摘要：机器之心发布作者：Mr.AI近日，华为推出了HiSR超分辨率技术，该模型借助第一款人工智能手机芯片Kirin970和深度学习算法将低分辨率图片转化生成高清图片，并在移动端实现了快速预览高清图片的效果。
机器之心发布
作者：Mr. AI
近日，华为推出了 HiSR 超分辨率技术，该模型借助 和深度学习算法将低分辨率图片转化生成高清图片，并在移动端实现了快速预览高清图片的效果。本文简要介绍了华为 HiSR 模型的结构与效果。
超分辨率算法是一种将低分辨率图片重建为尺寸更大、像素更多、质量更高的计算机视觉技术。最常见的传统图像处理算法是双三次插值（Bicubic Interpolation），该方法能创造出比双线性插值更平滑的图像边缘，且速度也较快。但是 Bicubic 算法对于重建高清作品里生动的细节有些力不从心，图像的细节和纹理等信息难以恢复。
华为推出的新技术 HiSR（Hisilicon Super-Resolution）在同样的标准下，处理效果相比 Google 的 RAISR 超分算法有明显的提升，此外 HISR 通过 Kirin 970 芯片的 HiAI 移动人工智能平台加速，首次实现了移动端的深度网络超分辨率算法，不仅达到了实时处理的速度，还保证了图片的效果，能效比提升了 50%。以下是 HiSR 算法提升的效果对比图：
HiSR 算法提升效果对比图：左图为原图，右图为 HiSR 算法生成的图片
HiSR 超分辨率模型
首先，HiSR 构建了一个七层深度的卷积神经网络，该模型能够有效地提升图片的质量，解决了深度网络研究存在的很多问题，比如说图片超分辨率时出现的块效应和细节丢失、边缘纹理不清晰的问题。该网络能够在 Kirin 970 的 HiAI 移动人工智能平台实现实时运算速度，相对普通的 CPU 计算，速度提升了 25 倍，即使相对于能够并行处理的 GPU，速度也提升了 6 倍。HiSR 网络结构如下图所示：
HiSR 超分辨率深度网络结构
图像的卷积操作相当于对图像进行一系列的滤波操作，在一定程度上，卷积神经网络的工作就在于构建这些滤波器。通常，图像经过第一个卷积层之后会有效的提取图片的低阶特征，比如边缘、角点、曲线等。通过第二个卷积层的输出可以得到边缘、角点、曲线等低阶特征的组合等情况（例如四边形、半圆等），如此累积，深层的卷积网络可以检测越来越复杂的特征。事实上，我们人类大脑也遵循这样的低阶特征到高阶特征的模式进行视觉信息处理的。
本网络采用了七个卷积层，能够通过学习获取图像各个方面的信息，有效的提取图片的整体特征。模型采用先进的 1x1 的卷积核和计算量较小的 3x3 卷积核，且整个过程保持 feature map 的尺寸不变，保证图像的细节不丢失。
相对于大多数超分辨率的深度网络来说，例如 SRCNN 和 TSR 等超分算法，都是通过采用 Bicubic 算法先将图片直接放大到需要的尺寸，然后再进行卷积操作，也就是说这类算法的操作都是为了改善 Bicubic 算法的缺陷，计算量比较大，运行的时间较长，而且效果往往也会局限于 Bicubic 算法的限制，得不到很大的提升。
HiSR 超分辨率深度学习网络采用先进的反卷积的结构，反卷积（Deconvolution）的概念第一次出现是 Zeiler 在 2010 年发表的论文 Deconvolutional networks 中。随着反卷积在神经网络可视化上的成功应用，其被越来越多的工作所采纳比如：超分辨率、场景分割、生成模型等。
HiSR 采用了一层反卷积实现图片的放大和还原，而且反卷积同样通过学习实现参数的更新，可以保留丰富的细节和纹理，实现了超分辨率图片的还原。
在模型输入方面，原始图片从 RGB 转换成 YCbCr 格式，其中 Y 是指亮度分量，Cb 指蓝色色度分量，而 Cr 指红色色度分量。CbCr 与 Y 通道分离后，HiSR 只对 Y 通道数据进行超分处理的方法提高处理速度。
YCbCr 是色彩空间的一种，因为人的肉眼对 Y 分量更敏感，在通过对色度分量进行子采样来减少色度分量后，肉眼将察觉不到的图像质量的变化，因此常常用于影片中的影像连续处理，或是数字摄影系统中。Cb 和 Cr 为蓝色和红色的浓度偏移量成份，Y 是所谓的流明 (Luminance)，表示光的强度。
在模型的训练过程中，通过专业的图像处理算法，构造出数百万张网络模型的训练的图片，然后对图片进行降采样从而构成一对训练图片。通过专有的图像处理算法得到的 data 和 label 数据，可以保留图像中丰富的特征，使得 HiSR 网络通过学习能够提取出相应的纹理和细节；另外训练过程中不断优化相应的学习参数，并且还进行了分批多层次的训练，可以让整个网络学习的更加的充分，最后使得网络处理后的图片具有更好的视觉效果。
HiSR 网络实现
我们知道，终端上面大部分的网站或者社交网络上面的图片都会经过压缩进行传输，这样可以节约大量的带宽，但是由于压缩比率太大导致细节损失非常严重，因此我们针对这类图片采用 HiSR 超分辨率网络进行细节和纹理的复原。
HiSR 网络具有很强的适应性和扩展性。针对当前主流的网络压缩传输应用，比如微信，facebook, 今日头条等的压缩方式进行调研，我们针对压缩之后不同分辨率的图像，提供两种可选的网络用于图片的增强（1x 网络）和放大（3x 网络）：
HiSR 采用独立训练的 1x 网络对图片进行了处理，通过该网络的处理，图像的细节不断的增强，各种块效应也消失了，图片的鲜艳程度也提高了，给用户带来了强烈的视觉体验。网络结构如下：
HiSR 采用的 1x 网络将最后一个反卷积层改为卷积层，然后再采用同比例的图像作为训练集，进行有针对性的训练，该网络收敛效果好，保证了图片的细节和色彩的恢复。
