The writing of history; an introduction to historical method

Front matter

Class

Book * P g,3

CQEOHGHI DEPOSIT.

Foreword

This volume is not a revised edition of my Outline of Historical Method; it is an entirely new work. It was written for college students who are beginning their studies in historical research, for teachers of history who have had no critical historical training, and for students of history who are hoping to find in private study some compensation for opportunities not enjoyed in college. This book does not aspire to fill the place of Bernheim's Lehrbuch, but rather to guide the student through his first steps in research, and to prepare him for the study of Bernheim. In a word, it is an "introduction" to historical method.

Although the simple reading of the text might not, I venture to hope, prove unprofitable, it will, nevertheless, yield the best return when studied in connection with a bit of research exemplifying the process I have endeavored to describe. I would suggest that some limited topic be carefully worked over, all the steps in method being taken from the criticism of the sources to the construction of the final narrative with notes. Only by such an experience can one fully understand what critical historical study means and how difficult and exacting the work of the scientific historian is.

Although this volume does not deal with the teaching of history, it has, nevertheless, an important bearing upon it. A teacher who has not read at least an elementary text on historical method and completed a piece of careful scholarly research, lacks one of the most important parts of the equipment of a well-prepared teacher of history. However much historical information such a teacher may have accumulated, he lacks a scientific standard that would enable him to separate the true from the false, to deal scientifically with contradictory statements in secondary works and to protect himself and his pupils against unsound and superficial historical narratives.

It seems extraordinary that it should be necessary to insist upon the importance of what should be self-evident, but the really extraordinary thing about the pedagogical situation is that a large majority of the teachers of history in secondary schools neither possess an elementary knowledge of historical method nor consider such knowledge a necessary part of their equipment as teachers. A teacher of chemistry who could not direct experimental work in a laboratory could neither secure nor hold a position in a good high school today, but the history courses in the high schools are still "passed around" to teachers without technical training.

Fifteen years ago, in the introduction to my Outline of Historical Method, I wrote that "it is the popular belief that any intelligent person, without

FOREWORD technical training, can teach a class in history." The statement is almost as true today as it was then, and I am convinced that there will be little improvement in the situation until the technical side of the history teacher's preparation is insisted upon, and he is required to be as much of a professional as the teacher of the natural sciences. Chemistry would be taught in the high schools today by any. person who could hold a textbook, had not the practice been rendered impossible by the introduction of laboratory work into the secondary schools, thus making a technically trained teacher a necessity. Why should an acquaintance with the theory and practice of historical method not be required of every high school teacher of history?

The examples in the text have been drawn almost exclusively from the period of the French Revolution. The period is important and interesting enough to justify such a course, but it is probable that I would not have exploited it to quite the same extent had it not been the chosen field for my own researches. I should be glad to attract workers to a field "already white for the harvest." Not only does it offer great opportunities, but for no other period, outside of English or American history, is it so easy to acquire the language equipment which makes possible the reading of the sources in the original text.

The manuscript of my book has been read by Professor George L. Burr, and I have profited by many excellent suggestions touching both matter and form. It is but one of many kindnesses that have marked the long years of our friendship.

It is with a feeling of gratitude that I dedicate this volume to Professor Bernheim. I was groping my way in method at a German university when his Lehrbuch appeared; it led me out into the light. It has saved many another lost soul in the quarter of a century of its existence. Bernheim's name should be as familiar to the student of history as Euclid's to the student of mathematics.

Fred Morrow Fling.

Contents

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I. Introduction . . . . . .15

Why History is Studied — What is History — History and Sociology — Synthesis in History and in Sociology — Both History and Sociology Rest on Past Social Facts — The Reality as Natural Science — The Reality as History — History as Science — Necessity of Historical Knowledge — HistoxicjaJ Consciousness — How Historical Knowledge is Acquired-^Naturfc of Historical Method — Histprical Sources — The Steps InHistorical Method — Knowledge of Historical Method of General Value — Languages as Aids to Historical Study — Literature and Historical Study — Art and Historical Study — Logic and Philosophy, and Historical Study — History and the Natural Sciences of Society — Plan of Historical Study — Intensive or Method Work — European Study and Travel.

