Historiography - methods, sources, and interpretations of historians

Introduction to Historical Research

The video addresses common questions about historical research, such as how to determine the trustworthiness of sources, where to start, and how to conduct research effectively. The speaker emphasizes the importance of historiography—the study of how history is researched and interpreted—as foundational knowledge for evaluating historical sources.

Types of Historical Sources

Sources are categorized into primary and secondary types, each requiring different evaluation methods. Primary sources, such as diaries, interviews, and news reports, provide direct evidence from the time being studied. Secondary sources, including history books and documentaries, analyze and interpret primary sources, offering broader context and critical insights.

Evaluating Sources

To assess a source's reliability, consider the following:

• Primary Sources:
  • Who created it and what is their background?
  • What biases or motives might influence its content?
  • When was it produced, and how does that relate to the events it describes?
  • Is it corroborated by other sources?
• Secondary Sources:
  • Who is the author, and what are their qualifications?
  • Is the evidence presented sufficient and well-contextualized?
  • Are counterarguments addressed adequately?

Finding Reliable Sources

Identifying scholarly works involves seeking peer-reviewed articles and books published by reputable academic presses. Peer review ensures that the research meets quality standards, reducing the likelihood of encountering unreliable information.

Research Strategies

Utilize tools like Google Scholar for academic articles, and check citations within those articles to discover additional sources. Literature reviews can also provide overviews of existing research on a topic, although they may not always be available.

Practical Experience

Ultimately, gaining practical experience in historical research is crucial. The speaker encourages viewers to select a topic, find a book or article, and apply the evaluation techniques discussed. This hands-on approach will deepen understanding and enhance research skills.

Conclusion

The video concludes by reminding viewers of the importance of critical reading and analysis in historical research, encouraging a thoughtful and methodical approach to studying history.

Historiography is defined in the transcript as the study of how historical events are researched and interpreted, distinguishing it from history itself, which comprises the past events and narratives. The speaker emphasizes the importance of historiography in understanding the context and methodology behind historical narratives, stating that without a grasp of historiography, it becomes challenging to determine the reliability of research and conduct thorough historical inquiries.

This distinction is crucial: while history is concerned with what happened in the past, historiography focuses on the processes, biases, and methodologies that shape our understanding of those events. Historiography examines the interpretative frameworks and scholarly debates that influence how history is recorded and understood. For example, different historians may approach the same event with various biases, assumptions, and perspectives, leading to divergent interpretations.

The conceptual boundaries between historiography and history are significant. Historiography does not merely catalog events but interrogates the sources and narratives that construct our understanding of those events. By engaging with historiography, researchers can uncover the layers of analysis that inform the writing of history, thus enriching their comprehensions of historical narratives and making them critical consumers of historical texts.

•  
  • [00:37] "the study not of the events of the past themselves but rather how they’re researched and interpreted"
  • [01:44] "if you don’t have a good understanding of this it’s impossible to even tell what research you can trust"
  • [01:50] "think of this as a sort of short simple introductory historical research 101 class"

The central thesis presented in the transcript revolves around the proper methods of conducting historical research and the importance of understanding historiography. The speaker argues that a foundational grasp of historiography is essential for anyone interested in history, as it allows researchers to critically analyze sources and engage with the complexities of historical narratives.

The main position is structured around the idea that starting with secondary sources is crucial for developing a comprehensive understanding of a historical topic. The speaker contends that secondary sources, which analyze and interpret primary data, provide context and critical evaluations that are often absent in primary sources. This approach allows researchers to build a solid knowledge base before delving into primary material.

Supporting reasoning includes the assertion that primary sources are the raw materials of history—valuable yet often lacking the interpretative depth that secondary sources can provide. By engaging with historiography, researchers can avoid misleading conclusions that might arise from a superficial reading of primary documents. The speaker also highlights the collaborative nature of historical research, where contemporary historians build upon the work of their predecessors, thus refining our understanding of the past over time.

•  
  • [09:20] "primary does not mean better nor read me first"
  • [11:04] "the best way to learn about a historical topic including its primary source material is through secondary sources"
  • [16:20] "identifying scholarly works... means looking for works that have been reviewed and judged as meeting basic quality standards by qualified historians"

The transcript provides a clear distinction between primary and secondary sources, crucial for conducting historical research. Primary sources are defined as the original documents or artifacts that provide firsthand accounts of historical events. These can include diaries, interviews, newspaper articles, or artifacts from the time period being studied. The speaker emphasizes that primary sources are the foundational building blocks of historical study: "Without them, history couldn’t exist at all".

In contrast, secondary sources are characterized as analyses or interpretations based on primary sources, offering critical evaluations and contextual information. These sources include history books, articles, and documentaries. The speaker notes that secondary sources benefit from hindsight, allowing historians to provide broader and more accurate narratives than what primary sources alone might convey.

Importantly, the classification between primary and secondary sources is not always inherent in the source itself; it depends on the research context and how the source is utilized. For example, a newspaper article from 1810 could be considered a primary source if cited for the details of an event, but it could be a secondary source if used to argue a broader social commentary. The speaker illustrates that a single source can be employed both ways, demonstrating the fluidity in categorizing sources based on their application in research.

•  
  • [01:55] "primary sources are the building blocks of the study of history"
  • [02:26] "secondary sources on the other hand provide arguments, analysis, evaluations, commentary"
  • [03:14] "the difference between a primary and secondary source is not always clear just by looking at the source itself"

The transcript outlines several key criteria for evaluating the reliability, credibility, and usefulness of historical sources. The speaker emphasizes that source criticism involves a series of methodological questions aimed at thoroughly analyzing both primary and secondary sources.

For primary sources, the speaker recommends asking the following questions:

• Who created the source, and what is their background?
• What were their biases or ulterior motives that might influence their account?
• Who was the intended audience, and how might this have shaped the content?
• When was the source produced, and how contemporary is it to the event it reports on?
• What is the wider context surrounding the source?
• Is the source contradicted by other primary sources?
• What is the authenticity and value of the source's content?

In evaluating secondary sources, the transcript outlines similar critical questions:

• Who authored the source, and what qualifies them to analyze this topic?
• What biases might they have, and do they strive for objectivity?
• What evidence do they use, and is it sufficient for their arguments?
• Are they accurately representing the content and quality of the evidence?
• How well do they contextualize their arguments?
• Are they addressing other conflicting arguments effectively?

This systematic approach to source criticism allows researchers to navigate the complexities of historical evidence and helps ensure a more rigorous understanding of the past.

•  
  • [07:04] "who offered it, what’s that background, why did they write it"
  • [08:42] "do their conclusions follow from their argument and make logical sense"
  • [09:00] "you might have noticed that analyzing secondary sources in particular also necessarily involves a lot of analyzing their primary sources too"

The transcript delineates a structured approach to conducting historical research, emphasizing the importance of methodology and strategy. The speaker suggests beginning with secondary sources to build a foundational understanding before engaging with primary sources. This method ensures that researchers have the necessary context and critical framework to interpret primary material effectively.

Here is a step-by-step breakdown of the outlined research process:

• Step 1: Start with Secondary Sources - Engage with history books and articles to gather context and background on your chosen topic.
• Step 2: Evaluate Sources - Look for peer-reviewed works and assess their credibility based on the author's qualifications and the publisher's reputation.
• Step 3: Identify Primary Sources - After gaining foundational knowledge, begin identifying relevant primary sources cited in the secondary literature.
• Step 4: Analyze Sources - Critically assess primary sources by asking about their authorship, context, biases, and authenticity.
• Step 5: Synthesize Findings - Combine insights from both primary and secondary sources to form a well-rounded understanding of the historical topic.
• Step 6: Engage in Practice - As the speaker emphasizes, practical experience is crucial. Conduct your research, read critically, and continually refine your understanding through exploration.

This structured approach highlights that historical inquiry is not merely about gathering facts; it involves critical thinking, analysis, and a systematic investigation of sources to construct a nuanced narrative of the past.

•  
  • [10:00] "the best way to find primary sources is itself by reading secondary literature"
  • [16:06] "always begin with the secondaries"
  • [34:30] "the best way to learn now that you know the fundamentals is not going to be through more guides... it’s going to be through practice"

Understanding the historical context is crucial for interpreting historical events and sources accurately. Context encompasses various dimensions, including temporal, geographical, social, political, and intellectual factors that shape our understanding of the past. Each of these elements provides necessary background information that informs how we interpret specific events or documents.

For example, temporal context refers to the time period in which an event occurred, which can significantly influence the perspectives and values of the individuals involved. The speaker emphasizes that primary sources—those created during the time of the event—are essential for grasping the contemporary mindset but must be evaluated within the broader framework of the time's social and political landscape.

Geographical context also plays a vital role; the physical location of an event can influence its outcome and the reactions it provokes. Social context, including prevailing norms and cultural attitudes, helps historians understand the motivations behind actions taken by individuals or groups. Furthermore, political context—such as the power dynamics and institutional frameworks present—can affect how events unfold and are subsequently recorded.

Intellectual context, referring to the ideas and beliefs circulating at the time, helps historians to decode the rhetoric used in primary sources. Without an understanding of these contexts, historians risk misinterpreting motives or downplaying the significance of certain events.

• [01:37] "...the evidence...every source...can usually be put into one of two categories primary or secondary..."
• [09:14] "...primary does not mean better nor read me first..."
• [12:12] "...the study of history is kind of an indirect collaborative process..."

The transcript highlights the significance of bias, perspective, and authorial intention in historical writing, asserting that these factors are pivotal in shaping historical interpretation. The speaker notes that every historian brings their own biases and motivations to their work, which can affect how they present evidence and draw conclusions.

For instance, the discussion of a hypothetical newspaper article about a robbery illustrates how the author’s perspective can skew the representation of an event. If one were to cite the article merely as evidence of societal morality, they would be engaging with the secondary source aspect of the article, which involves an analysis of the moral commentary made by the author rather than the event itself.

Furthermore, the speaker emphasizes the importance of considering the audience and the author’s intention, which can reveal ulterior motives that may compromise the reliability of their account. An author might write to persuade their audience of a certain viewpoint, which can lead to selective presentation of facts or the omission of conflicting evidence. This highlights the necessity for historians to critically assess sources not only for their content but also for the context in which they were created.

Overall, awareness of bias and perspective is essential for historians to construct a nuanced understanding of the past, as it influences how events are interpreted and understood within their broader historical framework.

• [07:04] "...who offered it what’s that background...what biases...might they have..."
• [25:10] "...a historian presenting a new conclusion that conflicts with those of others needs to explain why theirs makes more sense..."
• [11:04] "...the best way to learn about a historical topic including its primary source material is through secondary sources..."

The transcript addresses uncertainty and the limits of historical knowledge by emphasizing that historical research often operates within a framework of incomplete evidence. The speaker notes that historians frequently work with fragmented or ambiguous data, particularly when examining events from the distant past. This inherent uncertainty means that historians must often rely on probability and plausibility as guiding principles when forming conclusions.

For example, the speaker acknowledges that the best historians can sometimes do is to say what probably happened based on the available evidence, stating, "...the best argued and most logical conclusion based on the evidence that is available...tends to be accepted...until more evidence is found or a better argument is made." This highlights the fluid nature of historical interpretation, where conclusions can change as new evidence comes to light.

The transcript also touches on the importance of recognizing competing arguments. Good historical practice involves addressing contradictions and engaging with alternative perspectives. This engagement with competing interpretations bolsters the credibility of a historian's conclusions and reflects a rigorous epistemological approach to understanding the past.

Moreover, the speaker suggests that the more recent a work is, the more likely it is to incorporate the latest findings and discussions within the field. This suggests an ongoing evolution in historical understanding, as newer research builds upon and refines previous knowledge, demonstrating the collaborative nature of historiography.

• [28:34] "...historical research is not a court of law so things don’t need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt..."
• [29:06] "...the more recent that a work is the better that it’s going to be..."
• [17:12] "...this process...narrows things down quite a bit because it filters out the vast majority of the fluff that’s out there..."

The transcript outlines several key indicators that characterize good historical or historiographical practice. Understanding these principles is essential for anyone engaged in historical research or writing. First and foremost, the speaker emphasizes the importance of evidence. Good historical work relies on well-sourced evidence, where historians must critically evaluate the reliability of primary and secondary sources.

Another significant aspect of quality historiography is the engagement with counterarguments. A historian should not only present their perspective but also acknowledge and address opposing views. The speaker states, "...a historian presenting a new conclusion that conflicts with those of others needs to explain why theirs makes more sense..." This indicates that a robust argument must be able to withstand scrutiny from alternative interpretations.

The scope of a work is also critical. The speaker advises focusing on a narrow topic and timeframe to ensure depth of analysis. This principle is highlighted when discussing how broader works may fail to provide detailed insights. Furthermore, good historical research acknowledges its limitations. The speaker notes that the best historical research recognizes its flaws and openly discusses uncertainty and competing arguments.

In summary, good historical practice involves a rigorous approach to evidence, thorough engagement with alternative perspectives, and a clear acknowledgment of the work’s limitations. These practices contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the past, ensuring that historical interpretations remain grounded and credible.

• [16:21] "...works that have been reviewed and judged as meeting basic quality standards by qualified historians..."
• [17:12] "...the way that this is done is through peer review..."
• [24:58] "...the very best historical research acknowledges its flaws and shortcomings..."

The transcript does not contain explicit statements concerning the importance of archaeology for historical research. Instead, the focus is primarily on the distinctions between primary and secondary sources, along with the critical evaluation of these sources in historical research. The speaker emphasizes the necessity of understanding context and reliability when analyzing historical evidence but does not delve into specific archaeological methods or contributions.

However, it can be inferred that archaeology plays a vital role in historiography by providing primary sources that help reconstruct past societies and events. Archaeological evidence, from artifacts to structures, can offer insights that written records may not capture, thereby enriching the historical narrative.

In terms of methods, archaeological research often includes techniques such as excavation, stratigraphy, and analysis of material culture. These methods allow historians and archaeologists to piece together historical contexts that are otherwise obscured in written documentation. The integration of archaeological findings with historical texts can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the past.

In summary, while the transcript does not specifically address the importance of archaeology, it is evident that archaeology contributes significantly to historiography by providing tangible evidence that complements and enhances the understanding of historical narratives.

• [00:43] "...the study not of the events of the past themselves but rather how they’re researched and interpreted..."
• [12:12] "...the study of history is kind of an indirect collaborative process..."
• [09:14] "...primary does not mean better nor read me first..."

