From Reliable Sources

by Howell, Martha C.; Prevenier, Walter

• ISBN13: 9780801485602
• ISBN10: 0801485606
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

From Reliable Sources is a lively introduction to historical methodology, an overview of the techniques historians must master in order to reconstruct the past. Its focus on the basics of source criticism, rather than on how to find references or on the process of writing, makes it an invaluable guide for all students of history and for anyone who must extract meaning from written and unwritten sources. Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier explore the methods employed by historians to establish the reliability of materials; how they choose, authenticate, decode, compare, and, finally, interpret those sources. Illustrating their discussion with examples from the distant past as well as more contemporary events, they pay particular attention to recent information media, such as television, film, and videotape. The authors do not subscribe to the positivist belief that the historian can attain objective and total knowledge of the past. Instead, they argue that each generation of historians develops its own perspective, and that our understanding of the past is constantly reshaped by the historian and the world he or she inhabits. A substantially revised and updated edition of Prevenier's Uit goede bron, originally published in Belgium and now in its seventh edition, From Reliable Sources also provides a survey of western historiography and an extensive research bibliography.

Author Biography

Martha Howell is Professor of History at Columbia University Walter Prevenier is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Ghent (Belgium)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(16)
The Source: The Basis of Our Knowledge about the Past	17	(26)
What Is a Source?	17	(3)
Source Typologies, Their Evolution and Complementarity	20	(8)
The Impact of Communication and Information Technology on the Production of Sources	28	(6)
Storing and Delivering Information	34	(9)
Technical Analysis of Sources	43	(26)
Clio's Laboratory	44	(16)
Paleography	44	(2)
Diplomatics	46	(1)
Archaeology	46	(4)
Statistics	50	(6)
Additional Technical Tools	56	(4)
Source Criticism: The Great Tradition	60	(9)
The ``Genealogy'' of the Document	61	(1)
Genesis of a Document	62	(1)
The ``Originality'' of the Document	63	(1)
Interpretation of the Document	64	(1)
Authorial Authority	65	(1)
Competence of the Observer	66	(2)
The Trustworthiness of the Observer	68	(1)
Historical Interpretation: The Traditional Basics	69	(19)
Comparison of Sources	69	(10)
Establishing Evidentiary Satisfaction	79	(5)
The ``Facts'' That Matter	84	(4)
New Interpretive Approaches	88	(31)
Interdisciplinarity	89	(20)
The Social Sciences	89	(10)
The Humanities	99	(10)
The Politics of History Writing	109	(10)
The Annales	110	(2)
The ``New Left'' and New Histories	112	(3)
The New Cultural History	115	(4)
The Nature of Historical Knowledge	119	(78)
Change and Continuity	119	(8)
Causality	127	(16)
Causal Factors	131	(1)
Religious Ideology, Clericalism, and Anticlericalism	132	(1)
Social and Economic Factors	132	(3)
Biology and ``Race''	135	(1)
Environment	136	(1)
Science, Technology, and Inventions	137	(1)
Power	138	(1)
Public Opinion and the Mass Media	139	(1)
The Role of the Individual	140	(3)
History Today	143	(8)
The Problem of Objectivity	146	(2)
The Status of the ``Fact''	148	(3)
Research Bibliography
Contents	151	(4)
Bibliographies, Guides, Dictionaries	155	(31)
Additional Readings on Selected Technical Topics	186	(5)
Basic Readings on Historiography and Theory	191	(6)
Index	197