§-Syllabus dot point

NSWHistory ExtensionSyllabus dot point

Who counts as a historian, and how has the identity and authority of the historian changed from the ancient world to the present?

Students examine who historians are, the contexts in which they have worked, and how the identity, authority and purpose of the historian have changed over time

An answer to the first key question of Constructing History, who historians are and how their identity and authority have shifted from Herodotus and Thucydides to professional academics and public historians. How to use named figures and their contexts to argue that the historian is a constructed role, not a neutral recorder.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.89 min answerUpdated 2026-05-29

Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed

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What this dot point is asking
The answer
Examples in context
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In plain English

Think about who gets to be believed when they tell the story of your school. A hundred years ago it might only have been the headmaster, writing an official history from the archive of old records. Today it could be a student's blog, a documentary maker, a museum display, or a teacher publishing research, and each one claims to be telling the "real" story on a different basis, official records, lived experience, careful research or public access. "Who are historians?" asks the same question about the past on a much bigger scale. Herodotus earned trust by travelling and asking around; Thucydides earned it by having lived through the war he wrote about; a medieval monk like Bede earned it through faith in God's plan; a nineteenth-century professor like Ranke earned it through years spent in an archive; and today a public historian, an Indigenous knowledge-holder or a documentary maker can all claim a version of that authority too. The point of the dot point is that being a "historian" was never a fixed job description, it is a role whose rules for who gets believed keep being rewritten.

What this dot point is asking

The first of the NESA key questions in Constructing History is deceptively simple: who are historians? The dot point does not want a list of famous names. It wants you to argue that the very category of historian is historically constructed, that who is permitted to write authoritative history, on what authority, and for what audience, has changed dramatically across time. To answer it well you must move from antiquity to the present, naming figures and their contexts, and show that the historian is a role shaped by the society that produces it rather than a fixed, neutral observer standing outside the past.

The answer

A historian is anyone who systematically inquires into the past and produces an account of it for others, but the kind of person who has held that authority, and the basis of that authority, has shifted repeatedly. In the ancient Greek world Herodotus, often called the father of history, derived his standing from travel, eyewitness inquiry and the reporting of competing accounts. His Greek word historia means inquiry, and that emphasis on investigation distinguished him from the poets and myth-makers who preceded him. Thucydides, writing on the Peloponnesian War, narrowed authority further: he claimed reliability from his own contemporaneity, his political and military experience, and his refusal to include the marvellous. Between them the two Greeks established a tension that still defines the field, between the wide-ranging inquirer and the rigorous, evidence-bound analyst.

Authority from divine order to the archive

For much of the medieval period the historian's authority rested on a providential framework. Writers such as the Venerable Bede, author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, understood the past as the unfolding of a divine plan, and the historian's task was to read events as signs of God's purpose. Authority came from faith and from the institution of the Church as much as from evidence. The Renaissance and Enlightenment shifted the ground again. Humanists recovered classical models, and writers such as Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, combined narrative grandeur with a critical, sceptical attitude to sources and a willingness to explain change through human and material causes rather than providence.

The professional historian

The decisive transformation came in the nineteenth century with the German scholar Leopold von Ranke, who is usually credited with founding history as a professional academic discipline. Ranke insisted the historian's duty was to show the past wie es eigentlich gewesen, as it essentially was, through the rigorous, critical study of primary archival documents. He institutionalised the seminar, source criticism and the footnote. With Ranke the historian became a trained professional, certified by a university, whose authority rested on archival mastery rather than birth, faith or eloquence. This professional model dominated the twentieth century and still underpins the academy.

Widening the circle

The twentieth century then widened who could be a historian. The French Annales school, led by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre and later Fernand Braudel, expanded the historian's remit beyond politics and great men to geography, climate, mentalities and the longue duree. Marxist historians such as E.P. Thompson, in The Making of the English Working Class, insisted on recovering the experience of ordinary people, history from below. Feminist historians, social historians and historians of empire challenged the assumption that authoritative history was written by, and about, elite Western men. In the present, public historians, museum curators, documentary makers, Indigenous knowledge-holders and digital archivists all lay claim to the historian's work, fragmenting the singular professional authority Ranke had built.