[00:00] since i make a lot of videos about
[00:01] history i'm often asked questions like
[00:04] how do i know if a historical source is
[00:06] trustworthy where do i start if i want
[00:08] to look into a historical topic and how
[00:10] do i do my own historical research and
[00:13] i've always had trouble giving them
[00:14] simple answers because i don't really
[00:16] think that it's possible to respond to
[00:18] that sort of thing adequately in just a
[00:20] short off-the-cuff sort of way so in
[00:23] this video i'll be addressing all of
[00:25] those questions and others in detail
[00:28] that means giving a lesson on something
[00:30] very important that most people who are
[00:32] interested in history outside of an
[00:34] academic context often ignore
[00:37] historiography the study not of the
[00:39] events of the past themselves but rather
[00:42] how their researched and interpreted
[00:44] because if you don't have a good
[00:45] understanding of this it's impossible to
[00:47] even tell what research you can trust
[00:50] let alone do good research yourself i'm
[00:52] gonna go over things like how to
[00:54] critically analyze sources how to find
[00:56] them in the first place how to gauge
[00:58] their reliability and tell which ones
[01:00] are even worth your attention and a
[01:03] whole lot more the sorts of stuff that
[01:05] anyone looking to get a good grasp on a
[01:07] historical topic should always be
[01:09] considering think of this as a sort of
[01:11] short simple introductory historical
[01:14] research 101 class before we get started
[01:17] i just want to note that this video is
[01:19] sponsored by
[01:22] my supporters on patreon and kofi thanks
[01:24] very much to you guys now let's go
[01:33] we need to begin with the fundamentals
[01:35] the very basis of the study of history
[01:38] the evidence
[01:43] every source whether it's an
[01:44] archaeological artifact an ancient text
[01:47] a newspaper article a modern history
[01:50] book or whatever can usually be put into
[01:53] one of two categories primary or
[01:55] secondary each of which needs to be
[01:57] evaluated in different ways primary
[02:00] sources are the building blocks of the
[02:02] study of history without them it
[02:04] couldn't exist at all they're where the
[02:06] details come from they're usually
[02:08] contemporary or near contemporary
[02:10] accounts things like diaries recounting
[02:12] what happened a decorative vars that
[02:15] depicts events or practices a recording
[02:17] of an interview with a witness or a news
[02:19] report secondary sources on the other
[02:22] hand provide arguments analysis
[02:25] evaluations commentary etc etc based on
[02:29] both primary and other secondary sources
[02:32] the prime examples for our purposes here
[02:34] are history books
[02:36] articles documentaries and even youtube
[02:39] videos they're usually made with the
[02:41] benefit of a lot of hindsight the
[02:43] potential to be more critical with their
[02:45] sources and access to a lot of extra
[02:47] context and information that those who
[02:50] produce the primary sources usually
[02:52] would not have had hence they're able to
[02:54] provide a much broader and more accurate
[02:57] picture of history than what you'd be
[02:59] able to get from just reading primary
[03:01] sources alone the key word there is able
[03:04] just because they can doesn't mean they
[03:06] always do as most youtube history
[03:09] channels make painfully clear keep in
[03:11] mind here that primary and secondary are
[03:14] not valued judgments at all they just
[03:16] refer to the different ways that sources
[03:18] are utilized and that's also very
[03:20] important the difference between a
[03:22] primary and secondary source is not
[03:24] always clear just by looking at the
[03:25] source itself because that
[03:27] classification really depends much more
[03:29] on how it's being used here's some
[03:31] practical examples let's say that we've
[03:33] got a hypothetical clipping from a
[03:35] newspaper from 1810
[03:37] from uh
[03:39] london bridgeshire ingerland average
[03:42] english town name you know it reads july
[03:45] 7th 1810 baron rees-mogger churchill the
[03:48] 15th was robbed of his family heirlooms
[03:52] in broad daylight this shows just how
[03:55] far our society's morals have fallen if
[03:58] we were to only cite that first sentence
[04:00] and say that on july the 7th 1810 a man
[04:04] with a ridiculous name was robbed then
[04:07] we'd be using the article as a primary
[04:09] source because it's an event that in all
[04:12] likelihood did actually occur
[04:14] if we were to instead say
[04:16] using that second sentence of the
[04:18] article as evidence that in 1810
[04:22] society's morality was declining then
[04:24] we'd be using it as a secondary source
[04:27] because that's an argument that's being
[04:28] made by the author of the article
[04:30] they're saying here is my evidence and
[04:33] here is my subjective conclusion based
[04:35] on that evidence that conclusion may
[04:37] very well have been a very good and
[04:39] accurate assessment it might also have
[04:41] been totally wrong or maybe something in
[04:43] between that doesn't matter though
[04:45] because whether something is a secondary
[04:48] source has nothing to do with the
[04:49] quality of the author's argument and
[04:51] everything to do with the fact that the
[04:53] offer is making an argument an analysis
[04:56] an assessment or something like that and
[04:59] that that part is what's being cited but
[05:02] wait
[05:03] what if we were to instead cite that
[05:05] second part not for its argument
[05:08] but rather as evidence of what people in
[05:11] 1810 england might have thought about
[05:14] their society something like say a
[05:17] newspaper report about a robbery of an
[05:19] aristocrat said this shows just how far
[05:22] our society's morals have fallen which
[05:25] indicates that some people at the time
[05:27] might have felt negatively about the age
[05:29] they lived in then you'd be using that
[05:31] exact same sentence as a primary source
[05:34] because you're not simply citing its
[05:36] argument as if it's correct but rather
[05:38] using it as evidence of what some people
[05:40] thought
[05:41] a primary source on the mindset of the
[05:43] time you can even cite a source as both
[05:46] primary and secondary at the same time
[05:49] for example on july 7th baron reeves
[05:53] mugger churchill was robbed that's using
[05:55] the article as a primary source however
[05:58] if the sentence then continued with this
[06:01] which as one writer wrote showed just
[06:04] how far society's morality had fallen at
[06:07] the time that bit is using it as a
[06:09] secondary source for all of the reasons
[06:12] that we just went over because it's
[06:13] approvingly citing the argument itself
[06:16] rather than just its recounting of an
[06:18] event so one single source used in both
[06:21] a primary and secondary manner all in
[06:24] the same sentence i sure hope this isn't
[06:26] too confusing
[06:28] now some sources are definitely more
[06:30] suited to being used as primaries and
[06:32] some others as secondaries often though
[06:34] they can at least be utilized in niche
[06:36] ways that would fall into the other
[06:38] category but the most important thing
[06:40] here is to remember that whether
[06:42] something is a primary or secondary
[06:44] source doesn't particularly depend on
[06:46] the source itself but rather how you or
[06:49] whoever else is using it
[06:51] analyzing sources
[06:55] how you analyze a source depends on that
[06:57] categorization that we've just gone over
[06:59] for something being used as a primary
[07:01] source you want to ask questions like
[07:04] who offered it what's that background
[07:06] why did they write it what biases
[07:09] ulterior motives or outlook might they
[07:11] have had that could compromise the
[07:13] reliability of their account who was
[07:15] their intended audience and how might
[07:17] this have influenced the content when
[07:19] does the source originate from is it
[07:21] contemporary if not how far removed is
[07:25] it from the time that it's reporting on
[07:26] what's the wider context surrounding it
[07:28] is it contradicted by other primary
[07:30] sources is there any serious reason to
[07:33] believe that it might not be authentic
[07:35] or a faithful copy of the original and
[07:37] just how valuable is its actual content
[07:40] and for a secondary source you want to
[07:42] ask questions like who offered it what
[07:45] makes them qualified to analyze this
[07:47] topic what biases might they have and do
[07:50] they make an earnest effort to be
[07:51] unbiased despite them what evidence do
[07:54] they use is this evidence sufficient to
[07:56] support the arguments that they're
[07:57] basing off it are they accurately
[07:59] representing the content and quality of
[08:01] this evidence are they contextualizing
[08:04] it are they leaving out evidence that
[08:06] might be inconvenient for their argument
[08:08] are they adequately addressing other
[08:10] arguments that may contradict theirs
[08:12] especially the academic literature on
[08:14] the topic do their conclusions follow
[08:16] from their argument and make logical
[08:18] sense are they maybe being a bit too
[08:20] certain about something where a lot of
[08:22] doubt still remains or striking too
[08:24] broad of a brush be careful not to take
[08:27] questioning the evidence too far by the
[08:29] way remember that you really don't need
[08:31] to provide a source for things that are
[08:33] just kind of common knowledge stating
[08:35] that the u.s presidential election of
[08:37] 1856 took place on november 4th for
[08:40] example wouldn't require a source
[08:42] because no one in their right mind is
[08:44] going to argue against that but maybe
[08:46] more specific claims related to it like
[08:49] a quote from a speech that someone gave
[08:51] on the campaign trail would so as you
[08:54] can see two very different types of
[08:56] critique and analysis are required
[08:58] depending on how we're using a source
[09:00] you might have noticed that analyzing
[09:02] secondary sources in particular also
[09:05] necessarily involves a lot of analyzing
[09:07] their primary sources too but that
[09:10] doesn't mean that primary sources are
[09:11] the best way to learn about history
[09:14] not at all in fact
[09:15] primary does not mean better nor read me
[09:19] first
[09:20] as i touched on very briefly when i was
[09:22] outlining secondary sources they're
[09:24] usually made with the benefit of a lot
[09:25] of hindsight the potential to be more
[09:27] critical with their sources and access
[09:29] to a lot of extra context and
[09:30] information that those who produce the
[09:32] primary sources usually would not have
[09:34] had hence they're able to provide a much
[09:36] broader and more accurate picture of
[09:37] history than what you'd be able to get
[09:39] from just reading primary sources alone
[09:41] if you just go straight to the primary
[09:43] sources you're going to miss out on all
[09:44] of that and more in fact you're going to
[09:47] have trouble even finding primary
[09:49] sources how are you even gonna know
[09:51] where to start without reading the works
[09:53] that have already put them together and
[09:54] contextualize them the best way to find
[09:57] primary sources is itself by reading
[10:00] secondary literature especially because
[10:02] the study of history is kind of an
[10:04] indirect collaborative process the
[10:06] history books of today or at least the
[10:09] good ones all draw extensively from the
[10:11] research of other historians gradually
[10:14] building upon it and improving it over
[10:16] time in a lot of cases that means that
[10:18] they're engaging with decades hundreds
[10:20] of years
[10:21] or sometimes even more than a millennia
[10:24] of research to collectively produce the
[10:26] culmination of it all at least for now
[10:29] until others build on their work in the
[10:31] future historians have already
[10:33] discovered and gathered together the
[10:34] primary source material already asked
[10:37] all those questions about it that i
[10:38] outlined earlier and already put
[10:40] exhaustive amounts of time and effort
[10:43] into discussing how best to piece them
[10:45] together to form a coherent whole so
[10:48] unless you're at the very least like a
[10:50] phd student who's investigating
[10:52] something that's like totally new that
[10:55] no one else has ever looked into before
[10:57] then the best way to learn about a
[10:59] historical topic including its primary
[11:01] source material is through secondary
[11:04] sources history books and articles
[11:07] practical examples
[11:10] a great example of the problems with
[11:12] thinking otherwise is the youtuber
[11:14] knowing better in his video on
[11:16] christopher columbus he implied that
[11:18] there had been some dishonesty about
[11:20] what christopher columbus had intended
[11:22] to say in his writings so he made a
[11:25] point of going straight to the primary
[11:27] source material instead skipping the
[11:29] secondary scholarship entirely which led
[11:32] him to assert this and that's what the
[11:34] natives were peasants not slaves
[11:36] columbus wanted to subjugate them which
[11:38] means turn them into subjects of the
[11:40] crown not enslave them now that's an
[11:42] interpretation that definitely seems to
[11:44] make sense if we just look at the
[11:46] primary source that he was drawing on by
[11:48] itself columbus did indeed write that he
[11:51] wanted to subjugate the natives which
[11:53] can absolutely mean turn them into
[11:55] subjects of the crown but the word does
[11:58] also have other more sinister meanings
[12:01] which can mean enslavement or domination
[12:04] so without more context we don't really
[12:06] have a way of knowing for sure and a
[12:08] whole lot of such context exists if
[12:11] knowing better had read the secondary
[12:13] literature on the topic instead of going
[12:15] straight to the primary source he would
[12:17] have found it because historians have
[12:19] put the primary sources together and
[12:21] found that they attest quite extensively
[12:23] to the fact that after writing that
[12:26] columbus then went on to unambiguously
[12:29] enslave many of the natives which makes
[12:32] what he really meant by subjugate in his
[12:34] earlier writing pretty clear you'll find
[12:37] contexts like that
[12:39] along with tons and tons and tons more
[12:42] in any good secondary source on a topic
[12:45] so you should avoid starting out with
[12:46] the primary sources that doesn't mean
[12:49] that you shouldn't consult them yourself
[12:50] though not remotely whenever you have
[12:52] any doubts you should absolutely check
[12:54] out the primary sources to make sure
[12:56] that a secondary source is representing
[12:58] them properly being sufficiently
[13:00] critical about their contents not
[13:02] overstating their importance all that
[13:04] sort of thing that we went over earlier
[13:06] but you're not going to have a good
[13:07] grasp of what primary sources even exist
[13:10] let alone their context and the
[13:12] arguments surrounding them and the topic
[13:15] in question without secondary sources
[13:17] i'm going to show you another great
[13:19] example
[13:20] centered around one single primary
[13:23] source just one sometime during the 6th
[13:26] century meaning the years 500 to 599 a.d
[13:30] a british cleric named gildas wrote a
[13:33] sermon called on the ruin of britain
[13:36] regarding the invasions of britain by
[13:38] germanic peoples known as the saxons
[13:40] which had begun following the collapse
[13:42] of roman rule of the british isles in
[13:45] the previous century he also included
[13:47] some details about events in his own
[13:49] time despite the fact that gildas was
[13:51] writing retrospectively at least a few
[13:54] decades after these conflicts had
[13:55] already died down this work is
[13:57] considered to be an incredibly important
[13:59] primary source on these events because
[14:01] it's one of very very few surviving
[14:03] texts on them written by a near
[14:05] contemporary but while it's clearly very
[14:08] valuable that does not mean that its
[14:10] narrative is objectively true if you
[14:12] were to read it uncritically and just
[14:14] take it at face value
[14:16] you'd probably come away thinking
[14:18] whatever gildas had wanted the reader to
[14:20] think and there's no need to do that
[14:23] because this source like most important
[14:25] primary sources has been analyzed
[14:27] extensively so much so that there's
[14:29] actually entire books specifically about
[14:32] it and if you were to read the secondary
[14:34] scholarship that criticizes and draws
[14:36] upon it you'd be given a whole lot of
[14:38] context surrounding it you'd also be
[14:41] exposed to arguments that critique this
[14:43] text and show pretty convincingly that
[14:45] gildas was actually quite biased that
[14:48] his book was very clearly written to be
[14:50] a polemic that denounced certain
[14:52] institutions and rulers blaming them for
[14:54] their perceived failures during the
[14:56] invasions and what followed in an effort
[14:58] to influence contemporary politics he
[15:01] was painting some leaders of the past as
[15:03] bad examples for the present he also
[15:06] praised and centered other figures while
[15:08] presenting them as embellished idealized
[15:11] versions of what he thought a good
[15:13] christian should be claiming that their
[15:16] supposed successes were all thanks to
[15:18] this piousness because being a christian
[15:21] cleric he wanted people to believe that
[15:23] following god in the proper way was the
[15:26] way to go so basically gildas was not an
[15:29] omnipotent objectively correct source of
[15:32] perfect information but rather a human
[15:35] being with his own biases and motives
[15:37] writing about many events and distorting
[15:40] them in ways that he thought would be
[15:42] useful for his political goals that
[15:44] doesn't mean that his work is useless
[15:46] not even close it's incredibly valuable
[15:48] it just means that we need to be careful
[15:50] about how we use it and good secondary
[15:53] sources already do exactly that with the
[15:55] benefit of tons and tons of refinement
[15:58] thanks to a long history of research and
[16:00] discussion on that topic so there's very
[16:02] little reason to ever really start out
[16:04] with the primary sources always begin
[16:06] with the secondaries
[16:08] finding good history books and articles
[16:12] you're probably asking at this point
[16:14] okay but how do i even identify and find
[16:17] those good secondary sources then great
[16:20] question
[16:21] identifying scholarly works
[16:25] first you need to know how to make sure
[16:27] that historical research meets scholarly
[16:29] standards this means looking for works
[16:32] that have been reviewed and judged as
[16:34] meeting basic quality standards by
[16:36] qualified historians the way that this
[16:38] is done is through peer review where
[16:40] articles or books go through an
[16:42] editorial process which includes
[16:44] qualified historians reviewing them on
[16:46] their own merits blindly meaning that
[16:49] they're not told who the offer is if
[16:51] they then give it the thumbs up that
[16:53] usually means that its arguments and
[16:55] methodology at least hold up to a
[16:58] minimum level of scholarly scrutiny a
[17:00] standard that isn't necessarily an
[17:02] endorsement of a work's actual
[17:04] conclusions because there is certainly
[17:06] peer-reviewed work out there that is not
[17:09] very good or just outright bad but this
[17:12] process nonetheless narrows things down
[17:14] quite a bit because it filters out the
[17:16] vast vast majority of the fluff that's
[17:19] out there and there's a whole lot of it
[17:21] believe me
[17:22] and it's typically a whole lot worse too
[17:25] than even the worst peer-reviewed stuff
[17:27] so by sticking to peer-reviewed works
[17:29] there is a far far lower chance of
[17:31] having your time wasted by complete and
[17:34] out of garbage that doesn't mean that
[17:35] it's not possible that there's value in
[17:37] works that have not been peer reviewed
[17:39] or that don't conform to other standards
[17:41] that i'm outlining here but when you're
[17:43] just learning the ropes like this it's
[17:45] best to be very selective because you
[17:47] still lack the knowledge and practical
[17:49] experience that you need to be able to
[17:52] make those judgments confidently for
[17:54] yourself so how do you know if
[17:56] something's been peer reviewed for books
[17:58] this is pretty easy the vast majority of
[18:01] serious history books with at least a
[18:03] little bit of academic merit are
[18:05] published by one of two types of
[18:07] publishers a university press which are
[18:10] mostly conveniently named after a
[18:12] university like the duke university
[18:14] press for example making them easy to
[18:16] identify or by a publisher that
[18:19] specializes in academic publishing two
[18:21] examples being routledge or wiley you
[18:24] can always look up publishers and
[18:25] authors on google if you're unsure books
[18:28] put out by such publishers tend to go
[18:30] through an even more rigorous editorial
[18:32] process than that which i outlined while
[18:35] those released by non-academic
[18:37] publishers don't and to identify
[18:40] peer-reviewed articles look for those
[18:42] that have been published in
[18:43] peer-reviewed journals generally
[18:45] identifying these is pretty easy they
[18:48] have boring names that describe their
[18:50] focus very matter-of-factly like the
[18:53] canadian journal of latin american and
[18:55] caribbean studies search for their name
[18:57] in google check out their website or
[18:59] whatever other source pops up and look
[19:02] for confirmation that they're
[19:03] peer-reviewed you can also just search
[19:05] for the author's name in google too and
[19:07] usually if you see that they're a
[19:09] professor or have a phd in a relevant
[19:11] field it's pretty likely that the
[19:13] journal is peer-reviewed other things to
[19:15] help you identify these sorts of works
[19:18] are their titles and structure they'll
[19:20] usually have fairly boring and
[19:22] matter-of-fact sorts of names as they're
[19:24] directed to a very very specific
[19:27] audience being other researchers on
[19:29] their topic because the goal of
[19:31] historical research is to contribute to
[19:33] an ongoing synthesis with one's peers to
[19:36] help to achieve the most accurate and
[19:38] complete interpretation of the past as
[19:40] possible rather than to appeal to a
[19:43] popular audience and make money off them
[19:45] something like the weapons of the late
[19:47] third reich a study of german infantry
[19:50] armaments 1944-1945
[19:54] is a very characteristic title of a
[19:56] serious work of historical scholarship
[19:58] which i just made up a title followed by
[20:01] a subtitle that provides a fairly
[20:03] detailed description of what the actual
[20:05] contents are of course there are
[20:07] deviations from this but as a general
[20:09] guideline that'll do as for structure
[20:12] articles will start out with an abstract
[20:15] that succinctly summarizes context and
[20:17] arguments along with information on the
[20:20] author journal and date of publication
[20:23] they usually follow a structure of
[20:24] introduction which is similar to an
[20:26] abstract but more detailed body text
[20:29] where the main argument is made and
[20:31] conclusion where the believed findings
[20:34] are summarized and their potential value
[20:36] evaluated for books they will within the
[20:39] first few pages include their publishing
[20:42] information and information about the
[20:44] authors and date of publication their
[20:46] content can be more fluidly presented
[20:48] than that of the average academic
[20:50] article and they're typically divided
[20:52] into different chapters that might be
[20:53] ordered chronologically or by topic or
[20:56] maybe even by something else both types
[20:58] of works will usually have footnotes
[21:01] meaning numbered citations on the page
[21:03] which point to a citation at the bottom
[21:05] of that page or endnotes meaning the
[21:08] same thing that points to a citation at
[21:10] the end of the article chapter or book
[21:13] these are used to both cite sources and
[21:16] expand upon the main content this is the
[21:18] preferred citation method for history
[21:20] around the world if they don't have
[21:22] footnotes or endnotes then they'll at
[21:24] least still use a system of inline
[21:26] citation which points to a specific
[21:28] source and page number or paragraph
[21:30] within it
[21:32] additional stuff to consider
[21:36] before i move on to telling you how to
[21:38] actually find this stuff
[21:40] there's more things that you need to
[21:41] consider while evaluating it first keep
[21:44] in mind that there are non-peer-reviewed
[21:46] works that conform to all of the style
[21:49] and structure that i just went over but
[21:51] that doesn't mean that you should pay
[21:52] them any attention there's a bustling
[21:54] industry of pseudo-history that aims to
[21:57] pass itself off as legitimate historical
[21:59] research by copying the structure of
[22:02] academic history but not submitting
[22:04] itself to the same rigorous editorial
[22:07] process so don't be fooled when you're
[22:09] starting out look for that sort of
[22:11] structure and peer review together save
[22:15] more complicated judgments when you're
[22:16] more experienced second try to look into
[22:19] the author put their name into a search
[22:22] engine and look at what qualifications
[22:23] they have whatever works they've
[22:25] published etc check whether they have
[22:27] qualifications in history or at least in
[22:29] a related field like anthropology or
[22:31] sociology whether they still actively
[22:34] work in historical research and if
[22:36] they've published other peer-reviewed
[22:38] work in this area of study before that
[22:40] latter thing is actually the most
[22:42] important part while it's very uncommon
[22:45] that someone without any formal
[22:47] qualifications writes something that's
[22:49] able to pass peer review it does
[22:50] sometimes happen so in the unlikely
[22:53] event that you were able to find an
[22:55] author who's published say
[22:57] five peer-reviewed articles on the topic
[22:59] of um horse worship in ancient rome then
[23:03] even despite their lack of degree that
[23:06] almost certainly be better versed on
[23:08] that topic than an actual history
[23:10] professor with tons of qualifications
[23:13] but who's only ever written one single
[23:15] article on roman horselove and both of
[23:19] them would in all likelihood be
[23:21] infinitely better as starting points
[23:23] than the work of someone with neither
[23:25] the qualifications
[23:27] nor the history of peer-reviewed
[23:28] publishing third think about scope the
[23:32] strongest conclusions can be drawn from
[23:34] research that is focused on as narrow of
[23:37] a topic and time period as possible an
[23:40] article that covers for example economic
[23:43] policy during the first two years of a
[23:45] government is generally going to be able
[23:47] to cover that topic in more depth than
[23:49] one that covers say
[23:51] all four years of that government's
[23:53] economic policy and both of them will be
[23:55] able to cover it in much more depth than
[23:58] say
[23:59] an article about all four years of that
[24:01] government in general without a focus on
[24:04] a specific aspect of it the wider the
[24:06] scope of a work the more general it's
[24:08] gonna get the more reliant that it's
[24:10] going to be on citing those more focused
[24:12] works in the first place and the less
[24:14] precise and assured its conclusion can
[24:17] be this hardly means that broader works
[24:20] are invalid or anything not at all it's
[24:22] just something to keep in mind
[24:24] particularly when dealing with works
[24:26] that aim very broadly like those that
[24:28] try to cover the entire history of a
[24:30] region or even the world without even
[24:33] focusing on a specific part or time
[24:35] period good ones might be able to give
[24:37] you a good general overview on things
[24:39] and would be an okay starting point but
[24:41] they'll inevitably fail to do justice to
[24:43] a lot of the details so keep in mind
[24:46] that most of the best quality historical
[24:48] research is done on a less grand scale
[24:50] than what popular audiences tend to be
[24:53] interested in so you should try to rein
[24:55] in your scope as much as possible fourth
[24:58] keep in mind that the very best
[24:59] historical research acknowledges its
[25:01] flaws and shortcomings acknowledges
[25:03] uncertainty when appropriate and
[25:05] acknowledges and adequately deals with
[25:08] competing arguments when necessary a
[25:10] historian presenting a new conclusion
[25:12] that conflicts with those of others
[25:14] needs to explain why theirs makes more
[25:17] sense they can't just ignore the
[25:19] contradictions they must directly
[25:20] address them and this applies on a much
[25:23] smaller scale too
[25:24] not just to overarching conclusions a
[25:27] great example of the sort of work that
[25:29] violates basically every principle that
[25:31] i've just gone over is the very popular
[25:34] but also very bad book guns germs and
[25:37] steel by jared diamond i've got a whole
[25:39] longer video on it too if you're
[25:41] interested in some more detail on its
[25:43] problems in short it's just a mess it's
[25:47] author is a geographer with no academic
[25:49] publishing experience in most of the
[25:51] fields that his book tries to engage
[25:52] with history included let alone
[25:55] experience in the individual topics that
[25:57] he addresses it doesn't even try to
[25:59] conform to an academic structure instead
[26:02] opting to bomb the reader of a
[26:03] bibliography at the end that is not
[26:05] actually cited at all in the text itself
[26:08] making it very difficult to fact check
[26:10] the claims being made it completely
[26:12] misrepresents what some of its own
[26:14] sources say with its arguments often
[26:17] being entirely reliant on these
[26:19] misinterpretations it acknowledges
[26:21] conflicting arguments against its own
[26:23] arguments but solely does so in a
[26:25] mocking way without actually addressing
[26:28] them directly let alone adequately its
[26:31] scope is absolutely massive to an absurd
[26:33] degree since it claims to literally
[26:36] explain the entirety of human history
[26:38] and delves into about 10 wildly
[26:40] different academic disciplines while
[26:42] doing so that makes it practically
[26:44] impossible to adequately deal with all
[26:46] of the potential caveats let alone
[26:48] properly argue for any sort of sound
[26:50] conclusion and yet it's still very
[26:53] certain about everything that it claims
[26:55] despite that and because of all those
[26:57] shortcomings it was printed by a
[26:59] non-academic publishing company because
[27:02] there's simply no chance that it would
[27:03] have ever made it past proper peer
[27:05] review it's a great example of the
[27:07] opposite of everything that i've advised
[27:08] you to look for in this video almost
[27:11] without exception
[27:12] any history book that becomes extremely
[27:15] popular among a general audience is
[27:17] exactly the kind of work that you want
[27:19] to avoid if you're serious about your
[27:21] research good historical research simply
[27:24] doesn't have the same sort of wider
[27:26] appeal as simplistic works of popular
[27:28] history that have absurdly overstated
[27:31] and bombastic sorts of conclusions so
[27:33] keep that in mind as well you're not
[27:35] exactly going to be reading any new york
[27:37] times bestsellers here also as an aside
[27:40] from all of that i'm honestly just
[27:42] putting this here because i couldn't
[27:43] figure out where else to put it in the
[27:45] video you also need to know that the
[27:47] quality and quantity of the evidence
[27:49] available can vary greatly depending on
[27:51] the time and place that you're
[27:52] investigating if it happened 20 years
[27:55] ago there's probably going to be way
[27:57] more primary sources that have survived
[27:59] and they're also far more likely to be
[28:01] digitized than for something that
[28:03] happened 100 years ago and there'll be
[28:05] more for that than something that
[28:06] happened 300 years ago probably more for
[28:09] that than something that happened 500
[28:11] years ago
[28:12] more for that than something that
[28:13] happened 2 000 years ago
[28:15] you get the idea
[28:16] quite often there's not even enough
[28:18] evidence to make any surefire
[28:20] conclusions especially when dealing with
[28:22] the more distant past and so the best
[28:24] that historians can do is say well this
[28:27] is what probably happened but we can't
[28:30] really be sure and that's okay
[28:32] always remember that historical research
[28:34] is not a court of law so things don't
[28:36] need to be proven beyond a reasonable
[28:38] doubt and the less evidence that there
[28:40] is the more that occam's razor applies
[28:43] so the best argued and most logical
[28:45] conclusion based on the evidence that is
[28:47] available or perhaps even the lack of
[28:50] evidence tends to be accepted at least
[28:52] until more evidence is found or a better
[28:55] argument is made and also
[28:57] remember that since historical research
[28:59] is a collaborative process that becomes
[29:01] refined over time on average the more
[29:04] recent that a work is the better that
[29:06] it's going to be chances are that a book
[29:08] on ancient rome from 2020 is gonna be a
[29:11] whole lot more reliable than one from
[29:13] 1850 now with all of this in mind we can
[29:16] finally move on to
[29:18] actually finding stuff to read
[29:21] so now that you know what to look for
[29:23] you just need to know where to find it
[29:25] at the time of making this video the
[29:27] best search tool especially for articles
[29:30] is google scholar which searches most
[29:32] academic databases along with some other
[29:34] places not every result that it gives
[29:37] you will be a peer-reviewed academic
[29:38] source but many of them are put in
[29:41] keywords for the topic you're interested
[29:42] in like say for brazil's role in world
[29:45] war ii you could put in the keywords
[29:47] brazil and world war ii and if you want
[29:50] to ensure that only results that
[29:52] specifically include all your key terms
[29:54] are shown you can put them into double
[29:56] quotes and add the word and between them
[29:58] all as you can see on the screen here
[30:00] this can help you to narrow things down
[30:02] quite a bit as you can see here on the
[30:05] very first page we've already found some
[30:07] options the first result is a book on
[30:09] brazil's relations of the usa during
[30:11] world war ii and the second is about
[30:13] brazil's role in general in the war
[30:15] let's check out the article it's from
[30:17] 1995 so it's not that old underneath the
[30:20] title we can see that it was published
[30:22] in a journal called interdisciplinary
[30:24] studies of latin america if we google
[30:26] the journal and check its official
[30:28] website we can confirm that it is indeed
[30:31] a peer-reviewed academic journal and if
[30:33] we look to the right on google scholar
[30:35] we can see that the article has a pdf
[30:38] version freely available click on it and
[30:40] it'll take us directly to it this won't
[30:42] always be the case though often you're
[30:44] going to need to have access to academic
[30:46] databases to access these articles which
[30:49] is something that's unfortunately mostly
[30:51] limited to university students and
[30:53] researchers but there are also some
[30:56] other ways to gain access to these
[30:58] articles that i
[31:01] can't mention in this video but i mean i
[31:03] guess if you were to search for hubs of
[31:05] science it couldn't hurt
[31:07] if we look at that pdf we find a 21-page
[31:10] article by frank d mccann of the
[31:13] university of new hampshire when we look
[31:15] him up we find that he was a professor
[31:18] of history at said university who
[31:20] specialized in brazilian history and if
[31:22] we do another search in google scholar
[31:24] for those same two terms but this time
[31:27] with the author's name included as a
[31:29] keyword we can see that he's ridden
[31:31] quite a bit on brazil during world war
[31:34] ii so he definitely seems to be a good
[31:36] source on this topic and his article is
[31:38] likely going to be a great introduction
[31:40] another great way to find more sources
[31:42] would be to check out the sources that
[31:44] this article cites and it cites a lot so
[31:47] just by discovering this one source and
[31:49] looking into its author we've already
[31:51] found potentially dozens of things to
[31:53] read about our topic which could also
[31:55] potentially lead us to dozens more
[31:57] sources and allow us to look into even
[32:00] more specific subtopics
[32:02] now books are a little bit harder to
[32:04] find than articles we did find some in
[32:06] our google scholar search there and that
[32:08] can be a good way to find them sometimes
[32:10] but often some of the most important
[32:12] books on a topic won't actually show up
[32:15] in a search for it so one way to find
[32:17] them is as we just went over to check
[32:19] the citations on scholarly articles
[32:21] another is to try and look for academic
[32:24] book reviews which you can also do on
[32:25] google scholar these aren't just any old
[32:28] goodreads or amazon review they're
[32:30] special reviews published by academics
[32:33] for an audience of other academics which
[32:35] aim to assess a book's value to its
[32:37] particular area of study as you can see
[32:40] by adding the term book review to our
[32:42] earlier search terms a bunch of book
[32:44] reviews have popped up we can then read
[32:47] them at least if a copy is available and
[32:49] then if we like the sound of it we can
[32:51] look up the book that they're reviewing
[32:53] of course you could also just go
[32:54] straight to the book without reading the
[32:56] review if you can't actually get access
[32:58] to the review make sure to then apply
[33:00] the same level of scrutiny to the book's
[33:02] author and publisher as we did with the
[33:04] journal article you know you get it by
[33:06] now once you've found a book that
[33:08] presses all the buttons you might be
[33:10] able to find it for free somewhere on
[33:12] the internet or you might have to buy it
[33:14] if you do buy books i would recommend
[33:16] digital formats while i think that
[33:18] physical is much easier to read with
[33:21] digital you can do stuff like instantly
[33:23] search the text for keywords and
[33:25] instantly swap between parts of it
[33:27] all while multitasking on your computer
[33:30] or your phone or whatever with a search
[33:32] engine at hand so you can easily do fact
[33:34] checking that's all incredibly valuable
[33:37] for this sort of research and it's a bit
[33:39] more tedious to do so if you've got a
[33:41] physical copy another though harder way
[33:44] of discovering all kinds of relevant
[33:46] sources is through literature reviews
[33:48] these are reviews of all or most of the
[33:50] prominent literature surrounding a
[33:52] historical topic which assesses the
[33:54] value of different works that cover it
[33:57] weighs their pros and cons etc a
[33:59] literature review is kind of similar to
[34:01] a book review except it more generally
[34:04] covers a lot of the significant research
[34:06] on a topic at the same time and usually
[34:09] they're written by people who are
[34:10] themselves intimately involved in that
[34:12] field of research too if you can find
[34:15] them they're basically unequaled in
[34:16] their utility but don't count on it too
[34:18] much because for most topics they don't
[34:20] actually exist so that should give you a
[34:22] pretty good idea of how to find some
[34:24] decent sources to help you get started
[34:26] with by far the most important part of
[34:28] doing historical research practical
[34:30] experience the best way to learn now
[34:32] that you know the fundamentals is not
[34:34] going to be through more guides telling
[34:36] you how to research it's going to be
[34:38] through practice so
[34:40] do that
[34:42] a challenge for you the viewer
[34:46] so now with all of this in mind
[34:48] choose a topic and go and find a book on
[34:50] it for yourself or an article if you
[34:52] don't have time for a book though i do
[34:54] suggest the book as it'll give you a
[34:56] much more thorough introduction once
[34:58] you've found your book or article then
[35:01] read it and put all of this into
[35:03] practice read critically keeping
[35:05] everything that i've said here in mind
[35:07] and when it cites something whether it's
[35:09] a primary or secondary source look into
[35:12] what it's citing for as many citations
[35:14] as reasonably possible go and search for
[35:16] the source and if you can find it then
[35:18] check it out yourself though keep in
[35:20] mind that you won't be able to find
[35:21] every single source online since many of
[35:24] them simply aren't available to the
[35:26] public or maybe they haven't been
[35:27] digitized for those that you do find
[35:29] though give them a bit of a quick skim
[35:31] and check out these specific parts of
[35:33] them that your book or article is citing
[35:35] and ask all those questions about how
[35:37] it's being used that i outlined earlier
[35:40] depending on whether it's a primary or
[35:42] secondary source usually you wouldn't
[35:44] need to check the sources that often
[35:46] since it's not super common for
[35:48] peer-reviewed literature to just
[35:50] flagrantly misrepresented sources but
[35:52] since the point of this exercise is to
[35:54] practice you should do so a lot here
[35:56] because this is a golden opportunity to
[35:58] learn it'll really help you also to
[36:00] develop a sense for when things just
[36:02] don't really sound right which is always
[36:04] a great indicator that you should
[36:06] probably check the sources for yourself
[36:08] read your entire book or article do this
[36:10] the whole way through and keep every
[36:12] little thing that i've outlined in mind
[36:14] and you're gonna come out at the other
[36:16] end knowing both a whole lot more about
[36:18] whatever topic you've researched and a
[36:20] whole lot more about how to do
[36:22] historical research unless you already
[36:24] knew this stuff beforehand of course
[36:26] in which case well
[36:28] don't know why you watched so now go
[36:30] forth and do history for yourself
[36:32] or don't i mean i'm just a random
[36:34] youtuber i'm not your boss either way i
[36:36] hope you like this video i hope it
[36:38] helped you this was actually a very
[36:39] difficult topic for me to figure out how
[36:41] to talk about which is why it's taken me
[36:43] so long to actually sit down and make a
[36:45] video like this one be on the lookout
[36:47] because after this i'm probably going to
[36:49] make a video where i put this stuff into
[36:51] practice myself
[36:52] which you'll be able to understand a lot
[36:54] better for having watched this first if
[36:56] you like this video then make sure to
[36:58] subscribe to my channel for more and if
[36:59] you really really liked it and you can
[37:02] spare the money consider supporting me
[37:04] on my patreon or coffee page the latter
[37:06] of which i might be expanding upon soon
[37:09] so if you're watching in the near future
[37:11] be sure to check it out it all really
[37:13] really helps without my support is i
[37:15] would not be able to make these videos
[37:17] at all now it's time to roll the credits
[37:19] see ya
[37:22] you to all of my patrons and especially
[37:24] my 25 plus patrons potty gel cribson led
[37:28] down bride brandon flowers chubb darcius
[37:32] b william tomlinson brosnan eat the rich
[37:36] benny g jessie hosick hugo castellanos
[37:39] my name is pronounced like neve mischief
[37:42] and finns a big mean cat erin carroll
[37:45] and my 10 plus patrons nick hall ryan
[37:49] ringle gosh dang america jackie t rocha
[37:53] christian cornell's cab the bird ranger
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[38:00] and baguette jg can't care less momoshin
[38:04] morimur melissa gomez christopher strom
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[38:15] zunguseng raul valles industrial robot s
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[38:21] auschwitz jib and sean paul casino
[38:24] thanks for watching see you next time

Introduction
In this presentation, Dr. Lane So Barksdale, a research associate at Texas Tech University, discusses the nature of history, its teaching methodologies, and the importance of understanding historical context. The talk aims to provide insights into how history is defined, studied, and taught, particularly at the undergraduate level.