II

CHOICE OF A SUBJECT. COLLEC- TION AND CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES

The first problem which confronts the beginner in research work is the choice of a subject. It does not present itself in the same way to the undergraduate as to the advanced student. To the undergraduate, who is learning the technique of method, the question as to whether the topic selected for study has been worked over before is a matter of no great importance. The same laboratory problems are assigned in chemistry, botany and physics year after year. The fact that these problems had all been solved by scientists before they were used for elementary work in no way lessens their value for such work. The training in method, in technique, is the purpose of the work, not original research.

The topic in history for beginners should be assigned by the instructor and the source material put into the hands of the students. I know this runs counter to the common practice. It eliminates the bibliographical work from the first year and stresses the second step in research, the critical handling of evidence. Much can be said, however, in favor of this change. To run over a card catalogue, a periodical index or a volume of bibliography and note the titles of books or articles bearing on a given topic is not a difficult matter. The technique is learned in the first hour of work; after that, it is largely repetition, and the titles might quite as well be gathered by proxy and presented to the student. A large part of the material thus collected is of no value whatever for the scientific historical worker. The gathering and reading of worthless material is time thrown away, time that could be given with much greater advantage to the critical study of valuable source material. If we cannot, in the first year of college work, teach both bibliography and criticism, let us teach criticism; bibliography can be taught later in the course.

While it is not necessary to lay an original problem before beginners, it is quite as easy as to present one that has been thoroughly worked over and the original problem is much more interesting both for the instructor and for the class. The same problem should be assigned to the whole class, if it is to be made the basis for classroom study, as it should be. If the interest of the instructor lies in a field for which no printed source studies exist, it is no great task to arrange a study. Forty or fifty pages of sources supply material enough for the purpose and this may be put out in mimeographed sheets at slight expense to the student.

For the advanced student, for one who has taken his first steps in research and is looking about for original work to do, the problem presents itself in a different form. It is not a question of what one would like to do, but of what one is able to do, of what needs to be done and of what can be done. As the result of his reading, a student or teacher mayhave become interested in a topic in Greek or Russian history. He would like to investigate it, to write it up from the sources. Can he read Greek and Latin, or Russian? He cannot. Is he willing to learn to read them in order to be able to do this work? He had not thought of it and on considering the matter seriously decides that it would be unwise to undertake it. Perhaps he has been attracted by some topic in the Middle Ages, but has no knowledge of mediaeval Latin, paleography or diplomatics, all of which he should know as preliminary to the study of the sources.

If the student is young, the interest in the topic great and the topic worth the time and trouble, the preparation may be acquired and the work executed; for the older student, who has no time to spare, it would be better to seek a subject in a field which may be worked with the preparation he already has or that may be acquired without too great expenditure of time and effort. It is better, if possible, to select a subject for investigation from some field in which the student is somewhat widely read, for no topic can be successfully investigated, if the investigator does not possess a good working background for it. To acquire such a background one must devote much time to the reading of secondary histories. Much of this time can be saved, if a topic is chosen in a familiar field.

Two very important suggestions to the beginner are (i) to limit the scope of the investigation so that the work may be thoroughly done in the time that may be given to it and (2) to select a topic that is a part of a larger whole, making possible an indefinite continuation of research. Young students left to themselves might choose the whole subject of the diplomatic history of the Thirty Years' War, or of reconstruction in the South, without any conception of the number of years it would take to examine the sources upon which such a thesis, if it is to be of any scientific value, must rest. A single episode of the first subject or an account of reconstruction in a single state will give occupation enough for the graduate student. When, on the other hand, a student selects a topic that is isolated, that connects with nothing larger, he runs the risk of ending his investigations with his master's or doctor's thesis.

Finally, it is well to avoid topics for the investigation of which the student has no natural fitness or taste. Problems from economic, religious or art history, for example, should not be undertaken unless the student has some natural taste for such matters and can approach them sympathetically.

If the student is able to investigate the subject, the next question is, Does it need to be investigated? In other words: (1) Has it never been investigated?

(2) Has it been investigated in an incomplete way?

