We may only be 200 years, old but...

Ok, so I have two questions for you:

1- When does "history" begin?

2- When, how & why does something become "historical" ?

Why am I asking these questions? Well, because there's this girl in my class who seems to think that California doesn't have a lot of "history" because it's "so new." Now, I let this go because she's from California (or so I thought. She's really more of a transplant I think. I think that one of her parents has a job that moves a lot (because later she mentioned having lived in Paris and New York), so she isn't really Californian so it's super likely that she never learned anything about CA history) and also because it's hard to argue that if you don't know the other person's concept of history. I remember reading something for French last semester that mentioned how some French people think it's funny that we call something "historical" that's happened within the past century or so. And I must say, this is totally unfair. We aren't as old as Europe, so we can't possible have "historical" events or anythings from several centuries ago, but does that mean we can't have history for another few centuries? And yes, California is relatively young. It became the 31st state in the US in 1850. But before that we had the missions, which were built between 1769 & 1833 (these dates from Wikipedia, so take them with a grain of salt, but it's most likely the right time period more or less). So, that's already a fair amount of time from then to now. So why are we without history? When does "history" begin for these people? It definitely seems to me that "history" begins only when the Europeans discover something. Especially the British or French, maybe (seeing as how the missions were constructed by the Spaniards). Really, that's another thing I learned in my French class: in the European point of view, they kind of "began" Africa's "history" by bringing "civilisation" and creating countries. I'm not putting down the Europeans. I'm just saying. I for one am glad to be in a European-based country (granted, who knows what the world would be like otherwise. Some countries (maybe continents) might have been better off. Currently, I have a somewhat deep fear of Africa. I'm about 85% sure that if I went there, especially to sub-Saharan Africa, I'd be shot. I stereotype, I guess, but I don't plan on risking it. But if the corrupt leaders in Africa weren't benefiting so much from trading their natural resources (oil, diamonds, etc) with other more powerful countries, Africa might not scare me so much. Then I'd only not want to go because of the ridiculous heat (I'm a heat wimp. After about 75 degrees I practically refuse to go outside)). So anyways, just two questions. How much time must pass before something can be historical. I'm sure there are some laws and such about that on a country-to-country basis (to protect landmarks & other things considered important to history), but on a world-wide scale it would be harder to decide.