16 Introduction CHAPTER ONE

very often decidedly more progressive in tone. Such

historiography typically seeks to include a wider variety of
The Source: The Basis of Our Knowledge about the Past
historical actors than historians of the past thought worthy of
study. It often seeks, moreover, to expose the ways the A. What is Source?
political, social, and intellectual hierarchies that we have
inherited from the past were fashioned, in this way working to Sources are artifacts that have been left by the past. They exist
demystify those hierarchies, making what once seemed natural either as relics, what we might call “remains,” or as the
and unchangeable appear artificial and malleable. Historians testimonies of witnesses to the past.
today thus employ methodologies somewhat different from The first kinds of sources, relics or remain, offer the researcher
those of their predecessors. Almost all are also more skeptical a clue about the past simply by virtue of their existence. The
about the kinds of truths the historians can discover, about the wooden columns found at the site of a prehistoric settlement
kinds of truth buried in sources. Most approach their evidence testify, for example, to the existence of a people and tell
with many more questions about its provenance and its historians something about their culture. The pegs or dowels
limitations than their predecessors might have had. This does they used to fasten building materials further enlighten scholars
not mean, however, that historians today are free of the past. about their technical skills and artistic capacities. By
The best of them borrow heavily from their predecessors, using comparing their artifacts with those from other places,
their tools to place and decipher sources, often relying on historians can further learn something of their commercial or
similar strategies to manipulate and order them. While they do intellectual relations (for example, by comparing frescos from
not write the same kind of histories as their predecessors, they the Cycladen island of Santorini with those from Crete).
could not write history at all, at least not as they understand it,
if they did not have this rich legacy. In contrast, testimonies are the oral or written reports that
describe an event, whether simple or complex, such as the
record of a property exchange (for example, the donation of
land to a medieval monastery or the sale of shares on the New
York Stock Exchange). Speeches or commentaries are also
testimonies. Vaclav Havel’s speech during the “Velvet
Revolution” in Prague in 1989 is one such example; in it, he
fulminated against the communist hard-liners and reformers
and claimed the “Prague Spring” of 1968 as historical
precedent for
18 The Source Scholars sometimes think of the first as having had an
“intention,” the second as being “unintentional.” In source
his own revolution. The authors of such testimonies can
provide the historian information about what happened, how What is a Source? 19
and in what circumstances the event occurred, and why it
designed for one purpose may come to have very different uses
occurred. Nevertheless, few sources yield this information in
for vertently captured another might well be “unintentional” in
equal measure, and it is the historian’s job to supplement the
conception as was the film of President John F. Kennedy’s
raw material available in the source itself.
assassination taken by a bystander who meant only to record
Both relics and testimonies were usually created for the the parade for his private enjoyment. This film’s role in history
specific purposes of the age in which they were made. What and in historical interpretation has, however, been profoundly
are called relics were, typically, objects of practical use in daily more important. A memoir written to explain a life, a legal
life and only later, in the ages that followed, came to be treated brief designed to prove a case in court, and a portrait
as historical sources. The same is true of most testimonies, commissioned by a noblewoman obviously are not innocent of
whether oral or written. They were composed to provide design and motive, for they were produced with specific
contemporaries proof of an act or of a right, or in order to purposes in mind. To distinguish an “intentional” source from
inform them about a fact. Only rarely were they designed for an “unintentional” is not to argue that one is more transparent,
the use of posterity, although that sometimes occurred. In more reliable than another. Unintentional sources are
contrast to a relic, the content of a testimony is thus usually unintentional only in the sense that they were not produced
more important than its form. Still, the form of such a report with the historian’s questions in mind; they are not, however,
often tells the alert historian a great deal; to this point we will otherwise “innocent.” Conversely, intentional source contain
later return. It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that one of features not under the control of their authors and have lives
the historian’s principal tasks is to uncover the original purpose beyond their original intentions. A memoir intended to justify
or function of the relics or testimonies that have come down to the choices its author made during her life may, in fact,
posterity, to divine what use they were intended to serve and inadvertently reveal the uncertainties and untruths that she
what purposes they actually served at the time they were sought to conceal. It may, moreover, have been received in
created. totally unexpected ways, therefore affecting the future in ways
the author would never have intended.