Using this in an answer

The argumentative pay-off is this: every definition of who the historian is encodes a claim about what counts as legitimate knowledge of the past. Herodotus trusted inquiry and testimony, Bede trusted revelation, Ranke trusted the archive, Thompson trusted the recovered voice of the worker. When you write about who historians are, name the figure, name the basis of their authority, and name the context that produced it. That sequence turns a list into an argument about the constructed, contested nature of the historian's role.

Worked exam answers

Worked example 1 - a short-answer response (5 marks)

Question. Explain how the basis of the historian's authority changed between Thucydides and Ranke.

Model answer. Thucydides, writing on the Peloponnesian War, grounded his authority in contemporaneity and direct experience as a participant-observer, deliberately excluding the marvellous in favour of rigorous, evidence-bound analysis of events he had lived through. By contrast, Leopold von Ranke, founding history as a professional academic discipline in the 1820s, relocated authority to institutional certification and archival mastery: the historian's duty, in his phrase wie es eigentlich gewesen, was to show the past as it essentially was through rigorous, critical study of primary documents, verified through the university seminar. The shift moves authority from a participant's lived testimony to a trained professional's document-based method, showing that the standard for who may be believed as a historian is set by the intellectual climate of the age, not fixed.

Marker's note: markers reward both figures named with a specific, accurate basis of authority, an explicit statement of what changed (participant testimony to institutional/archival method), and use of Ranke's phrase attributed correctly. A response naming only one figure stays mid-band.

Worked example 2 - a data/stimulus response (5 marks)

Question. An ExamExplained-composed stimulus states: "Anyone with a laptop, a museum badge or a smartphone camera can now publish history." Identify the basis of authority claimed and compare it to Ranke's.

Model answer. The stimulus claims authority from access and platform, arguing that owning publishing tools or holding a public-facing role (blogger, curator, documentary maker) now confers the ability to produce history for an audience, regardless of formal academic training. This contrasts sharply with Ranke's basis of authority, which rested on institutional certification through a university post and demonstrated mastery of primary archival documents, assessed through the professional seminar. Where Ranke's model gatekept authority behind years of archival training, the stimulus describes a far more open, less gatekept model in which digital platforms let non-academic producers reach an audience directly, illustrating that the "who" of history-writing keeps expanding.

Marker's note: about 2 marks for correctly identifying access/platform as the claimed basis, about 3 marks for an explicit, accurate comparison to Ranke's institutional/archival basis. Paraphrasing the quote without naming Ranke caps the mark at 2.

Worked example 3 - an extended-response paragraph (evaluate)

Question (paragraph only). Evaluate the extent to which the identity of the historian has been an open, contested category. Write one body paragraph on the twentieth-century widening of the category.

Model paragraph. The clearest evidence that the historian's identity has been repeatedly contested, rather than fixed by Ranke's nineteenth-century professionalisation, is the twentieth-century widening of who counts as a historian and what they study. The French Annales school, led by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre and later Fernand Braudel, deliberately challenged the archive-centred, political-event history Ranke had institutionalised, arguing that geography, climate and mentalities, the longue duree, better explained the past than a narrow diet of documents about kings and battles. E.P. Thompson pushed further still, insisting in The Making of the English Working Class that "history from below", the recovered experience of ordinary working people using union and popular records rather than only state archives, was as legitimate a historical subject as any state paper. Together these movements show that Ranke's professional model, far from settling who a historian is, became the very target against which the next generation of historians deliberately redefined the role.

Marker's note: markers reward a thesis-driven paragraph (not description), named figures and texts, and an explicit statement of what was being contested (Ranke's archive-only model) and what replaced it.