(3) Has the material been treated uncritically? (4) Is a new and valuable synthesis possible? (5) Has new material been found that justifies the re-examination of the topic? If one or more of these conditions exist, the topic needs to be investigated. But how can one be certain that any one of these conditions does exist? A quick way to find out is to consult some historian who knows, somebody who is a specialist in the field in which the student is interested. If no such person can be found, the student must solve the problem himself. To discover what has been written on the topic is a bibliographical problem; to determine whether the writers of these works have utilized all the existing source material is also a bibliographical problem; to pass judgment upon the manner in which the sources have been used is a critical problem; and, finally, to decide whether the facts can be combined in a new and instructive way is a problem in synthesis. How these problems should be dealt with will be shown later.

While answering the second problem, — the need of investigation, — the student will have acquired the means of answering the third, Can the topic be investigated? In other words, are there sources enough in existence to enable the investigator to determine what the historical facts were? If not, no matter how interesting the topic may be, it cannot be investigated.

The topic for investigation having been fixed upon, the next step is to collect the material with which the investigation is to deal, that is to say, the secondary works and the sources. The secondary works are often helpful in indicating what the sources are, in interpreting and criticising them, in establishing the facts and in synthesizing them. Not to take advantage of all the good work done in the past on the topic would clearly be a waste of time and an indication of a lack of understanding of the right conditions of scientific advance. Each generation of historians should begin where the previous generation left off, and each historian should work with posterity in view and formulate the result of his work in such a way that it will not be necessary to do it over again.

To learn what has been written on a topic in European history is no easy matter. Bibliographies of countries and periods can be found, but they may not be sufficiently exhaustive in their lists, or may not have been published at a sufficiently recent date, so that one is not certain that they tell the whole story. Furthermore, such bibliographies deal almost, if not quite, wholly with books and tell us nothing of what has been printed in historical reviews. There is a long list of such reviews, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, etc., any one of which may contain a satisfactory treatment of the topic which has been selected for investigation, thus making a new treatment unnecessary. It is not safe to go ahead without examining at least the indexes of the reviews of the country of whose history the topic forms a part. As a rule it is wise to do more than this. In the last few years, for example, perhaps as much has been published in Russian reviews on the France of the late eighteenth century as in French reviews. The German reviews have also had some valuable studies on the same period.

As the bibliographical work proceeds, the student should form a card catalogue of the titles, examine the works and take notes upon any matter he may want to make use of. If the notes are at all voluminous, it is better to keep them apart from the catalogue in a loose-leaved notebook. A card is well enough for a brief note, but a sheet of paper should be used for a long extract.

Up to a certain point the preparation of a bibliography of the sources does not differ from that of secondary works. In searching for secondary works, however, we are searching for printed matter, while this may be true of the search for sources to a limited extent only. A large part of the sources may be in manuscript form, some of them may be oral and pictorial, while some may belong to the group called remains. Of a large part of this material, no bibliographical trace may exist. To discover the material is a most important part of the work of the investigator. For a thorough search for sources, a serious attempt to bring together all the evidence bearing upon the topic is the sine qua non of a piece of investigation that is to have any permanent value.

To succeed in this search for unrecorded evidence one must have both ingenuity and patience; ingenuity in forming hypotheses concerning the existence and probable location of evidence and patience in testing these hypotheses. In a large majority of cases, the search is fruitful. For example, a trial of some importance for a topic under investigation took place in London in 1785. The only evidence hitherto used in dealing with the incident had been an account published at the time in a London paper. More and better sources were wanted. What would they be? Court records naturally. What was the court? The Old Bailey, which still exists. Have the records for 1785 been preserved? From a visit to the court it is learned that a stenographic account of the trials was published in 1785, and a copy of this record was found in the Guild Hall library.

On another occasion the investigator was interested in an incident that took place in Holland. A Frenchman had been extradited at the request of the government of Louis XVI. The incident had been written up wholly from French sources. Do no Dutch sources exist? The arrest was made in Amsterdam. The council of Amsterdam would be obliged to correspond with the government at The Hague. Doubtless material could be found in the city archives of Amsterdam and in the state archives at The Hague. Inquiry at these two places brought the documents to light. A somewhat different case would be where one knew that certain material had

CHOICE OF A SUBJECT existed, — a newspaper, for example, — but did not know where it could be found. A search in one of the great libraries of Europe, London or Paris, would probably lead to the discovery of a copy.