Defining History
Dr. Barksdale begins by emphasizing that history is not merely a collection of past events but a complex discipline that requires inquiry and interpretation. He outlines two primary functions of introductory college history courses: to provide essential content and to equip students with skills to engage with historical narratives. He critiques common approaches that overload students with facts and dates, arguing instead for a deeper understanding of historical processes and context.

Challenges in Teaching History
One of the key challenges in teaching history is the overwhelming amount of information available. For instance, the Library of Congress holds over 140,000 documents related to George Washington alone, making it impractical for educators to cover extensive periods in a limited timeframe. This necessitates a selective approach to historical content, which is a fundamental aspect of historical research and teaching.

Understanding Historical Sources
Dr. Barksdale discusses the importance of primary sources in historical research, illustrating this with examples such as cuneiform tablets and the complexities involved in interpreting them. He explains that historians often work with incomplete information, which makes the process of drawing conclusions about the past inherently selective. The act of engaging with historical texts involves not only understanding the content but also grappling with the limitations of the sources themselves.

Etymology of History
The term "history" comes from the Latin "historia," which signifies a narrative account of past events. Dr. Barksdale highlights the Greek origins of the term, where "historia" means knowledge acquired through inquiry. This etymological background underscores the idea that history is about seeking knowledge and understanding the past through investigation.

Types of Historical Narratives
Dr. Barksdale categorizes historical narratives into various types, such as ephemeris (daily accounts), calendars (monthly records), and annals (yearly summaries). He notes that modern history is more comprehensive, focusing on broader narratives that encompass various years and ages, contrasting with medieval definitions that often emphasized specific events or deeds.

Historical Interpretation and Context
The presentation emphasizes the necessity of interpreting historical events within their specific contexts. Dr. Barksdale argues that understanding past beliefs and actions, such as the significance of miracles in medieval narratives, is crucial for grasping how people interacted with their world. He advocates for a non-judgmental approach to historical analysis, encouraging students to understand the past on its own terms rather than imposing modern values.

Modern Perspectives on History
Dr. Barksdale references RG Collingwood's definition of history as a form of inquiry aimed at understanding human actions from the past. He stresses the importance of interpreting evidence and communicating findings to a broader audience, whether through teaching, writing, or digital media. This highlights the evolving nature of historical scholarship and the need for historians to adapt their methodologies to contemporary contexts.

Conclusion
The presentation concludes with a reflection on the significance of history as a discipline that fosters understanding of human experiences across time. Dr. Barksdale emphasizes the need for historians to engage with diverse sources and perspectives, promoting a more nuanced understanding of the past. He invites further discussion and questions from the audience, reinforcing the collaborative nature of historical inquiry.

Final Thoughts
Ultimately, Dr. Barksdale's insights underscore the complexity of history as a field of study and the importance of critical engagement with historical narratives. His emphasis on context, interpretation, and the role of primary sources serves as a valuable guide for both students and educators in the pursuit of historical knowledge.

In the transcript, historiography is implicitly defined through the exploration of what history is and how it is constructed. The speaker, Dr. Lane So Barksdale, emphasizes that history is not merely a collection of past events but a narrative shaped by inquiry and interpretation. This suggests that historiography, the study of historical writing and methodologies, involves understanding how historians select, analyze, and present historical information rather than just recounting events.

Historiography is distinguished from 'history' as it delves into the processes and frameworks that historians use to interpret the past. While 'history' refers to the events that have occurred, historiography examines how those events are recorded, understood, and taught. This involves critical engagement with sources, the contexts of those sources, and the biases inherent in their creation and interpretation.

Furthermore, the speaker alludes to the idea that historians must navigate incomplete information and make selective decisions about which events and sources to include. This highlights the conceptual boundaries of historiography, as it requires a methodological approach to understanding what constitutes reliable evidence and how that evidence is framed within narratives. Historiography is thus concerned with the rules of engagement with the past and the philosophical underpinnings of historical interpretation.

•  
  • [07:01] 'Historia is more basically a learning or knowing by inquiry...'
  • [06:21] 'The act of writing or pursuing history is in and of itself a selective process.'
  • [04:40] 'What do I leave in, what do I leave out? That is the eternal struggle of the historian.'

The central thesis presented in the transcript revolves around the importance of understanding history as a complex interplay of inquiry, interpretation, and narrative construction. Dr. Lane So Barksdale argues that history should not merely be viewed as a series of events but as a discipline that requires critical engagement with sources and an appreciation for the processes of historical writing. He posits that the purpose of studying history is twofold: to acquire fundamental knowledge about the past and to develop skills for engaging with that knowledge meaningfully.

Dr. Barksdale emphasizes that an introductory history course aims to equip students with the tools necessary for interpreting historical events and understanding their significance. He critiques traditional teaching methods that focus excessively on memorization of dates and facts, suggesting that such approaches can lead to a superficial understanding of history. Instead, he advocates for a more nuanced approach that encourages students to think critically about the sources of historical narratives and the contexts in which they were created.

In essence, the speaker's main position is that history is not a static account of the past but a dynamic field that requires continuous inquiry and interpretation. This perspective encourages a deeper engagement with historical materials, fostering skills that are valuable not only in academic contexts but also in broader social interactions and professional endeavors.

•  
  • [02:01] 'My goal here is to introduce students to what I define history as.'
  • [03:00] 'History's supposed to provide you an opportunity to apply that basic content.'
  • [04:08] 'That is the cliche a mile wide and an inch deep is probably applicable here.'

The transcript provides insightful explanations concerning the distinction between primary and secondary sources, which are foundational concepts in historical research. Dr. Lane So Barksdale defines primary sources as direct evidence from the past, such as diaries, letters, and artifacts, which offer firsthand accounts of historical events. He emphasizes the value of these sources in providing immediate insight into the perspectives and experiences of individuals from the past.

On the other hand, secondary sources are characterized as interpretations or analyses based on primary data. These sources, such as textbooks or scholarly articles, synthesize information from primary sources and offer broader narratives about historical phenomena. Dr. Barksdale highlights that understanding the context and purpose of these classifications is essential for effective historical inquiry and research.

Moreover, he notes that the classification of sources can depend significantly on their research use or context. For instance, a document might be considered a primary source in one context and a secondary source in another, depending on how it is utilized within a specific research framework. This nuanced understanding encourages historians to critically evaluate the materials at their disposal and to consider the implications of their source choices for their interpretations of the past.

•  
  • [19:14] 'What is a primary source? The answer on most standardized tests...'
  • [19:46] 'Is that a primary source? Again, pause for dramatic effect here.'
  • [23:43] 'Does that translation count as a primary source? Arguably not.'

In the transcript, Dr. Lane So Barksdale outlines several criteria for evaluating the reliability, credibility, and usefulness of historical sources. One primary focus is the inherent selection process involved in writing history, where historians must be conscious of the incomplete nature of available evidence and the biases that may affect its interpretation.

Dr. Barksdale suggests that a critical question for historians is, 'What do I leave in, what do I leave out?' This reflects the ongoing struggle faced by historians in determining which sources best represent the complexities of historical narratives. He emphasizes the importance of source criticism, wherein historians must assess the context in which a source was created, the author's perspective, and the intended audience. This critical evaluation helps to ascertain the source's reliability and credibility.

Furthermore, the speaker implies that historians should consider the methodological questions that guide their analysis. This includes examining the source's origins, the motivations behind its creation, and how it has been preserved or transmitted over time. By applying such rigorous standards, historians can better navigate the challenges of reconstructing the past and articulate more informed interpretations that reflect a comprehensive understanding of historical events.

•  
  • [06:23] 'The act of writing or pursuing history is in and of itself a selective process.'
  • [04:12] 'What do I leave in, what do I leave out? That is the eternal struggle of the historian.'
  • [22:25] 'What matters more than anything else is the information that we're getting from whatever the thing is.'

Dr. Lane So Barksdale outlines a methodological approach to historical inquiry that emphasizes critical engagement with sources and the interpretive processes involved in reconstructing the past. While the transcript does not provide a detailed step-by-step workflow, it does highlight several key components that constitute an effective research strategy in the discipline of history.

First, the speaker underscores the importance of defining what history is and understanding the purpose of historical inquiry. This foundational step involves recognizing that history is a narrative shaped by human actions and interpretations rather than a mere collection of facts. Dr. Barksdale encourages students to develop a clear thesis or central argument as they begin their research.

Next, the process entails conducting thorough research by identifying and evaluating both primary and secondary sources. As Dr. Barksdale notes, historians must be mindful of the context in which sources were created and the potential biases present within them. This critical evaluation of sources contributes to a more nuanced understanding of historical narratives.

Finally, the speaker emphasizes the need for historians to synthesize their findings into coherent interpretations that convey their insights effectively to an audience. This involves not only presenting the information but also contextualizing it within broader historical frameworks. By following this structured approach, historians can produce informed and meaningful contributions to the field.

•  
  • [02:20] 'My goal here is to introduce students to what I define history as.'
  • [18:22] 'If I'm writing a book, I cannot...'
  • [21:30] 'We have to interpret that information we've got from the past.'

The transcript emphasizes the critical role of historical context in understanding history. Historical context encompasses various dimensions, including temporal, geographical, social, political, and intellectual factors that shape events and narratives. Without this context, historical accounts can be misinterpreted or oversimplified, leading to a skewed understanding of past events.

For instance, Dr. Lane So Barksdale discusses the importance of understanding the specific social and political climates under which historical documents were produced. He states that historians often find themselves grappling with the question, "What do I leave in and what do I leave out?" This reflects the inherent difficulties in conveying a comprehensive historical narrative when faced with the overwhelming volume of available documents.

Moreover, context allows historians to appreciate the nuances of human actions and decisions. For example, the significance of martyrdom in early Christianity is deeply rooted in the historical and cultural context of the time. Understanding the societal pressures and beliefs that influenced individuals to sacrifice their lives for their faith sheds light on the motivations behind such extreme actions.

In summary, historical context is essential for interpretation as it provides the necessary backdrop against which events are analyzed. It enriches our understanding, allowing for a more layered and nuanced interpretation of history.

•  
  • [02:29] "What we're going to be talking about today is an introduction to history as a concept, as a discipline, and as a thing you have to study..."
  • [06:18] "The act of writing or pursuing history is in and of itself a selective process..."
  • [12:09] "If we read these definitions of history, these do not look completely the same as how the Greeks or the Romans would have defined history..."

The transcript provides important insights into the bias, perspective, and agenda inherent in historical writing. Dr. Lane So Barksdale emphasizes that every historical account is shaped by the author's context, beliefs, and intentions. This perspective is vital in understanding how history is recorded and interpreted.

For instance, Barksdale notes that historians must contend with their own biases when selecting which events or documents to include in their narratives. He states, "What do I leave in and what do I leave out?" This question illustrates the inherent selectivity in historical writing, where personal or cultural biases can influence the interpretation of events.

Additionally, the transcript points to the rhetorical strategies employed by historians. For example, Barksdale highlights the significance of narrative voice in historical accounts, which can impact how events are perceived by readers. The choice of language, emphasis on certain details, and the framing of events all contribute to the overall interpretation of history.

Moreover, Barksdale discusses the role of authorial intention in shaping historical narratives. He underscores that understanding the context in which a historical text was written, including the author's motivations, is crucial for accurate interpretation. Without recognizing these factors, readers may misinterpret the significance of events or the intentions behind them.

•  
  • [04:40] "What do I leave in, what do I leave out? That is the eternal struggle of the historian..."
  • [12:06] "A large part of what historians are working with are the work of other historians who wrote their own histories decades, centuries, or millennia ago."
  • [14:27] "Histories for the instruction of the living...so that people in the present can learn from it."

The transcript highlights the inherent uncertainty and incomplete evidence associated with historical knowledge. Dr. Lane So Barksdale asserts that historians often work with limited and fragmented information, which complicates the task of constructing a coherent historical narrative.

For example, Barksdale states, "We're always working with incomplete information," underscoring the challenges historians face in piecing together the past. This acknowledgment of uncertainty is crucial, as it shapes the way historians approach their research and conclusions. They must navigate the epistemological limits of their sources, often relying on probability and plausibility to draw conclusions based on the available evidence.

Barksdale further illustrates this point by referencing the vast number of documents available, such as the 140,000 documents related to George Washington. He emphasizes that historians cannot possibly account for every single document, leading to decisions about what to include or exclude based on their relevance and reliability. This selection process is inherently subjective and reflects the historian’s judgment.

Additionally, the transcript indicates that competing interpretations often arise from the same set of historical events or sources. Barksdale notes that historians' conclusions may vary significantly based on the evidence they prioritize, demonstrating that history is not merely a collection of facts but a complex interpretative process shaped by the historian's lens.

•  
  • [07:59] "The best that we can do is make some sort of reasonable conclusion about what happened, why it happened, and who it happened to..."
  • [04:23] "Historians often spend decades studying... and still don't get the complete picture."
  • [11:00] "We are never getting first-hand information; period."

The transcript outlines several key principles of good historical practice as articulated by Dr. Lane So Barksdale. These practices underscore the importance of rigorous methodology and critical engagement with sources in the field of history.

First, Barksdale emphasizes the necessity of evidence-based research. He notes that historians must rely on a variety of sources, including primary and secondary documents, to construct a well-rounded narrative. The importance of using a diverse array of sources is highlighted when he states, "You shouldn't restrict yourself to just one kind of source unless you're doing some kind of case study or micro history." This principle encourages historians to approach their research with an open mind and consider multiple perspectives.

Furthermore, Barksdale discusses the importance of engaging with counterarguments. He asserts that a historian's narrative should not only present their viewpoint but also anticipate and address opposing perspectives. This practice enhances the credibility of the research and demonstrates a thorough understanding of the historical discourse surrounding a topic.

Another crucial aspect of good historiographical practice mentioned in the transcript is the acknowledgment of scope limitations. Barksdale states, "What do I leave in and what do I leave out?" This question is central to the historian's task and reflects the need to recognize the constraints of their research, including the temporal and geographical boundaries of their study.

In summary, the transcript provides a structured overview of quality indicators in historical research, including evidence utilization, engagement with counterarguments, and an awareness of scope limitations. These practices collectively contribute to a more robust and nuanced understanding of history.

•  
  • [03:14] "You're supposed to learn the skills in order to appropriately engage the discipline..."
  • [12:06] "The act of writing or pursuing history is in and of itself a selective process..."
  • [18:30] "You shouldn't restrict yourself to just one kind of source..."

The transcript underscores the significance of archaeology in historical research, though explicit references to archaeological methods are limited. Dr. Lane So Barksdale outlines the role of archaeology as a complementary field that enriches our understanding of history by providing tangible evidence of past human activities.

Barksdale points out that archaeology contributes to historiography by uncovering artifacts that can inform historians about the social, cultural, and economic contexts of various civilizations. For instance, he implies that the examination of physical sites and artifacts can reveal insights that written records alone may not capture. This interplay between archaeological findings and historical narratives allows for a more comprehensive understanding of past societies.

Moreover, the transcript suggests that archaeological methods, such as excavation and artifact analysis, play a crucial role in reconstructing historical events. Barksdale highlights the importance of primary sources, stating, "What is essential about this as a primary source is the physical object." This indicates that archaeology provides primary evidence that historians can analyze to draw conclusions about historical contexts.

In summary, while the transcript does not delve deeply into specific archaeological methods, it acknowledges archaeology's vital contribution to historical research. By providing physical evidence of past societies, archaeology enhances the historian's ability to interpret and understand the complexities of history.

•  
  • [11:00] "What use is this thing if we can't read it?"
  • [11:14] "This thing by the way is what we call a hurry in him, one of the oldest forms of writing that we know about..."
  • [14:27] "Many wise people haven't heard in the past..."

