Class 1: Source Analysis

[Jubal]

Welcome to my first actual class! I've prepared an article and a task to do for you, if you can be bothered. Do discuss and get talking, learning by asking questions is probably far better than any of the crap I've written for you guys.

CLASS ARTICLE

Spoiler

Sources: What To Look For

This is intended as a brief guide to quick analysis of source material. Working through the basics of a source is a key historical skill, and asking the right questions and finding the answers are both equally important.

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
When we have a source, our aim is to see how it can be best used to inform us as historians and whether it backs up or counters our arguments. We cannot, however, simply take everything at face value, nor do we necessarily know everything we would wish to about the provenance of a source.

The key things to look for are, firstly, things which would make the account less reliable, and/or biased towards a particular point of view. This is the case both for academic historians of the modern age and for sources from the time. Secondly, to make sure the source tells you what you think it does ascertaining the date and the reason for it being written are important. With a sheet of paper in front of you it may not always be initially obvious precisely when it was written, which can confuse an argument. Additionally, if a piece is satirical it may be arguing the opposite of what it appears to at first glance – and there can be other confusing factors such as errors in translation, remarks added or changed by copyists who may either be embellishing or hostile to the original author, and so on.

To synthesise that into a more compact format, here is a list of good starting questions when confronted with new material:
-   Why was the source written? What type of document is it?
-   Who wrote it? What about them can we know personally that might have influenced them?
-   If we do not know who exactly, what sort of person?
-   In either case, how might their societal position and culture have affected them?
-   When was the source written? How precisely can we know?

The remainder of this document will try and deal with these starting questions – these are only pointers for how to think about material, but this basic checklist can go a long way.

DOCUMENT TYPES & REASONS
This is in many ways the simplest initial question to answer, but can get far more complex.

The type of document is generally fairly obvious from reading it, though there are some caveats it is worth noting. Letters, inventories, lists of supplies or accounting books, and of course descriptive chronicles all have such familiar or at least obvious styles that they will not be recounted here. However, documents can have multiple purposes. At some points in history, for example, political party leaders would set out election manifestos in the form of a letter to their constituents – a letter which was in fact intended to be read by everyone in the country. Similarly, public pronouncements could be in the form of private letters at some times.

This leads us on to the reasons for writing. An inventory of items, for example, could be written for a number of reasons – it could be a probate inventory, written after someone's death, or it could be book-keeping on the part of the owner of the items, or it could be to inform a third party (law court, owner of a firm, nobleman) of transactions made. Accounts and factual data designed for personal use are generally among the more reliable of sources, though their uses are also limited. The reason for this is simple; it is much harder to have multiple interpretations of the fact that John Green of Yaxley was paid three shillings and eight pence for his work last Saturday than whether he did a good job or not. However, we may primarily be interested in whether he did a good job, which the simple fact of the data will not show.
Chronicles and letters are more complex to think about – I shall deal with the latter first. Firstly, think about whether a letter is genuinely personal. Some are; some are in fact open letters or propaganda pieces designed to be seen by a wider audience. A letter writer may be addressing a political opponent but in fact playing to the gallery of their own supporters.

Chronicles are effectively histories written close to the time – journals of current affairs, and so on. These function partly as a historical record, but only partly. Books written ostensibly about the past are often written with the present more in mind. A Tudor chronicler would be expected to give a negative view of Richard III, the king defeated by the first Tudor king at Bosworth, because doing so would help underline the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty. History was often seen in the past as something of a rhetorical art. The aim was not a vigorous soul-baring search for the truth, but to create the best and most convincing story from the facts available.

Other types of document worth noting include legal records, often better kept than many other documents and thus a vital source of information. Parish registers of births and deaths are also useful, as are literary sources – a playwright or poet or author is inevitably going to be influenced by the world around him and will often be either consciously or subconsciously commenting on it in his work.

A note should also, finally, be made about pictorial sources. Reading into pictures is an art all of its own, but important inferences can be made easily in many cases too. For example, portraits of Martin Luther during the reformation tend to show him with his head raised, sometimes with a halo, as a very heroic figure. Other theologians tend to be much more "human" in portrayal, which is evidence for Luther's position seen as the figurehead of the movement. Be wary of satire in images, as the difference between heroism and mockery can be done subtly. There are a wide variety of different symbols, animals, and styles of clothing or expression which can mean different things in different time periods or places, which can be confusing, but the general impression from an image is generally in itself a decent historical tool.