Oral tradition should be sought for in the place where the incident took place and with the aid of the local antiquarian. He may have discovered the material needed, but the knowledge of his discovery may never have gone beyond the bounds of the town. In the search for material, one thing leads to another, sometimes in the most extraordinary way. One summer, some years ago, I visited Aix-en-Provence for the purpose of making the acquaintance of M. Guibal, professor in the University of Aix, who had written a very exhaustive and scholarly work on Mirabeau and the Provence. M. Guibal was not in the city, but a gentleman of whom I inquired, on learning of my mission, introduced me to M. Mouttet, who for years had been a student of the life of Mirabeau in Provence and was full of valuable information. He, in his turn, made me acquainted with M. Paul Arbaud, who had in his possession a large number of important Mirabeau manuscripts hitherto unused by the biographers of Mirabeau.

These illustrations may give some slight idea of the way in which source material is brought to light when no trace of it exists in printed bibliographies. It may be well to add that the search for sources does not end until the printed work comes from the press. The discovery of fresh material may take place while the narrative is being written and necessitate the recasting of a large part of the text. The path of research is a rocky one and not always pleasant to travel.

In working over his manuscript sources, or rare printed matter, the young investigator is apt to content himself with notes giving the substance of the source. That method is often a bad one. When the time comes to use the notes, the investigator may be far from his sources and it may be absolutely necessary to know the exact wording of the text. It is much wiser to make extracts in the exact language of the document, and when there is the slightest doubt as to whether certain parts should be omitted or not, to copy the whole document. It is safer in the long run. Another suggestion for the beginner, whose time may be limited when he is abroad for research work, is to make use of a copyist. When the material has been found and it is simply a matter of copying it, the investigator cannot afford to give his time to it when a copyist will do the work even better and for a few cents a page.

Something has already been written about the nature of material used in the reconstruction of the historical past. It is as varied as human activities. To enumerate it all would be impossible; the labor would be of doubtful utility. For the effective use of the sources, it is important to know the main divisions and subdivisions employed by the writers on method in the classification of the sources and the reasons for this classification. The two main divisions are remains and tradition. The ground for this division is readily understood.

The first group comprises all objects coming down to us from the past, actual products of man's social activities. They came into existence as the result of man's daily needs and were not created for the purpose of acquainting posterity with the nature of man's activities. If these objects later found their way into museums, such a disposition of them was not anticipated by their creators. Sources of this kind, infinite in variety as they are, ranging from different kinds of breakfast food, through clothing, buildings, machinery, works of literature and art to the most trivial ornaments of human vanity, can supply us with but a small part of the information we need concerning man's unique social evolution. They reveal to us the results of actions, not actions themselves. To interpret these remains is a most difficult process, yielding, often, very questionable results. It will be remembered what a false fabric of inference concerning the Aryan race was built upon the uncertain foundation of the common root words in the European and Indian languages. The fabric has been demolished, not because the common root words do not exist, but because their existence did not justify the inferences drawn from them. With this class of sources, the beginner will have little to do. A detailed treatment of them will be found in Bernheim's work.

The second group of sources is called tradition. Some of these, from one point of view, might be treated as remains, but the significant characteristic of the group, the characteristic which distinguishes it from remains proper, is the fact that it contains the records of the impressions made upon human brains by man's social activities. The events took place, someone saw them and made a record of what he thought he saw, and that record has been handed down to us. It may be preserved in three ways, by word of mouth, in writing, or pictorially, and thus we have oral, written and pictorial tradition. Oral tradition, after a time, may disappear or become written tradition, so that in the end the forms of the record are chiefly two and more largely written than oral. In the present generation, through the use of photography, the volume and value of the pictorial record have been very much increased.

In the first division of sources, — remains, — we can see the actual objects that have come down to us from past times; in the second, — tradition, — containing the impressions made upon individual minds by man's past activities, what we see is not the act, but what the witness thought the act was. r

In dealing with a tradition, it must be remembered that at least one human brain stands between us and the fact. We can see the fact only indirectly. In dealing with the affirmation of a witness, — which may be something quite different from the fact itself, — in trying to determine how true the affirmation is, we

CHOICE OF A SUBJECT must always keep the personality of the witness in view. This profound difference between remains and tradition inevitably gives rise to a difference of method in handling the two groups of sources. But the value of the tradition is determined not alone by the personality of the witness; the character of the sources must also be taken into consideration.