当然，终端大部分的网络传输的图片分辨率相对来说都是比较小的，经过我们的调研和分析，大部分分辨率较小的图片放大到华为以及市面上大多数手机屏幕的分辨率，需要 3 倍的网络进行放大，因此我们没有采用大多数算法那样，主要工作集中在 2x 的图片放大。3x 网络的放大意味着更多细节和更多纹理的恢复，因此挑战性更大。
HiSR 采用独立训练的 3x 网络对图片进行了处理，该网络只需要在 1x 的网络上进行很小的改动，加入了反卷积层，还原高分辨率图像的特征，图像的细节通过卷积层的不断学习和增强，可以有效的提升高分辨率图像的质量。HiSR 的 3x 网络结构如下：
HiSR 的 3x 网络采用反卷积层，训练时在原来的网络上进行优化，采用三倍的图片进行训练，可以稳定的提升图像的质量和效果。
下面展示了 HiSR 对图片处理的效果。
1x 网络效果
左边是原图，右边是 HiSR 超分辨率算法处理后的图片
3x 网络效果
左边是 Bicubic 处理后的图片，右边是 HiSR 超分辨率算法处理后的图片
对比 Google RAISR 算法
注：左边是 Google RAISR 处理后的图片，右边是 HiSR 超分辨率算法处理后的图片
[1]Romano Y, Isidoro J, Milanfar P. RAISR: Rapid and Accurate Image Super Resolution[J]. IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, ):110-125.
[2]D. Chao, C. C. Loy, H. Kaiming, and T. Xiaoou,「Image super-resolution using deep convolutional networks,」IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 295–307, Feb , 20, 22
[3]C. Dong, C. C. Loy, K. He, and X. Tang,「Learning a deep convolutional network for image super-resolution,」in ECCV, 2014, pp. 184–199. 2, 7, 20, 22
[4]Dong C, Chen C L, Tang X. Accelerating the Super-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network[J]. .
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painting by
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
History (from
?στορ?α, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered . It is an
that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called .
History can also refer to the
which uses a
to examine and analyse a sequence of past events, and objectively determine the patterns of cause and effect that determine them. Historians sometimes debate the
and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present.
Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding ), are usually classified as
or , because they do not show the "disinterested investigation" required of the discipline of history. , a 5th-century BC
is considered within the Western tradition to be the "father of history", and, along with his contemporary , helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a state , the
was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived.
Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a
in university studies.
History by
The word history comes ultimately from
(historía), meaning "inquiry", "knowledge from inquiry", or "judge". It was in that sense that
used the word in his
(Perì Tà Z?a Ηistoríai "Inquiries about Animals"). The ancestor word ?στωρ is attested early on in , , the
' oath, and in
inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness", or similar).
