Writing History : Knowing Your Sources
History can be simply explained as an exploration of the past. In order to explore the past, historians will investigate many sources from a period of time in an attempt to find the answers they seek. Accordingly, there exists a close relationship between the historian and their sources, but it is not one of unblinking trust or loyalty. Sources can misrepresent and they can lie, therefore the historian must be critical when analysing their sources for how they represent the past. History can also be explained, with more complexity, as a particular way of seeing the past: a point of view constructed by the historian. This essay will introduce you to the types of sources historians use, and how the sources are used to craft an interpretation of the past.
First, we can address the question: what is history? Brundage encourages us not to think of history as a passive, static discipline, but as a “dynamic process” (2017, p. 1). History is not (or should not be) a bland record of dates and figures; it is an exciting, lively debate about the past and past events. This 101 series defines history as a dialogue between facts of the past, perspectives of the present, and visions of the future. When thinking about the writing of history, it is useful to think in the framework of Brundage’s definition of history as an “evolving, intellectual system” (2017, p. 2). As we will see throughout the series, the way history has been recorded and written has changed dramatically over the years. This is known as historiography (Brundage 2017, p. 16). More explicitly, historiography can be defined as “works of history that seek to shape opinion about a particular aspect of the past” (Cullen 2016, p. 23). Over the course of this series, we will engage with different practices within the “evolving, intellectual system” of history to see how written histories shape our perspective of the past.
Another important question to ask is what do we want to find out through history? Scheuler identifies that we want to access the “ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of people in the past” through historical inquiry (2014, p.165). When we study historiography, we are therefore trying to access how people’s relationship to the past has changed and evolved. Brundage recognises history as a discipline that “imposes pattern and meaning” on past events (2017, p. 132). Engaging with historiography therefore allows us to expose these “patterns and meanings”. Before we explore the different types of history, we must consider the following: what are the sources of historical inquiry? And how do we use them to form these “patterns and meanings”?
The most important part of any good history writing is the selection of sources. Cullen viscerally describes sources as the “very tissue” of your historical analysis (2016, p. 22). There are two main categories of sources: primary and secondary. Primary sources are critical to original historical research. They are the “raw materials” of history, or in other words, the first hand-accounts of the past (e.g., diary entries, official policy documents, newspaper articles written at the time under study, and so on) (Brundage 2017, p. 17; Cullen 2016, p. 22). For example, if you wanted to research the Suffragette movement, the image [below left] of a Votes For Women newspaper from 1911 would be a primary source. Written works, such as a book [below right] on the topic of study, in this scenario would be used as a secondary source. Secondary sources are the interpretations of historical events (Cullen 2016, p. 23). These are typically the works of other historians, such as books or essays; and even films can be a source of history. These sources are good for contextualising the period of study. It is best to use a combination of primary and secondary sources in your historical research, that way you engage in a direct dialogue with the past, with perspectives in the present, to build you analysis.
