When I graduated in 1956, history - even 'modern history' - ended in 1914, when, as the British Foreign Secretary put it, the lights were going out all over the world.

That was about a 40-year gap. Which would mean that nowadays the Kennedy assassination, say, would be 'history', but the Vietnam war would not be.

However, 1914 wasn't just 40 years before. It also marked a cataclysmic change (at least the beginning of one) in the world.

Is there a comparable date/event that now should be taken as marking the 'end of history'?

In real history books:

World history ends at 1990s.

American history ends at Clinton Administration.

History does not end until the last Man on earth takes his last breath.

If you're asking for periodization, that varies according to different historiographic perspectives. In Portugal we use French timeline. According to that we're still livin in the Contemporary Ages, which started with the French Revolution in 1789.

Does that mean you now teach, say, the Kosovo campaigns in history lessons? How often do you bring out new history textbooks and/or revise the history syllabus?

It doesn't even then, does it? If the dinosaurs are part of history, won't whatever comes after man be part of history too?

Anyway I meant 'history' with quotes around it - i.e. what is taught as history rather than as current affairs.

Again, does that mean you teach, say, the first Bush administration in history classes?

(It may well do - I would just find that odd.)

No, we don't teach that yet, but it's already a study matter.

I didn't realize you were asking about History school programs, I thought it was about the focus of History making. 

As for that "whatever comes after man be part of history too?", just between you and me, and don't really believe there will be much left when Man leaves this place...

History ends when you die, I doubt you'll have any concerns for it after that. Otherwise, as long as there is someone to remember, history won't end.

It seems to me there is 'history' which deals with events far enough in the past that they can be viewed with reasonable objectivity, and some sense that 'all the facts are in' - i.e. that we pretty well know what actually happened.  And there are 'current affairs' or 'contemporary studies' or whatever you call them which deal with things that are still open issues - the fat lady hasn't sung yet. 

I guess you could loosely say if you weren't involved in it and you don't remember it., then its history.

In US history the Civil War is definitely history (there may be disputes about it, and some flag-waving, but it and its aftermath are definitely over (and probably have been since the compromise of 1876).

Is Vietnam however just history? In the last electoral campaign it didn't seem to be.

I might suggest from an American point of view that 1963 would be a symbolic year, with the assassination of Kennedy, a kind of informal concordat with the Soviets, and the beginning of the downslope in Vietnam.  Or maybe it should be the abandonment of Saigon a little over 30 years ago.

For Britain it might be 1947 and Indian independence: would that work for India too - is the Pandit Nehru period now history, or still contemporary?. Or possibly more cogent Britain (for France too) might be 1956 because of the Suez debacle. 

I don't know. I wondered what ideas people might have.

Granted there will never be a clear-cut line between the two (at least I doubt it) but there is a kind of fuzzy one

Well, the History of Portugal is already teached in schools right up to the year 1999, the end of the Empire (if you can call it that).

Of course I feel that the proximity of the study subject really affects objectivity, which is already impossible to keep, even when analizing events that took place ages ago. But we simply correct that problem through the use of objectivation.

I was a bit surprised that no mention has been made of Francis Fukuyama's book "The End of History" (1992) in which he says "What we are witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or a passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

History by definition is the story of humanity and the recording of human events.  IMO the end of history will come when the last two people on earth finish telling each other what happened yesterday and one of them dies, leaving the other with no one to relate his story to.

Fukuyama is a fraud!

I find it odd how educators tend to seek a "beginning" and "end" to everything they teach.

In my opinion, there is no end point to History.  There never will be.  Even when we cease to exist, or our children cease to exist, or even the world, events will continue to happen.

Technically, history began when man started to write, and the period before this is prehistory. That would mean that history ends when man stops writing.

In my opinion, however, history is a much broader discipline which basically means, the study of the past. Natural history, prehistory and even current events are all, in my opinion, subsets of "history".

Now, obviously the most modern events have some difficulty in being analysed easily, but that does't matter, they are still history. As we learn more we discover more about this history.

So when does history end? I consider history to come up to and include the present.

Best Regards