The Greek word was borrowed into Classical Latin as historia, meaning "investigation, inquiry, research, account, description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative". History was borrowed from Latin (possibly via
as staer ('history, narrative, story'), but this word fell out of use in the late Old English period.
Meanwhile, as Latin became
(and ), historia developed into forms such as istorie, estoire, and historie, with new developments in the meaning: "account of the events of a person's life (beginning of the 12th century), chronicle, account of events as relevant to a group of people or people in general (1155), dramatic or pictorial representation of historical events (c. 1240), body of knowledge relative to human evolution, science (c. 1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (c. 1462)".
It was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into , and this time the loan stuck. It appears in the thirteenth-century , but seems to have become a common word in the late fourteenth century, with an early attestation appearing in 's
of the 1390s (VI.1383): "I finde in a bok compiled | To this matiere an old histoire, | The which comth nou to mi memoire". In , the meaning of history was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "the branch of knowledge that de the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs" arose in the mid-fifteenth century.
With the , older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that
used the term in the late sixteenth century, when he wrote about "". For him, historia was "the knowledge of objects determined by space and time", that sort of knowledge provided by
was provided by , and
was provided by ).
In an expression of the linguistic , English like Chinese (史 vs. 诌) now designates separate words for human history and
in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are solidly synthetic and highly inflected, the same word is still used to mean both "history" and "story".
The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669.
Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" is attested from 1531. In all , the substantive "history" is still used to mean both "what happened with men", and "the scholarly study of the happened", the latter sense sometimes distinguished with a capital letter, "History", or the word .
The title page to
Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for their own society. In the words of , "All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the formation of a "true discourse of past" through the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse.
All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record. The task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the "true past").
The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the
and at other times as part of the . It can also be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some individual historians strongly support one or the other classification. In the 20th century, French
revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines as , , and
in the study of global history.
Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an , and have attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have also used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved, and historians often consult all three. But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.
is a discipline that is especially helpful in dealing with buried sites and objects, which, once unearthed, contribute to the study of history. But archaeology rarely stands alone. It uses narrative sources to complement its discoveries. However, archaeology is constituted by a range of methodologies and approaches which are inde that is to say, archaeology does not "fill the gaps" within textual sources. Indeed, "historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archaeology, often contrasting its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources. For example, Mark Leone, the excavator and interpreter of historical , USA; has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents and the material record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth apparent via the study of the total historical environment, despite the ideology of "liberty" inherent in written documents at this time.
There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized, including chronologically, , territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, and significant overlaps are often present, as in "The International Women's Movement in an Age of Transition, ." It is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the very general, although the modern trend has been toward specialization. The area called
resists this specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been studied with some practical or
aim, but also may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity.
is the memory of the past
around the world, as that experience has been preserved, largely in written records. By "prehistory", historians mean the recovery of knowledge of the past in an area where no written records exist, or where the writing of a culture is not understood. By studying painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts, some information can be recovered even in the absence of a written record. Since the 20th century, the study of prehistory is considered essential to avoid history's implicit exclusion of certain civilizations, such as those of
America. Historians in the West have been criticized for focusing disproportionately on the . In 1961, British historian
The line of demarcation between prehistoric and historical times is crossed when people cease to live only in the present, and become consciously interested both in their past and in their future. History begins with the handi and tradition means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the past into the future. Records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations.
This definition includes within the scope of history the strong interests of peoples, such as
and New Zealand
in the past, and the oral records maintained and transmitted to succeeding generations, even before their contact with European civilization.
The title page to La Historia d'Italia
Historiography has a number of related meanings. Firstly, it can refer to how history has been produced: the story of the development of
and practices (for example, the move from short-term biographical narrative towards long-term thematic analysis). Secondly, it can refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "Works of medieval history written during the 1960s"). Thirdly, it may refer to why history is produced: the . As a
analysis of descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, , use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians. Professional historians also debate the question of whether history can be taught as a single coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives.
History's philosophical questions
What is the proper unit for the study of the human past—the individual? The polis? The civilization? The culture? Or the nation state?
Are there broad patterns and progress? Are there cycles? Is human history random and devoid of any meaning?
