Historical Method

Concept

Historical research is the systematic collection and objective evaluation of evidence about past events in order to test hypotheses, explain causes and trends, and so help us understand the present and anticipate the future. Unlike experiments, the past cannot be repeated or manipulated, so the researcher works only with surviving traces and must judge how far they can be trusted. The usual sequence is: choose a problem and form a hypothesis; collect sources (called heuristics); subject them to criticism (external, then internal); synthesise and interpret the verified facts; and finally present the findings in an organised narrative, often chronological. The writing of history and the study of how it has been written is historiography. R. G. Collingwood is associated with the idea that the historian must re-enact past thought in the mind.

Concept

A primary source comes directly from the time and person under study: eyewitness accounts, diaries, letters, official records, archives, inscriptions, coins, photographs, speeches and artefacts. A secondary source is an account written by someone who did not witness the event, such as a textbook, encyclopaedia, biography or later history. Sources are also divided into records (intentionally preserved evidence, such as minutes and chronicles) and relics or remains (unintentional evidence, such as tools, buildings and skeletons). Oral history collects first-hand testimony through interviews and is treated as primary evidence for recent events. Whether a source is primary or secondary depends on how close the author was to the event and on the research question.

Concept

Historical criticism asks two questions in a fixed order. External criticism (lower criticism) checks authenticity: is the document genuine, who wrote it, when and where? It examines handwriting, paper, ink, language, style, signatures and seals, and exposes forgeries. Internal criticism (higher criticism) assumes the document is genuine and tests credibility: what does the text mean (positive internal criticism) and is the author reliable, competent, close to the events, honest and free from bias (negative internal criticism)? Corroboration, the confirmation of a fact by independent sources, strengthens credibility.

Concept

Historiography traces how historians have understood and written about the past. Herodotus is called the Father of History for his Histories, while Thucydides is admired for his critical, evidence-based approach. Leopold von Ranke, the father of modern scientific history, insisted on archival documents and on showing the past as it actually happened. Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah is a landmark of the philosophy of history, and Kalhana’s Rajatarangini (twelfth century) is a celebrated chronicle of Kashmir. Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre founded the Annales school with its emphasis on long-term social and economic structures. E. H. Carr, in What Is History?, described history as a continuous dialogue between the historian and the facts, and between the present and the past; Arnold Toynbee wrote A Study of History on the rise and fall of civilisations by challenge and response; Karl Marx’s historical materialism interprets history through economic relations.

Concept

The historian cannot observe events, repeat them or control variables, and the surviving record is partial, often written by the powerful and sometimes forged or destroyed. Interpretation is therefore open to subjectivity. Typical errors include presentism or anachronism (judging the past by present values or concepts), selective use of evidence to support a favourite view, hindsight bias, the single-cause fallacy and the post hoc fallacy (assuming that because B followed A, A caused B). Generalisations from unique events are limited, which is why historical conclusions are expressed as probabilities.