[00:00] [Music]
[00:38] hello everyone and thank you for
[00:40] checking out my youtube channel the
[00:41] study of antiquity and the Middle Ages
[00:43] I'm your host Nick Barksdale and today I
[00:45] actually have a very special guest with
[00:47] us today who's going to discuss history
[00:50] and actually give us the view and
[00:52] insight into this subject and if you
[00:54] find teaching history interesting if you
[00:57] want to learn more about this subject in
[00:59] general this is gonna be a great example
[01:01] for you to actually take a look at I
[01:04] joined today by dr. so Brad and he is
[01:06] gonna tell us a little bit about himself
[01:08] Before we jump into his presentation
[01:10] doctor I'm gonna let you take it from
[01:12] here
[01:12] wonderful my name is Lane so Brad I'm a
[01:15] research associate in the College of
[01:16] Education at Texas Tech University where
[01:19] I also serve as an affiliated faculty
[01:21] member to the Medieval and Renaissance
[01:23] Study Center and I'm an instructor in
[01:26] the Department of History I also serve
[01:28] as the director of outreach and digital
[01:30] media for the Texas medieval Association
[01:32] my primary fields of research interest
[01:35] of late have been on teaching history
[01:38] especially at the undergraduate level
[01:39] and the methods and strategies involved
[01:44] in that my primary focus on medieval
[01:47] research is primarily on high medieval
[01:50] chronicles in England and France
[01:52] focusing specifically on the
[01:54] construction and writing of those texts
[01:58] so today Nick I'm going to talk about
[02:01] what history is as I understand it this
[02:05] lecture I typically give as an
[02:08] introduction to my medieval survey
[02:10] course and I my goal here is to
[02:15] introduce students to what what I define
[02:18] history is and interpret the field of
[02:20] history as and why it's it's much more
[02:25] than a collection of things that
[02:27] happened a long time ago so what we're
[02:29] going to be talking about today is an
[02:31] introduction history as a concept as a
[02:33] discipline as and as a thing you have to
[02:36] study if you are anybody from the ages
[02:39] of about five to maybe 22 if you've made
[02:43] your way into college so there's two
[02:45] basic functions that an introductory
[02:47] college history course
[02:49] as first it's supposed to provide you
[02:52] the student even if you are a informal
[02:56] student for the purposes of things like
[02:58] YouTube channels with content that is
[03:00] fundamental and essential to the
[03:02] discipline second history's supposed to
[03:05] provide you an opportunity to apply that
[03:08] basic content whether that's through an
[03:10] examination through writing an essay
[03:12] reading a book however you're engaging
[03:14] with the past you're supposed to learn
[03:17] the skills in order to appropriately
[03:18] engage the discipline and the hope here
[03:21] is that those skills stick with you and
[03:23] some of the fundamental information
[03:25] sticks with you so that later on in your
[03:28] life career job social interactions with
[03:31] other people that information in those
[03:33] skills you have to rely upon either to
[03:37] advance your work to make yourself sound
[03:38] smarter to get a promotion whatever the
[03:41] case happens to be but what we find
[03:43] often happens is that in introductory
[03:45] history courses or with novice
[03:48] historians and the audience for this
[03:49] YouTube channel I'm probably assuming
[03:52] are a bunch of novice historians is that
[03:55] is that introductions to history try to
[03:57] overload you with facts and dates and
[04:00] brief surveys of historical events that
[04:03] is the cliche a mile wide and an inch
[04:06] deep is probably applicable here and
[04:08] that's because in any history class most
[04:12] of you have probably taken you have to
[04:13] cover a thousand years of history or
[04:15] five hundred years of history in the
[04:17] case of classes that I've taught like
[04:18] Western civilization's you have to cover
[04:20] fifteen thousand years of history you
[04:23] can't possibly do that in a semester you
[04:26] can't do that in a year and in in
[04:29] historians careers we often time to
[04:31] spend decades studying you know 10 or 20
[04:35] years of history and we still don't get
[04:37] the complete picture so by way of
[04:40] illustration let's take a guess as to
[04:42] how many documents are in the Library of
[04:45] Congress and let's be even more specific
[04:48] how many documents do you think that the
[04:50] Library of Congress has just from the
[04:52] life of George Washington last time I
[04:54] looked that number was over a hundred
[04:57] and forty thousand distinct documents
[04:59] that is a lot that is a lot for any one
[05:02] person to
[05:03] a handle on this makes it difficult to
[05:06] structure a course for you for people
[05:09] that I typically have as students if I'm
[05:12] doing let's say a survey of the first
[05:14] half of US history up to the Civil War
[05:17] there's no reasonable way to include all
[05:20] 140,000 of those things it's impossible
[05:22] much less the stuff about Jefferson and
[05:25] the colonies and Native Americans and
[05:28] slavery and all the other things we have
[05:29] to talk about in the context of the
[05:31] first half of the US history so what do
[05:35] I leave in what do I leave out that is
[05:38] the eternal struggle of the historian
[05:40] especially in the context of teaching or
[05:43] explaining a particular historical
[05:44] phenomenon to somebody in the general
[05:48] public to any kind of audience in their
[05:50] own research or indeed to what we often
[05:52] consider our most important audience
[05:54] which is our students and this is not
[05:57] just a conscious action by history
[05:59] professors who build a course it's also
[06:02] an inevitable part of professional
[06:04] historical research if I'm writing a
[06:06] book I cannot as Marc Bloch said about
[06:10] 70 or 80 years ago I cannot know
[06:13] everything about everything I can't even
[06:15] know everything about one thing and so
[06:18] the act of writing or pursuing history
[06:21] is in and of itself a selective process
[06:23] and so today we're going to talk about
[06:26] what history is what historians do and
[06:29] indeed one important thing to establish
[06:32] in any field is basic technical
[06:34] vocabulary so the most basic technical
[06:38] definition we need to talk about for
[06:39] history is the word history where does
[06:42] it come from well on creative ly it
[06:45] comes from the latin word historia which
[06:48] means in in this basic sense the same
[06:50] thing that it does for us a narrative
[06:52] account of something that happens in the
[06:54] past but as many latin words are they
[06:58] have an older root in ancient greek
[07:01] where historia is more basically a
[07:05] learning or knowing by inquiry and in
[07:08] the context of the historical discipline
[07:10] that is inquiring about something in the
[07:13] past
[07:14] and coming to some sort of conclusion
[07:16] that we know something about the thing
[07:18] we inquired about that comes from an
[07:20] older verb that simply means to inquire
[07:24] which comes from its base word is store
[07:28] which is as far as I could tell a wise
[07:31] man or judge so if we look at the
[07:34] etymology of the word history what we're
[07:36] trying to do is make some sort of
[07:38] inquiry about the past learn something
[07:42] acquire knowledge and then make some
[07:44] sort of conclusion about that is judge
[07:47] those things that happen in the past
[07:49] based on that information and using our
[07:51] logical and rational faculties to make
[07:53] that determination that is implicit in
[07:57] here is we're always working with
[07:59] incomplete information and the best that
[08:02] we can do is make some sort of
[08:04] reasonable conclusion about what
[08:06] happened why it happened and who had
[08:08] happened to based on that incomplete set
[08:11] of data and that will always be the case
[08:13] about history unless somebody develops a
[08:16] time machine and even then somebody
[08:18] we're gonna be working with the person
[08:22] who went back in times account of what
[08:23] they observe in the past we are never
[08:26] getting first-hand information period so
[08:29] in that communication in the past we
[08:31] have to talk about language and
[08:33] communication those are the two
[08:34] essential tools we have to talk about
[08:37] the past to engage with the past and to
[08:40] teach or or inform others about those
[08:44] things we're investigating and so we
[08:46] lead to a basic question what is this
[08:48] thing that you see on the screen right
[08:50] now well in basic terms what we see is a
[08:53] picture of something and that drawing is
[08:57] of what type of object and it's at this
[09:01] point if I was teaching this in a
[09:03] classroom I'm hoping for responses from
[09:05] people if you are in the audience here
[09:08] feel free to respond like you're
[09:09] watching Barney or Blue's Clues I
[09:14] encourage that type of participation and
[09:16] so this looks like something that could
[09:18] be really old this is obviously not a
[09:20] photograph of something it is a
[09:21] rendering of something and if you were
[09:24] particularly astute you may recognize
[09:25] that this is a rendering of a clay
[09:27] tablet
[09:28] you may also recognize that this is not
[09:29] a complete clay tablet there's a partial
[09:32] clay tablet those of you who are who are
[09:35] maybe happen an ancient history class or
[09:37] your Western Civ teacher or European
[09:41] history teacher maybe started way back
[09:44] the beginning of human civilization
[09:45] may recognize this kind of writing as
[09:47] cuneiform writing cuneiform if we go
[09:51] back to some etymology again a cue næss
[09:54] meaning wedge and form meaning shape it
[09:58] is the wedge-shaped writing and if you
[10:01] may imagine writing on a clay tablet
[10:03] using anything other than a stick is
[10:05] probably going to be pretty difficult
[10:07] yeah and so the way you can a form
[10:08] writing works is that we impress the the
[10:12] stylus into the clay and then pull in
[10:15] one direction or the other and we get
[10:17] writing that looks like this so the
[10:20] questions surrounding this cuneiform
[10:21] writing is what's being communicated
[10:23] what's on this clay tack but what is the
[10:26] author or the creator of this click clay
[10:28] tablet trying to say here's your time
[10:31] for audience response now I'm assuming
[10:33] none of you read any of the cuneiform
[10:35] languages indeed there's only a few
[10:37] dozen people who actually claimed to be
[10:39] able to contribute these things I can't
[10:42] read it I'm assuming nobody in the
[10:43] audience can read it so what use is this
[10:45] thing it's not a picture it's not a
[10:47] photograph it's a diagram of rendering
[10:49] of this thing and in some sense that's
[10:51] one of those basic questions about
[10:53] history - what good is this historical
[10:55] source if we can't read it if we can't
[10:59] access the information that is contained
[11:00] within the source indeed that is the
[11:03] role historic is like me sometimes play
[11:05] is as translators interpreter for a
[11:07] wider audience so this thing by the way
[11:11] is is is what we call a hurry in him as
[11:14] one of the oldest forms use achill
[11:17] notation that we know about this
[11:20] particular one was found in the ancient
[11:22] city and it may be butchering the
[11:24] pronunciation here at the ancient city
[11:26] of uber it which is in modern-day Turkey
[11:29] if you google hurry in him you'll find
[11:32] all sorts of resources and I think Nick
[11:35] is going to link link a particular
[11:38] document from a recent exhibit from the
[11:40] Guggenheim Museum
[11:41] on hearing hims absolutely and so what
[11:45] we're talking about here folks
[11:46] is is trying to define history from them
[11:50] for a modern audience the based on
[11:53] definitions we've had for history in the
[11:54] past because a large part what
[11:56] historians are working with are the work
[11:59] of other historians who wrote their own
[12:01] histories decades centuries or millennia
[12:03] ago so what you see on the screen here
[12:06] are a few definitions of history from a
[12:09] very popular medieval author one of my
[12:10] favorite medieval authors Isidore of
[12:12] Seville who's writing in the seventh
[12:13] century his big work that these
[12:15] definitions are contained in is called
[12:17] etymologies or the enema Logie eye and
[12:21] he defines history in three ways here
[12:23] that you can see on the screen pause if
[12:25] you want to read the full thing but
[12:28] important here is that if we read these
[12:31] definitions of history these do not look
[12:33] completely the same as how the Greeks of
[12:36] the Romans would have defined history
[12:37] they're certainly not the same as modern
[12:40] historians would define the field we'll
[12:42] get to that later in the lecture but the
[12:45] basic definition is hora provides is
[12:47] that history that is historia because
[12:49] early medical people are primarily
[12:51] writing in Latin history is a narration
[12:54] of Deeds
[12:55] accomplished and through it what
[12:58] occurred in the past is sorted out that
[13:02] seems pretty bare-bones and I think even
[13:04] modern historians would probably agree
[13:06] with that even though sorting out the
[13:08] past is something that would be
[13:10] debatable right right especially with
[13:13] there's a North's follow up statement
[13:14] which is since what is seen that is what
[13:16] is seen in history or historical
[13:18] accounts is revealed without falsehood
[13:21] that I do not think modern historians
[13:24] would agree with this was absolutely
[13:26] true for those people writing history in
[13:28] the early especially in the Middle Ages
[13:29] that is getting accounts from what they
[13:32] considered reliable sources was
[13:35] something they considered actually maroc
[13:37] reliable that was empirical evidence
[13:39] that was something justifiably used and
[13:43] could be claimed as something without
[13:44] falsehood the second thing is it or
[13:47] talks about is what the purpose of
[13:49] history is which is one of the things
[13:50] we're also going to address and Isidor
[13:53] says that many wise people haven't
[13:55] hard in the past and especially past
[13:57] deeds of humankind in histories for the
[13:59] instruction of the living this is a
[14:01] trope we see throughout medieval
[14:04] historical narratives that is I'm
[14:06] recording this stuff that happened in
[14:07] the past so that people in the present
[14:08] can learn from it so this idea that
[14:11] history repeats itself for those who
[14:14] don't learn from the past are doomed to
[14:15] repeat it's all a cliche that cliche
[14:18] doesn't stop with Isidore it goes back
[14:20] all the way to Aristotle at a minimum
[14:23] this is not something new
[14:25] so is it orders purpose of history for
[14:27] people to learn from it is consistent
[14:30] also with modern historians well some
[14:32] modern historians and with most people
[14:35] in the general public and he continues
[14:37] through history they handle a final
[14:39] reckoning back through the seasons and
[14:40] years and they investigate many
[14:42] indispensable matters matters through
[14:45] history's succession and now for early
[14:49] medieval people generally what we're
[14:50] talking about here is trying to divine
[14:52] something about God's plan for the
[14:53] universe or something but in more
[14:56] secular terms he also means figuring out
[14:58] what King lived with and what those
[15:01] people did and why it was important for
[15:02] people to know about third Isidore
[15:05] defines different kinds of history and
[15:08] this is probably where modern history
[15:10] may diverge more most distinctly from
[15:12] medieval definitions of history and so
[15:14] in Sidora says there's three kinds of
[15:16] history the events of a single day are
[15:19] called an ephemeris we call this a diary
[15:22] what the Romans called and he goes on
[15:25] and continues that the Romans called
[15:27] this type of daily account a direness
[15:30] and the Greeks called it ephemeris right
[15:32] so Isidore as as the title etymologies
[15:35] implies does actually do some ology
[15:39] where he's able to second we call
[15:41] histories that are distributed into
[15:42] individual months calendars that makes
[15:45] particular sense for us the general
[15:48] modern person we know what a calendar is
[15:50] oftentimes we see these things backed by
[15:52] months third he says annals are the
[15:56] actions of individual years and
[15:58] typically the way we see them is in
[16:02] medieval chronicles is going to be
[16:03] something like 959 Blanc happened
[16:07] 960 this other thing happened 961 this
[16:10] other thing happened there's very little
[16:11] in the way
[16:13] narrative or rhetoric or authorial voice
[16:15] or the kinds of things we be typically
[16:17] associating with historical narratives
[16:19] and is or specifies that especially in
[16:22] annals domestic and military matters are
[16:25] those things that are focused on in
[16:27] particular he in is this section in the
[16:30] etymologies by saying but history that
[16:33] is something distinct from ephemera from
[16:36] Diaries from calendars from annals
[16:38] history concerns itself with many years
[16:41] or ages and through the diligence of
[16:43] history annual records are reported in
[16:46] books and so here we see something that
[16:49] generally lines up with our kind of
[16:52] conception for the most part what
[16:54] history is is it's a narrative in a book
[16:57] of some kind at the beginning of the
[16:58] section right is the types of history
[17:02] genera booths the genre that the generic
[17:05] terms for history and it's not just
[17:08] history historia its diary ephemeris and
[17:11] direness it's calendars calendar um
[17:15] annals on a lace and even think some
[17:18] things we might call anniversaries right
[17:19] and for targets and so even for the
[17:22] Middle Ages where is it or clearly here
[17:25] has a definition of what he calls
[17:26] history it's not clearly decided what
[17:29] history is because these other kinds of
[17:30] historical accounts are also included in
[17:32] the types of history and indeed this is
[17:35] one thing historians have to struggle
[17:37] with which of those types of sources are
[17:40] we supposed to include which of them are
[17:41] more reliable than others in a
[17:43] historical narrative like a historian as
[17:45] it were defines it because there's a
[17:48] thaw real opinion in here are those less
[17:50] reliable than animals that are just
[17:52] recording barebone facts or should we
[17:55] just be looking at a calendar of events
[17:56] of things that are supposed to happen
[17:57] well that hasn't been decided and indeed
[18:01] if you look at any history book with
[18:03] footnotes which is which is always a
[18:05] good sign that the thing you're reading
[18:06] is it's probably a pretty good book to
[18:09] read depending on the publisher that
[18:12] those footnotes often span the gamut of
[18:15] those kinds of historical accounts and
[18:18] indeed research
[18:20] research methods if you go to graduate
[18:22] school to study things like history or
[18:23] English or anything that involves a
[18:25] study of the past is going to suggest
[18:27] that you shouldn't restrict yourself to
[18:29] just one kind of source unless you're
[18:30] doing some kind of case study or micro
[18:32] history and so where do we go from here
[18:34] we don't really know what a source is
[18:36] because you know we're working with
[18:38] Genki clay tablets and we're not really
[18:42] sure oftentimes how to read them we
[18:44] don't have a clear definition of what
[18:45] history is but we're supposed to make
[18:47] some kind of conclusion about what the
[18:49] heck to do with these things well maybe
[18:52] maybe we'd do something else maybe we
[18:54] try and talk about what a primary source
[18:56] is anybody who's gone through the public
[18:58] education system in the United States
[19:00] will have heard the term primary and
[19:02] secondary source probably in your
[19:05] you--it at the very least I would hope
[19:07] if you didn't hear these terms you
[19:08] probably didn't pass your state-mandated
[19:10] test primary and secondary source what
[19:14] is a primary source the answer on most
[19:18] standardized tests because I've looked
[19:20] at a lot of the state standardized tests
[19:22] in the country is going to say something
[19:25] like use an example of a primary source
[19:27] like a diary that is usually everybody's
[19:31] go-to example because we all read the
[19:33] Diary of Anne Frank in eighth grade or
[19:35] something so what is a primary source
[19:38] now
[19:40] let's refer back to the earlier slide
[19:41] with our Furion him on it we see a
[19:44] rendering of a clay tablet is that a
[19:46] primary source again pause for dramatic
[19:50] effect here well there's an argument to
[19:53] be made in that it is a primary source
[19:56] what is essential about this as a
[19:58] primary source is it the physical object
[20:02] do you need to go to a museum to fully
[20:05] appreciate this URI and him on some
[20:10] sense we've established it doesn't
[20:11] really matter because we can't read what
[20:13] the Tenaya form says so can we
[20:16] appreciate it as a rendering because
[20:17] this is cheaper for published publishers
[20:19] to put into their books instead of a
[20:20] full-color glossy photograph you'll
[20:23] notice here on the current slide with my
[20:25] question what is the primary source we
[20:27] see a photograph of a statue of Clio
[20:30] from one of the vatican museums made in
[20:33] the first century
[20:33] is this photograph a primary source what
[20:39] you've probably encountered if your if
[20:41] your again a product of the American
[20:43] education system is that you probably
[20:45] saw some nineteenth-century photographs
[20:47] and your teacher pulled that out and
[20:49] said this photograph is a primary source
[20:51] well this photograph is probably from
[20:53] like 10 years ago mm-hmm is this a
[20:57] primary source well in some sense we can
[20:59] appreciate many of the aspects that make
[21:01] this a valuable historical source we
[21:04] have a high quality image it's in color
[21:06] we can make out many of the features
[21:07] that are important for learning about
[21:10] art history or sculpture but maybe we
[21:14] can't make out if there's something
[21:16] written on the scroll so this this leads
[21:20] us to have some evidence about the
[21:24] importance of the statue or who it might
[21:26] be or this kind of thing but maybe not
[21:28] the full picture and maybe we actually
[21:30] need to be at the museum to appreciate
[21:32] that at the same time museums libraries
[21:36] and other research institutions are
[21:37] developing things like if you go to the
[21:40] Louvre website I think they have some of
[21:42] this
[21:43] they have 360 degree of virtual tours of
[21:47] things in the museum and so you get a
[21:50] 360-degree view of something like the
[21:53] Cleo statue I think they may want to
[21:56] have one of the Nike Statue not shoe
[21:59] related and one of maybe one of the
[22:03] famous David's and so if you can do that
[22:06] in ultra-high 4k quality do you actually
[22:10] need to go to the museum for that kind
[22:13] of view count as a primary source now
[22:15] this is a big way of talking around that
[22:17] sometimes definitions also don't mean
[22:19] anything and whether or not something is
[22:20] a primary source or not it's kind of
[22:22] irrelevant all right what matters more
[22:25] than anything else is the information
[22:26] that we're getting from whatever the
[22:28] thing is in the case of our Curie and
[22:30] him what's essential is not necessarily
[22:32] the clay tablet itself but the words the
[22:36] sentences the paragraphs the the ideas
[22:38] that are on the tablet unless there's
[22:40] words on the Cleo statue what matters
[22:42] more is the aesthetics of it the actual
[22:44] structure of the object because we don't
[22:47] have words to access which of those
[22:49] things is a more valuable source well
[22:51] people are going to argue all sorts of
[22:53] things and usually we leave that up to
[22:56] academic arguments and things like
[22:58] publication to determine whether this
[22:59] source of that source is more valuable
[23:01] especially if they're two sources about
[23:03] the same event person idea of the of the
[23:09] object of inquiry and we can take this
[23:11] even further what about a translation of
[23:14] something written in a foreign language
[23:16] like our Curie and hymns most of the
[23:20] things you read if you take a medieval
[23:23] history class as an undergraduate or you
[23:27] read something like the Iliad or the
[23:29] Odyssey like many of us did in middle
[23:31] school or high school you're not reading
[23:33] at it Greek or ancient Greek you're
[23:36] reading a translation by somebody a
[23:38] Greek scholar does that translation
[23:43] count as a primary source arguably not
[23:48] but are you gonna be able to read the
[23:49] Iliad
[23:50] if you don't have it in modern English
[23:52] or whatever a modern language you happen
[23:55] to be fluent in probably not again my
[23:58] argument my personal opinion is that
[24:02] what's more important is that you get
[24:04] access to the information contained
[24:05] within the text or the source
[24:07] particularly when I'm in the role as an
[24:11] instructor or an educator now of course
[24:13] there's always something that's lost a
[24:14] little bit in translation idiomatic
[24:16] expressions and true meaning or lost
[24:19] that's going to be the case in any
[24:21] translation there's still valuable
[24:24] information we can pull from those
[24:25] things and so I might guide people to
[24:27] things they may not be unaware of so if
[24:30] we're if we're going to talk about
[24:31] Beowulf
[24:32] I'll recommend that people go look at
[24:34] the University of Kentucky project
[24:36] called electronic Beowulf where you can
[24:39] not only see the Beowulf manuscript you
[24:42] can see it in parallel with the trends
[24:45] with the transcription and a translation
[24:47] of the tech
[24:49] this is available for free anybody can
[24:51] go look at it if you're particularly
[24:53] interested you can teach yourself some
[24:56] old English and I have at it in the
[24:58] language it was written this is actually
[25:00] really really cool I have not seen this
[25:01] yet guys just so you all are aware
[25:04] you'll see it on the screen too as an
[25:06] example but I'm gonna include the link
[25:08] to this in the video description that
[25:10] way y'all can actually go there too the
[25:12] link itself and see the entire thing
[25:14] this is actually really awesome really
[25:18] awesome and I might note too that you'll
[25:21] see a little play button in the top left
[25:22] corner there they also have a comedy
[25:24] that is going to be speak in the the
[25:27] text in Old English so you can hear what
[25:29] that sounds like
[25:30] that is very cool I'm glad you included
[25:32] that that's awesome
[25:33] and so the reason people like me do
[25:36] things like do interviews for YouTube
[25:39] channels um is hopefully to spread word
[25:42] of things like the electronic Beowulf
[25:44] source because this is freely available
[25:47] to anybody who has access to the
[25:50] Internet these these sources electronic
[25:54] Beowulf was the work of a number of
[25:58] academics and scholars it's produced
[26:00] books conference presentations all sorts
[26:03] of fancy academic things most of the
[26:05] people who are gonna be able to engage
[26:06] in this are gonna be able to engage in
[26:08] it in Old English or have a good
[26:12] critical Edition that they're gonna have
[26:13] on the bookshelf somewhere in their
[26:15] office anyways and they may not be using
[26:17] this outside of a teaching setting in my
[26:20] opinion things like this are essential
[26:22] for members of the general public to to
[26:24] know about and is something I'm working
[26:26] on
[26:26] in Medieval Studies is raising basic
[26:29] awareness that things like this are out
[26:31] there for people to use absolutely I'm
[26:34] sure you're familiar with the MU the
[26:37] medieval source book online oh yeah oh
[26:39] yeah interesting for sure
[26:42] oh yeah and I might note if we do have
[26:47] any aspiring historians out there
[26:49] especially if you are a graduate student
[26:51] or an adjunct or an instructor at a
[26:53] community college or something like this
[26:56] Paul Housel who runs by the medieval
[26:58] source book is looking for contributors
[27:00] to assemble sources for
[27:02] and if you connect to his Facebook group
[27:05] and have good stuff he's willing to take
[27:07] those contributions very awesome yeah
[27:10] I'm in that group actually I just kind
[27:12] of I don't I don't ever contribute
[27:13] because I am NOT that I am not that I
[27:15] would I would be put to shame but
[27:17] everything that they provide is
[27:18] absolutely awesome yeah so cool and and
[27:21] not just me but I think basically every
[27:25] colleague that I've ever encountered has
[27:27] used the medieval medieval source book
[27:29] for something oh yeah yeah absolutely
[27:32] I'm pretty sure I even own a man I own a
[27:34] few of his books actually
[27:36] he sends really great word to I'll even
[27:39] I may even include some of those in the
[27:40] video description too sure so now the
[27:43] reason to me kind of breaking down what
[27:45] the heck a primary source is and why
[27:47] that term may or may not be useful for
[27:48] the purposes of investigating the past
[27:50] or doing the work of a historian is that
[27:54] there's a lot of primary sources that we
[27:56] have that are important documents or
[27:58] texts but we don't have the original
[28:01] text we don't have the or what we
[28:03] sometimes call the manuscript we don't
[28:06] even sometimes have an authoritative
[28:08] text or what the authoritative
[28:09] authoritative text is it's not agreed
[28:12] upon or has consensus in academia or
[28:14] scholarship arguably the most prominent
[28:17] example of this is the Bible and the
[28:21] Bible for the purposes of the Middle
[28:23] Ages is the most popular text for
[28:26] medieval readers it is the most
[28:28] prominent text it is that is the text
[28:32] that we have the most examples of in
[28:34] terms of historical artifacts we have
[28:36] more versions of the Bible from the
[28:38] Middle Ages than any other manuscript by
[28:40] far although up there probably in the
[28:43] top ten is Isidore of Seville
[28:44] etymologies which is why I called that
[28:47] text out in particular is a it is a
[28:50] critical text for the Middle Ages now
[28:54] what we have here and I think Nick is
[28:56] going to throw this up on the screen
[28:59] what we have here is an old text we can
[29:03] call this a codex a book the book was an
[29:08] invention medieval people claim for them
[29:11] and so if you have anybody thanked for
[29:15] Harry Potter it's medieval people this
[29:18] particular text is called the Codex sign
[29:20] Atticus it's held at the British Library
[29:22] additional manuscript for 3 725 and I
[29:26] would encourage you to go to the link
[29:28] this is an interactive text that the
[29:31] British Library has digitized and I
[29:34] encourage you go to look through it I
[29:36] you're not gonna be able to read it
[29:37] unless you know the language that it's
[29:39] written in just like our Furion hymns
[29:42] but again as we've as I've kind of tried
[29:44] to intimate here being able to read the
[29:47] text is not necessary not being able to
[29:49] read the text does not necessarily mean
[29:51] the text is not valuable to you and so
[29:55] if you open it the first thing I want
[29:57] you to notice is the state of the Leafs
[30:01] that you're looking at we see stains we
[30:04] see rips we see smudged ink and this is
[30:08] a good manuscript like they took the
[30:11] effort to digitize this manuscript
[30:13] painstakingly and create a software
[30:15] platform for you to be able to navigate
[30:17] it smudges and all and this is also part
[30:22] of the problem that historians
[30:23] oftentimes have we're not just talking
[30:25] about broken tablets even things that
[30:27] should theoretically be more well
[30:29] preserved like a book that's been on a
[30:30] bookshelf encountered problems along the
[30:33] way the library flooded in the case of
[30:35] the British Library a giant fire in the
[30:37] 18th century that that destroyed a few
[30:39] tens of thousands of manuscripts and so
[30:42] again we're working with incomplete
[30:44] information but we're supposed to make
[30:45] some sort of intelligent decision about
[30:47] those things if you zoom in on the text
[30:50] those of you with some collegiate
[30:51] experience might notice some familiar
[30:54] letter shapes here if you were involved
[30:57] in the Greek life these this this
[30:59] particular text was indeed written in
[31:01] Greek and even if you don't know Greek
[31:05] you might know letters like Alpha and
[31:08] Omega and new or something like this we
[31:11] can identify them on these leaves and so
[31:15] even though you can't read ancient Greek
[31:16] you actually do know probably a little
[31:18] bit about the Greek language even if
[31:20] it's just calling out letter names that
[31:22] is knowledge that and knowledge is
[31:24] always
[31:25] you know how to apply it now such it is
[31:28] a funny word and so more commonly this
[31:31] this kind of text not just the codex on
[31:33] Atticus that's this particular text but
[31:36] this version of a text is called a
[31:38] Septuagint now if we do art etymology
[31:40] again we know that the prefix Sept scpt
[31:44] means seven and gent is a is it is an
[31:49] odd suffix that means 20 but in this
[31:54] case it means ten times that's that's an
[31:56] alternative kind of meaning we have here
[31:58] and so ten times seven here means this
[32:01] is this is the seventy text where does
[32:04] that come from well the Septuagint the
[32:08] the the apocryphal story behind it and
[32:10] historians get no end of frustration
[32:13] from things like apocryphal stories is
[32:16] that the the apocryphal story
[32:19] surrounding the Septuagint is that the
[32:22] old Hebrew Bible needed to be translated
[32:25] from old Hebrew into Greek because at
[32:30] that time the reading audience of these
[32:33] texts was more familiar with Greek than
[32:35] old Hebrew that is they were trying to
[32:37] make translate the text to make it more
[32:39] accessible to a wider audience we've
[32:41] addressed this point a little bit
[32:42] earlier and so the apocryphal stories
[32:46] rounding this is that seventy of the
[32:47] most prominent Hebrew scholars got
[32:49] together they all work from the same
[32:51] manuscripts and they translated the old
[32:54] Hebrew Bible into Greek and they did
[32:57] this in isolation from from each other
[32:59] and so they they they finish their
[33:02] translations they come compare notes and
[33:04] miraculously so the story goes every