Exam technique

Use the three-part formula every time you name a figure. Figure, basis of authority, context that produced it. "Ranke (figure) claimed authority from archival mastery and university training (basis), amid the nineteenth-century rise of research universities and a scientific faith in verified fact (context)" reads as analysis; "Ranke was a historian in Germany" reads as a fact.

Match the command word to the depth needed. "Identify/name" wants a figure and one basis of authority; "explain" wants a mechanism linking a change in basis to a cause or context; "evaluate/analyse" wants at least three figures spanning different eras, developed together, with a sustained judgement on how open or fixed the category has been.

Always specify your case study early, as the 2022 HSC question explicitly instructs, and use ONE area of debate from it as your test case for the definition being argued, rather than switching examples paragraph to paragraph.

Do not let "widening the circle" examples become a list. Pick one or two of the Annales school, Marxist historians, feminist historians or public historians and explain specifically what basis of authority they claimed and against what they were reacting, rather than naming all of them with no development.

Examples in context

Example 1. Ranke and the archival revolution. Ranke's insistence on wie es eigentlich gewesen and his institutionalisation of the seminar at the University of Berlin in the 1820s gave the professional historian a repeatable method, archival source criticism, that could be taught and certified, decisively separating the trained historian from the amateur antiquarian or popular chronicler.

Example 2. Marc Bloch and the stakes of who writes history. Bloch, co-founder of the Annales school, was shot by the Gestapo in 1944 as a member of the French Resistance. His insistence that history should explain deep structures, not only political events, grew partly from his own experience of a politics-only history that had failed to prevent catastrophe, showing that a historian's identity and their argument about the past can be inseparable from their own context.

Try this

Q1. Explain how the basis of the historian's authority changed between Herodotus and Bede. [5 marks]

Cue. Inquiry and eyewitness testimony versus providence and the institution of the Church; state the shift explicitly.

Q2. Evaluate the extent to which the identity of the historian has been an open, contested category rather than a fixed profession. [8 marks]

Cue. At least three figures/eras (Herodotus/Thucydides, Ranke, Annales/Thompson/public historians), each with a named basis of authority, and a sustained judgement on what changed and what stayed constant.

Q3. Name the historian usually credited with founding professional academic history, and state the basis of his authority. [3 marks]

Cue. Leopold von Ranke; archival mastery and university/seminar certification, wie es eigentlich gewesen.

Exam-style practice questions

Practice questions written in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.

2022 HSC'The role of the academic is to make everything less simple.' (Mary Beard, Source C) To what extent do you agree with the view presented in Source C? In your response, refer to at least ONE area of debate from your case study. Identify your case study at the beginning of your answer.

Show worked answer →

This 25 mark Section II essay is mapped by NESA to "Who are historians? - the producers of history over time", so frame it as a question about the historian's ROLE and authority. The top band (21 to 25) communicates a critical historical judgement of Beard's claim, tied to ONE area of debate in a named case study.

Interpret Beard's claim: "The role of the academic is to make everything less simple" defines the professional historian as a complicator of easy narratives - someone who introduces nuance, evidence and competing interpretations against popular or political simplifications.
Agree, then complicate: A strong response largely agrees but qualifies: academic historians do problematise simple stories (for example revisionists challenging a heroic national myth), yet public historians, film-makers and popular writers also produce history for mass audiences, and "making things less simple" is not always their role or even desirable.
Anchor in a case study and area of debate: Identify your case study at the start and use ONE area of debate to test the claim - show a named academic complicating an accepted account, and weigh that against producers who simplify. Sustain a judgement on what the historian's role actually is.

2024 HSCEvaluate the role of historians in changing interpretations and perspectives of history. Integrate Sources A and B and at least TWO other sources throughout your response. (Source A: Tom Holt, Thinking Historically: Narrative, Imagination and Understanding, 1990. Source B: Rita Luis and Chrysi Rapanta, 'Towards (Re-)Defining historical reasoning competence', Educational Research Review, 2020.)

