Historical determinism is the belief that events in history are entirely determined or constrained by various prior forces and, therefore, in a certain sense, inevitable.
It is the philosophical view of determinism applied to the process or direction by which history unfolds.
The main idea is that certain factors determine the existence of humans and therefore limit the scope of their free will.
Used as a pejorative, it is normally meant to designate a rigid finalist or mechanist conception of historical unfolding that makes the future appear as an inevitable and predetermined result of the past.
This article about political philosophy or theory is a stub.