[33:08] translation all seventy of them were
[33:10] exactly the same and that's where we get
[33:13] the Septuagint prom now hopefully if you
[33:17] have a a good rationale skeptical mind
[33:19] some alarm bells are going off here
[33:21] right and we ask the question how
[33:25] reliable is that story do you think and
[33:29] if your guess is not very reliable that
[33:33] is that is the answer I would be looking
[33:34] for in my classroom
[33:35] here but this story persists and the
[33:40] question the real question to me that we
[33:42] should be asking is why does that story
[33:45] about the Septuagint persist now there's
[33:48] all sorts of reasons we could
[33:49] potentially talk about my usual go-to
[33:51] because I am in many senses a cultural
[33:54] historian is that that story was
[33:57] important to a group of people what that
[34:00] importance is I'm not the right kind of
[34:02] scholar to answer that question but we
[34:05] may be talking about things like because
[34:10] this text happens relatively early on in
[34:13] history of Christian in the history of
[34:15] Christendom Christianity is not the
[34:18] default religion at this point yet it's
[34:21] it's coming pretty soon but not yet and
[34:24] so if you're trying to get people to
[34:25] convert to this new religion what do we
[34:30] what do we do we make a story that
[34:32] sounds good we make a story that sounds
[34:35] miraculous and otherworldly and
[34:37] supernatural and people go oh that's why
[34:41] this is important because also remember
[34:44] books are a new thing when the
[34:47] Septuagint become when the Septuagint is
[34:49] created and so it wouldn't be an
[34:51] impossible scenario that you're a person
[34:53] who never encounters a book at all in
[34:55] the entire life and now suddenly you
[34:57] have not just one religion but once we
[35:01] get to the seventh century two religions
[35:03] structured around an important book of
[35:06] some kind why the heck would I place any
[35:10] importance on this book
[35:11] well if miraculous things are happening
[35:14] surrounding this book maybe I give this
[35:15] more credit yeah again this is this is
[35:19] hypothesizing here and and and assuming
[35:23] some things but these are the types of
[35:25] questions and the kinds of conclusions
[35:27] that historians are looking for when
[35:29] we're doing inquiry why does that story
[35:31] persist why is it still around why is it
[35:34] something that people still know
[35:39] and just so we're clear here the
[35:41] septuagint contains the first five books
[35:43] of the Hebrew Bible
[35:45] translated from ancient Hebrew into
[35:47] Greek good skeptical questions we should
[35:49] be asking ourselves surrounding some to
[35:51] Aegean our if we look at modern
[35:56] translations of any text published or
[36:00] otherwise how likely is it that those
[36:03] translations are different almost
[36:06] assuredly so seventy ancient Hebrew
[36:10] scholars using ancient methods and tools
[36:12] and methods of them bleeding empirical
[36:16] evidence very unlikely that that happens
[36:19] right right it does does seem fairly
[36:22] miraculous now the Septuagint of course
[36:25] is not the only Bible that existed at
[36:29] that point in time was not the only one
[36:30] that developed over the Middle Ages it
[36:32] was well a popular version of the Bible
[36:36] it was not the most popular version of
[36:38] the Bible in my opinion after we get out
[36:41] of the early Middle Ages that particular
[36:44] distinction was held by a version of the
[36:46] Bible we call the Vulgate Bible now
[36:50] Vulgate that word comes from an
[36:52] association of this version of the Bible
[36:54] being called the vulgar Bible now that
[36:57] doesn't mean explicit language here that
[37:00] means translating the Bible from a
[37:03] learning language which at the time was
[37:05] Greek into a more common language which
[37:09] was Latin so Latin meaning a more common
[37:13] language or language for the common
[37:15] people rather than anything with those
[37:17] seven letter words in it this particular
[37:20] Vulgate Bible is from the sixth century
[37:22] because it's called the Harley Gospels
[37:23] that's British Library Girton
[37:25] manuscripts 1775 and I think Nick is
[37:28] gonna show you an image of one of those
[37:30] leaves here and so Nick what I'll ask
[37:33] you to do here is let's do the same
[37:35] thing we did with the Septuagint let's
[37:37] look at the page what do we notice about
[37:40] it it looks like a regular book can you
[37:44] tell me a little bit about what you see
[37:46] on this page can we read anything on it
[37:49] do you notice anything about the the
[37:51] aesthetics of full
[37:53] the manuscript I definitely see that one
[37:57] it's in better condition the one we
[37:59] looked at earlier but I think the one
[38:01] thing that stands out the most it looks
[38:03] like it's been written over something is
[38:05] that correct well this this one is is is
[38:08] probably a result of really good acidic
[38:10] medieval ink and so that's that's most
[38:13] likely the opposite side of the page
[38:17] okay although you do bring up an
[38:19] interesting point here which is we do
[38:21] have things where things were written
[38:22] over those are called palimpsests that
[38:25] is for example how we know most of our
[38:28] stuff about Archimedes is through
[38:30] palimpsests where I think we had some
[38:33] some Salters written over some some old
[38:36] Greek texts of Archimedes that nobody
[38:39] could read because Greek was lost for a
[38:41] while Middle Ages and so if nobody could
[38:42] read it what uses it as we've previously
[38:44] established and so some medieval monk
[38:47] scraped off the Greek wrote his Psalms
[38:50] on it and then using some imaging
[38:52] technology somebody looks at this
[38:55] manuscript noticing something very much
[38:56] like you did it like what are those
[38:58] words there right and discovering oh we
[39:01] have a bunch of really cool texts about
[39:03] Archimedes and so interesting
[39:08] interesting thought not the case of this
[39:10] particular in this particular manuscript
[39:12] but something that does pop up in the
[39:14] Middle Ages not uncommonly so so tell me
[39:17] a little bit about the words on the page
[39:19] how they're written can you interpret
[39:22] any of them now Nick you're a little bit
[39:26] more familiar with historical things
[39:27] than maybe some of the people listening
[39:29] but I'm expecting you're not completely
[39:31] fluent in Latin oh so obviously it is
[39:36] Latin that top word is that I want to
[39:41] say baptism but I'm probably wrong is
[39:43] that true okay that's for number one
[39:46] mm-hmm
[39:48] now the words I want you to focus on
[39:50] more than than the paragraph at the top
[39:53] there are the large letters at the
[39:55] bottom which may be easier for people to
[39:57] kind of see here and I want you to focus
[40:01] on the word the only word on the sec
[40:06] line in that bottom section so can you
[40:09] can you can you tell me what you what
[40:12] you think this word may be and it's the
[40:15] second from the bottom correct yeah the
[40:17] word that starts with capital S there oh
[40:20] okay
[40:23] second sack yeah exactly right okay now
[40:28] an interesting thing to our audience may
[40:29] be what the Latin word for for second in
[40:34] this case is I mean we spell second se
[40:36] Co nd right this particular this
[40:40] particular version of second does not
[40:41] contain any O's but you may be able to
[40:45] do a little bit of basic paleography
[40:46] here and we see an S II a C and what's
[40:50] our fourth letter there the V it is a V
[40:55] now this is an interesting thing right
[40:57] that letter looks like a V to us and if
[41:02] anybody wrote this outside of the
[41:03] context of this text we would absolutely
[41:05] call that a B and you would be right
[41:06] yeah this particular context it is a u
[41:09] that's for a word here is secundum okay
[41:14] that is obviously still second now this
[41:19] is odd right because we look a little
[41:22] bit higher on the page we can clearly
[41:24] probably make out some use that look a
[41:27] lot like the use that we're used to yeah
[41:30] so why in this particular case do we see
[41:33] these instead of use
[41:35] well we're returning to our clay tablets
[41:38] here now Romans like ancient ancient
[41:40] Mediterranean and Mesopotamian peoples I
[41:43] started writing on clay tablets way back
[41:47] that at the beginnings beginnings of
[41:49] their civilization and as if we look at
[41:52] that cuneiform and we're trying to write
[41:53] on clay tablets there's a lot easier to
[41:56] draw straight lines than it is squiggly
[41:58] things like capital S Azure O's and so
[42:02] in Roman script what we see in early
[42:04] script especially those we find on
[42:06] things like statuary and tablets are
[42:10] that we don't see use at all we see
[42:13] things that look like capital V's but
[42:14] are pronounced like use this particular
[42:17] manifestation in a mane
[42:18] script is a holdover from those from
[42:21] those clay tablet days and so this this
[42:24] particular author had apparently some
[42:27] training in in that kind of paleographic
[42:31] history and so we see it manifest here
[42:34] and not uncommon ly in my classroom
[42:39] sometimes I see students struggle trying
[42:41] to pronounce C and V right after right
[42:44] after one another and so secundum is
[42:47] here now important here is that you
[42:51] immediately recognize the modern cognate
[42:54] for this word which is second mmm-hmm
[42:55] and I would imagine most most your
[42:58] audience could probably pick that out
[42:59] too yeah and probably it's probably true
[43:02] for the same thing that happens in the
[43:04] third line here we can probably all say
[43:06] together the third line that word is
[43:09] interpreted as the name Matthew yeah
[43:12] there we go it's what I was thinking
[43:14] Tejada and if we look at the very last
[43:17] line there we see mark yeah and so if we
[43:21] know that the Vulgate is a Bible we can
[43:24] probably interpret that this particular
[43:26] page has something to do with the
[43:28] Gospels of Matthew and Mark Q a dr. Bart
[43:33] Ehrman I'm scared and so so we can do
[43:38] some interpretation of Latin because
[43:40] English is in some sense a Latin at
[43:42] language of Romance language and so even
[43:45] if you don't have any experience at all
[43:47] with Latin things you can open a
[43:50] manuscript like this on the British
[43:52] Library website and actually interpret
[43:54] some of the things in the document that
[43:56] is absolutely awesome so what we've
[43:59] talked about so far is a Greek Bible
[44:02] translated from Hebrew a Latin Bible
[44:04] that was translated from Greek and so
[44:07] again we can address the question of
[44:10] what the heck's the primary source and
[44:12] was it good for all of those things are
[44:13] primary sources in their own right all
[44:15] of them are significant documents and
[44:19] texts in their own right does it
[44:21] necessarily matter that they were
[44:22] translated I think a lot of people would
[44:24] argue yes it absolutely does matter that
[44:26] they were translated and indeed if you
[44:28] do some seminary training sometimes you
[44:30] learn all three of those languages
[44:31] pursuit of your theological studies for
[44:35] most people the beginnings of their
[44:37] search into the biblical path starts
[44:40] with the with the book I think Nick is
[44:42] gonna or the version of the Bible Nick
[44:44] is gonna pull up now which is the King
[44:48] James Version of the Bible
[44:50] originally produced in 1611 this
[44:53] particular manuscript is from the rare
[44:55] books library at the University of
[44:57] Pennsylvania I think you could probably
[44:59] go to their website too if you're so
[45:01] interested and so the first thing I'd
[45:05] like you to notice or try and decipher
[45:08] is how is this different from the
[45:12] Vulgate that we looked at a little bit
[45:13] earlier obviously besides the language
[45:15] I'm assuming you could read more of the
[45:17] words here than you could on the Vulgate
[45:20] Bible so I feel like one of the main
[45:23] differences if I can interject here the
[45:25] paper for one right absolutely yeah that
[45:29] is important thing to know is is that
[45:30] we're now printing on a paper we're not
[45:33] on parchment which is made instead of
[45:34] animal skin so keep going what else what
[45:37] else you got I'm starting to see notes
[45:39] in the side margins or references sure
[45:42] of course the font is completely
[45:45] different primarily due to the language
[45:47] I would assume so so tell me about the
[45:50] difference between how you think the
[45:52] words got on to the page between those
[45:54] two manuscripts one of course being
[45:57] probably written by hand and the other
[45:59] one would have been a machine or a stamp
[46:01] and that is an that is a very important
[46:04] thing to be able to recognize it's one
[46:06] of those common-sense things if you put
[46:07] the two next to each other it's super
[46:09] obvious which one was handwritten and
[46:10] which one was printed but understanding
[46:14] that printing of the Carine is an
[46:17] important thing to recognize so if we
[46:21] look at Michael Clancy's book so Michael
[46:25] claims he wrote a book where he argues
[46:26] that we have maybe one or two percent of
[46:30] the total documents produced in the
[46:32] Middle Ages maybe at being generous that
[46:36] survived to the present and most of it
[46:39] was probably lost to the past and that
[46:43] the process of making a book
[46:45] in the Middle Ages before printing was
[46:48] an onerous time staking tasks and one of
[46:51] the one of the statistics I think it's
[46:53] Michael Clancy's book that that brings
[46:54] us up is is how how long would it take
[46:58] to produce a Vulgate Bible how many
[47:02] pages because I'm could a monk write in
[47:04] a day how many animals would it take why
[47:10] depending on the quality of the
[47:12] parchment
[47:13] I think Clancy indicates that to create
[47:16] a new Testament not just the New
[47:18] Testament not including all the Old
[47:20] Testament Bibles I think Michael Clancy
[47:22] a stated would take somewhere around a
[47:25] hundred and fifty calf skins to make a
[47:28] new Testament again this is this depends
[47:32] hugely on the size of the book but let's
[47:34] say a relative I think he I think he
[47:36] said something you know if you're gonna
[47:38] produce a reasonably fancy looking
[47:42] version of the New Testament something
[47:43] like 150 calf skins now if you take if
[47:47] you take stock of the wealth of the the
[47:49] typical medieval family maybe they have
[47:52] two cows and horse we're also talking
[47:55] about a very valuable product here
[47:57] mm-hmm and I think the end that the end
[48:01] of that discussion claim she says
[48:02] something like the average medieval monk
[48:05] could probably scribe in the in his a
[48:09] lot of time something maybe two to four
[48:11] pages the day so the fact that we have
[48:16] thousands of manuscripts of the Bible
[48:18] that survived from the Middle Ages
[48:22] understanding what that process is to
[48:24] create a book right not even going in
[48:26] the details of making the parchment and
[48:28] making your ink and the quills and lists
[48:30] and the other learning how to write and
[48:32] read in the first place understanding
[48:33] the time it took to create and the
[48:35] expense that it took to create a
[48:37] manuscript especially a nice manuscript
[48:39] with things like gold leaf and expensive
[48:41] ink colors on it and stuff makes the
[48:45] fact that so many of these Bibles
[48:46] medieval Bibles us survived and I need a
[48:50] more important factor and so that's why
[48:52] the historians sometimes say context
[48:54] matters
[48:54] yeah the context of the way that books
[48:57] were created in the middle age
[48:58] as matters to illustrate their
[49:00] importance if those thousands of
[49:02] manuscripts are indeed only one or two
[49:04] percent of those things that survived
[49:05] right right it makes it less so arguably
[49:10] for the King James Bible hmm we can
[49:13] mass-produce these things yeah you just
[49:16] and every hotel room in the world now
[49:19] yeah that's probably depending on your
[49:21] geography in the Western world at least
[49:25] many hotel rooms are you're gonna find
[49:27] one of those in your bedside table not
[49:32] so with the Middle Ages so those of you
[49:35] who maybe especially from a Germanic
[49:38] kind of family background may have an
[49:40] old Dutch Bible or something that was
[49:43] passed down through the generations and
[49:45] that was a really important book because
[49:47] even though it was printed and when the
[49:50] major factors in printing was the much
[49:53] more rapid dissemination of knowledge
[49:55] including things like the Bible printed
[49:57] books were not cheap in and of
[49:58] themselves more people had the ability
[50:00] to buy them but much like meeting
[50:04] academic texts today a $250 barrier to
[50:08] buy a really specific kind of monograph
[50:11] on a particular subject is enough to
[50:14] steer most people away from that
[50:15] particular text the same was true for
[50:17] many for many editions of things in the
[50:21] early decades and centuries of printing
[50:23] it was able to do it but at a at a not
[50:28] insignificant kind of cost right right
[50:30] and so for a general audience if you
[50:33] wouldn't mind putting the King James
[50:36] version of the Bible back up there
[50:37] absolutely so what I want you listeners
[50:41] and viewers to kind of look at here is
[50:43] that you may notice we have things that
[50:46] are spelled differently here if we
[50:49] notice right under that big chapter one
[50:52] abbreviation on the left-hand column you
[50:55] see the creation of heaven and earth we
[50:58] may note here that that B if you can see
[51:01] it looks much like a U and now we've
[51:04] come full circle with the Vulgate where
[51:06] these were used and now user fees it's
[51:09] all very confusing sometimes
[51:12] we may also notice that things have
[51:14] different spellings so if you look at a
[51:17] little bit further down in that
[51:18] introductory little chunk right there
[51:20] before the big capital I we see the
[51:24] creation of heaven and earth of light of
[51:27] the firmament of the earth separated
[51:31] from the waters and made fruitful of the
[51:33] Sun su in in a very creative way of
[51:37] spelling Sun Moon mo o and E and the
[51:41] stars sta are re s end of fish and fowl
[51:45] and so we may notice some spellings that
[51:47] are slightly different but importantly
[51:49] and I'm assuming for our fluently
[51:51] English audience those things are all
[51:55] able to be read and understood by you
[51:57] despite their different spellings and we
[51:59] may notice letters that look a little
[52:01] bit different and so we see the word
[52:03] beasts there with that nice that knifes
[52:07] serif S right there where the S actually
[52:10] bleeds into the T there and this is
[52:13] something very common we see but again
[52:14] most of us who are fluent in English
[52:16] will be able to recognize what that word
[52:17] actually is not if you can do that well
[52:20] congratulations you're doing some basic
[52:21] paleography can I point out one thing
[52:24] real quick just in case it doesn't get
[52:27] addressed cuz I'm really curious about
[52:28] this number four and God saw the light
[52:31] that it was good and of course if you
[52:34] look it was is completely mm-hmm not
[52:38] only a different font but it almost
[52:39] looked like somebody inked it in much
[52:41] later would you say that's true
[52:43] yeah so this so this is a complete gasps
[52:46] not remember we're still relatively
[52:48] early on in printing in 1611 yeah
[52:51] my best guess here and again this is a
[52:54] complete guess if you go to the
[52:56] University Pennsylvania website where
[52:58] the manuscript is held they may have
[53:00] some knowledge on this is that whoever
[53:03] was supposed to be putting putting those
[53:06] letters into the typeset there forgot to
[53:10] put in it was and and it didn't get
[53:15] included and they had to go back and fix
[53:17] a bunch of these things interesting
[53:19] fired
[53:22] maybe maybe but that that's my best
[53:25] guess for that
[53:26] I mean people aren't perfect right all
[53:28] right let's see her the the 70 Hebrew
[53:30] scholars with the Septuagint that is
[53:32] true how much you are yeah and so that's
[53:35] my best guess there either was left out
[53:37] of a few of a few texts like this and
[53:42] somebody fixed it later on and maybe
[53:44] there's another version where it was was
[53:46] fixed and we can compare those two
[53:47] sometimes that's interesting to find out
[53:49] that provenance or it could be somebody
[53:52] noticed the mistake and fixed it
[53:55] themselves
[53:55] yeah both of those things are possible I
[53:57] don't know about this particular
[53:59] manuscript yeah but those those are some
[54:02] likely possibilities interest that's a
[54:05] really interesting thing to point out I
[54:06] hadn't noticed that before so thank you
[54:07] for reporting that I know you're good I
[54:09] saw that I think it's because I had read
[54:11] a a while back I read misquoting Jesus
[54:13] by dr. Ehrman and he talks about texts
[54:16] quite a bit and how like you can see
[54:17] minor changes throughout time as some
[54:20] people add to it and some people down
[54:21] and like when I saw that I think by
[54:23] reading that book that's one of the
[54:24] first things I for some reason I
[54:26] automatically look for huh very cool and
[54:29] that's that's basically what we're doing
[54:30] here just across languages right oh yeah
[54:33] so if we go look at the Septuagint Old
[54:36] Testament compared to the Vulgate Old
[54:38] Testament they're gonna look of course
[54:40] they're gonna look completely different
[54:41] there are different languages that's
[54:42] true what if we look at the content of
[54:45] them right um you're having to interpret
[54:47] Greek into Latin by a non fluent Latin
[54:52] audience right right because medieval
[54:54] peoples even though most of them knew
[54:55] Latin what we would call fluently it
[54:59] wasn't their primary spoken language
[55:00] anymore true something else and so it's
[55:04] also going through that lens in the
[55:05] translation process
[55:06] oh yeah and I'll be sure to at some
[55:09] point I'll actually show all the ones
[55:11] we've looked at so far cited by side
[55:12] that way people can really get a good
[55:15] look at an owl at the same time yeah the
[55:17] King James Bible is usually rolled out
[55:20] as the premier early English not early
[55:25] English meaning something like Old
[55:26] English or MIDI Middle English an early
[55:30] version of an English translation of a
[55:33] Bible
[55:34] and that's usually the go-to one
[55:35] actually one of the earliest ones is the
[55:38] version we call the Geneva Bible this is
[55:40] the Bible for example that was onboard
[55:42] the Mayflower when it made its way over
[55:44] to the colonies and it was indeed the
[55:45] bible of choice of many of the
[55:47] Protestants and Puritans from
[55:48] english-speaking countries who settled
[55:50] in North America very early on during
[55:53] the colonial period the New Testament of
[55:56] it was finished in 1557 the whole Bible
[55:59] was finally completed in 1560 for its
[56:01] first version although I think the most
[56:04] popular version of the text was the
[56:06] $15.99 version and so here we see again
[56:10] that we're working with a rendering of a
[56:13] manuscript we're not working with an
[56:15] image of it like we have been on the
[56:16] previous manuscripts hopefully you've
[56:19] taken my my clay tablets suggestion to
[56:21] heart and we don't actually need to see
[56:23] it because we can see the words on the
[56:24] page here these words however we can
[56:27] actually probably read you might notice
[56:29] a difference between the spelling of
[56:30] book and the Geneva Bible and book on
[56:34] the King James Version of the Bible
[56:35] where the King James had Bo Bo oke
[56:39] we have B okay II here so we're missing
[56:43] an O depending on who you ask we might
[56:45] say Boca Boca here or some some
[56:47] variation of this we also see our nice
[56:50] tall s here for Moses and Genesis and if
[56:53] you back up a couple of pages where we
[56:56] see an introductory letter to Queen
[56:57] Elizabeth we also see a holdover from
[57:00] the Vulgate and those ancient Romans
[57:02] with use as these again even though as
[57:07] you can probably very easily tell this
[57:09] was a printed one too and they were very
[57:11] capable of doing use and all of its
[57:13] curves and so again this is one of those
[57:16] things where if we know a little bit of
[57:17] background in context it helps us
[57:19] understand some of these weird things we
[57:21] sometimes see in printed books we saw
[57:23] thee are used that looked like these in
[57:26] the volga they're still doing use as v's
[57:29] a thousand years later and to me that
[57:32] sort of stuff is really cool one thing I
[57:36] might point out in particular is you'll
[57:42] notice in the first line there under the
[57:44] most virtuous and noble Queen Elizabeth
[57:47] and you might note here that Elizabeth
[57:49] ends with the T and we don't have an H
[57:51] there a Queen of England France a with a
[57:56] squiggle over at D Ireland and then some
[57:59] funky happenin yeah Nick you have any
[58:02] idea what the a squiggle D and that
[58:04] funky thing happened in on either end of
[58:07] Ireland might be so I okay a pardon me
[58:10] wants to say the the weird thing at the
[58:12] end is ET see like etc etc it absolutely
[58:16] is okay and the one before Ireland I'm
[58:20] assuming is and you're absolutely right
[58:23] in Sag radiation of and and again this
[58:25] is one of those things as you indicated
[58:27] with the King James Bible somebody could
[58:29] have goofed in the printing and so we
[58:32] had to use an abbreviation annotation to
[58:34] make sure that people understood this
[58:36] was and and not the the Latin
[58:38] preposition odd which would mean going
[58:40] towards something or they wanted to keep
[58:43] this nice little pyramid kind of
[58:45] structure that's going on consistent and
[58:48] so they couldn't put the hand in because
[58:49] it would mess that up so we have rebated
[58:51] it instead Queen Elizabeth is like I'm
[58:55] the queen of the British Isles and this
[58:57] is what you send me you know maybe
[59:00] that's why the King James version was
[59:01] more popular later that's true that's
[59:03] true but you're absolutely right about
[59:06] the etc right there we're all familiar
[59:08] with that abbreviation and you might
[59:12] note that if we spell out etc its et
[59:14] space and then the word cetera that is
[59:18] and the things that come afterwards and
[59:21] you might note here that it is
[59:23] abbreviated by this little weird thing
[59:26] and if you look real close you might be
[59:29] able to pick out something that looks
[59:30] like an e smushed together with
[59:33] something that looks like a T mm-hmm and
[59:36] your your your interesting little
[59:38] historical factoid of the day is that
[59:41] that is the precursor to our ampersand
[59:43] that is shift to 7 on modern keyboards
[59:45] whoa and if you if you look if you can
[59:50] just google history of the ampersand and
[59:53] you can you can kind of see a
[59:55] progression of those things as they
[59:56] happen and one of these other apocryphal
[01:00:00] surrounding things like learning the
[01:00:02] English alphabet is that when little
[01:00:05] early medieval English boys and girls
[01:00:07] were learning their alphabet so the
[01:00:09] story goes again this is apocryphal is
[01:00:11] that you learn all your all your letters
[01:00:14] and then you'd go W X Y and per say Z Y
[01:00:21] or Z depending on where you're from and
[01:00:24] per se that is and by itself Z and this
[01:00:31] so the story goes and that is that that
[01:00:36] little funky et smushed together there
[01:00:39] was used so commonly in that form of the
[01:00:42] abbreviation that it was its own
[01:00:44] distinct letter in the alphabet now you
[01:00:48] can believe that or not you can you can
[01:00:49] do some digging online but it's always a
[01:00:51] fun story that kind of illustrates that
[01:00:54] words and even symbols that we use
[01:00:58] sometimes have their own interesting
[01:01:01] history if you do a little bit of
[01:01:03] Investigation here and I don't want to
[01:01:07] get too far afield here because we need
[01:01:08] we do need a we do want to talk about a
[01:01:10] little bit about the Geneva Bible but
[01:01:12] maybe Google what what the Bluetooth
[01:01:16] symbol came from it too has a medieval
[01:01:19] origin that is true
[01:01:21] and so we've addressed most of what we
[01:01:22] what we've talked about here you'll note
[01:01:24] you'll know differences between the King
[01:01:27] James Version of the Bible and the
[01:01:28] Geneva Bible here where we see
[01:01:32] significantly more notes in the margin
[01:01:33] on this one notes aren't requisite here
[01:01:36] but they happen very often sometimes
[01:01:38] they're referring to other relevant
[01:01:40] passages in the Bible sometimes it's
[01:01:42] this particular versions version of the
[01:01:44] Bible the author wanted to note
[01:01:47] something they thought was important
[01:01:49] maybe it's think that medieval
[01:01:52] manuscripts sometimes they include
[01:01:53] things other stories that were of
[01:01:55] interest to the author especially for
[01:02:00] looking at the New Testament sometimes
[01:02:02] the author will refer to things salient
[01:02:06] to that point or the thing that Jesus
[01:02:07] said referenced back to the Old
[01:02:10] Testament note in particular passages or
[01:02:12] books
[01:02:14] we may also note here too that we see
[01:02:18] versions of things like our little
[01:02:20] paragraph symbol so note they're right
[01:02:22] next to the number 14 we see a little
[01:02:24] early version of the paragraph symbol
[01:02:27] sometimes those things were used because
[01:02:31] indents and tabs and the kind of these
[01:02:36] kinds of aesthetic structures we have in
[01:02:37] modern books and essays and these sorts
[01:02:40] of things we're not quite solidified and
[01:02:42] so sometimes it was hard to determine
[01:02:43] where a paragraph began or ended or when
[01:02:48] somebody started talking especially if
[01:02:51] it was somebody important so like in
[01:02:55] Jesus or God says something those are
[01:02:57] important to note yeah so we see here
[01:03:00] let there be light has some stuff
[01:03:02] surrounding it and so this particular
[01:03:05] author wanted to have those asterisks
[01:03:07] there to denote that hey God saying
[01:03:11] something here you need to pay attention
[01:03:15] and so again all of all of this stuff
[01:03:17] that we're talking about here is without
[01:03:19] reading any of the actual words or
[01:03:21] understanding any of the passages that's
[01:03:24] contained within the text and that's
[01:03:26] really the ultimate point here right is
[01:03:28] that historians will say that the most
[01:03:32] important thing for them to be able to
[01:03:33] have are the texts and the information
[01:03:36] that contains we talked about this with
[01:03:37] primary sources and I agree with that
[01:03:40] absolutely I consider myself a
[01:03:42] documentary or textual investigator but
[01:03:47] at the same time there's a lot of
[01:03:48] information and especially for a novice
[01:03:51] historians who sometimes might be
[01:03:52] intimidated about a particular text or
[01:03:54] thing that they're looking at and if you
[01:03:56] even if you don't read any of the word
[01:03:58] so you can't read any of the words you
[01:03:59] can still look at these things and get
[01:04:01] some really interesting stuff out of it
[01:04:03] and so we've got one more example to
[01:04:06] look at today and this is another
[01:04:08] English Bible but it may not be the kind
[01:04:11] of English you may be familiar with and
[01:04:14] so we are gonna be looking at a book
[01:04:16] called the Old English hexxit ook yeah
[01:04:19] that's what I figured I thought it would
[01:04:21] be something like that and so Nick's
[01:04:22] gonna pull up another version of this
[01:04:25] from the British Library
[01:04:26] and this is London British Library
[01:04:30] cotton manuscript Claudius b4 and that
[01:04:33] kind of citation methodology also sounds
[01:04:35] complicated it's really not and again I
[01:04:39] don't want to get up on a tangent these
[01:04:41] are the things I think are interesting
[01:04:42] so if it says cotton manuscript what
[01:04:45] that means is originally that manuscript
[01:04:48] was in the Robert cotton collection from
[01:04:52] the 16th century 16th century I think
[01:04:54] the cotton was 16th century in Cotton's
[01:04:57] library he had all of his manuscripts on
[01:05:00] different really giant bookshelves that
[01:05:03] had a bust of a Roman Emperor at the top
[01:05:05] and each of the shelves was labeled a B
[01:05:09] C D as you go down the shelf and so all
[01:05:13] that reference number means cotton
[01:05:15] Claudius manuscript before is that this
[01:05:18] manuscript was originally in Robert
[01:05:20] Cotton's library on the Claudius
[01:05:23] bookshelf with Claudius at the top on
[01:05:26] the second shelf that is the B shelf
[01:05:28] fourth manuscript over and so again that
[01:05:33] kind of citation sounds like something
[01:05:35] completely foreign to maybe the Dewey
[01:05:37] Decimal System or the library of
[01:05:38] congress catalog in system but is in
[01:05:41] fact if you have the appropriate
[01:05:43] information to approach it really super
[01:05:45] easy to interpret so so Nick tell me
[01:05:49] about what you see on this page
[01:05:51] particularly the image who is this
[01:05:53] person what are they doing well how do
[01:05:56] we know that's who the person is all
[01:05:58] right so I'm assuming this is Jesus
[01:06:02] who's walking on the water you can see
[01:06:05] his hand is pointing up you can also see
[01:06:08] he's got his little almost like Christ
[01:06:10] illogical halo there that's exactly what
[01:06:13] that is and you're spot-on
[01:06:15] right even if you couldn't identify
[01:06:16] anything else if you're familiar with
[01:06:18] the Christian tradition at all you see a
[01:06:20] dude walking on water it's going to be
[01:06:22] Jesus we may note here he's wearing a
[01:06:26] particularly nice classical Greek or
[01:06:28] Roman robes again one of those things
[01:06:32] where Jesus was a brown guy from the
[01:06:33] Middle East but we oftentimes see him
[01:06:36] any type of significant biblical or
[01:06:39] historical figure we often
[01:06:40] see them in classical robes if you go if
[01:06:47] you look at the apotheosis of Washington
[01:06:49] for example in the Capitol building in
[01:06:52] Washington DC you'll see George
[01:06:53] Washington and some good nice classical
[01:06:55] robes and so walking on water is the
[01:06:58] obvious giveaway right but you noted a