Show worked answer →

A 25 mark Section I source question on the historian's role. A band 6 answer (21 to 25) gives an insightful judgement of how historians drive changing interpretation, with sustained integration of Sources A and B plus at least TWO other sources.

Argue the historian is an active maker, not a recorder: Holt says historians, "like fiction writers", work with plots and impose order on the past; Luis and Rapanta cast the historian as an arguer in "an ongoing debate" who must rebut counterclaims. Use both to argue that the identity of the historian (their questions, methods and arguments) produces interpretation.
Show changing roles over time: Add at least TWO further producers to trace how the role shifted: Herodotus and Thucydides inventing inquiry, Ranke professionalising the archive, then feminist, Marxist or public historians widening who counts as a historian and what they ask.
Judgement: Conclude that historians are central agents of historiographical change because their identity, context and purpose shape the questions asked of the past. Sustain this across the response for the top band.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation3 marksDefine what is meant by 'a historian' for the purposes of this key question, and state the basis on which Herodotus claimed authority for his account.

Show worked solution →

Definition (1 mark). A historian is anyone who systematically inquires into the past and produces an account of it for others; the term describes a shifting ROLE, not a fixed profession.

Herodotus's basis (2 marks). Herodotus grounded his authority in historia (inquiry): travel, eyewitness observation and the deliberate reporting of competing accounts he had gathered, rather than in revelation, birth or institutional office.

Marking spine: an accurate, role-based definition (1), Herodotus's basis named as inquiry/eyewitness testimony with the term historia (2). Simply calling him "the first historian" with no basis loses a mark.

foundation4 marksName the historian usually credited with founding history as a professional academic discipline, give the German phrase he used to describe the historian's task, and its usual English translation.

Show worked solution →

Historian (1 mark): Leopold von Ranke.
Phrase (2 marks): Wie es eigentlich gewesen.
Translation (1 mark): As it essentially was (sometimes rendered "as it actually happened").

Marking spine: Ranke named (1), the German phrase given accurately (2, partial credit for the sense without exact wording), an acceptable English translation (1). Attributing the phrase to "history in general" rather than to Ranke by name loses marks.

core5 marksExplain how the basis of the historian's authority changed between Thucydides and the Venerable Bede.

Show worked solution →

Thucydides (about 2 marks): Thucydides grounded authority in contemporaneity and direct experience: he was a participant-observer of the Peloponnesian War, an exiled general, and he explicitly excluded the marvellous, claiming reliability from rigorous, evidence-bound analysis of events he had lived through or investigated at first hand.
Bede (about 2 marks): Writing centuries later in a Christian monastic context, Bede's authority in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People rested on a providential framework: he read events as unfolding God's plan, so his standing came from faith and the institution of the Church rather than eyewitness inquiry.
The shift (1 mark): The change moves authority from human testimony and rational analysis (Thucydides) to divine revelation and institutional faith (Bede), showing that "who may write history, and why we should believe them" is not fixed but tied to the intellectual framework of the age.

Marking spine: both bases named accurately with a specific feature of each (4), an explicit statement of the shift in what grounds authority (1). Describing only one figure caps the mark at half.

core6 marksExplain how the Annales school and E.P. Thompson widened who counts as a historian, and what a historian studies, in the twentieth century.

Show worked solution →

The Annales school (about 3 marks). Led by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, and later Fernand Braudel, the Annales movement expanded the historian's remit beyond politics and great men to geography, climate, mentalities and the longue duree (the slow-moving structures of the past), arguing that political-event history alone had failed to explain catastrophes such as the world wars.

E.P. Thompson (about 3 marks). In The Making of the English Working Class, Thompson insisted on recovering the lived experience of ordinary working people, "history from below", using sources such as trade-union and popular records rather than only elite state archives, so that people previously treated as objects of history became its subjects.

