| Historiography refers to both the study of the methodology of historians and development of history as a discipline, and also to a body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography topically – such as the "historiography of the British Empire," the "historiography of early Islam", or the "historiography of China" – as well as different approaches and genres, such as political history or social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the ascent of academic history, a body of historiographic literature developed. Postmodernism taught that texts allow many interpretations and that there is nothing other than the text. Its attacks on “essentialism” made it much harder to use “history” in such a way as to attribute will or agency to it, or even a capacity to teach. |