[01:07:02] finger and you also noted halo-halo is
[01:07:04] perhaps another good dead giveaway and
[01:07:08] you know he's covering up some of the
[01:07:09] cross but there's a nice little cross
[01:07:11] there behind it and you noticed he's
[01:07:13] pointing his finger up what the heck's
[01:07:15] going on there so now this is just me
[01:07:20] guessing I'm assuming he's mmm he's
[01:07:25] pointing up towards the sky because you
[01:07:27] can also see the sky up above and I
[01:07:29] don't know if that's meant to be a
[01:07:30] symbol of like his divinity the finger
[01:07:34] is meant to be a symbol with his
[01:07:35] divinity okay quite in the way that
[01:07:38] you're thinking though is a good guess
[01:07:39] though we do see Renaissance art like
[01:07:43] like Raphael's image of the Academy with
[01:07:46] Plato pointing to the sky and Aristotle
[01:07:50] pointing to the ground right because
[01:07:52] Plato is concerned with the universal
[01:07:54] things right and Aristotle is concerned
[01:07:56] with those particular things so so not a
[01:07:59] bad interpretation by any means here
[01:08:03] however is a particular medieval
[01:08:05] artistic expression which we call the
[01:08:07] finger of God and so that finger is the
[01:08:10] thing that does all the divine stuff
[01:08:14] that's that's what's doing the miracles
[01:08:17] those of you who get a little bit in the
[01:08:19] medieval isms here that's what happens
[01:08:22] when we see my Python the big finger
[01:08:25] coming out of the sky he has a PhD in
[01:08:28] medieval history he's he's been to some
[01:08:32] of the conference's I've been at but
[01:08:35] that's that's the finger of God there
[01:08:38] and that's what does all the godly stuff
[01:08:40] as a metaphor or an allegory or whatever
[01:08:43] kind of
[01:08:44] word association would want to use their
[01:08:45] but that's another one of those dead
[01:08:47] giveaway its halo walking on water
[01:08:49] finger of God got to be Jesus right now
[01:08:54] if you zoom into the top text there that
[01:08:56] starts with that big capital blue letter
[01:09:03] this is Old English you can get you can
[01:09:07] do some comparisons with the Beowulf
[01:09:08] manuscript if you want to but the
[01:09:10] letters are gonna look a little
[01:09:11] different but again it's hand it's
[01:09:12] handwritten can we make out any of these
[01:09:15] letters that's completely yeah so let's
[01:09:18] let's start with the first two words I
[01:09:21] see if we can make anything out so
[01:09:24] obviously I would guess that God is the
[01:09:27] first word perfect then we see a see we
[01:09:31] see a couple other funky letters you see
[01:09:34] some D's with crosses through them you
[01:09:36] see what looks like a lowercase a man
[01:09:38] this is yeah I can't believe I'm not
[01:09:40] getting this at all so well we found
[01:09:42] that with secundum that letters appear
[01:09:45] not always like what they're actually
[01:09:47] supposed to be interpreted as right
[01:09:49] right and we know as fluent English
[01:09:52] speakers that English words do not start
[01:09:54] with CP so remember this is the
[01:09:57] beginning of the Bible Old Testament oh
[01:10:00] so this is the but this isn't Genesis
[01:10:04] though right this is Genesis oh it is
[01:10:06] Genesis okay so that's is that actually
[01:10:10] gonna say and God created the heavens
[01:10:11] and the earth or is it nailed it right
[01:10:13] okay okay so as God created right but we
[01:10:19] might depending on who you ask this
[01:10:20] maybe God coiffeur or God crop that
[01:10:22] right and so we see we see a diphthong
[01:10:26] that has since made its way into EI
[01:10:29] instead of AE in modern English we see
[01:10:32] created which right now those weird DS
[01:10:36] with slashes through them is a letter
[01:10:37] called an F or a thorn just some that
[01:10:40] makes the the th sound that's or the
[01:10:42] depending on depending on context and
[01:10:45] and so this is this is God created and
[01:10:49] again if you if you're familiar with the
[01:10:51] Christian tradition and more
[01:10:52] specifically familiar with the Genesis
[01:10:54] creation story you know those first two
[01:10:56] words and any version of the Bible our
[01:10:58] God created the heavens and the earth
[01:11:00] right and so if you know we're starting
[01:11:02] in Genesis you can make as you did an
[01:11:04] educated guess that even if I don't know
[01:11:07] what the heck that is that those are
[01:11:08] probably some version of God created I
[01:11:10] mean again this is one of those things
[01:11:13] where even if you know nothing about the
[01:11:14] text in question you can look at it and
[01:11:17] you can get some information out of it
[01:11:19] even if it's even if the information is
[01:11:21] not completely accurate even if you
[01:11:24] can't interpret any of these letters we
[01:11:27] know this is something biblical because
[01:11:28] we see Jesus walking on the water
[01:11:30] right now I might ask you since we can
[01:11:34] zoom way in here if we look at the at
[01:11:36] the edge of the text on the left and
[01:11:39] maybe in the top corner or the left hand
[01:11:40] side what can you tell me that you
[01:11:43] notice here that looks a little apart
[01:11:46] from the letters on the page and stuff
[01:11:48] alright so I can see that one it's
[01:11:52] obviously worn it's got minor water
[01:11:54] damage there are holes mm-hmm that
[01:11:59] appears to be some kind of can you see
[01:12:01] my cursor mm-hmm that appears to be some
[01:12:04] kind of possibly like a scribble or a
[01:12:06] mistake and of course I'm assuming this
[01:12:10] is all hand written for honest reasons
[01:12:13] now if you look on the right hand side
[01:12:15] of the page do we see holes in a similar
[01:12:17] kind of fashion somewhere that appears
[01:12:24] to be holes but they don't look exactly
[01:12:26] like the ones across mm-hmm so scroll
[01:12:29] down the left-hand margin of the page do
[01:12:34] we keep seeing holes probably not on the
[01:12:37] image but yeah it's gonna say small
[01:12:40] little small marks right yeah so what do
[01:12:44] you imagine those are for for the
[01:12:47] binding good guess but remember on the
[01:12:50] edge of the page here yeah that's true
[01:12:52] page although we do have manuscripts
[01:12:56] times the binding was reversed or things
[01:12:57] were scratched out okay all right hit me
[01:13:04] with it I'm curious now so how do you
[01:13:07] think medieval scribes got their lines
[01:13:09] to be straight okay so these are what we
[01:13:15] call prick marks or pricks they were not
[01:13:19] being mean but what medieval people had
[01:13:23] to do was make their own lines and so
[01:13:26] usually this was done with something
[01:13:29] like a something like a pen knife or a
[01:13:33] needle or something like this you stick
[01:13:35] it into the parchment and you either
[01:13:39] trace a line and make your own lines you
[01:13:41] can see exactly even as Google examples
[01:13:43] of medieval lines and see examples of
[01:13:45] this or they had a string with something
[01:13:48] like chalk on it and you know do one of
[01:13:51] those things where you can just snap it
[01:13:53] and then zero minds in you can erase
[01:13:54] them later sometimes they drew their own
[01:13:56] lines and then scratch them out
[01:13:58] afterwards sometimes they use the pen
[01:14:00] knife to kind of make grooves for lines
[01:14:03] instead but when we see manuscripts like
[01:14:06] this we can identify those prick marks
[01:14:07] and and see evidence of where those
[01:14:10] lines match up and indeed if we look at
[01:14:12] this in general they line up with where
[01:14:14] we would expect the lines to be history
[01:14:17] huh and so that was just a little thing
[01:14:19] but an interesting thing we can see on
[01:14:21] some not all but some manuscripts
[01:14:23] oh yeah and so understanding things
[01:14:25] about kind of the physical nature of a
[01:14:27] text which is which is mostly what we've
[01:14:29] been doing here sometimes help us get
[01:14:31] interesting information and and
[01:14:34] sometimes helps direct historians
[01:14:36] investigation of things so for example
[01:14:39] we've we've talked about books that were
[01:14:40] printed on paper and manuscripts that
[01:14:42] were created on parchment now because
[01:14:47] parchment is a lot more durable than
[01:14:49] paper we have a lot more parchment that
[01:14:52] survives in the Middle Ages than paper
[01:14:53] we see our first paper documents around
[01:14:56] the beginning of the 14th century I
[01:14:57] think like 1312 maybe I can't recall the
[01:15:02] top of my head and I mean papers made
[01:15:04] out of wood wood pulp things like
[01:15:06] papyrus are made out re
[01:15:07] and so a little bit more durable but
[01:15:11] what can we do with that kind of
[01:15:12] information well using nice fancy things
[01:15:17] like DNA sequencing we can take
[01:15:20] something like parchment I think a group
[01:15:22] out of North Carolina State is pursuing
[01:15:24] a project now or they may have completed
[01:15:26] it by now
[01:15:27] where they are sequencing some of the
[01:15:29] DNA the animals in the parchment the DNA
[01:15:32] fragments from the parchment and
[01:15:33] medieval manuscripts to help determine
[01:15:37] migration patterns of domesticated
[01:15:39] animals in the Middle Ages Wow and I'm
[01:15:43] not a for sure thing right yeah but it
[01:15:46] is it is biological material sometimes
[01:15:49] not always but sometimes we can get
[01:15:51] little snippets like this right we're or
[01:15:55] we can use an MRI machine to look for
[01:15:58] for hidden texts that have been erased
[01:16:00] like our Rd Archimedes texts that I
[01:16:03] mentioned with Palin's tests earlier and
[01:16:06] so they're sometimes a really
[01:16:08] interesting conjunction of the hard
[01:16:10] sciences and and and things like the
[01:16:13] humanities for for really interesting
[01:16:15] purposes and in my opinion that needs to
[01:16:19] be more of those kinds of collaborations
[01:16:21] oh yeah yes my overarching opinion is
[01:16:25] increasing knowledge and people's access
[01:16:28] to knowledge and whatever form it takes
[01:16:30] everybody and the same thing is true of
[01:16:33] some of the ink on the page ink for the
[01:16:37] most part was made from plant material
[01:16:38] or sometimes ink material are sometimes
[01:16:43] animal material if we look at things
[01:16:45] like dark purple ink if you look up the
[01:16:47] book of kells that really dark purple
[01:16:50] ink that is incredibly valuable one way
[01:16:54] to get that kind of dark purple ink is a
[01:16:56] snail that's only found off the coast of
[01:16:58] some Mediterranean locations and it is
[01:17:02] some extreme effort to get it you could
[01:17:06] just use some flowers and some other
[01:17:07] things to get purple that's almost as
[01:17:09] rich right but doesn't have the status
[01:17:11] and
[01:17:13] and a prestige associated with it so
[01:17:15] thus much less not used for things like
[01:17:18] popes are in burst right but by being
[01:17:22] able to determine what kind of animal
[01:17:24] material that came from again it helps
[01:17:26] us sometimes place manuscripts we don't
[01:17:28] know where they came from and so if you
[01:17:30] have a if you have a manuscript in
[01:17:32] England with ink that you're able to
[01:17:34] determine came from medieval Greece
[01:17:39] medieval England and medieval Greece
[01:17:41] especially for talking the early neural
[01:17:42] ages they weren't supposed to have done
[01:17:44] anything with each other yet and how did
[01:17:47] that mange could make its way over so
[01:17:49] the materials did the manuscript did or
[01:17:51] the person did and so there's
[01:17:53] interesting avenues of Investigation
[01:17:55] here again not even looking at words on
[01:17:57] pages here and so I might direct you now
[01:18:00] to slide number 11 okay where after we
[01:18:04] get from the King James Version of the
[01:18:06] Bible the Bible takes all sorts of other
[01:18:07] manifestations forms and languages last
[01:18:10] time I did any sort of looking up on
[01:18:12] this I I was able to find a thing that
[01:18:14] said the Bible has been translated in
[01:18:16] the 438 different languages secludes odd
[01:18:21] things like Klingon if you've never
[01:18:23] looked at the long path Bible I would
[01:18:26] suggest looking it up that link is still
[01:18:29] active that's funny
[01:18:31] good old internet meme fashion
[01:18:34] absolutely cheeseburgers are mentioned
[01:18:36] and we have popular versions of the
[01:18:41] Bible in in modern English like the New
[01:18:43] International Version or the Revised
[01:18:44] Standard Version of this sort of stuff
[01:18:46] all of which are different from one
[01:18:48] another
[01:18:49] and so again we can to return to that
[01:18:51] question is which one's most correct
[01:18:53] which one's the best one those sorts of
[01:18:56] debates I don't anticipate ever stopping
[01:18:58] but they are interesting things to think
[01:19:01] about to investigate and depending on
[01:19:05] your particular religious viewpoint or
[01:19:07] purpose and using the Bible different
[01:19:09] versions of that are more appropriate
[01:19:10] than others so for example if I want to
[01:19:15] know what early Protestants used in
[01:19:17] North America I'm not using the Vulgate
[01:19:21] I'm not going to use the New
[01:19:22] International Version of the Bible that
[01:19:24] was printed in 2017
[01:19:26] I'm probably going to use something like
[01:19:28] the Geneva version if I'm doing academic
[01:19:30] research if I'm doing anything in
[01:19:33] medieval Europe especially Western
[01:19:36] Europe I'm probably going to be using
[01:19:38] the Vulgate yeah if I'm talking about
[01:19:44] things like sermons more English
[01:19:47] vernacular in the Middle Ages I might be
[01:19:49] looking at something like the Old
[01:19:50] English hexa toque and understanding
[01:19:53] that even though these texts or
[01:19:56] manuscripts like the Bible go through
[01:19:58] all of these different versions that
[01:20:00] each of those versions has its own role
[01:20:02] in place in historical investigation and
[01:20:04] oftentimes especially for novice
[01:20:06] historians understanding the appropriate
[01:20:08] way may be maybe a better phrase is the
[01:20:11] most appropriate way to use these
[01:20:13] different versions as oftentimes a very
[01:20:15] difficult task and so this leads us into
[01:20:18] a more modern definition of history than
[01:20:20] is adores but has some components if you
[01:20:22] if you'll move to slide 12 and that's
[01:20:25] from RG Collingwood's the idea of
[01:20:27] history his version this was written
[01:20:30] posthumously in 1946 from a manuscript
[01:20:32] of his from from the 20s and his
[01:20:34] definition of history I in my personal
[01:20:36] opinion I like his definition more than
[01:20:38] most of the others interbred where he
[01:20:40] says history is a kind of research or
[01:20:42] inquiry that fastens upon something we
[01:20:44] do not know and tries to discover it
[01:20:47] it's object is to interpret the evidence
[01:20:49] of human actions that have been done in
[01:20:52] the past and he just kind of there's
[01:20:54] other stuff surrounding that in that
[01:20:56] particular chapter but that's a good
[01:20:57] summary of my conception of why I think
[01:21:00] history is is it some type of inquiry
[01:21:04] that can take many manifestations and
[01:21:07] we're simply trying to find the answer
[01:21:09] to what the question is and not only
[01:21:11] find the answer but we have to find an
[01:21:13] answer and then we have to interpret
[01:21:14] that answer to other people in some way
[01:21:17] whether that's through me teaching a
[01:21:18] class writing a paper or talking to you
[01:21:20] making a PowerPoint creating a video
[01:21:23] whatever happens to be we have to
[01:21:25] interpret that information we've got
[01:21:27] from the past and in some way verbalize
[01:21:30] or read erisa the conclusion that we've
[01:21:33] come up with in our head which is own
[01:21:34] kind of method of interpretation and
[01:21:36] translation and so I might note another
[01:21:39] a few last things here I didn't think I
[01:21:41] had palimpsests in this presentation but
[01:21:45] I do actually have a link to one and so
[01:21:47] I know this was a while ago but it's a
[01:21:49] good little link and these were these
[01:21:51] will be in the presentation two last
[01:21:53] things to note are conventions that we
[01:21:55] see often times in modern writing and
[01:21:58] modern books and modern note-taking
[01:22:00] especially and and so oftentimes those
[01:22:03] things are obvious right right so you'll
[01:22:05] note in the first image that I sent you
[01:22:08] we see scribbles in the margin you see a
[01:22:11] nice little figure of a dude sometimes
[01:22:15] we see things like this in sermon
[01:22:20] manuals or from up from a preacher's
[01:22:21] archive or something where little
[01:22:24] figures like this might mean something
[01:22:25] like hey I need to write a sermon about
[01:22:28] this right you're taking notes that's
[01:22:30] all they're doing and you'll note in the
[01:22:32] top right hand corner though you see a
[01:22:33] little 88 some librarian at some point
[01:22:36] in time numbered these pages maybe for
[01:22:39] an addition or a translation and was
[01:22:42] making sure the page numbers in their
[01:22:43] Edition matched up with the page numbers
[01:22:45] in manuscript may also be for stuff like
[01:22:47] library indexing you'll also see some
[01:22:49] notations in what we call interlinear
[01:22:52] that is between the lines notations on
[01:22:55] this manuscript - at least a little bit
[01:22:58] and so medieval people were doing many
[01:23:00] of the same things that we do with our
[01:23:02] texts or text books when we look at them
[01:23:04] which is mark it up so we can access the
[01:23:07] information more easily next time in the
[01:23:10] second image you'll see a more clear
[01:23:13] example of a lined medieval manuscript
[01:23:17] here right you can you can clearly see
[01:23:18] the lines there but also we see things
[01:23:20] we do which is we underline the
[01:23:22] important stuff now there's there's
[01:23:23] there's two general ways we see this
[01:23:26] appear in medieval manuscripts though is
[01:23:27] underlined the important stuff in red or
[01:23:29] because of the work involved in creating
[01:23:32] medieval manuscripts we underline the
[01:23:34] stuff in red where we made an oopsie and
[01:23:36] here's what you're telling the audience
[01:23:37] to ignore that section interesting we
[01:23:42] see this more explicitly or more clearly
[01:23:44] to our understanding and the third image
[01:23:46] I sent you which is where we see red and
[01:23:49] blue things crossing out this section
[01:23:51] saying
[01:23:53] I sit sparked up don't include this but
[01:23:56] you know we also included things like
[01:23:57] gold leaf and so we look at the pretty
[01:24:00] picture and so we might end this with a
[01:24:04] question when do we say history begins
[01:24:06] we've talked a lot about written records
[01:24:09] today and artifacts in the past and
[01:24:12] oftentimes I mean I identify myself as a
[01:24:15] documentary or textual investigator and
[01:24:18] many historians really agree with you
[01:24:21] what do we do with archaeologists and
[01:24:23] anthropologists stop oftentimes before
[01:24:28] written texts were developed so do we
[01:24:32] start with an anthropological data with
[01:24:34] like early man hominids the evolution of
[01:24:38] Homo sapiens something like this I don't
[01:24:42] really have a good answer that that's
[01:24:44] for people that continue to discuss and
[01:24:46] debate there are there are fields that
[01:24:48] are called like big history yeah
[01:24:49] contributed to like it by guys like Carl
[01:24:53] Sagan and these sorts of folks that say
[01:24:57] well history really began with the Big
[01:24:59] Bang right I don't know that I
[01:25:02] necessarily agree with those sorts of
[01:25:03] things I might call that you know maybe
[01:25:08] time began with the Big Bang right my
[01:25:11] interpreter predation of history is more
[01:25:13] in line with calling woods is is that it
[01:25:15] involves human action and our
[01:25:17] interpretation of those human actions
[01:25:19] and there are many versions of
[01:25:21] investigating the path that are not that
[01:25:24] investing in the past that are not
[01:25:25] distinctly history no Isidore tried to
[01:25:28] parse some of those out for us yeah my
[01:25:31] interpretation of history is purely on
[01:25:34] human action although obviously evidence
[01:25:37] of all sorts of other stuff that happen
[01:25:38] in the past leaves its own type of
[01:25:41] evidence behind
[01:25:42] that is its own distinct field of
[01:25:44] investigation just as worthy of it I've
[01:25:47] noticed because we've talked about the
[01:25:49] Bible quite a bit in this and the
[01:25:51] different versions of that and why you
[01:25:53] would study this one in this era or if
[01:25:55] you're studying this subject and why you
[01:25:57] would study this one if you were
[01:25:58] studying something else one thing I've
[01:26:01] noticed a trend in YouTube comments
[01:26:03] especially as people tend to disregard
[01:26:06] the bio regardless of translation ones
[01:26:09] lever they oh it's it's all fiction myth
[01:26:12] and I've always taken a stance to her
[01:26:13] even though I'm an atheist I disagree
[01:26:15] with that I think there is a large
[01:26:17] amount of history in the Bible and we
[01:26:20] can argue about the mythos aspects of it
[01:26:22] of course too but a book that I've
[01:26:25] always said if you discard the Bible and
[01:26:29] if you discard the subject of
[01:26:30] Christianity you'll completely miss out
[01:26:33] on one of the most fundamental aspects
[01:26:35] of the Middle Ages and I was warned if
[01:26:37] you would agree with that or not yeah
[01:26:39] you can't have the Middle Ages without
[01:26:41] Christianity absolutely in the same man
[01:26:44] you can't have Middle Ages without Islam
[01:26:46] either yeah no absolutely
[01:26:47] that's exactly what I've said to write
[01:26:49] on for Judaism because those religions
[01:26:53] were so crucial to those to their
[01:26:57] respective cultures community identity
[01:27:00] and and to most people's personal
[01:27:02] identity too and so for example if you
[01:27:06] look at arguably the best historical
[01:27:09] author of the Middle Ages William of
[01:27:11] Malmesbury
[01:27:13] he was a member of the clergy
[01:27:15] there's biblical stuff throughout
[01:27:17] history story narrative despite modern
[01:27:20] historians looking at him and going
[01:27:21] William of Malmesbury is anticipating
[01:27:24] modern methods modern versions of what
[01:27:27] means to be an evidential historian and
[01:27:29] these kinds of things Jesus and God
[01:27:32] stuff all the way throughout Saints are
[01:27:33] doing things or supernatural events
[01:27:35] right right and an important thing to
[01:27:39] keep in mind here and one thing I really
[01:27:41] try to emphasize to my students is that
[01:27:45] our judgment of the past is to try and
[01:27:49] interpret them on their own terms not
[01:27:52] placing modern moral judgments yeah on
[01:27:55] those things that people were doing so
[01:27:58] for example it's real easy to go
[01:28:01] slavery's bad right nobody in the 21st
[01:28:05] century
[01:28:05] hopefully nobody in the 21st century is
[01:28:07] going to disagree with you yeah it's a
[01:28:10] much different question to go why did
[01:28:14] people who had slavery think it was okay
[01:28:16] yeah and that is a very difficult thing
[01:28:19] to try and wrap your mind around I
[01:28:21] usually do that discussion in a US
[01:28:23] history course specifically in the
[01:28:25] context of transatlantic slavery right
[01:28:27] cuz that's a chattel slavery is its own
[01:28:29] unique terrible thing and so it's much
[01:28:34] more difficult to get into the mindset
[01:28:36] of somebody from the past especially
[01:28:37] working with as we've established as
[01:28:39] incomplete evidence and so if we
[01:28:42] understand that people in the Middle
[01:28:44] Ages absolutely thought things like
[01:28:48] Saints did miracles supernatural events
[01:28:52] happen seen omens in the sky were
[01:28:56] important because we see those things in
[01:28:59] historical accounts right those animals
[01:29:02] that are supposed to be bare bones we
[01:29:04] see things all the time that are I mean
[01:29:07] you know there were there was a blue
[01:29:09] moon or I saw a meteor go across the sky
[01:29:11] that meant bad stuff was gonna happen
[01:29:14] yeah and then later on the bad thing
[01:29:18] happens yeah exactly
[01:29:19] and maybe people people absolutely took
[01:29:23] that as empirical evidence which is why
[01:29:26] it was included in those texts it's a
[01:29:30] different discussion entirely about
[01:29:32] whether or not they thought those things
[01:29:33] actually happened yeah and so some of
[01:29:37] these things are rhetorical tropes so
[01:29:40] things like we see the bodies of saints
[01:29:42] never decomposed and they were the
[01:29:47] bodies always smelled sweet is a very
[01:29:49] common thing that we see you open up a
[01:29:51] casket somebody that's been dead for 40
[01:29:53] years ain't sweet yeah no not a hot look
[01:29:56] too bright but when you record everybody
[01:29:59] went to go see the same when they were
[01:30:01] reinterred somewhere else every record
[01:30:03] about that Saints gonna say the body
[01:30:05] didn't decompose or the but when the
[01:30:08] body was translated it was pristine and
[01:30:11] it smelled it smelled sweet right right
[01:30:13] because it indicated the importance of
[01:30:15] that person and their their godliness
[01:30:19] right because of all good things that
[01:30:21] they did during their lifetime and so if
[01:30:24] medieval people believe that if they
[01:30:26] placed that amount of importance on
[01:30:28] those sort of things
[01:30:29] it's a in in my opinion it's a
[01:30:31] disservice to those people in the past
[01:30:33] to push those off as well that couldn't
[01:30:36] have happened because that's not the way
[01:30:37] the world works yeah exactly
[01:30:39] because our our our my mission as a
[01:30:43] historian is not to figure out how the
[01:30:44] world worked yeah it's to figure out how
[01:30:47] the people that lived in that world
[01:30:49] interacted with it how they understood
[01:30:51] it how they how they how they interacted
[01:30:53] with each other how they interacted with
[01:30:55] the systems the societies and the
[01:30:58] cultures that were in place at the time
[01:30:59] and so it's one of those things where
[01:31:01] this is where fiction is helpful
[01:31:03] sometimes yeah so we could go to one of
[01:31:06] those classics Connecticut Art connect
[01:31:09] the Inca in King Arthur's Court
[01:31:10] I a big chunk of the book is is the
[01:31:13] protagonist trying to figure out what
[01:31:15] the heck is going on here I don't
[01:31:17] understand any of this this is not the
[01:31:19] way that I think the world works and the
[01:31:22] same thing for medieval people they're
[01:31:24] approaching it from two completely
[01:31:25] different you know what what are these
[01:31:27] what are these modern conventions I
[01:31:28] don't understand or more recently in an
[01:31:30] adaptation of the same story where that
[01:31:33] kid goes back in time and you know shows
[01:31:35] him a CD player right oh yeah I forget
[01:31:39] the name of the movie today too but it's
[01:31:42] one of those things where those are for
[01:31:44] all intents and purposes different
[01:31:46] worlds entirely and again my job is to
[01:31:49] help people as best as I can understand
[01:31:54] the way those people perceive the world
[01:31:56] and interacted with it in a way that's
[01:31:59] approachable for a modern audience and
[01:32:02] that was a really really difficult thing
[01:32:03] to do and so my basic interpretation of
[01:32:06] history is that the more people
[01:32:08] understand history and appreciate the
[01:32:11] reasons people did things or didn't do
[01:32:13] things and one of those things were what
[01:32:16] we perceive as a positive or negative
[01:32:19] according to modern social norms helps
[01:32:21] us appreciate those values again we can
[01:32:26] appreciate them as negative values or
[01:32:27] appreciate them as positive values but
[01:32:29] we can we can use that cliche walk a
[01:32:31] mile on somebody else's shoe here right
[01:32:33] and if we can go oh I understand how
[01:32:37] they ought about that
[01:32:39] I don't agree with that at all yeah and
[01:32:42] again I want to avoid a soapbox too much
[01:32:45] but if for example again I'll bring up
[01:32:49] US history just because of what I
[01:32:51] anticipated is probably your primary
[01:32:53] audience and their and their familiarity
[01:32:55] with history if we understand that the
[01:32:59] context of somebody like Martin Luther
[01:33:01] King jr. and concepts of non-violence
[01:33:05] but the context of that was lynching and
[01:33:09] masked race riots with dozens and
[01:33:11] hundreds of people killed yeah it makes
[01:33:14] non violence more remarkable to me right
[01:33:17] and understanding that in his head
[01:33:19] that's what he that's that's the culture
[01:33:22] he grew up in and the risks that he knew
[01:33:24] were there yeah and still pursued
[01:33:28] non-violence yeah that's that's pretty
[01:33:30] remarkable I mean the fact that and I've
[01:33:33] always like admired that the fact that
[01:33:35] some people even though they're living
[01:33:37] an incredibly violent and unstable time
[01:33:40] periods to where you just never know and
[01:33:41] eventually violence did eventually sadly
[01:33:45] and tragically end Martin Luther King
[01:33:47] the fact that he clung to that belief
[01:33:50] system in a violent world I've always
[01:33:52] admired people like that they I feel
[01:33:54] like they have a much stronger
[01:33:55] Constitution and say certain people like
[01:33:57] myself since we're on the subject of
[01:33:59] American history I have two ancestors
[01:34:02] specifically they fought in the Civil
[01:34:03] War and controversially of course they
[01:34:05] fought for the Confederacy one is
[01:34:07] General William Barksdale who is gonna
[01:34:09] die at Gettysburg the Brigadier General
[01:34:11] of the Mississippi Army and the other
[01:34:13] one was a no-name dirt poor guy who
[01:34:16] fought for Tennessee and I've always
[01:34:19] imagined trying to figure out like the
[01:34:21] the ideological differences between
[01:34:24] these two guys that I'm related to
[01:34:26] different clothes you know classes one
[01:34:29] of them is rich one of them is really
[01:34:30] poor one of them is going to die at
[01:34:32] Gettysburg the poor one will actually
[01:34:35] have to get a pension from the US
[01:34:38] government because of the shrapnel that
[01:34:40] he got hit with during a battle he
[01:34:41] couldn't work afterwards and so I've
[01:34:43] always tried to imagine like what their
[01:34:45] different lives would have been like
[01:34:46] what their different perspectives were
[01:34:48] one of them highly benefited off of
[01:34:50] slavery and the other one
[01:34:51] well yeah was not as I guess you could
[01:34:54] say privileged and so it's interesting
[01:34:57] to try to put yourself in those
[01:34:58] perspectives 100% and we can take this
[01:35:01] full circle back to two early Christian
[01:35:04] martyrs right that's true and one of the
[01:35:07] reasons why modders are so common
[01:35:08] sometimes in English texts is because of
[01:35:10] the importance of what they perceive
[01:35:12] themselves is doing and so if you're an
[01:35:16] early Christian martyr and you get the
[01:35:20] Roman government that says convert or
[01:35:22] we're going to chop your head off
[01:35:24] right and you say no I'm not going to
[01:35:29] denounce Christianity right that should
[01:35:34] illustrate to an audience reading that
[01:35:36] how deeply that person held that
[01:35:38] particular set of beliefs rightly or
[01:35:41] wrongly or whatever your opinion on that
[01:35:42] legit happens to be that person
[01:35:44] perceived it as incredibly important
[01:35:46] because they got the check they got
[01:35:47] their head chopped off for it yeah
[01:35:50] and in order to emphasize how a
[01:35:56] significant of a change Christianity can
[01:35:58] bring to somebody's life Christian
[01:36:01] leaders promoted things like Christian
[01:36:03] martyrs as exemplars of the faith that
[01:36:07] if you really understand Christianity in
[01:36:09] the way that we interpret it you will
[01:36:11] absolutely believe in the things that
[01:36:14] they want that Christianity is supposed
[01:36:16] to be about and you will do it unto
[01:36:18] death yeah and nobody after you after
[01:36:21] you understand these things nobody will
[01:36:23] be able to sway your beliefs in those
[01:36:25] things and again modern conceptions of
[01:36:29] religion and faith and these sort of
[01:36:30] things notwithstanding those people many
[01:36:33] of them right deeply held those beliefs
[01:36:35] and it's it's that kind of thing that
[01:36:37] we're really trying to figure out you
[01:36:39] know yes how did that you know in the
[01:36:41] context of religious history right how
[01:36:43] did that kind of deep belief manifest
[01:36:45] how did people develop that kind of
[01:36:49] deep-seated belief in religion or
[01:36:52] theology or theological systems and we
[01:36:56] go back to that other question too and
[01:36:58] that's that's a that kind of context it
[01:37:02] was it was the bet it was the Jesus
[01:37:04] message
[01:37:05] right that was more insignificant right
[01:37:06] Jesus didn't need to pop up and go hey
[01:37:08] guys make sure you believe yeah it was
[01:37:11] the message that was there that was that
[01:37:13] was the the calling or the the point of
[01:37:17] contact there ladies and gentlemen thank
[01:37:19] you so much for watching this is
[01:37:20] concluding our presentation for today I
[01:37:22] wanted to thank dr. so Brad for spending
[01:37:24] his time with us and actually taking the
[01:37:26] time to better educate us on some very
[01:37:29] complex and complicated issues when it
[01:37:32] comes to the study of history how we
[01:37:35] look at it how we interpret it and
[01:37:37] eventually how some of us teach it thank
[01:37:40] you so much for coming on it means a lot
[01:37:43] I'm looking forward to doing more of
[01:37:44] this with you in the future and honestly
[01:37:46] we can't thank you enough Nick thanks
[01:37:48] thanks very much for inviting me to do
[01:37:49] this it was good fun and hopefully if
[01:37:54] there's something that's a that's of
[01:37:55] particular interest to people that I can
[01:37:57] do you'll have me back and if anybody
[01:38:00] has any particular questions I'm happy
[01:38:03] for Nick to facilitate some of those to
[01:38:05] me if I can get those answers in a
[01:38:07] reasonable kind of timeframe I will
[01:38:09] absolutely absolutely ladies and
[01:38:12] gentlemen thank you all so much and have
[01:38:15] a wonderful night