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Philosophy of history is a branch of philosophy concerning the eventual significance, if any, of human history. Furthermore, it speculates as to a possible teleological end to its development—that is, it asks if there is a design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the processes of human history. Philosophy of history should not be confused with historiography, which is the study of history as an academic discipline, and thus concerns its methods and practices, and its development as a discipline over time. Nor should philosophy of history be confused with the , which is the study of the development of philosophical ideas through time.
A depiction of the ancient
Historical method basics
The following questions are used by historians in modern work.
When was the source, written or unwritten, produced ()?
Where was it produced ()?
By whom was it produced ()?
From what pre-existing material was it produced ()?
In what original form was it produced ()?
What is the evidential value of its contents ()?
The firs the fifth, ; and, together, external criticism. The sixth and final inquiry about a source is called internal criticism.
The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which
and other evidence to research and then to .
(484 BC – ca.425 BC) has generally been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, his contemporary
(c. 460 BC – ca. 400 BC) is credited with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method in his work the . Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, regarded history as being the product of the choices and actions of human beings, and looked at , rather than as the result of divine intervention. In his historical method, Thucydides emphasized chronology, a neutral point of view, and that the human world was the result of the actions of human beings. Greek historians also viewed history as , with events regularly recurring.
There were historical traditions and sophisticated use of historical method in ancient and medieval . The groundwork for professional historiography in
was established by the
court historian known as
(145–90 BC), author of the
(Shiji). For the quality of his written work, Sima Qian is posthumously known as the Father of . Chinese historians of subsequent dynastic periods in China used his Shiji as the official format for , as well as for biographical literature.[]
was influential in
at the beginning of the medieval period. Through the Medieval and
periods, history was often studied through a
or religious perspective. Around 1800, German philosopher and historian
and a more
approach in historical study.
In the preface to his book, the
(1377), the
and , , warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle
and uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a
to the study of history, and he often referred to it as his "new science". His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of , ,
in history, and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography" or the "father of the philosophy of history".
In the West, historians developed modern methods of historiography in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and Germany. The 19th-century historian with greatest influence on methods was
in Germany.
In the 20th century, academic historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or , to more objective and complex analyses of social and intellectual forces. A major trend of historical methodology in the 20th century was a tendency to treat history more as a
rather than as an , which traditionally had been the case. Some of the leading advocates of history as a social science were a diverse collection of scholars which included , , , , , , , , , ,
and . Many of the advocates of history as a social science were or are noted for their multi-disciplinary approach. Braudel combined history with geography, Bracher history with political science, Fogel history with economics, Gay history with psychology, Trigger history with archaeology while Wehler, Bloch, Fischer, Stone, Febvre and Le Roy Ladurie have in varying and differing ways amalgamated history with sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics. More recently, the field of
has begun to address ways of using computer technology to pose new questions to historical data and generate digital scholarship.
In opposition to the claims of history as a social science, historians such as , , ,
argued that the key to the historians' work was the power of the , and hence contended that history should be understood as an art. French historians associated with the
introduced quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of
(cf. ). Intellectual historians such as ,
have argued for the significance of ideas in history. American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. Another genre of
to emerge in the post-WWII era was
(History of Everyday Life). Scholars such as ,
sought to examine what everyday life was like for ordinary people in 20th-century Germany, especially in the
such as , , , , , , , , ,
have sought to validate 's theories by analyzing history from a Marxist perspective. In response to the Marxist interpretation of history, historians such as , , , ,
have offered anti-Marxist interpretations of history.
historians such as , , , , , , , and
have argued for the importance of studying the experience of women in the past. In recent years,
have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources. In his 1997 book In Defence of History,
defended the worth of history. Another defence of history from post-modernist criticism was the Australian historian 's 1994 book, The Killing of History.
theorises that society is fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time – in other words, the relationships which people have with each other in order to fulfill basic needs such as feeding, clothing and housing themselves and their families. Overall,
claimed to have identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in .
was once orthodoxy in the Soviet Union, but since the collapse of communism there in 1991, Mikhail Krom says it has been reduced to the margins of scholarship.
Particular studies and fields
These are a not listed are histories of other fields, such as ,
: the study from the beginning of human history until the Early Middle Ages.
: the study of the history of people living on or near the Atlantic Ocean.
: the study of changes in and social context of art.
: historical analysis of social and cultural entities not confined to national boundaries.
: the study of recent historical events.
: the study of historical events as they might have happened in different causal circumstances.
