History (written account)
A narrative or record describing events that happened in the past. It selects and interprets evidence to explain what occurred and why.
Primary source: A source created by someone directly involved in, or close to, the events it documents. Letters, records, and objects can provide direct evidence for the events an account describes.
Historical narrative: An account that organizes past events into a connected sequence with a point of view. Narrative is the form through which many written histories make events intelligible.
Collective memory: Shared representations of the past held by a community and transmitted across generations. It shapes historical accounts, but is not the same as evidence-based historical inquiry.
National historiography: The traditions and debates through which a nation’s past is written and interpreted. National histories can link accounts of past events to political identity.
Historical method: The practices historians use to investigate the past through evidence, criticism, and interpretation. It explains how a narrative is built from sources rather than simply copied from them.
Historical causation: The analysis of factors and processes that contribute to historical events or change. Accounts explain the past by linking events to causes, conditions, and consequences.
Historical fiction: Fiction set in a past period, often combining invented characters or events with historical settings. It uses narrative to evoke the past while allowing invention that history must substantiate.
Public history: Historical work created for or with audiences beyond academic institutions. Museums, documentaries, and heritage projects carry written interpretations into public life.
Chronology: The arrangement of events in the order in which they occurred. An account’s sequence can shape how causes and consequences appear.
Periodization: The division of the past into periods using selected dates, events, or characteristics. Period boundaries organize accounts but can also impose interpretations on the past.