What are the two kinds of history?
It can be said that there are two types of history, in fact more
than two. Sticking with the current question one type of history is
a series of written facts in chronological order. To the best of
the historian's knowledge, this factual style of writing history
means that all that facts on a historical period are known to many
people. This type of history writing can be interesting and
informative. This is true for even history that is well known and
begs the question, why write it if it already has been written. In
this situation, by research, the historian uncovers a part of the
life of say, Julius Caesar, that has have been facts only recently
discovered by this type of historian.
The main part of history takes into consideration of the facts already written by the first type of historian, but takes history a step forward, or backwards, depending on what is written. By this is meant interpretive history. Here the historian provides an explanation as to why certain historical events happened. Here there is more room for controversy, as the "why" factor can be extremely subjective.