AUTHORS – HISTORICAL
The background of the author is key to an understanding of a historical source. Who were they? What might they have thought? What prejudices might they have had and what role might they have played in events? In matters of history, there is no such thing as an impartial witness. We can only ever see our past through the eyes of those who saw it originally, with their interpretations of it being our starting point for sifting towards what actually happened.

We do not need to have a record of who wrote a source to begin finding information about them and who they may have been. For many periods of history the simple fact that they were writing puts them cleanly in a minority of the population. Other cues can be found from the text itself – scriptural or classical references probably imply greater levels of education (particularly quotations in Latin or Greek), and specific items can give hints (if an inventory has an order for psalters, it is likely to be from a church account book, and so on).

Bias can work in two ways – we can extrapolate the person from their biases, and probably biases from the person. For example, if a source gives a very negative view of Martin Luther, we can assume that the author is not a Lutheran. If we know an author of a source about the Reformation is a Calvinist, we can expect that they will portray Catholics in a less favourable light.

AUTHORS – HISTORIANS, CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Historians are, or at least often profess or attempt to be, less subjective than contemporary viewers. This does not mean that they succeed. A source is certainly not unbiased simply due to a professional historian having written it. Historians have a vested interest in writing material that will get through a peer reviewing process; their career success is measured by publications and citations in journals, and this system helps give a strong incentive to avoid excessively biased interpretations. Nevertheless, the cultural and political landscape they live in, their own particular interests and views, and the state of historiography at the time will all influence how they write.

Firstly, a historian's personal views. These are much the same as the biases of a contemporary author; historians are as prone as anyone else to identify more with those they perceive as similar or empathise with. A left-wing historian can be expected to favour the causes of commoners and peasant uprisings, be more derogatory about the influence of colonialism or globalised capitalism, and emphasise the progress made by left-wing governments. A right wing historian may have the reverse view, focusing on the maintenance of tradition, on individuals and nobles more than large-scale peasant risings, and being an apologist for more traditional viewpoints. Historians will also be affected by their affiliation to a particular country, and by their religious upbringing or lack thereof.

A lot of these are compounded by a historian's academic interests. That is to say that a religious man who chooses to study history may be proportionally more interested in the history of religion. It is rare to find a major expert on religious history who has no religious affiliation, and many of the most prominent religious historians of the twentieth century were themselves ministers, priests, or preachers of some description.

This leads on to the cultural background a historian is writing in. A historian writing in the 1920s in America was writing during the strongest anti-catholic period the nation's history; therefore we can expect that when writing for the public, or their colleagues, they are likely to be influenced by those prevailing attitudes. Racial and racist elements in history were not uncommon during times when eugenics or racial profiling were common, and of course Russian historians for most of the C20th tended to be entirely Marxist in outlook. Considering the culture a historian lived in may give clues as to their possible slants and biases.

Marxism leads on to the last thing to consider, historiography. History as an academic discipline has seen a great number of shifts in methodology and prevailing opinion, from more analytical to more qualitative methods and back again, between histories primarily aimed at charting the course of nations or institutions to histories based around creating a full picture of a given time period at the expense of narrative, and so on. A historian in the 1950s or 1960s may well have used a Marxist analysis in his or her work due to that being the prevailing methodology of the time; in the 1980s, a more revisionist interpretation would have been dominant.

DATING
Finding the date of a source, where it is not given on the source itself by the author, is done by three methods. The first is physical, using methods such as carbon dating, and will not be dealt with here.

Method two is to mark out boundaries – essentially points between which the source must fall due to things it does or does not reference. An obvious example would be specific mentions of events in the source, but inferences of events can also be made. If a person is mentioned as holding a specific title or office, that gives a good potential indicator. Legislation and systems of government can also give a hint – a source discussing some groups of people voting must be from after the franchise was extended to those people, or use of particular systems of weights and measures can also be helpful.

The third method is to match up data from the source to historical trends and patterns. This can be numerical or discussing particular ideas or technologies. In numerical terms, economic trends are key. Matching prices, particularly wage levels or key indicator goods such as grain, to known historical patterns of inflation and price changes can be important in dating a source. Longevity or human metrics such as heights are possible to use, but should be approached with more care due to their huge variability.  Ideas are also worth using – many ideologies have a certain lifespan, and so that can be used as a dating tool. Eugenics, for example, was in vogue from the 1880s to the middle of the 20th century; Christian Humanism, the first half of the C16th.