Marking spine: the Annales contribution named with a specific new subject matter (structures/mentalities/longue duree) and at least one founder (3), Thompson's contribution named with the "history from below" idea and his key text (3). Naming the school/historian without saying what they added to the historian's remit stays mid-band.

core5 marksAn ExamExplained-composed stimulus reads: 'Anyone with a laptop, a museum badge or a smartphone camera can now publish history; the archive is no longer the historian's only gate.' Identify the basis of authority this stimulus claims for the modern producer of history, and compare it to Ranke's basis of authority.

Show worked solution →

Identify the claimed basis (about 2 marks). The stimulus claims authority from ACCESS and PLATFORM (a laptop, a museum role, a camera) rather than from formal training, arguing that publishing tools and public-facing roles (bloggers, curators, documentary makers) now confer the ability to produce history for an audience.

Compare to Ranke (about 3 marks). Ranke's authority rested on institutional certification (a university post) and archival mastery, the rigorous, critical use of primary documents assessed through the professional seminar. The stimulus describes a much wider, less gatekept basis: production of history is no longer restricted to the archive-trained professional, since digital platforms and public roles let non-academic producers reach an audience directly.

Marking spine: the stimulus's claimed basis identified with a reason (access/platform, not training) (2), an explicit, accurate comparison to Ranke's archival/institutional basis (3). A response that only paraphrases the quote without naming Ranke's contrasting basis caps at 2.

exam8 marksEvaluate the extent to which the identity of the historian has been an open, contested category rather than a fixed profession.

Show worked solution →

An 8-mark "evaluate" needs a sustained judgement, at least three named figures spanning different eras, and an explicit statement of what basis of authority each claimed, not a chronological list.

Thesis: The identity of the historian has been substantially open and contested: the basis on which someone may write authoritative history, inquiry, faith, archival training or lived experience, has repeatedly been redefined by figures who challenged the dominant model of their time, though a professional academic core has persisted since Ranke.
Argument 1: Herodotus and Thucydides already disagreed about the basis of authority: inquiry and testimony versus contemporaneity and rigorous analysis, showing contestation existed from the earliest historians, not only in modern times.
Argument 2: Ranke's nineteenth-century professionalisation (archival mastery, the seminar, wie es eigentlich gewesen) briefly narrowed the category to the university-trained specialist, but this was itself a historically specific claim, not a timeless definition, since it displaced the providential authority of writers such as Bede.
Argument 3: The twentieth century reopened the category: the Annales school, Marxist historians such as E.P. Thompson, and later feminist, postcolonial and public historians argued that lived experience, ideological standpoint and public-facing platforms could also confer authority, deliberately contesting Ranke's archive-only model.
Judgement: On balance the identity of the historian has been more open and contested than fixed: each era's "true" historian (inquirer, believer, archivist, recoverer of hidden voices) has been a construction contested by the next, though the demand for evidence-based, systematic inquiry has been a constant thread across all of them.

Marker's note: rewards a sustained thesis, at least three eras/figures each tied to a named basis of authority, and a calibrated judgement (not "it has changed a lot") that states what has stayed constant as well as what has changed.

exam6 marksAnalyse how naming a historian's context, alongside their basis of authority, strengthens an answer to 'who are historians?'

Show worked solution →

The claim (about 2 marks): Naming only a figure and a basis of authority ("Ranke claimed authority from the archive") risks reading as an isolated fact; adding the CONTEXT that produced that basis turns the fact into an argument about why the historian's identity is constructed rather than natural.
Worked demonstration (about 3 marks): Ranke wrote in early nineteenth-century Germany, amid the rise of research universities and a broader European faith that rigorous method could make disciplines scientific (the positivist current also visible in the natural sciences). Naming this context explains WHY archival mastery, rather than eloquence or faith, became the era's marker of a credible historian, and shows the shift was produced by a specific intellectual climate, not an inevitable improvement.
Judgement (1 mark): A response that pairs figure, basis of authority and context for at least two or three producers demonstrates that the category "historian" is contingent on its era, which is the analytical point the dot point rewards.

Marking spine: the claim that context strengthens the argument (2), a worked example demonstrating figure plus basis plus context together (3), an explicit judgement on why this matters for the dot point (1).