Auxiliary (or ancillary) sciences of history are scholarly disciplines which help evaluate and use historical sources and are seen as auxiliary for
historical research.[1][page needed] Many of these areas of study, classification and analysis were originally developed between the 16th and 19th centuries by antiquaries, and would then have been regarded as falling under the broad heading of
antiquarianism.[2] "History" was at that time regarded as a largely literary skill. However, with the spread of the principles of
empirical source-based history championed by the
Göttingen school of history in the late 18th century[3] and later by
Leopold von Ranke from the mid-19th century onwards, they have been increasingly regarded as falling within the skill-set of the trained
historian.[4][5]
Examples
Auxiliary sciences of history include, but are not limited to:[1]
^
abDrake, Miriam A. (2003). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Dekker Encyclopedias Series. Vol. 3.
CRC Press.
ISBN0-8247-2079-2.[page needed]
^Sweet, Rosemary (2004). Antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century Britain. London: Hambledon & London. p. xiv.
ISBN1-85285-309-3.
^Green, Anna; Troup, Kathleen, eds. (1999). The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory. Manchester University Press. p. 2.
ISBN978-0-7190-5255-2.
^Stern, Fritz, ed. (1972). The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present (2nd ed.). New York: Vintage Books. p. 54.
ISBN0-394-71962-X.