinary , Diplomatic Body , Earl Of Holderness FURTHER READING Books listed by date
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