Official history

An official history is a work of history which is sponsored, authorised or endorsed by its subject. The term is most commonly used for histories which are produced for a government. The term also applies to commissions from non-state bodies as company histories, i.e. histories of commercial companies. An official biography (one written with the permission, cooperation and perhaps participation of its subject or the subject's heirs) is often known as an authorized biography.

Official histories frequently have the advantage that the author or authors have been given access to archives, could interview subjects and use other primary sources that would be closed to independent historians. Because of the necessarily close relationship between author and subject, such works may be (or be perceived to be) partisan in tone and to lack historical objectivity. Such bias varies and some official histories are little more than exercises in public relations and promotion, whereas in other cases the authors have retained sufficient independence to be able to express negative as well as positive judgements about their subjects.

There is a long tradition of history being written or published under official patronage: they include, for example, the Anglica Historia (drafted by 1513 and published in 1534), a history of England written by Polydore Vergil at the request of King Henry VII and William Camden's Annales Rerum Gestarum Angliae et Hiberniae Regnate Elizabetha (1615–1627), a history of the reign of Elizabeth I of England. In early modern Europe, certain royal courts appointed official historians: these included the Kongelig historiograf in the kingdom of Denmark–Norway from 1594, the Rikshistoriograf in Sweden from 1618, the Historiographer Royal in England from 1660 and the Historiographer Royal in Scotland from 1681; the Scottish post is still in existence. Each book in the Twenty-Four Histories records the official history of a Chinese dynasty. Sixteen of the histories were written between the 7th and 15th centuries. The first is Records of the Grand Historian, authored by Sima Qian in the Han Dynasty and the last is History of Ming in 1735. The official histories were compiled since the Tang Dynasty by a government office for historiography. They were revised and expanded over the course of a dynasty, up until the point that a final edition is published by the succeeding dynasty.

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