The first thing that the student has to learn is not to believe a thing merely because it is in the documents, and not for a moment to imagine that the documents are there simply to be believed.

Herbert Butterfield

Some issues to keep in mind when studying history:

• Language changes over time. Having a ‘gay night out’ in the 1870s does not mean the same thing as it does in the 1970s.
• Documents are produced in specific societies. It is often necessary to know a great deal of history in order to be equipped for interpreting documents.
• Personal memoirs should be approached with GREAT skepticism and are the lowest grade of historical document. More often than not, people lie about themselves.
• Newspapers do not necessarily give you the facts! ‘Fake News’ is nothing new.
• We need to know just what it is we do not know. Rumsfeld’s ‘known unknowns’ do indeed matter.
• If you are serious about history, you CANNOT rely only upon documents written in English. An English-only approach hamstrings you from the start. Nor should you rely upon only typed or published documents. Avoid foreign and handwritten sources at your own peril.


What is a Primary Source?

A primary source is a text that provides the raw data (information) for the historian. It is a text that was composed, collected, printed, or published contemporary or nearly contemporary with the time period being studied. Written documents such as letters, speeches, diary entries, newspapers, and government records are examples of primary sources. Works of art, photographs, films, cartoons, novels, buildings, maps, folk tales, and music can also be primary sources.

What is a Secondary Source?

Secondary sources are texts that provide explanations of, or judgments about, the primary information or historical events. Secondary sources are generally written after the time of the event with which they are concerned and contain interpretations of the primary sources. It is important to understand that secondary sources may reach vastly different conclusions even though they rely upon the same primary sources. Edward Gibbons’ History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is an example of a secondary source.

Question Your Sources

When evaluating documents, you will need to do some difficult thinking. Not all texts are equal or representative of a historical era. Not all are reliable. Some may contain downright fabrications. Primary sources, of course, also contain assumptions, inferences, ideology, and opinions. Authors from different historical eras also expected their readers to bring some basic knowledge to the table when reading, basic knowledge that YOU don’t necessarily have. For example, when Shakespeare has the Ghost in Hamlet say that he is ‘confined to fast in fires till his foul crimes are burnt and purged away’ he expects his audience to understand the reference to the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Rigorous students of history must always ask questions about the sources.

Who wrote this document? Who is the author and what is his or her place in society? What relationship does this person have to the event about which he writes? What is this person’s occupation? Is this a peasant? A president? A factory-worker? Male or female? From what perspective does this person witness the events described in the document? Was he, for example, a member of the Continental Congress in 1776 or a member of the Philadelphia lamp-lighters’ association? Was he a young or old man when he wrote? Does this perspective limit the value of the person’s insights? Does the author have an obvious bias or conflict of interest simply by the fact of who he or she is? (For example, we may expect the writings of an economist of the former Soviet Union to have a built in bias for Communism.)


When was the document written? Start by looking at the date it was created. What is the historical context of the document? HISTORICAL CONTEXT — that is the political, social, cultural, and economic setting of an event (including the creation of a document) – is one of the essential concepts for the study of history. The historical context of a document tells us a great deal about how we should approach the information. Was the document written before or after the French Revolution, for example? Was it written during the optimism of the Roaring Twenties or the despair of the Great Depression? Was it written during the Middle Ages or the Enlightenment? How do the values and presumptions of the author differ from or own and how might that influence the content of the document?


Who is the author’s intended audience? Who exactly did the author intend to be the reader of this document? Diary entries, for example, are rather different from letters sent home to your parents from college. Scholarly articles for publication are written differently than court records. Who might be the indirect audience of this document? For example, the president addresses the US Congress in his State of the Union Address, but the speech is now also directed to the entire nation. How does the intended audience shape the content or tone of the document?


What does the document say? What is the central point of the document? What precisely does the author wish to convey in his or her writing? Does the author have a thesis? What — in one sentence — is that thesis? You should be able to identify passages in which the author makes the most important points. Does the author make a persuasive argument? Be an active reader and underline passages, write comments and questions on the document; engage in a dialogue with your text. What insights did you gain into the historical period under investigation by reading the document?


What does the document mean? Analyzing primary sources requires you to make sense of it all and often read between the lines to identify concerns that aren’t always made explicit. Documents can tell us much about the society that produced them, but we must make an effort to think critically about the text. This means that proper close reading entails thought beyond simply reading. What can we learn from this text beyond what the author wished to tell us? What does the author imply in the text? What insights does he provide about his society? Use imagination and logic. Apply what you do know about the period and the author and attempt to make some statement about the meaning of the document. How does the information from this document help answer the focus questions presented in the unit of study? Does this document support or contradict other documents or secondary interpretations on the subject in question? When you relate the content of this document to others, what larger historical picture or story emerges? What patterns emerge when you group this document with others?


How reliable is this source? Reliability refers to our ability to trust the consistency of the author’s account of the truth. Can we trust what the author says? Reliable texts display patterns of verifiable truths. An author who is inconsistently truthful loses credibility. Evaluating truth, however, can be tricky since there are all sorts of reasons that a person may add or delete information in his document. Take, for example, a high-ranking German administrator who worked for Hitler who writes his memoirs later in life, a credible source to be sure on the Nazi High Command. However, during Word War II this man committed atrocities against civilians though he fails to mention this in his memoirs and actively covers up his involvement in the Holocaust by blaming others. Knowing his possible motive for altering information, we would be correct to question the veracity of his account. However, on many other issues, this high-ranking German official might prove utterly reliable; the only gap in his reliability may be in the omission of details about the atrocities he committed. Corroborating information is vitally important to the serious historian. You should always approach sources with a certain amount of skepticism and check that your sources accurately reflect reality. Can you verify the author’s claims as facts? An author such as our German administrator above, who seems quite credible, may be utterly unreliable.


1. See Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? (1961).