Diplomatic history

Sometimes referred to as "Rankian History", diplomatic history focuses on politics, politicians and other high rulers and views them as being the driving force of continuity and change in history.

This is the most common form of history and is often the classical and popular belief of what history should be.

Leopold von Ranke, a German, started this school of historical thought in the 1870s. It relies on the large amount of official documents produced by modern western governments to create its history.