: the study of culture in the past.
: the use of computing technologies do massive searches in published sources.
: the use of economic models fitted to the past.
: the study of ideas in the context of the cultures that produced them and their development over time.
: the study of maritime transport and all the connected subjects.
: the study of the Modern Times, the era after the .
: the study of warfare and wars in history and what is sometimes considered to be a sub-branch of military history, .
: study of ancient texts.
: historical work from the perspective of common people.
: the study of politics in the past.
: study of the psychological motivations of historical events.
: study about the past that falls outside the domain of mainstream history (sometimes it is an equivalent of ).
: the study of the process of social change throughout history.
: the history of female human beings.
is related and covers the perspective of gender.
: the study of history from a global perspective, with special attention to non-Western societies.
Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular blocks of time. Historians give these
names in order to allow "organising ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians. The names given to a period can vary with geographical location, as can the dates of the beginning and end of a particular period.
are commonly used periods and the time they represent depends on the
used. Most periods are constructed retrospectively and so reflect value judgments made about the past. The way periods are constructed and the names given to them can affect the way they are viewed and studied.
The field of history generally leaves prehistory to the archaeologists, who have entirely different sets of tools and theories. The usual method for periodisation of the distant
is to rely on changes in material culture and technology, such as the ,
and their sub-divisions also based on different styles of material remains. Despite the development over recent decades of the ability through
and other scientific methods to give actual dates for many sites or artefacts, these long-established schemes seem likely to remain in use. In many cases neighbouring cultures with writing have left some history of cultures without it, which may be used.
Particular
locations can form the basis of historical study, for example, ,
and . Understanding why historic events took place is important. To do this, historians often turn to . Weather patterns, the water supply, and the landscape of a place all affect the lives of the people who live there. For example, to explain why the ancient Egyptians developed a successful civilization, studying the
is essential. Egyptian civilization was built on the banks of the Nile River, which flooded each year, depositing soil on its banks. The rich soil could help farmers grow enough crops to feed the people in the cities. That meant everyone did not have to farm, so some people could perform other jobs that helped develop the civilization.
begins with the first emergence of modern human beings on the continent, continuing into its modern present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states.
is the collective history of North and South America, including Central America and the Caribbean.
is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's northern and western hemisphere.
is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's western hemisphere.
begins with the oldest evidence where 7,000-year-old remains have been found.
is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's southern and western hemisphere.
emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe.
starts with the documentation of the Makassar trading with Indigenous Australians on Australia's north coast.
dates back at least 700 years to when it was discovered and settled by Polynesians, who developed a distinct Māori culture centred on kinship links and land.
covers the history of the islands in the Pacific Ocean.
is the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions: the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
describes the passage of time from humans inhabiting the European continent to the present day.
can be seen as the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian steppe.
is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation in East Asia.
begins with the earliest civilizations in the region now known as the Middle East that were established around 3000 BC, in Mesopotamia (Iraq).
is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation in the Sub-Himalayan region.
has been characterized as interaction between regional players and foreign powers.
concerns warfare, strategies, battles, weapons, and the psychology of combat. The "new military history" since the 1970s has been concerned with soldiers more than generals, with psychology more than tactics, and with the broader impact of warfare on society and culture.
The history of religion has been a main theme for both secular and religious historians for centuries, and continues to be taught in seminaries and academe. Leading journals include , , and . Topics range widely from political and cultural and artistic dimensions, to theology and liturgy. This subject studies religions from all regions and areas of the world where humans have lived.
Social history, sometimes called the new social history, is the field that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies and institutions for coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments. In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%. In the history departments of British universities in 2007, of the 5723 faculty members, 1644 (29%) identified themselves with social history while
came next with 1425 (25%). The "old" social history before the 1960s was a hodgepodge of topics without a central theme, and it often included political movements, like Populism, that were "social" in the sense of being outside the elite system. Social history was contrasted with ,
and the history of . English historian
saw it as the bridging point between economic and political history, reflecting that, "Without social history, economic history is barren and political history unintelligible." While the field has often been viewed negatively as history with the politics left out, it has also been defended as "history with the people put back in."
