Definition of Regional History

The Regional History It is one of the most recent branches of History, developed mainly from the second half of the 20th century thanks to the all-important School from Annales, a French school interested in the renewal of historical methods. As its name implies, Regional History seeks to study the history of particular regions rather than analyze to the great civilizations traditionally studied by common history. In this sense, Regional History emerges as a good complement that gives specificity to the great historical processes.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the aforementioned School proposed to study the history of the Humanity from great social and economic processes rather than through specific dates or the work of great men. However, this historical current showed some wear towards the middle of the 20th century, especially in terms of that makes the study specific of certain realities about which there was not much information or answers. This is how Regional History emerges as an academic current within the Annales School itself, always renovating and advanced.

According to its most important exponents, Regional History should be interested in the analysis of specific historical realities to small regions. This is why throughout its development, Regional History produced interesting studies on different communities both in Europe and in America and other geographic spaces. These analyzes could cover various historical periods, both from the Middle Ages as of the Modern Age or of the Contemporary one. In some cases, they also had to do with events or situations specific to those regions that had an important meaning in their occurrence.

Regional History can also vary in what it does to its object of study and while some cases have been interested in the analysis of the cultural productions of certain peoples or communities, others engaged in the understanding of social forms or of institutions political, administrative, as well as structures of thought.