Historical Documents and History

History is a discipline which keeps changing due to reinterpretation over the time. This reinterpretation occurs either due to new theoretical understanding, change in social circumstances or due to the availability of new sources. This makes history a very dynamic discipline. The nature and scope of history writing has been changing rapidly. This change can be seen from positivist history to Marxist history, annals and its agenda for total history, post-modernism and again, there is a return of political history and history of events. That history writing in India has moved considerably over the last fifty years is obvious. From the earlier preoccupation with the history of personalities or the narrative of dynastic changes, history writing has moved on to the analysis of institutions and structures. Economic history has revealed the existence of high levels of agricultural and commercial growth while social history has shown that conflicts between intersecting social classes which were rooted in the distribution and redistribution of this growth. Therefore, instead of viewing history from the top, there is now an increasing awareness of its multi polarities and greater recognition of human agency. Over the last three decades, explorations in some new areas of historical investigations, broadly called history of mentalities or the intersection between cultural practices and economic processes, have widened the scope of historical research. Environmental histories have begun to reveal close links between ecology and ethnicity.

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