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John Arnold - History: A Very Short Introduction - Chapter 4References
Footnotes - John Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
Chap. 4.
References - Arnold, John. History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Chap. 4.
Notes and Quotes
- ‘historians often refer to historical documents produced at or near the event under investigation as
‘primary’ evidence… ‘secondary’ sources indicate the works of other later writers. However this is only a
useful shorthand, and not very philosophical, because the line between the two can be difficult to draw;
and ‘secondary’ sources are also ‘primary’ evidence of their own time’ - 59
- Similarly to Tosh’s argument, this demonstrates that there are exceptions to the general rule of
primary meaning contemporary and secondary meaning not. This also expands on the concept that
sources do not have to be just primary or just secondary, but can be used as either depending on
context
- Archives are important because ‘the sources of the past do not survive in neat patterns of their own
accord…archivists place the relics of the past into some kind of order…archivists spend time producing
what are called ‘finding aids’. There are lists of documents often with brief summaries of what they
contain’ - 60
- Arnold here expands on the significance of systems of document preservation in being able to make
sense of historical sources. Furthermore he details the importance of not only organising documents,
but producing a means of understanding the organisation and the document itself at quick glance,
making the prices of historical research smoother
- Arnold discusses how sources can be difficult to access even once they have been found in an archive
due to the changes in language, handwriting and spelling over time
- ‘In the middle ages, handwriting… was full of abbreviations, familiar to the relatively small group of
scribes dealing with documents, but less clear to modern readers’ - 64
- ‘As literacy grew… handwriting became less tidy and more personalised’ - 64
- Studying handwriting itself can be a useful source of information to historians however, as it can be used
to date documents as well as deciphering the words themselves
- Spelling is another hurdle for historians looking at primary sources as ‘spelling had not yet been
standardised in England by the seventeenth century, so certain words tend to follow phonetic patterns’
meaning that different people would write the same word in different ways - 65
- ‘One area of documentation were forgery was common is medieval monastic records. Monks would
regularly forge large numbers of charters, setting out the rights and properties of the monastery. This
did not always indicate straightforward dishonesty: quite a lot of forgery was done to create documents
that ‘ought’ to have existed, as rights which had previously been accepted by custom later demanded
documentary ‘proof’’ - 66
- This demonstrates another issue historians face in determining the validity of the source as although
some documents are forgeries, just identifying it as such does not necessarily also identify its validity,
as in the case of the monks who were creating forged documents that actually represented the
accepted customs of the time. This in itself makes the historian’s task more challenging as there are
two layers to be uncovered when assessing the validity of a document - type (forged or not) and
content
- Arnold goes on to discuss the problems surrounding the concept of ‘bias’ in historical sources
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