Overview of Historiography

Historiography is a crucial aspect of historical study, alongside argumentation, methodology, essay structure, and source critique. It is defined as the history of history, particularly focusing on the evolution of historical thought and the major schools of thought within the discipline.

Historical Development

• Ancient Historians: The first historians emerged in Greece during the 5th century BCE, with Herodotus providing entertaining narratives and Thucydides offering rigorous analyses.
• Medieval Period: Following the fall of the Roman Empire, chroniclers documented timelines without analysis, laying the groundwork for future historians.
• Renaissance to Modern Era: The Renaissance sparked a shift towards varied objectives, leading to debates over the transition from medieval to modern history, with significant developments in literacy and the printing press.

Key Schools of Thought

• Whig History: Emphasizes progress towards liberal democracy and technological advancement, often critiqued for its assumptions about societal improvement.
• Marxism: Focuses on class struggle as the primary driver of historical change, positing that material conditions shape societal structures.
• Pragmatism: Advocates for the idea that the best arguments reveal truth, merging economic influences with historical analysis.
• Cultural History: Examines how cultural contexts shape historical narratives, moving beyond structuralism to focus on individual experiences.

Postmodern and Contemporary Perspectives

Postmodernism challenges grand narratives and emphasizes the constructed nature of categories such as race, class, and gender. Historians today often adopt a post-revisionist approach, blending various theories to explore history's complexities without adhering strictly to traditional or revisionist frameworks.

This summary provides a rapid overview of historiography, highlighting its evolution and the diverse methodologies that characterize the field.

Historiography refers to the history of history, encompassing the various interpretations, methodologies, and schools of thought within the field of historical study. It is a critical discipline that goes beyond merely recounting past events; it involves an analysis of how history has been recorded, interpreted, and understood over time. The speaker emphasizes that historiography is a fundamental skill for anyone engaged in historical writing and analysis.

One of the key distinctions between historiography and history itself lies in their respective focuses. While history is primarily concerned with the narrative of past events—the facts and occurrences that have taken place—historiography interrogates how those narratives have been constructed, who has constructed them, and the context in which they were created. This involves examining the biases and perspectives of historians, as well as the societal and political influences that shape historical interpretation.

Conceptually, historiography serves to illuminate the evolution of historical thought, revealing the ways in which historians' views have changed over time in response to new evidence, theoretical frameworks, and cultural contexts. The speaker notes that historiography is not merely about telling a story; it is about understanding the process and methodology behind the construction of historical narratives, which includes critiquing primary sources and recognizing the subjective nature of historical interpretation.

•  
  • [00:20] "Historiography is the history of history."
  • [01:15] "Historians generally divide themselves between medievalists and modernists."
  • [20:20] "Think of all this historiography as a toolbox from which a historian may write history."

The core argument presented in the transcript revolves around the methodology of historiography and how it informs the writing and interpretation of history. The speaker emphasizes that understanding historiography is essential for historians, as it involves not only the study of past events but also a critical examination of how those events have been recorded and interpreted over time. The speaker outlines that every historian must grapple with the context in which history is written, as well as the biases inherent in the sources they use.

A significant aspect of the speaker's position is that history is not a fixed narrative; instead, it is a dynamic and evolving field shaped by various schools of thought and methodologies. The speaker notes that historians must engage with different interpretations and critiques, which can alter the understanding of historical events.

Furthermore, the speaker highlights the importance of primary and secondary sources in historiography. Primary sources are the direct evidence from the time being studied, while secondary sources interpret those primary sources and provide context. The relationship between the two is crucial for constructing a well-rounded historical narrative. This duality emphasizes that historical research is not merely about gathering facts but also about interpreting those facts through various lenses.

•  
  • [01:12] "Let’s explain the major schools of thought in the history profession rapid fire style."
  • [01:56] "This is just telling a true story."
  • [20:33] "This was a very brief and rapid overview of a topic that is normally an entire graduate seminar over the course of a semester."

The transcript discusses the importance of primary and secondary sources in historical research, highlighting the distinctions between the two and their roles in historiography. Primary sources are defined as original materials from the time period being studied, such as documents, artifacts, and firsthand accounts. These sources provide direct evidence and insights into historical events and contexts. In contrast, secondary sources are interpretations or analyses created by historians and scholars based on those primary materials. They synthesize and contextualize the primary sources, offering critical perspectives on historical narratives.

The speaker emphasizes that the classification of sources as primary or secondary is not merely academic; it depends significantly on the context of research. For instance, a document might be considered a primary source for one historian examining a specific event while being a secondary source for another historian analyzing the same document as part of a broader narrative. This fluidity highlights the necessity for historians to critically assess the sources they use and understand their potential biases and limitations.

Ultimately, the effective use of both primary and secondary sources is crucial for constructing a robust historical narrative. Historians must evaluate the credibility and reliability of these sources, considering factors such as the author's perspective, the time of creation, and the intended audience.

•  
  • [00:09] "Critiquing primary sources and how to properly cite materials."
  • [03:25] "There’s far more literacy in writing the printing press to spread ideas."
  • [05:04] "Professional historians were still beholden to the whims of their day."

The transcript outlines several criteria for evaluating the reliability, credibility, and usefulness of historical sources. One key aspect emphasized is the necessity of source criticism, which involves a rigorous examination of sources to assess their authenticity and relevance to the historical narrative being constructed. The speaker emphasizes a few methodological considerations that historians should apply when evaluating sources:

• Authorship: Understanding who created the source and their possible biases or intentions.
• Context of Creation: Considering the temporal and social context in which the source was produced, which can greatly influence its perspective and reliability.
• Corroboration: Looking for additional evidence from other sources to support or challenge the claims made in a given source.
• Purpose: Analyzing the intended audience and purpose of the source to understand its potential biases.

Additionally, the speaker notes that historians should be aware of their own biases and the influence of contemporary societal values on their interpretations. This self-awareness is crucial for maintaining objectivity and rigor in historical analysis, as it allows historians to critically engage with their sources rather than accept them at face value.

•  
  • [04:02] "They applied ideas like rationalism and empiricism to the craft of history."
  • [05:53] "The most fundamental figure of this transformation was Leopold von Ranke."
  • [20:11] "Post-revisionists emphasize nuance and ambiguity, avoiding the triumphalism of nationalism or the judgment of the new left."

The transcript does not explicitly outline a methodological workflow or step-by-step approach to historical inquiry. However, it does imply several stages in the process of engaging with history through historiography. These stages include:

• Identifying Primary Sources: Historians begin by locating original materials that provide direct evidence of past events.
• Critical Analysis: Once sources are identified, historians must critically evaluate them for reliability, credibility, and bias, as discussed earlier.
• Contextual Understanding: Historians need to consider the social, political, and intellectual contexts in which the sources were created to provide a nuanced interpretation.
• Integration of Secondary Sources: Secondary sources are utilized to contextualize primary sources further and to engage with existing historiographical debates.
• Formulating Arguments: Historians then construct narratives or arguments based on their findings, which must be supported by evidence from their sources.
• Citing Sources: Proper citation practices are emphasized to maintain academic integrity and to allow others to trace the historical discourse.

While the transcript does not provide a detailed procedural framework, these implied steps highlight the necessity for historians to engage deeply with both primary and secondary sources to construct a well-founded historical narrative.

•  
  • [00:11] "How to properly cite materials."
  • [01:14] "Every undergrad history major takes a course in this."
  • [20:28] "This was a very brief and rapid overview of a topic that is normally an entire graduate seminar."

The transcript provides several references to the importance of historical context in interpreting history. Historical context encompasses various dimensions, including temporal, geographical, social, political, and intellectual factors that influence how historical events are understood.

For instance, the speaker notes the transition from the medieval to the modern era as a significant contextual shift that affects how historians interpret events. The Renaissance marks a period where scholars began to engage with a wider array of sources, thus altering the narrative of history itself. This context is crucial for understanding the evolution of historical thought and the factors that shaped it.

Furthermore, the speaker touches on the notion that historians generally divide themselves into medievalists and modernists, which implies a recognition that different historical contexts require different analytical approaches. Contextual understanding is essential because it allows historians to place events within a framework that clarifies their significance and relationships to other events.

Historically, the context can also illuminate the motivations behind certain events, such as political movements or social changes, and help historians avoid presentism—an anachronistic interpretation of past events through contemporary values.

•  
  • [01:17] "Let’s explain the major schools of thought in the history profession."
  • [03:00] "Historians still argue over the divide between the medieval and modern eras."
  • [06:35] "This dialectic was the zeitgeist and the nation state was its ultimate destination."

The transcript discusses several factors that influence historical interpretation, including bias, perspective, authorial intention, rhetoric, and agenda. The speaker emphasizes that historians must recognize these elements in their work to critically analyze historical narratives.

One important point made is that every historian has their own biases, which are shaped by their cultural and temporal contexts. This subjectivity can affect how they perceive and interpret sources, leading to potential distortions in historical narratives. The speaker highlights that understanding an author's perspective is essential for discerning the motivations behind their work, which often reflects broader societal ideologies.

Additionally, the speaker mentions the impact of nationalism on historiography, noting how historians have often crafted narratives that serve nationalistic purposes. This can lead to a glorification of certain events while marginalizing or omitting others. For instance, the dominance of white, cisgender, heterosexual males in historiography has historically skewed perspectives and narratives, highlighting the need for a more inclusive approach to history.

Ultimately, the speaker encourages historians to be aware of their own biases and the biases present in their sources, adopting a critical stance that acknowledges the complexities and nuances of historical interpretation.

•  
  • [01:40] "The first historians came in Greece during the 5th century before Christ."
  • [14:23] "Historians showed how possibilities were stamped out by cultural hegemony and how that came to be."
  • [20:07] "Post-revisionists emphasize nuance and ambiguity, avoiding the triumphalism of nationalism or the judgment of the new left."

The transcript addresses the themes of uncertainty, incomplete evidence, and limits of historical knowledge by emphasizing the complexity inherent in historical inquiry. The speaker points out that historians often face gaps in the record, which can lead to different interpretations based on the available evidence. Such gaps require historians to engage in a process of interpretative reasoning, where they must weigh the credibility of sources and consider alternative explanations.