The division of tradition into three groups rests upon the manner in which the tradition is formulated. It is not a matter of scientific indifference whether the tradition is passed on orally, in writing, or pictorially. The value of the affirmation is affected by the form in which it expresses itself. The first account of what the witness has seen, if formulated at once, may be as valuable in the oral as in the written form. But this is not true when the affirmation is repeated. If the impression is committed to writing, it is fixed and not injuriously affected by lack of memory; oral tradition is fluid, each repetition differing more and more from the original, until, in time, the affirmation becomes practically worthless. This is true whether the affirmation is repeated year after year by the original witness, or is passed on from individual to individual. Oral tradition is, then, as a class, much less reliable than written tradition.

Pictorial tradition occupies a middle ground between oral and written tradition. The impression made by an individual or by a scene upon the artist is fixed on canvas or in marble; in this respect — its fixity — pictorial tradition resembles written tradition. It differs from it in the greater difficulty offered by the medium — paint or marble — and the greater completeness with which the record must be made. The result is that there are greater possibilities of error in the pictorial record than in the written. The written record cannot, however, take the place of the pictorial record. No written description of Washington could give us the same clear conception of his personal appearance that could be obtained from an excellent portrait or statue by a contemporary artist.

Written tradition itself may be divided into numerous groups, differing from each other in value. The same event — for example, a scene in the great French assembly of 1789 — may be described in the minutes of the assembly (Proces-verbal), in a newspaper, in a pamphlet, in a letter of a member to his constituents, in a letter of another member to his wife, in a letter of a diplomat residing in Paris at the time, or in the Memoires of a member. Here are five groups of material, official records, newspapers, pamphlets, letters and Memoires, differing from each other in value because of the character of the source. The experienced investigator understands the general valuation to put upon each. Diplomatic correspondence intended for publication, party programs, political speeches, war bulletins, illustrate some of the groups of written tradition which are notoriously untrustworthy. Something will be said in a later chapter of the way in which these groups are evaluated. At present, it is only necessary to point out that the reason for classifying the sources, instead of leaving them a heterogeneous mass, is to enable the historian to determine more readily the value of the individual sources, by knowing the value of the class to which they belong.

Having selected a subject for investigation, collected and classified the sources, the next step in the process is the criticism of the sources for the purpose of determining the value of the evidence they contain and the relation of the different witnesses to each other.

Ill

CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES: GENUINENESS

The sources collected for the purpose of restoring the historical past do not contain the facts, but the affirmations of witnesses concerning the facts. The fact is what actually took place; the affirmation is a statement by a witness of what he believed took place. The fact is established by the agreement of two or more independent witnesses. Before, however, the affirmations in the different sources can be used to establish the fact, each source must be evaluated and the relationship of the sources to each other must be studied to determine whether they are dependent or independent. There is nothing novel in this procedure ; it is simply the method of every day rendered conscious and precise. The man on the street does not receive the testimony of every witness with equal confidence, but in a rough and ready way puts a value upon the statements of each. The historian has carefully considered the reasons for trusting or distrusting the affirmations of a witness and has arranged these reasons in an orderly manner, together with the tests to be applied to the sources. If much of the work of historians in the past has had no permanent value because of the failure to base it upon exhaustive research, as much more has been discarded because it showed little or no trace of the critical evaluation of the sources. The one is as indispensable as the other. All the sources on a topic must be collected and all must be critically evaluated. Such work consumes a vast amount of time and only a limited topic can be investigated, but what of that? The end of scientific historical work is reliable, scientific results, and nothing obliges the investigator to undertake more than he can do thoroughly. Scientific historical work is the only kind worth while, the only kind which makes progress in historical reconstruction possible. Let the young investigator set his standards high and then limit the scope of his work so that it will be possible to live up to the standards he has set. When he has once learned what excellent work means, he will be content with nothing less, if he be animated by the true spirit of scholarship.