ABSTRACT
American historian Georg Iggers takes the view that the evolution of history from the beginning of the twentieth century until its end comprises two broad trends: 1 first, an emphasis on orthodox history, based largely on a narrative of events, institutions, and “historic” figures and, second, social history under the influence of social sciences, which typified history in the latter half of the twentieth century. 2
Considerable debate has taken place on the status of social history from one period to another. 3 Instrumental for the advent of social history was the school of French historians associated with the journal Annales and their adherents in Europe, the U.S., and beyond. For the French approach to history, which was highly influential in historical research in the twentieth century, the connections with the social sciences were essential. 4 Scholars affiliated with the latter school took the view that there was some reality, or truth, lying beyond the events that were the subject of traditional history and that it was important to establish that reality or truth. The social system itself, a reflection of a certain fixed structure of society, was seen as providing the key to an understanding of the progress of history. Facts continued to play a major role in the mind of the historian but in a different manner from before. Now historians started to pay attention to facts that recurred in a systematic way. At the same time they increasingly learned from social scientists, who had the methodological tools to grapple with the recurrent and the tangible. In a sense, the material world in all its diversity was the subject of these disciplines, but in due course subjective issues attracted the attention of social historians. Death, emotional life, love, and stench, to name but a few, became popular subjects of social historians’ research. A common factor shared by subjects of this nature was that they were studied
on principles of quantitative methods: social historians generally turned their focus on groups, and other larger units, often across national borders.
