different between prehistory vs historiography

English

Alternative forms

• pre-history

Etymology

From pre- (“before”) +? history, first attested in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836, after the model of prehistoric, from French préhistorique.

Noun

prehistory (countable and uncountable, plural prehistories)

1. (properly) History before written records, inclusive of both
   1. The time before written records in any area of the world; the events and conditions of those times.
   2. The study of those times.
2. (humorous, hyperbolic) Any past time (even recent) treated as such a distant, unknowable era.
   • 1984, Shiva Naipaul, Beyond the Dragon's Mouth, p. 25:

     I was a town boy through and through. The country belonged to a vague pre-history.

3. (often as pre-history) The history leading up to some event, condition, etc.
   • 1931 July 25, Time & Tide, p. 893:

     Psychologists... are mostly bad historians, inventing—as Freud has done—their pre-history to suit their theories.

Synonyms

• (time before written records): prehistoric age, prehistoric times

Antonyms

• posthistory

Related terms

• prehistoric

Translations

References

• “prehistory, n.”, in OED Online ?, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2007

English

Etymology

From historio- +? -graphy.

Pronunciation

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /h??st??i?????fi/
• Rhymes: -????fi

Noun

historiography (countable and uncountable, plural historiographies)

1. (countable and uncountable) The writing of history; a written history.
   • 1991, Els Elffers-van Ketel, The Historiography of Grammatical Concepts, Rodopi, page 51,

     As was mentioned on p.31, value-judgments are generally considered the most conspicuous source of subjectivity in historiography.

   • 2006, Israel Gershoni, Amy Singer, Y. Hakan Erdem (editors), Introduction, Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century, University of Washington Press, page 7,

     We limited the discussion to historiographies examining the development of the modern Middle East from World War I onward.

   • 2015, Alexander Vezenkov, Tchavdar Marinov, The Concept of National Revival in Balkan Historiographies, Roumen Daskalov, Alexander Vezenkov (editors), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Volume 3: Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies, Koninklijke Brill, page 406,

     This article examines the usages of the notion of “revival” in the context of nineteenth-century Balkan history and, more precisely, in different national historiographies in the region.

2. (uncountable) The study of the discipline and practice of history and the writings of past historians.
   • 1999, B. W. Higman, 1: The Development of Historical Disciplines in the Caribbean, B. W. Higman (editor), General History of the Caribbean, Volume 4: Methodology and Historiography of the Caribbean, UNESCO Publishing, page 5,

     In its broadest sense, historiography has to do with the process of historical writing, the identification and use of source material, and the techniques and methods applied to the analysis of these data.

   • 2006, Keith Nield, 22: A Symptomatic Dispute?: Notes on the relations between Marxian theory and historical practice in Britain, Robert M. Burns (editor), Historiography: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, Volume 2: Society, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 91,

     Consistently the most underestimated and neglected debate in recent British historiography is that between Perry Anderson and Edward Thompson conducted in the mid-1960s in the pages of the New Left Review and the Socialist Register.

   • 2009, Nicole Weickgenannt Thiara, Salman Rushdie and Indian Historiography: Writing the Nation into Being, Palgrave Macmillan, page 6,

     Thus in this brief and schematic survey of modern Indian historiography an emphasis is placed on the role of the concept of the Indian nation in the writing of Indian history; this will provide contextual knowledge for the following chapters.

Related terms

• historiographic
• historiographical
• historiographically
• historiographer

Translations

See also

• historiograph