Testimonies and artifacts, whether oral or written, may have
been intentionally created, perhaps to serve as records, or they Historians must thus always consider the conditions under
might have been created for some other purpose entirely. which a source was produced---the intentions that motivated
it---but they must not assume that such knowledge tells them
all they need to know about its “reliability.” They must also indirect. A direct source might be the letters or chronicles that
consider the historical context in which it was produced---the come to us from eighteenth-century businessmen, a law code
events that precede it, and those that followed, for the written in 846, or a poem penned just yesterday. An indirect
significance of any event recorded source might be an eighteen-century inventory listing the
letters and books found in an educated woman’s study, from
20 The Source
which scholars could deduce something about the kind of
depends as much on what comes after as it does on what comes training she
before. Had the Boston Tea Party of 1773 not been followed by
Source Typologies 21
the American Revolution, it would have had considerably less
significance than historians have since given it, and the very had received and her intellectual interests; or, to pursue the
same newspaper report of the uprising, in the very same examples given here, it might be an eleventh-century register
archive, would have had a very different status from the one it cataloging the contents of a princely archive that named the
actually acquired. Thus, historians are never in a position---and ninth-century code; or it could be a computer printout of sales
should never imagine themselves as being in a position---to of poetry volumes from the Barnes and Noble at Broadway and
read a source without attention to both the historical and the 82nd in Manhattan.
historiographical contexts that give it meaning. This, of course,
The boundaries between a source (whether direct or indirect)
is the heart of historical interpretation.
and a historical study are not always, however, so clear.
Sources are thus those materials from which historians Although an ancient weapon---a spear or a catapult, for
construct meanings. Put another way, a source is an object instance---or a deed transferring ownership of a piece of land
from the past in testimony concerning the past on which is, obviously, a source in the usual sense, certain documents
historians depend in order to create their own depiction. The have an ambiguous and shifting status. Herodotus and
relationship between the two can be illustrated by an example: Thucydides, for example, each of whom provided accounts of
The diary left by a midwife who lived in colonial New England events in their own days, can be considered both historians of
constitutes a source. On the basis of such a source, Laurel their ages---creators of historical interpretations---and authors
Thatcher Ulrich created a prize-winning historical study, A of sources in that they provide modern-day historians evidence
Midwife’s Tale (1990). A source provides us evidence about both about these events and about the intellectual culture of the
the existence of an event; a historical interpretation is an ages in which they wrote. In many cases, moreover, the sources
argument about the event. that former historians used to compile their own accounts are
lost to the present, so the historical interpretation they
Although when we use the term “source” we have in mind
constructed serves present-day historians also as a “source of
these primary sources, such sources can themselves be direct or
sources,” their only route to lost evidence. The church history to impart a particular message. The motives for their
left by Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 265-340 C.E.), for example, composition vary widely. A scientific tract is typically
mentions countless texts that are now lost; his work thus serves composed in order to inform contemporaries or succeeding
not only as a historical interpretation concerning the first generation; a newspaper article might be intended to shape
Christian centuries, but also as an indirect source about this era. opinion; the so-called ego document or personal narrative such
as a diary or memoir might be composed on order to persuade
It is thus one of the primary responsibilities of the historian to
readers of the justice of the author’s actions; a novel or film
distinguish carefully for readers between information that
might be made to entertain, to deliver a moral teaching, or to
comes literally out of the source itself (in footnotes or by some
further a religious cause; a biography might be written in praise
other
of the subject’s worth and achievements (a panegyric or
22 The Source hagiography). Such sources thus take many different forms,
which are highly dependent upon the
means) and that which is a personal---what is transcribed from
the source itself---historians have no ethical responsibility; for Source Typologies 23
the meaning they impart to that material, of course, they are
conventions of the ages in which they were written. The
entirely responsible.
category of “narrative source” is therefore considerably
B. Source Typologies, Their Evolution And broader than what we usually consider “fiction.” Novels and
poetry – the archtypical fictions – are; nevertheless, a subset of
Complementarity this category, a kind of source, although they were not
Written sources are usually categorized according to a tripartite composed with the purpose of informing successors about the
scheme: as narrative or “literary,” as diplomatic/juridical, or as time in which they were written.
