Making Histories

Where does history come from? Historians use a great many different sources to assemble information on the past. Evidence comes in many forms.

To think like a historian, we must concern ourselves not only with what people did, but also with what they thought they were doing. In every act that humans perform, however simple or banal, they are looking toward the future. Nations don’t go to war for the sake of war; they do so to obtain more territory or to secure borders or to chasten a neighbour in the future. Likewise, individuals make personal choices, such as emigrating or postponing marriage until they are older, because of how their decisions will “pay out” later on.

Peter Moogk, an accomplished historian of New France [Canada], encourages us to develop an deep understanding of past societies: “If a historian is not immersed in the culture of the time being studied and has not grasped its internal logic, then that scholar’s reconstruction of past human behaviour will inevitably be superficial and anachronistic.”[1] To study history properly, we must creep around behind people in the past and try to look at the future through their eyes. In order to do so, we must become open to the institutions and instincts of earlier eras and then consult the detritus and records of our predecessors.

The sources that historians rely upon are grouped under two headings (which sometimes overlap). The first group is primary sources, which are original materials that come to us directly from people in the past. Diaries, letters, and reports of government inquiries are good examples of primary materials. The other group is secondary sources, which generally are documents that examine primary documents and provide an interpretation. Both types are discussed below.

Primary Sources

In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called original source or evidence) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Primary sources are distinguished from secondary sources, which cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources. In some cases, a secondary source may also be a primary source, depending on how it is used. For example, a memoir would be considered a primary source in research concerning its author or about his or her friends characterized within it, but the same memoir would be a secondary source if it were used to examine the culture in which its author lived. “Primary” and “secondary” should be understood as relative terms, with sources categorized according to specific historical contexts and what is being studied.

Using Primary Sources: Historical Method

History as an academic discipline is based on primary sources, as evaluated by the community of scholars for whom primary sources are absolutely fundamental to reconstructing the past. Ideally, a historian will use as many primary sources that were created by the people involved at the time under study as can be accessed. In practice however, some sources have been destroyed, while others are not available for research. In some cases, the only eyewitness reports of an event may be memoirs, autobiographies, or oral interviews taken years later. Sometimes, the only evidence relating to an event or person in the distant past was written or copied decades or centuries later. Manuscripts that are sources for classical texts can be copies or fragments of documents. This is a common problem in classical studies, where sometimes only a summary of a book or letter, but not the actual book or letter, has survived. While some sources are considered more reliable or trustworthy than others (e.g., an original government document containing information about an event vs. a recording of a witness recalling the same event years later), historians point out that hardly any historical evidence can be seen as fully objective, because it is always a product of particular individuals, times, and dominant ideas. This is also why researchers try to find as many records of an event under investigation as possible and attempt to resolve evidence that may present contradictory accounts of the same events.

 

Historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence (including the evidence of archaeology) to research and write historical accounts of the past. Historians continue to debate what aspects and practices of investigating primary sources should be considered, and what constitutes a primary source when developing the most effective historical method. The question of the nature, and even the possibility, of a sound historical method is so central that it has been continuously raised in the philosophy of history as a question of epistemology.

Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources may remain in private hands or are located in archives, libraries, museums, historical societies, and special collections. These can be public or private. Some are affiliated with universities and colleges, while others are government entities. Materials relating to one area might be spread over a large number of different institutions. These can be distant from the original source of the document. For example, the Huntington Library in California houses a large number of documents from the United Kingdom. While the development of technology has resulted in an increasing number of digitized sources, most primary source materials are not digitized and may only be represented online with a record or finding aid.

Traditionally, historians attempt to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. They also use such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved. Historians often consult all three. However, writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.

Archaeology is one discipline that is especially helpful to historians. By dealing with buried sites and objects, it contributes to the reconstruction of the past. However, archaeology is constituted by a range of methodologies and approaches that are independent from history. In other words, archaeology does not “fill the gaps” within textual sources but often contrasts its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources.

Archaeology also provides an illustrative example of how historians can be helped when written records are missing. Unearthing artifacts and working with archaeologists to interpret them based on the expertise of a particular historical era and cultural or geographical area is one effective way to reconstruct the past. If written records are missing, historians often attempt to collect oral accounts of particular events, preferably by eyewitnesses, but sometimes, because of the passage of time, they are forced to work with the following generations. Thus, the question of the reliability of oral history has been widely debated.