The speaker mentions the concept of probability and plausibility as tools that historians use to navigate uncertainties. These epistemological standards allow historians to assess the likelihood of certain interpretations being accurate, even in the absence of complete evidence. This approach acknowledges that history is rarely a straightforward narrative; instead, it is often constructed from fragments of evidence that must be pieced together thoughtfully.

Moreover, the speaker highlights the importance of recognizing competing narratives and acknowledging the possibility of multiple interpretations. This multiplicity reflects the reality that historical knowledge is not static but rather a dynamic conversation among historians. By being open to different perspectives and interpretations, historians can better understand the complexities of the past.

•  
  • [14:04] "They showed the oppression of people that were not in the dominant race class or gender."
  • [19:24] "History itself is a social construct created by historians."
  • [20:23] "This stuff just keeps getting more and more complicated, huh?"

The transcript outlines the qualities that constitute good historical or historiographical practice. These practices are essential for ensuring the integrity and validity of historical narratives. The speaker emphasizes the following indicators of quality in historiography:

• Use of Evidence: Good historiography relies on robust evidence derived from both primary and secondary sources, ensuring that claims are substantiated by credible data.
• Engagement with Counterarguments: A strong historical argument anticipates and addresses counterarguments, demonstrating a depth of understanding and a willingness to engage with differing perspectives.
• Scope Limitations: Historians should clearly define the scope of their research and acknowledge its limitations, avoiding overgeneralizations that can misrepresent historical realities.
• Nuanced Analysis: Good historiography embraces complexity and nuance, avoiding simplistic narratives that fail to capture the multifaceted nature of historical events.

By adhering to these principles, historians can contribute to a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the past. The speaker also emphasizes that historiography is like a toolbox from which historians can draw various methodologies and approaches, allowing for a rich and diverse exploration of history.

•  
  • [20:10] "Post-revisionists emphasize nuance and ambiguity, avoiding the triumphalism of nationalism or the judgment of the new left."
  • [20:22] "Think of all this historiography as a toolbox from which a historian may write history."
  • [20:31] "This was a very brief and rapid overview of a topic that is normally an entire graduate seminar."

The transcript does not mention archaeology or its importance for historical research. There are no specific references to archaeological methods or approaches discussed in the context of historiography. The focus is primarily on historiographical practices, the evaluation of sources, and the dynamics of historical interpretation.

[00:00] hey safer here historiography is a very
[00:02] important part of doing history along
[00:04] with argumentation methodology essay
[00:07] structure critiquing primary sources and
[00:09] how to properly cite materials
[00:11] historiography is one of the fundamental
[00:14] skills one must have to write papers on
[00:16] history
[00:18] as in being a historian so what is
[00:20] historiography well it's the history of
[00:22] history i've actually already done an
[00:24] episode on what that is so you can click
[00:26] here for that but today i want to talk
[00:28] about western historiography as in the
[00:30] major schools of thought in the history
[00:32] field every undergrad history major
[00:35] takes a course in this and grad students
[00:38] have an even more intensive version
[00:40] there you'll learn about most of these
[00:42] schools of thought in much greater
[00:44] detail today i'm taking a bit of a
[00:46] challenge and maybe this will help you
[00:48] if you don't get to take one of those
[00:50] classes let's go over each school in
[00:52] about a paragraph or two obviously
[00:54] that's not enough to go into depth but
[00:56] perhaps it'll help you understand the
[00:58] evolution of the history field as a
[01:00] whole as always there are some helpful
[01:03] secondary sources in the description
[01:05] below for those who'd like to dig deeper
[01:07] also i'm going to timestamp each one of
[01:09] these so you can jump through it okay
[01:12] let's explain the major schools of
[01:15] thought in the history profession
[01:17] rapid fire style
[01:19] [Music]
[01:38] the first historians came in greece
[01:40] during the 5th century before christ
[01:43] herodotus described the past in an
[01:45] entertaining way if not so accurate a
[01:47] narrative his successor thucydides used
[01:50] more rigor and analysis to tell the
[01:52] story of the peloponnesian war which he
[01:54] had participated in these two lit the
[01:56] way for future historians by showing
[01:59] what history is and how to write it the
[02:01] word story and history derive from the
[02:04] same root so history is just telling a
[02:06] true story whether in the herodotus
[02:08] fashion of entertaining narrative or
[02:09] thucydides's more analytical and
[02:12] accurate fashion for the next couple
[02:13] millennia this was the primary divide
[02:16] between historians in the ancient world
[02:18] they are pretty much our soul sources in
[02:20] the medieval world after the fall of the
[02:22] roman empire in the 5th century a.d
[02:25] monkish devotion to writing gave more
[02:27] sources and created chroniclers
[02:29] chroniclers simply made timelines as in
[02:32] a list of dates and events with no
[02:34] attempt to connect these things
[02:36] chroniclers are not historians for they
[02:38] are not telling a story but they formed
[02:40] the basis of many historians who studied
[02:43] chronicles while in their monastic
[02:45] orders throughout the middle ages such
[02:46] as the venerable bead
[02:49] [Music]
[02:51] something changed around the beginning
[02:53] of the renaissance as scholars began to
[02:55] devote their pursuits to a more varied
[02:58] set of objectives a plethora of sources
[03:00] came about historians still argue over
[03:02] the divide between the medieval and
[03:04] modern eras it depends on how one
[03:06] defines the difference normally the
[03:07] difference between the renaissance which
[03:09] began in the 15th century and the age of
[03:12] revolutions which began in the 18th
[03:14] century is the demarcation of the early
[03:16] modern era from there on to the world
[03:19] wars is the high modern era and from
[03:21] world war ii to present is called
[03:23] contemporary history in modern times
[03:25] there's far more literacy in writing the
[03:27] printing press to spread ideas a push to
[03:29] advance both socially and scientifically
[03:31] while also more interconnectedness
[03:33] around the world so defining when that
[03:35] starts could be the fall of
[03:36] constantinople the invention of the
[03:38] printing press or when columbus reported
[03:40] his landing in the new world because of
[03:42] this brick and sourcing and general
[03:43] public disposition historians generally
[03:46] divide themselves between medievalists
[03:48] and modernists as in those who study the
[03:50] past before or after that hazily defined
[03:52] periodization
[03:58] during the enlightenment some people who
[04:00] at leisure time chose to study the past
[04:02] they applied ideas like rationalism and
[04:04] empiricism to the craft of history these
[04:07] antiquarians were not professional
[04:08] historians more of hobbyists but they
[04:10] began to develop a style of history more
[04:12] recognizable to scholars today this
[04:14] included citing one's sources for the
[04:16] sake of veracity using a positive
[04:17] perspectives to interrogate a subject
[04:19] and finding new materials to shed light
[04:22] on previously unknown topics this led to
[04:24] a swath of lay historians most prominent
[04:26] of which was edward gibbons who used
[04:28] newly dug up sources and a bunch of
[04:30] ancient historians to write his
[04:32] magisterial the decline and fall of the
[04:34] roman empire though antiquarians
[04:36] sometimes rose to such venerable heights
[04:38] they were just making it up as they went
[04:39] along
[04:43] as more antiquarians wrote history in
[04:45] the 19th century universities began to
[04:47] give history degrees alongside this
[04:49] professionalization historians took on
[04:51] standards for their scholarship the most
[04:53] fundamental figure of this
[04:54] transformation was leopold von ranka who
[04:56] really pushed a reliance on primary
[04:58] sources good argumentation and proper
[04:59] citation some even pretended this was
[05:02] scientific and objective but
[05:04] professional historians were still
[05:05] beholden to the whims of their day this
[05:07] process played a key role in nationalism
[05:09] by making histories about their
[05:11] respective nations extending its
[05:13] existence backwards well beyond the
[05:15] limits of common ethnicity many
[05:17] historical associations were founded as
[05:19] nation-building projects and they all
[05:21] relied on a german philosopher's view of
[05:23] history
[05:24] [Music]
[05:27] george wilhelm friedrich hegel has way
[05:29] too many names was kind of the
[05:31] figurehead of many romantic philosophers
[05:33] who theorized a way of understanding
[05:35] what the spirit of the times is or was
[05:37] also known as zeitgeist a status quo
[05:40] gave rise to its opposition eventually
[05:42] resolving into a new norm that
[05:44] incorporated both this is called the
[05:46] hegelian dialectic where you have the
[05:48] thesis antithesis and synthesis so the
[05:51] french revolution was merely the rise of
[05:52] opposition to aristocracy resolving with
[05:55] napoleon taking on the role of both this
[05:57] dialectic was the zeitgeist and the
[05:59] nation state was its ultimate
[06:01] destination historians who use this
[06:03] theory believe that history is always
[06:05] progressing that the zeitgeist is always
[06:07] improving and the arrow of history
[06:09] points toward liberal democracy more
[06:11] civil rights scientific advancement
[06:13] technological improvement and increasing
[06:15] nation states around the world reinforce
[06:17] this view of perpetual progress these
[06:20] historians are called wigs though i
[06:22] rather like the term chronological
[06:23] snobbery for wigs are rather assumptive
[06:25] of what is good for the general public a
[06:28] funny term i made up is technotheism
[06:30] because they are wigish about science
[06:32] and technology to the point of blind
[06:34] faith but wiggishness is not the only
[06:35] way of interpreting the hegelian
[06:37] dialectic
[06:38] [Music]
[06:44] karl marx theorized that the driver of
[06:46] history was not nations and instead was
[06:49] class struggle the material
[06:50] circumstances of people's economic
[06:52] position determined their lives more
[06:54] than anything else so in his view the
[06:56] french revolution resulted in the rise
[06:58] of the bourgeoisie as a middle class to
[07:00] dominance beginning the era of
[07:02] capitalism ancient history was defined
[07:04] by rulers exploiting slaves medieval
[07:06] times as aristocrats exploiting peasants
[07:09] and modernity by the bourgeoisie
[07:10] exploiting urban labor also known as
[07:12] proletarians every time a lower class
[07:14] would rise up in defiance of an upper
[07:16] class it would result in a new upper and
[07:18] lower class marx believed that the next
[07:20] revolution would result in a proletarian
[07:22] dictatorship and this would be the last
[07:24] world revolution as they would first
[07:26] implement a kind of temporary socialism
[07:28] before the state as a whole would wither
[07:30] away resulting in communism so
[07:32] historians who utilize this theory of
[07:34] history look at material circumstances
[07:36] of class and whether they are aware of
[07:38] their exploitation this is called
[07:40] materialism and the recognition of
[07:41] exploitation is called class
[07:43] consciousness
[07:47] building from marx's definition of
[07:49] modernity an early sociologist named max
[07:51] weber theorized that capitalism arose
[07:53] from calvinist protestantism due to the
[07:55] working spirit that that theology
[07:58] instilled historians following weber
[08:00] seek further explanation for modernity
[08:02] such as science and legal rights by
[08:04] defining modernity with these supposed
[08:06] good values they can push for other
[08:08] countries to adopt them and therefore
[08:10] modernize today this is considered
[08:11] highly imperialistic and antithetical to
[08:14] the profession's ethics but you still
[08:15] find historians like nile ferguson on
[08:17] the fringes of academia this is driven
[08:19] by german philosophy but the us was
[08:21] coming to power in the 20th century and
[08:23] scholars there had their own basis
[08:29] pragmatism is not an adherence to
[08:31] practicality it's a theory of truth
[08:33] which says those with the best argument
[08:35] know the current truth and given
[08:36] infinite time to investigate and discuss
[08:39] whatever rational inquirers would
[08:40] conclude is the ultimate truth american
[08:43] academics followed this epistemology and
[08:45] really blossomed in the interwar years
[08:47] these historians fused ideas of
[08:49] modernity with whig history to study the
[08:51] economic influence on ideology most
[08:53] prominent was charles beard who suddenly
[08:55] did not have a beard
[08:58] you need to save this thing
[09:02] he applied this to the american
[09:03] revolution in civil war showing the
[09:05] economic basis of opposition to taxation
[09:08] and slavery carl becker advocated for
[09:10] learning from the public as part of the
[09:12] rational inquiry of pragmatism which he
[09:14] called the everyman historian historians
[09:16] could teach and learn kind of like what
[09:18] i do on this channel but generally
[09:19] academics remain split from public
[09:21] history especially since they thought
[09:22] individuals would atomize the
[09:24] nation-building project of us history
[09:26] this fusion of nationalism and
[09:28] materialism meant they believed that the
[09:30] us was on a trajectory for greater
[09:33] hegemony in the world which came after
[09:35] world war ii
[09:41] directly after world war ii historians
[09:43] on either side of the following cold war
[09:44] generally agreed on the trajectory that
[09:46] the nation was taking it conformed to
[09:48] the wigish interpretation in the west as
[09:50] in a unified nation headed towards
[09:51] greater equality and freedom the marxist
[09:53] interpretation dominated in the east as
[09:55] in proletarian socialism headed towards
[09:58] communism western historians formed a
[09:59] consensus this was the orthodoxy of
[10:01] contemporary history seeing their nation
[10:03] state as the triumphant endpoint of
[10:05] history which only needed moderate
[10:07] improvements and massive defense from
[10:09] foreign aggression
[10:14] another thing that grew roots prior to
[10:15] world war ii and blossomed afterward was
[10:17] the analysis school mark bloch
[10:18] formulated an interdisciplinary approach
[10:20] by combining economics anthropology and
[10:23] sociology to investigate what he called
[10:26] the mentality or the overall mentality
[10:28] of a given society fernand brodel
[10:30] applied this to a massive time scale
[10:32] this isn't 10 or 20 years but 10 or 20
[10:35] centuries which they called the long
[10:37] deere braudel typified the
[10:39] macro-historical approach this school of
[10:41] thought is known for
[10:45] analysis and pragmatism were part of
[10:47] many schools of thought that applied a
[10:49] structural understanding of linguistics
[10:51] to history called the new social history
[10:53] social history looked at society as a
[10:55] whole through rigorous structural theory
[10:57] the language of primary sources was kind
[10:58] of an ethnic glue that gave context to
[11:01] all speech mostly they applied
[11:03] structural functionalism from sociology
[11:05] as in what is the function of any given
[11:07] subject within the context of a social
[11:09] structure this linguistic analysis
[11:11] brought in what societal trends were
[11:13] leading toward a better nation but
[11:14] structuralism began to break down as
[11:16] neoliberalism emphasized individuals
[11:19] more than society as a whole replacing
[11:21] it was culture cultural historians look
[11:23] for the meaning of the subject instead
[11:24] of its function language continues to
[11:26] inform their study but the historic
[11:28] context is how it affects an individual
[11:30] instead of society as a whole these
[11:32] theories of semiotics derive from
[11:34] pragmatism to show how any given primary
[11:36] source is embedded in its cultural
[11:38] context revealing the meaning of that
[11:40] topic culture rather than society was
[11:43] the focus from the 1970s onward
[11:48] anthropologist clifford geertz used
[11:50] what's called thick description to
[11:52] explain a culture where he not only
[11:53] explained the function of some act
[11:55] within the structure of a given society
[11:57] but also the subjective explanations and
[11:59] how it fits within the context of that
[12:02] culture for a far more complete
[12:04] ethnography historians took this
[12:06] approach and applied it in the opposite
[12:07] direction of the analysis school they
[12:09] took small case studies such as
[12:11] inquisition records of a single
[12:12] individual to perform geertz's thick
[12:14] description and draw out greater context
[12:16] from that narrative rather than simply
[12:18] smaller topics microhistory drew out
[12:20] much larger history by connecting
[12:22] aspects of a subject to a wide group of
[12:25] topics culture was beginning to
[12:27] challenge the consensus
[12:31] some historians revived the theories of
[12:33] antonio gramsci a marxist who'd been
[12:36] jailed by mussolini until his death in
[12:37] 1937. his convoluted prison letters
[12:40] spoke of a cultural superstructure that
[12:42] prevented class solidarity this cultural
[12:44] hegemony as in how generally accepted
[12:46] ideas tend to favor the elites of any
[12:49] given culture those elites indirectly
[12:51] control the very mentality of the lower
[12:53] classes historians showed how
[12:55] possibilities were stamped out by
[12:56] cultural hegemony and how that came to
[12:58] be
[13:02] unlike gramsci most of the frankfurt
[13:03] school managed to escape fascists
[13:05] persecution by moving to the united
[13:07] states these marxists also pointed to
[13:09] how culture could snuff out resistance
[13:11] but they were more about ideas they
[13:13] theorized that the culture industry as
[13:15] in movies books tv and whatnot helped
[13:17] bolster capitalism by making the
[13:19] population complacent and docile their
[13:21] critical theory analyzed popular media
[13:23] for how it reinforced societal
[13:25] structures historians who use this
[13:27] method to critique tend to be looking at
[13:29] how a culture is affected by media
[13:32] [Music]
[13:34] throughout the 1960s and 70s as the
[13:36] linguistic turn went from societal to
[13:38] cultural emphasis due to the
[13:39] counterculture and civil rights
[13:41] movements a different form of politics
[13:42] advocated peace and equality as opposed
[13:44] to marxism anarchism or socialism this
[13:47] new left was fundamentally opposed to
[13:49] violence they eventually made their way
[13:51] into academia and began to revise the
[13:53] historical orthodoxy of the consensus
[13:55] they showed that the emphasis on a
[13:56] national character was necessarily
[13:58] marginalizing to anyone who did not
[14:00] conform with it these revisionists used
[14:02] history to show the oppression of people
[14:04] that were not in the dominant race class
[14:06] or gender eventually specializing in
[14:07] those marginalized identities race class
[14:09] and gender studies came to dominate the
[14:11] field much of revisionism is about
[14:14] raising the voices of historical
[14:15] characters previously silenced by
[14:17] nationalistic history nationalism
[14:19] violently imposed racism exploitation
[14:21] and misogyny historicizing the meaning
[14:23] of those who were hegemonic within the
[14:25] orthodoxy namely white cis heterosexual
[14:27] males who were rich challenged that
[14:29] violent nationalism but gender took on
[14:31] an extra dimension
[14:35] as the 1970s push for the equal rights
[14:37] amendment swept the united states though
[14:39] it would ultimately fail academic
[14:41] feminism took on extra theoretical might
[14:44] mary ritter beard who was married to
[14:45] charles beard was a suffragette who made
[14:47] biographies of prominent women but few
[14:49] scholars followed her until the 1980s
[14:51] first wave feminists sought voting
[14:53] rights like mary beard so the second
[14:54] wave sought civil rights like the era
[14:57] historians like joan scott showed how
[14:58] history itself had been heavily
[15:00] misrepresentative of half the population
[15:03] seeking to raise the voices of women
[15:04] who'd been discounted by a patriarchal
[15:06] historical profession judith butler
[15:08] theorized that gender was performative
[15:10] as in one performs their gender to
[15:11] whatever the historical circumstance
[15:13] requires feminist historians showed that
[15:15] patriarchy imposed spheres of
[15:17] domesticity where women were forced into
[15:19] domestic roles thereby keeping them
[15:21] subservient they also studied ideas of
[15:23] how gender reinforces nationalism
[15:25] historian george moss showed how
[15:27] masculinity and femininity were forms of
[15:29] what a nation saw in itself as well as
[15:32] what it excluded
[15:36] some forms of nationalism only arose to
[15:38] fight imperialism as empires decolonized
[15:41] historians sought to illustrate how
[15:42] previous history had supported colonial
[15:45] subjugation franz fanon theorized that
[15:47] imperial powers imposed a cultural
[15:48] hegemony on indigenous people that
[15:50] ultimately alienated them much like
[15:52] w.e.b du bois propose the idea of double
[15:55] consciousness where a marginalized
[15:56] person thinks in a way that subjugates
[15:58] them by devaluing their self-worth
[16:00] edward syed built from that showing that
[16:02] westerners described easterners or the
[16:05] orient as exotic and irrational thereby
[16:07] needing subjugation to impose supposedly
[16:09] superior western virtues various
[16:11] theories attempted to raise the voices
[16:13] of alienated subjects also known as
[16:15] sub-alterns homibaba revived dubois
[16:17] theory by saying there was hybridity of
[16:19] the hegemonic affectation and a true
[16:22] undercurrent depeche chakrabarti showed
[16:24] that many aspects of indian culture were
[16:26] eurocentric and needed to be divorced in
[16:29] order to have a true indian nationalism
[16:30] but gayatri spivak argued that there
[16:32] were certain subalterns that couldn't
[16:34] have their voices elevated because they
[16:36] were essentially too alienated by
[16:38] cultural hegemony they were so
[16:40] subjugated that they had no voice of
[16:42] their own so there is a tension in
[16:43] historiography that some people may
[16:45] truly be lost as legitimate sources to
[16:48] counter colonial narratives these
[16:49] post-colonial theories allow us to
[16:51] question the archives but also show how
[16:53] colonized people often cannot transcend
[16:56] their subjugation
[17:00] many people did transcend national
[17:01] borders though especially through the
[17:03] spread of ideas and movements
[17:05] international history is about how
[17:07] nations interact while comparative
[17:08] history compares different nations but
[17:10] transnationalism is about how things
[17:13] transcend individual nations
[17:14] interlinking them through cultural
[17:16] diffusion borderlands history looks at
[17:18] areas where there is competing or
[17:20] layered sovereignty as in the
[17:21] negotiation of disputed areas complex
[17:24] cultural interactions and how nations
[17:26] mix by crossing borders maritime history
[17:28] does a similar thing with the inherently
[17:30] borderless space of water intellectual
[17:32] history especially has adopted
[17:33] transnationalism in recent years such as
[17:36] how the atlantic revolutions of the late
[17:37] 18th and early 19th centuries built off
[17:40] of one another there's also many
[17:41] histories of how certain places like
[17:43] port cities are inherently more similar
[17:45] to each other than the nation that they
[17:47] belong to and therefore more
[17:48] cosmopolitan all of these histories
[17:50] challenged nationalism at its very core
[17:52] by questioning the nature of boundaries
[17:54] and nations themselves allowing
[17:56] historians like benedict anderson to
[17:58] show that nations in the modern
[18:00] conception of the term are only a 19th
[18:02] century invention often created by the
[18:04] history profession itself this
[18:06] fundamentally undermines the very basis
[18:08] of not only orthodoxy but revisionism
[18:11] too for it opens up the possibility of
[18:13] something beyond modernity
[18:18] this stuff just keeps getting more and
[18:19] more complicated huh historians now
[18:22] question the grand narratives that
[18:23] reinforce nationalism and thereby
[18:25] modernism postmodernism in the history
[18:27] profession is simply that showing that
[18:29] abstract categories such as race class
[18:31] gender and nation are social constructs
[18:33] that feed into a grand narrative
[18:35] humanity built them and they changed
[18:37] over time to the point of making them
[18:39] appear natural so postmodernists
[18:41] deconstruct that grand narrative while
[18:43] this shows how a given social construct
[18:45] came into being and what it is used for
[18:47] this ultimately undermines its power by
[18:49] showing these are not fixed and natural
[18:51] abstractions michel foco or as one
[18:54] student mispronounced it mitchell [ __ ]
[18:56] was at the forefront of this trend he
[18:59] applied friedrich nietzsche's ideas
[19:00] about genealogical history and
[19:02] humanity's fundamental drive to assert
[19:04] power over various concepts such as
[19:06] sexuality government knowledge and
[19:08] punishment food co would show that there
[19:10] are very different conceptions of such
[19:12] abstract categories then show that it
[19:14] fundamentally changed decades later if
[19:16] not centuries each construct showed a
[19:18] different form of power being exerted
[19:20] upon those using the categorizations
[19:22] history itself is a social construct
[19:24] created by historians many laymen claim
[19:26] that there's such a thing as objectivity
[19:28] and being unbiased but these sentiments
[19:30] do not truly grasp what the process of
[19:32] making history is it is good to aspire
[19:35] to what peter novick called that noble
[19:37] dream but no historian worth their salt
[19:39] would say that objectivity is even
[19:41] possible and most recognize that such
[19:43] claims is typically the province of
[19:44] nationalists who inevitably marginalize
[19:46] people race class and gender are now
[19:48] being deconstructed for how these
[19:50] categories exert power historians are
[19:52] steadily moving away from modernism such
[19:54] as wiggish history but no one knows
[19:56] where that will lead
[20:00] generally speaking most historians today
[20:02] are post-revisionists they neither
[20:04] adhere to revisionism nor orthodoxy
[20:07] instead where the history field is going
[20:09] tends to be a combination of all these
[20:11] different theories post-revisionists
[20:13] emphasize nuance and ambiguity avoiding
[20:15] the triumphalism of nationalism or the
[20:17] judgment of the new left think of all
[20:19] this historiography as a toolbox from
[20:22] which a historian may write history once
[20:24] again there are some useful resources in
[20:26] the bibliography below i especially
[20:28] recommend these two books they'll give
[20:31] you a good start on historiography this
[20:33] was a very brief and rapid overview of a
[20:35] topic that is normally an entire
[20:37] graduate seminar over the course of a
[20:39] semester and that's always woefully
[20:41] incomplete in and of itself so find some
[20:44] more historiography and see just how
[20:45] much diverse thought there is in the
[20:47] history profession
[20:50] [Music]
[21:18] you