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List of historical classifications

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A chart depicts different types of historical study on a colorful timeline. The Roman Empire is the primary focus of the chart, along with other European histories.
This image exemplifies the Eurocentric focus of early Western historical classifications.


Historical classification groups the various history topics into different categories according to subject matter as shown below.

Meta-history

By geographic region

By geographic subregion

By date

By time period

See also Periodization.

By religion

By nation

By field

Mathematics and the hard sciences

Social sciences

By ideological classification (historiography)

Although there is arguably some intrinsic bias in history studies (with national bias perhaps being the most significant), history can also be studied from ideological perspectives, which practitioners feel are often ignored, such as:

A form of historical speculation known commonly as counterfactual history has also been adopted by some historians as a means of assessing and exploring the possible outcomes if certain events had not occurred or had occurred in a different way. This is somewhat similar to the alternate history genre in fiction.

Lists of false or dubious historical resources and historical myths that were once popular and widespread, or have become so, have also been prepared.