The chief subfields of social history include:
Smaller specialties include:
Cultural history replaced
as the dominant form in the 1980s and 1990s. It typically combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at language, popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of a group of people. How peoples constructed their memory of the past is a major topic. Cultural history includes the study of
as well is the study of images and human visual production ().
focuses on the relationships between nations, primarily regarding diplomacy and the causes of wars. More recently it looks at the causes of peace and human rights. It typically presents the viewpoints of the foreign office, and long-term strategic values, as the driving force of continuity and change in history. This type of political history is the study of the conduct of
between states or across state boundaries over time. Historian Muriel Chamberlain notes that after the First World War, "diplomatic history replaced constitutional history as the flagship of historical investigation, at once the most important, most exact and most sophisticated of historical studies." She adds that after 1945, the trend reversed, allowing social history to replace it.
Although economic history has been well established since the late 19th century, in recent years academic studies have shifted more and more toward economics departments and away from traditional history departments.
deals with the history of individual business organizations, business methods, government regulation, labour relations, and impact on society. It also includes biographies of individual companies, executives, and entrepreneurs. It is related Business history is most often taught in business schools.
Environmental history is a new field that emerged in the 1980s to look at the history of the environment, especially in the long run, and the impact of human activities upon it.
World history is the study of major civilizations over the last 3000 years or so. World history is primarily a teaching field, rather than a research field. It gained popularity in the United States, Japan and other countries after the 1980s with the realization that students need a broader exposure to the world as globalization proceeds.
It has led to highly controversial interpretations by
and , among others.
The World History Association publishes the Journal of World History every quarter since 1990. The H-World discussion list serves as a network of communication among practitioners of world history, with discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and book reviews.
is a type of historical work which attempts to account for historical events from the . A people's history is the history of the world that is the story of mass movements and of the outsiders. Individuals or groups not included in the past in other type of writing about history are the primary focus, which includes the , the , the , the , and the otherwise forgotten people. The authors are typically on the left and have a socialist model in mind, as in the approach of the
movement in Britain in the 1960s.
Intellectual history and the history of ideas emerged in the mid-20th century, with the focus on the intellectuals and their books on the one hand, and on the other the study of ideas as disembodied objects with a career of their own.
is a sub-field of History and , which looks at the past from the perspective of . It is in many ways, an outgrowth of . Despite its relatively short life, Gender History (and its forerunner Women's History) has had a rather significant effect on the general study of history. Since the 1960s, when the initially small field first achieved a measure of acceptance, it has gone through a number of different phases, each with its own challenges and outcomes. Although some of the changes to the study of history have been quite obvious, such as increased numbers of books on famous women or simply the admission of greater numbers of women into the historical profession, other influences are more subtle.
describes the broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings. Public history practice has quite deep roots in the areas of historic preservation, archival science, oral history, museum curatorship, and other related fields. The term itself began to be used in the U.S. and Canada in the late 1970s, and the field has become increasingly professionalized since that time. Some of the most common settings for public history are museums, historic homes and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives, film and television companies, and all levels of government.
, courtesy name Huiban, was the first known female Chinese historian. 
Professional and amateur historians discover, collect, organize, and present information about past events.They discover this information through archaeological evidence, written primary sources from the past and other various means such as place names. In , historians can be grouped by order of the historical period in which they were writing, which is not necessarily the same as the period in which they specialized.
and , though they are not historians in the true sense, are also frequently included.
Since the 20th century, Western historians have disavowed the aspiration to provide the "judgement of history." The goals of historical judgements or interpretations are separate to those of , that need to be formulated quickly after the events and be final. A related issue to that of the judgement of history is that of .
is a term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard
in a way which undermines their conclusions. Closely related to deceptive , works which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative, or disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of national, political, military, and religious affairs, are often rejected as pseudohistory.
A major intellectual battle took place in Britain in the early twentieth century regarding the place of history teaching in the universities. At Oxford and Cambridge, scholarship was downplayed. Professor , Oxford's Regius Professor of history in 1904 ridiculed the system as best suited to produce superficial journalists. The Oxford tutors, who had more votes than the professors, fought back in defence of their system saying that it successfully produced Britain's outstanding statesmen, administrators, prelates, and diplomats, and that mission was as valuable as training scholars. The tutors dominated the debate until after the Second World War. It forced aspiring young scholars to teach at outlying schools, such as Manchester University, where
was professionalizing the History undergraduate programme by introducing the study of original sources and requiring the writing of a thesis.
