Romans; Moslem Civilization of North Africa; Native America

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Historical Research

• Research Methods and Data
• College of Advancing Studies
• Brendan Rapple

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Types of History

• History in terms of nations very common
• Sometimes regional history is studied, e.g.
• Latin America Eastern Europe Middle East South
  East Asia
• A Civilization
• Romans Moslem Civilization of North Africa
  Native American Civilization of South America.
• Sometimes its Periods
• Renaissance
• Reformation
• 30 Years War
• The Enlightenment
• The Dark Ages

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More Specific Topics

• Columbus discovering or rediscovering America
  The Vietnam Conflict Watergate Salem Witch
  Trials Battle of Leningrad
• Topics are often Categorized
• Intellectual history Cultural history Social
  history Economic history Religious history
  Educational history
• Many of these can be Subdivided
• The HISTORY OF WOMEN as a category of cultural or
  social history
• Historical analysis may be directed toward an
  individual, an idea, a movement, or an
  institution.

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Sometimes Questions can be very Broad

• What caused societal revolutions in China,
  France, Russia?
• How have major social institutions, like
  medicine, developed and changed over two
  centuries?
• How have basic social relationships, like
  feelings about the value of children, changed
  over the centuries?
• Is race declining in significance compared to
  social class as a major division in the U.S.?
• Why did South Africa develop a system of greater
  racial separation as the U.S. moved toward
  greater racial integration?
• What caused fall of Roman Empire?

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Facts

• Battle of Waterloo was a fact
• Made up of many smaller facts, i.e. facts as
• Events
• charges and retreats
• heads smashed by cannon balls
• orders shouted by officers
• Objects
• field guns
• Food depots
• Corpses

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• Also by IDEAS and VALUES held by each of the
  combatants.
• And each of these facts as event, object, idea
  can be further subdivided.

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NAPOLEON

• We may be reasonably sure of
• his place of birth
• his date of birth
• the physical scene at Waterloo

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• But what of
• the morale at the battle?
• the frustration leading to death of ex-emperor?
• the depth of his love for Josephine?
• why he wanted to be emperor?

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Interpretation

• Historians rely on records of events that were
  made by others, e.g.
• journalist
• court reporter
• diarist
• photographer
• These recordings involve interpretive acts.
• They involve certain biases, values, and
  interests of those who recorded them, i.e. they
  attended to some details and omitted others.
• Thus, interpretation exists even before historian
  enters the picture.

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Essential to Test and Evaluate Evidence

• Free from bias?
• Was source capable intellectually to provide a
  sound interpretation?
• Is evidence (and the sources interpretation)
  supported by evidence from other sources?

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Historian adds still another layer of
interpretation

• She stresses or ignores certain data.
• She organizes data into categories/patterns.

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History is a Representation of the Past

• But representations may be hindered by
• lack of ability of historian
• lack of evidence
• historians biases
• historians interpretation
• sheer desire to present a false picture

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Very Different Treatments

• Teaching of History in
• Palestinian Schools
• Israeli Jewish Schools
• Zulu Schools
• Afrikaner Boer Schools

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History often very Specialized

• Today historians often have a methodological
  specialization
• Historians who study the Depression of the 1930s
  need to have quite a sophisticated knowledge of
  economics.
• Historians who study social mobility in the U.S.
  should be trained in aspects of social science.
• Historians who study farming in Central America
  must have a strong knowledge of agricultural
  techniques.
• Cultural historians must have strong backgrounds
  in such subjects as literary theory,
  anthropology, art history, or musicology.

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Recent Developments in Historical Writing

• Change from political to social history, from the
  public life of the nation to the private life of
  citizens
• Many studies of
• lives of women and children
• slaves
• ethnic groups
• factory workers
• the family, etc.
• Thus, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality have
  supplanted traditional political, diplomatic and
  intellectual history.
• There are now no more people without a history
  (Wolf, 1982).

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• In reality, for the most part, these earlier
  historians were concerned overwhelmingly with a
  decided minority of the population in terms of
  class, ethnicity, region, and gender, and tended
  to confuse the history of one group with the
  history of the nation
• (Lawrence W. Levine, Amer. Hist. Rev. June, 1989)

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Change to More Democratic History was Resisted

• Today we must face the discouraging prospect
  that we all, teachers and pupils alike, have lost
  much of what this earlier generation possessed,
  the priceless asset of a shared culture. Today
  imaginations have become starved or stunted . . .
  Furthermore, many of the younger practitioners of
  our craft, and those who are still apprentices,
  are products of lower middle-class or foreign
  origins, and their emotions not infrequently get
  in the way of historical reconstructions. They
  find themselves in a very real sense outsiders on
  our past and feel themselves shut out. This is
  certainly not their fault, but it is true. They
  have no experience to assist them, and the chasm
  between them and the Remote Past widens every
  hour . . . What I fear is that the changes
  observant in the background and training of the
  present generation will make it impossible for
  them to communicate and to reconstruct the past
  for future generations. (Carl Bridenbaugh, Amer.
  Hist. Rev. Jan., 1963 Bridenbaugh was President
  of the Amer. Hist. Soc.)

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Among Some New Approaches

• Cultural History
• Many dimensions.
• Quantitative History
• Statistical methods
• Voting records
• Population analyses
• Literacy counts, etc.
• Feminist History
• Feminist historians frequently question
  male-dominated assumptions and data on women in
  other cultures.
• Biological Environmental History
• Studies in nutrition, disease, such elements of
  the environment as plants, animals, land, and the
  atmosphere.

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Sources

• Usually limited and indirect.
• Historian is limited to what sources survive --
  usually most evidence has been destroyed.
• A surviving building looks different in 2006 than
  it did in 1806.
• For example, today it's in the "old style" back
  then it may have been very new.

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Primary Sources

• Manuscripts/Documents
• Charters, Laws, Archives of official minutes or
  records, Letters, Memoirs, Official publications,
  Wills, Newspapers and magazines, Maps,
  Catalogues, Inscriptions, Graduation records,
  Bills, lists, deeds, contracts, etc., etc.
• Objects
• Relics, Coins, Stamps, Skeleton, Fossils,
  Weapons, Tools, Utensils, Pictures, Furniture,
  Clothing, Coins, Food, Books, Scrolls
• Also Art Objects
• Sculptures, Paintings, Pottery
• Also Films, Photographs, Buildings
• Oral Testimony also important as primary sources
• Thus, evidence or sources includes many
  categories beyond written texts.

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External Criticism

• Check if the evidence is authentic/genuine.
• Researcher must discover frauds, forgeries,
  hoaxes, inventions.
• Chemical analysis of paint, ink, paper,
  parchment, cloth.
• Carbon dating of artifacts.
• Ask such questions as
• Was the knowledge the source aims to transmit
  available at the time?
• Is it consistent with what is already known about
  author/period?
• What about beautiful Greek coin just discovered
  and bearing the date 499 B.C.?

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Internal Criticism

• Evidence is genuine, but can we trust what it
  tells us?
• Does document present a faithful/true report?
• Was document's author a competent observer?
• Was she too sympathetic or too adversely
  critical?
• Was she pressured to twist or exclude facts?
• Was documentary record made long after events
  described?
• Does her story agree with that of other witnesses?

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Secondary Sources

• Not ORIGINAL sources
• No direct physical connection to event studied
• Examples include
• history books
• articles in encyclopedias
• prints of paintings or replicas of art objects
• reviews of research