As a final note, remember calendar changes can have an effect on dates.
Two brief points of interest to note:
-   Changes from the Julian to Gregorian calendars. Our current, Gregorian, calendar had a growing difference from the older Julian over time. An original date from 1740 in a British source would be eleven days different to the "correct" Gregorian one.
-   Legal starts to the year have not always been on January 1. In England the legal start of the year was 25 March until 1752, so something recorded in a legal record as being in 1502 might be as late as what we would see as 24 March 1503.

CLASS TASK

Here are five sources vaguely relating to the state of Germany between 1510 and 1530.

For each one, write a short summary of it, covering as much information as you can about what you think on;
- When the source may have been written
- What sort of person may have written it
- What their views or biases on any particular subjects may have been
- What trustworthy information or inference you think the source really tells you; how does it inform your view of Germany in this period?

Please don't google the text, as it will make the exercise pointless and you will learn nothing whatsoever. PM completed notes to me and I'll give you feedback on them (ask if you need help with the PM system, basically you just go on my profile and hit "send personal message").

Think laterally, and good luck!

SOURCE ONE
"The thought of the Turkish danger was much before men's minds. Some weight attached to the advice of the Pope. German national feeling was hardly self conscious and was only active in restricted circles, but it was not a negligible force and it told in favour of Charles. He was indeed King of Spain, but he was born within the limits of the Empire, and his family was one of the foremost in Germany. It is interesting to note, too, that the centralization and efficiency of the French monarchy was in itself a deterrent"

SOURCE TWO
"...this money [tithes/ religious taxes] might be put to better uses, as to put on foot great armaments and extend the boundaries of the empire; also to conquer the Turks, if this seems desirable; that many who, because of poverty, steal and rob may honestly earn their living once more, and that those who otherwise must starve may receive contributions from the state to mitigate their need"

SOURCE THREE
"Luther's theses differed from the ordinary propositions for debate because they were forged in anger... this polemic would evoke a deep Ja Wohl among the Germans"

SOURCE FOUR
"Seventh, the word of god should always be preached faithfully and truly in the territory, and all sophistry and legalism eliminated and the books which contain them burned.
Eighth, the courts throughout the territory should be arranged in the most convienient way and the clergy excluded from them, so they are administered with the least cost.
Ninth, the whole population of each court district should elect a judge each year and ten jurors, to serve for the whole year."

SOURCE FIVE
"First. I will not oppose a ruler who, even though he does not tolerate the Gospel, will smite and punish these peasants without offering to submit the case to judgment. For he is within his rights, since the peasants are not contending any longer for the Gospel, but have become faithless, perjured, disobedient, rebellious murderers, robbers, and blasphemers, whom even heathen rulers have the right and power to punish; nay, it is their duty to punish them, for it is just for this purpose that they bear the sword, and are "the ministers of God upon him that doeth evil.""

Any questions about the main article, please post below! I'll try and recommend some reading soon.

[comrade_general]

Teacher, how long do we have to do this first assignment?

[Jubal]

As long as you like; I just provide the material, you do it in your own time. 

[comrade_general]

Can we do any research at all? Or is this just to present our own generalized speculation?

[Jubal]

You can certainly do general background research onto the time period, but avoid putting large chunks of sources into Google as that would give the game away somewhat.

[comrade_general]

Still waiting on my grade.

[Jubal]

I probably want to rewrite this course entirely now, but I'll get yours marked before I do...

[comrade_general]

Entirely? What's wrong with it?

[Scarlet]

He's just done a year of History at Cambridge Don't ask!

[Jubal]

ALL OF THE THINGS

I mean seriously this isn't great.  Mainly I think I want more of a focus on getting information into people, because increasingly I feel that stuff like source analysis just doesn't work that well unless you have a bit more context/breadth of understanding.

[Will]

Not sure how I haven't seen this bit of the forum before since I originally signed up to History! (oops)

ALL OF THE THINGS

I mean seriously this isn't great.  Mainly I think I want more of a focus on getting information into people, because increasingly I feel that stuff like source analysis just doesn't work that well unless you have a bit more context/breadth of understanding.

I while ago I read ''The English Civili War At First Hand'' by Tristram Hunt (think he is actually a labour MP), not read any book like it. The format for the book is a few paragraphs of explanation and then a quote from a relevant letter or something. The accounts of the time and letters would have made a bit of sense on their own, but the explanation added a huge amount of depth (and I guess vice versa since most books are written without sources included).