In the United States, scholarship was concentrated at the major PhD-producing universities, while the large number of other colleges and universities focused on undergraduate teaching. A tendency in the 21st century was for the latter schools to increasingly demand scholarly productivity of their younger tenure-track faculty. Furthermore, universities have increasingly relied on inexpensive part-time adjuncts to do most of the classroom teaching.
From the origins of national school systems in the 19th century, the teaching of history to promote national sentiment has been a high priority. In the United States after World War I, a strong movement emerged at the university level to teach courses in Western Civilization, so as to give students a common heritage with Europe. In the U.S. after 1980, attention increasingly moved toward teaching
or requiring students to take courses in non-western cultures, to prepare students for life in a globalized economy.
At the university level, historians debate the question of whether history belongs more to social science or to the humanities. Many view the field from both perspectives.
The teaching of history in French schools was influenced by the
as disseminated after the 1960s by Cahiers pédagogiques and Enseignement and other journals for teachers. Also influential was the Institut national de recherche et de documentation pédagogique, (INRDP). Joseph Leif, the Inspector-general of teacher training, said pupils children should learn about historians' approaches as well as facts and dates. Louis Fran?ois, Dean of the History/Geography group in the Inspectorate of National Education advised that teachers should provide historic documents and promote "active methods" which would give pupils "the immense happiness of discovery." Proponents said it was a reaction against the memorization of names and dates that characterized teaching and left the students bored. Traditionalists protested loudly it was a postmodern innovation that threatened to leave the youth ignorant of French patriotism and national identity.
This section is missing information about the United States. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the . (August 2016)
History books in a bookstore
In most countries history textbook are tools to foster nationalism and patriotism, and give students the official line about national enemies.
In many countries, history textbooks are sponsored by the national government and are written to put the national heritage in the most favourable light. For example, in Japan, mention of the
has been removed from textbooks and the entire Second World War is given cursory treatment. Other countries have complained. It was standard policy in communist countries to present only a rigid Marxist historiography.
Academic historians have often fought against the politicization of the textbooks, sometimes with success.
In 21st-century Germany, the history curriculum is controlled by the 16 states, and is characterized not by superpatriotism but rather by an "almost pacifistic and deliberately unpatriotic undertone" and reflects "principles formulated by international organizations such as UNESCO or the Council of Europe, thus oriented towards human rights, democracy and peace." The result is that "German textbooks usually downplay national pride and ambitions and aim to develop an understanding of citizenship centred on democracy, progress, human rights, peace, tolerance and Europeanness."
, in France
, in Germany
, Regarding post-colonial India
, History portrayed as the story of continuous progress
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See, in particular,
Marx makes no claim to have produced a master key to history. Historical materialism is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself" (Marx, Karl: Letter to editor of the Russian paper Otetchestvennye Zapiskym, 1877). His ideas, he explains, are based on a concrete study of the actual conditions that pertained in Europe.
Mikhail M. Krom, "From the Center to the Margin: the Fate of Marxism in Contemporary Russian Historiography," Storia della Storiografia (2012) Issue 62, pp 121-130
Marwick, Arthur (1970). The Nature of History. The Macmillan Press LTD. p. 169.
Tosh, John (2006). The Pursuit of History. Pearson Education Limited. pp. 168–169.
Pavkovic, M Morillo, Stephen (2006). What is Military History?. Oxford: Polity Press (published 31 July 2006). pp. 3–4.  .
Cochrane, Eric (1975). "What Is Catholic Historiography?". Catholic Historical Review. 61 (2): 169–190.  .
For example see Gajano, Sofia B Caliò, Tommaso (1998). "Italian Religious Historiography in the 1990s". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 3 (3): 293–306.
Peter Stearns, ed. Encyclopedia of Social History (1994)
Diplomatic dropped from 5% to 3%, economic history from 7% to 5%, and cultural history grew from 14% to 16%. Based on full-time professors in U.S. history departments. Stephen H. Haber, David M. Kennedy, and Stephen D. Krasner, "Brothers under the Skin: Diplomatic History and International Relations," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer, 1997), pp. 34-43 at p. 4 2;
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Mary Fulbrook (2005). "Introduction: The people's paradox". The People's State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker. London: . p. 17.  .
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Muriel E Chamberlain, Pax Britannica'? British Foreign Policy
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J. D. Hughes, What is Environmental History (2006)
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Williams, H. S. (1907). . (ed., This is Book 1 of 25 V )
See also . Collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts for educational use
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