When dealing with many government records, historians usually have to wait for a specific period of time before documents are declassified and available to researchers. For political reasons, many sensitive records may be destroyed, withdrawn from collections, or hidden, which may also encourage researchers to rely on oral histories. Missing records of events, or processes that historians believe took place based on very fragmentary evidence, forces historians to seek information in records that may not be a likely sources of information. As archival research is always time-consuming and labor-intensive, this approach poses the risk of never producing desired results, despite the time and effort invested in finding informative and reliable resources. In some cases, historians are forced to speculate (this should be explicitly noted) or simply admit that we do not have sufficient information to reconstruct particular past events or processes.

Reading the Records

Primary documents can get you closer to actual participants in past events, but they are not without problems. Think about it: Has anyone ever lied or embellished a story in his or her diary? Has there ever been an inquiry without a political agenda in the background? Have you ever read a letter and wondered if it reveals the writer’s thoughts or what the writer thinks you will understand by it? Take the Jesuit Relations, for example. These are reports submitted by Jesuit missionaries in New France to their masters back home. There are many truths contained in them, but you have to keep in mind that the Jesuits who prepared the Relations knew that they would be read by people who had the power to cut off their supplies or to send them the reinforcements and materials essential to success. In the reports, were they overly optimistic about the likelihood of religious conversions among the First Nations? Did they dramatize or downplay daily life? Both?

Salt and pepper: comparing two paintings

If letters and reports can be duplicitous, what about paintings and maps? Take a look at Benjamin West’s famous 1770 work, The Death of General Wolfe (Figure 1.6), which hangs in the National Gallery in Ottawa. Clearly it is a very romantic interpretation of what actually took place in 1759, but what truths does it reveal … despite itself?

The pepper to West’s salt is The Death of Montcalm by François-Louis-Joseph Watteau, painted in 1800. It, too, hangs in the National Gallery. It shows Montcalm dying on the battlefield, despite the fact that he died in a surgeon’s home.

In order to appreciate and make the most of primary documents, we need to follow some basic practices of critical enquiry. The questions that follow are ones that you should ask of your sources (even secondary sources) and have been posed by the historians whose articles and books you will read.

Identify the Source

• What is the nature of the source?

  You’ll want to know what kind of source it is — a newspaper, an oral history account, a diary entry, a government document, etc. — because different kinds of sources must be considered differently. For example, you might think about a written description of a fur trade post differently than you would think about a photograph of one, or you might ask different questions of census data regarding poverty in the 1830s and 1840s than you would of the recollections of Irish immigrants who arrived in the midst of the 1834 cholera epidemic. Knowing the type of source you’re dealing with can help you start to think about appropriate questions.

• Who created this source, and what do you know about them?

  Knowing something about who created the source can help you determine what biases they might have had, what their relationship to the things they described in the source might have been, and whether this source should be considered credible. Keep in mind that someone doesn’t have to be a famous leader or play a dramatic role in history to be a credible source. In terms of understanding the experience of the War of 1812, for example, the writings of a militia soldier may be as valuable or even much more so than the correspondence of General Isaac Brock.

• When was the source produced?

  Knowing when the source was produced can help you put it into historical perspective. A discussion of slavery in Canada, for example, would obviously be very different in the early 1700s (when most Canadian slaves were Aboriginals), the 1790s (when John Graves Simcoe, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, introduced an Act Against Slavery), and the mid-19th century (when the “underground railway” was shepherding American slaves north to freedom). If you don’t know when a source was written, you can’t put it in historical context and understand how it connects to historical events. If you’re using a first-hand account that was written some time after the events it describes, you might also take into account the passage of time in your analysis. A record of events produced at the time has the advantage of freshness and a first-hand quality; it has the disadvantage of a limited horizon and none of the benefits of hindsight. A subsequent reminiscence or recollection of events may place things in perspective but it will likely lose a sense of the context of decisions and actions and, of course, it is subject to forgetfulness.

• Where was the source produced?

  Just as it is important to situate the source in time, it’s also important to identify where the source was produced. If you found a letter describing Acadia, it would matter quite a bit if the letter was written by someone living and working — or even visiting — the colony as opposed to an official sitting in a chateau somewhere in France.

 Contextualize the Source

• What is the historical context for this source?

  What was going on in the place and time that the source was created? What significant local, regional, or global events might this source relate to? You can look for information about the historical context for your sources in many places. Sometimes sources are packaged along with descriptive information that can help you contextualize them. You can also consult secondary sources (like this textbook) to learn more about the time and place in which the source was created.

• How were the creators of your document(s) connected to their historical context?

  Gender, race, and social and economic class all matter. So does ideological position. An account of the burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal in 1849, for example, will be of value only if you can determine where the creator stood on the issue of the Rebellion Losses Bill. Was he or she opposed? Was the creator involved in the arsonist mob that is described in the source? Figuring out how the author of your primary document fitted into the historical context can help you think more critically and creatively about what he or she had to say.

• Why was the source created in the first place?

