We understand social history as that way of representing or telling history that takes into account all social phenomena as a fundamental part of the elaboration of the historical account. Thus, social history confronts or polemicizes with those traditional ways of telling the past in which deeds were only carried out by political or military leaders and in which peoples or societies had little or no value in the historical endeavor. . Social history is a fairly recent branch of history if one takes into account that man has always told the past and that this way of doing it emerged only in the middle of the 19th century to consolidate at the beginning of the 20th century with the famous School of French Annales.
Social history is perhaps one of the most innovative ways of representing the events of the past if we take into account that since ancient times history has always been elaborated from specific anecdotes that were based on the action of great military, political or religious leaders. For social history, as its name implies, the reason for all the changes, or the space where those changes and historical events take place, is none other than society itself. Thus, for social history it is more interesting to pay attention to the social changes that a community can show over time and that can lead to great historical events or phenomena.
The central difference is also to recognize that social changes are much more progressive and longer term, so that their effects or results are much less visible than simple anecdotes that can be recognized and dated accurately. Social history is the product of changes in mentalities, of ways of understanding the world, of discontent and discomfort accumulated for a long time, of pressure, of fear.
A clear example of this would be to see the French Revolution according to the eyes of social history. For her, the Revolution was not carried out by anyone other than the French people who had been accumulating discomfort and annoyance due to many historical events (low political participation, lost crops, the enrichment of the aristocracy, high taxes). It is impossible to understand this and many other historical events as non-social phenomena or phenomena resulting from the decision of a single person or of a political and military leader.
