Sima Qian in the context of "Yellow River"

Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term historiography is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by using particular sources, techniques of research, and theoretical approaches to the interpretation of documentary sources. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, of WWII, of the pre-Columbian Americas, of early Islam, and of China—and different approaches to the work and the genres of history, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the development of academic history produced a great corpus of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups and loyalties—such as to their nation state—remains a debated question.

In Europe, the academic discipline of historiography was established in the 5th century BC with the Histories, by Herodotus, who thus established Greek historiography. In the 2nd century BC, the Roman statesman Cato the Elder produced the Origines, which is the first Roman historiography. In Asia, the father and son intellectuals Sima Tan and Sima Qian established Chinese historiography with the book Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), in the time of the Han Empire in Ancient China. During the Middle Ages, medieval historiography included the works of chronicles in medieval Europe, the Ethiopian Empire in the Horn of Africa, Islamic histories by Muslim historians, and the Korean and Japanese historical writings based on the existing Chinese model. During the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, historiography in the Western world was shaped and developed by figures such as Voltaire, David Hume, and Edward Gibbon, who among others set the foundations for the modern discipline. In the 19th century, historical studies became professionalized at universities and research centers along with a belief that history was like a science. In the 20th century, historians incorporated social science dimensions like politics, economy, and culture in their historiography.

Sima Tan (traditional Chinese: 司馬談; simplified Chinese: 司马谈; pinyin: Sīmǎ Tán; Wade–Giles: Ssu-ma T'an; c. 165–110 BCE) was a Chinese astrologist, astronomer, and historian during the Western Han dynasty. His work Records of the Grand Historian was completed by his son Sima Qian, who is considered the founder of Chinese historiography.

The Shiji (simplified Chinese: 史记; traditional Chinese: 史記; pinyin: Shǐjì; lit. 'Historical Records'), also known as Records of the Grand Historian or The Grand Scribe's Records (simplified Chinese: 太史公书; traditional Chinese: 太史公書; pinyin: Tàishǐgōng shū), is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC by the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, building upon work begun by his father Sima Tan. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time, and describes the world as it was known to the Chinese of the Western Han dynasty.

The Shiji has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization". Following Confucius and Qin Shi Huang, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China; by providing definitive biographies, he effectively shaped the enduring images of these two earlier figures." The Shiji set the model for all subsequent dynastic histories of China. In contrast to Western historiographical conventions, the Shiji does not treat history as "a continuous, sweeping narrative", but rather breaks it up into smaller, overlapping units dealing with famous leaders, individuals, and major topics of significance.

Fajia (Chinese: 法家; pinyin: fǎjiā), or the School of fa (incl. law, method), often translated Legalism, was a bibliographic school of primarily Warring States period classical Chinese philosophy, including more administrative works traditionally said to be rooted in Huang-Lao Daoism. Addressing practical governance challenges of the unstable feudal system, their ideas 'contributed greatly to the formation of the Chinese empire' and bureaucracy, advocating concepts including rule by law, sophisticated administrative technique, and ideas of state and sovereign power. They are often interpreted along realist lines. Though persisting, the Qin to Tang were more characterized by the 'centralizing tendencies' of their traditions.

The school incorporates the more legalistic ideas of Li Kui and Shang Yang, and more administrative Shen Buhai and Shen Dao, with Shen Buhai, Shen Dao, and Han Fei traditionally said by Sima Qian to be rooted in Huang-Lao (Daoism). Shen Dao may have been a significant early influence for Daoism and administration. These earlier currents were synthesized in the Han Feizi, including some of the earliest commentaries on the Daoist text Daodejing. The later Han dynasty considered Guan Zhong to be a forefather of the school, with the Guanzi added later. Later dynasties regarded Xun Kuang as a teacher of Han Fei and Qin Chancellor Li Si, as attested by Sima Qian, approvingly included during the 1970s along with figures like Zhang Binglin.

The Twenty-Four Histories, also known as the Orthodox Histories (正史; Zhèngshǐ), are a collection of official histories detailing the dynasties of China, from the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors in the 4th millennium BC to the Ming dynasty in the 17th century.

The Han dynasty historian Sima Qian established many conventions of the genre, though its form was not standardized until much later. Starting with the Tang dynasty, each dynasty established an official office to write the history of its predecessor using official court records, partly in order to establish its own link to the earliest times. As fixed and edited in the Qing dynasty, the whole set contains 3,213 volumes and about 40 million words. It is considered one of the most important sources on Chinese history and culture.