  You’ll also want to know the motivations of the person who wrote the source, which may be easier to guess after you know the historical context. Why do you think this source was created? Was it meant to be a private document or was it intended for others to view? How do you know? If there was an intended audience, who was that audience? Family? The general public? Future generations? What did the creator of the source intend for that audience to get out of it? Was he or she trying to persuade people to a particular point of view? Simply recording daily events? Intentionally trying to deceive the audience? Trying to look good in the eyes of the readers and/or posterity?

Naturally, you’ll want to extract as much factual information as you can from the source. Details are what you’re after. But documents from the past are tricky and they might contain a surprise or two. What is the balance in the document between opinion and verifiable fact? Opinion isn’t entirely without value, because you can then ask why the creator of the document held that opinion. Also, ask what the source is not telling you. What information might be withheld? Ask yourself what you expected to see that you didn’t? For example, it might seem odd to find a letter written on July 1, 1867, that makes no mention of Confederation. Was that date not important to everyone in British North America?

In addition you can look at documents for unintentional messages — revelations of perspectives and prejudices that they so took for granted that they weren’t necessarily aware they were transmitting them to their audience. An example is how women are regularly described in historic documents in a vocabulary of dependence and weakness. Finally, be open to being surprised; documents may disclose much more than the facts. It is often only by confronting the original documents that you may be able to do some justice to the truth of the past .

Just one example comes from the journals kept by the Hudson’s Bay Company’s field officers. These journals covered commerce, day-to-day life in the posts and forts, relations with Aboriginal peoples, and personnel issues. The senior clerk at Fort Rupert on Vancouver Island in 1850 recorded in his journal that he was going to discipline some of his men: “I shall put them in Irons,” he wrote. While that in itself may seem surprising, a look at the original document reveals even more: it shows us that the clerk’s mental stability was in free fall. He was so agitated that the word “Irons” is scrawled in letters nearly two inches tall and it is triple-underlined. The nib of his quill pen nearly tore through the page. [2]

Secondary Sources

When historians consult the works of other historians, they are using secondary sources. Overwhelmingly these are documents that examine primary documents and provide an interpretation. The shelves of libraries are full of secondary sources, which may come in the form of books or scholarly journals (such as the Canadian Historical Review or Labour/Le Travail). Every article you read on a historical topic is a secondary source (assuming that it’s not just pure invention and fantasy). These are sources that filter primary evidence. Sometimes that’s good; sometimes it’s not. You, as the reader, have to be critically aware of that filter. And keep in mind that the distinction between primary and secondary is not always clear. For example, let’s say that you’re reading a history of New France written in 1800. It’s a secondary source that made use of primary documents, but it is simultaneously itself a primary source, in that it is evidence of how people thought in 1800.

Making Sense of the Past

Teodoro Agoncillo, a historian of the Philippines, captures in a few lines what most historians know (and often say):

There is a great similarity between legal evidence and historical evidence. The only difference lies in the fact that in legal evidence it is the judge who determines whether the account of a witness is acceptable or not… The historian is prosecuting attorney and defence attorney and the judge all rolled into one, and [she or he] is the narrator and the interpreter.^[1]

This is why historians say that the facts cannot speak for themselves. Our responsibility is to cross-examine the facts and to lay out clearly what they reveal. As the great British historian E. H. Carr wrote in the middle of the last century,

The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: It is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. It was, I think, one of Pirandello’s characters who said that a fact is like a sack – it won’t stand up till you’ve put something in it. The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar’s crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all.^[2]

Events and personalities to which we apply importance are a matter of choice. If we want to tell the story of New France from the point of view of the French, that’s one perspective; if we decide, however, to tell that story from the point of view of the Wendat (on whose territory New France impinged) that will be a very different history. In other words, history doesn’t exist independently of the human imagination: it is something that is created.

Endnotes:

[1] Peter Moogk, “Writing the Cultural History of Pre-1760 European Colonists,” French Colonial History 4 (2003): 5.

[2] Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Fort Rupert Journals 1 (638), 28 April 1850.

Attributions

Figure 1.5
Fondos archivo by Archivo-FSP is used under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.

Figure 1.6
Benjamin West 005 by Alexander Shatulin is in the public domain.

Figure 1.7
The Death of Montcalm is in the public domain.

Figure 1.8
Mort de Montcalm by AYE R is in the public domain.

Figure 1.9
Death of General Montcalm by Jeangagnon is in the public domain.

Figure 1.10
The Death of General Wolfe at the Siege of Quebec by Dcoetzee is in the public domain.

Figure 1.11
Indians at a Hudson Bay Company trading post by Tungsten is in the public domain.

Figure 1.12
E.H. Carr by Themightyquill is in the public domain.