social documents. Although these categories are arbitrary and, Questions of intentionally, discussed above, become especially
as we shall see, can distort as much as clarify the status of the important in the case of “ego documents.” Diaries, for
evidence a particular source can provide, it is important to example, can almost never treated as reliable reports about an
recognize that source do, in fact, have generic qualities. One event, but must be read in terms of the very individual
kind of source cannot be read exactly like another, and each perspective from which they were written, as an index of what
should be analyzed in terms of its formal properties as well as the author (that is, the “intellectual author,” a term we will
in terms of content. define later) considers his truth. Memoirs are similarly
Sources traditionally classified as narrative or literary include selective accounts, always highly edited versions of the life
chronicles or tracts presented in narrative form, written in order being recorded, almost always highly teleological in structure
(in that they are written to explain the outcome of a life, not to the seal; internal, such as particular rhetorical devices and
record its process). In general, then, ego documents record the images) which are determined by the norms of law and by
author’s perception of events, perhaps even his memory of how tradition. Such characteristics thus vary in time (each
he experienced them, and they can often tell us a great deal generation has its own norms) and according to provenance
about the writer’s political intentions and his tactics, as well as (each bureaucracy has its own traditions-the emperor’s has
his ideology and the culture of the age. one style, the pope’s another, the United States House of
Representatives’ still another).
Diplomatic sources are understood to be those which
document an existing legal situation or create a new one, and it Technically, a diplomatic source is composed of three
is this kinds of sources that professional historians once treated parts. The first is the “protocol,” which is generally quite
as the purest, the “best” source. The classic diplomatic source stereotypical; it includes the names of the author or issuer
is the charter, a “legal instrument,” what Germans called the and of the recipient, a standard opening or salutation, and
Urkunde, the French the charte or diplome. This is a document, an appeal to some higher authority that legitimates the legal
usually sealed or authenticated in some other way, intended to act – perhaps a god (“in the name of the Father . . .”), a
provide evidence of the completion of a legal transaction or secular lord (“by the power invested in me . . .”), or a
proof of the existence of principle of justice (“we hold these truths to be self-
evident . . .”). The second is
24 The Source
juristic fact and which could serve as evidence in a judicial
proceeding in the event of dispute. Scholars differentiate those Source Typologies 25
legal instruments issued by public authorities (such as kings or
the content itself, the recitation of the case and its
popes, the New York Court of Appeals or the U.S Congress)
determination. Here the form is variable, being determined
from those involving only private parties (such as a will or a
largely by the purpose of the document. The third is the
mortgage agreement).
closing (the eschatocol); again, the form is stereotypical,
The form of any particular legal instrument is fixed. It containing various authenticating formulas, witnesses,
possesses specific formal properties (external, such as the hand dates, and so on.
or print style, the ink,
These charters can also be categorized according to
1. “Truth” is, to be sure, a slippery notion for the individual recounting an function. Some are law-giving (ordinances, declarations of
event. See, for further discussion, Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and
Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis (New
law, statues, etc.). Others are juridical (judgments of courts
York, 1982). and of other legal authorities); still others record voluntary
agreements between individuals authenticated by public the most important categories of unwritten evidence. Such
notaries, by officials of bishops, or by aldermen of cities. artifacts can tell historians a great deal about the culture of
They deal with contracts, wills, marriage licenses, and all the area, the ways of life, the artistic ambitions of the
other forms of social agreements. people who lived there. If the objects unearthed in one
place can be identified as having been made in another,
What historians often refer to as social documents are the
they can also reveal a great deal about the commercial and
products of record-keeping by bureaucracies such as state
sociocultural interconnections of the age.
ministries, charitable organizations, foundations, churches,
and schools. Containing information of economic, social, Sometimes the archaeological object is little more than the
political, or judicial import, these documents provide trace of a former settlement, a scar left on a landscape.
accounts of particular charges or agencies (ambassador’s Even relics as apparently insignificant as the charred beams
reports, municipal accounts, the findings of a particular of a burned house, especially if they have been left
commission), of meetings (parliamentary debates), of untouched through time, can provide the historian valuable
business policy. Or they give a survey of an administrative information. Archaeological sites of interest to historians
structure (the property registers of a monastery), of a fiscal are sometimes buried under present-day structures and first
structure (tax rolls), of a social structure (registers of births, unearthed during excavations undertaken in the course of
marriages, and deaths, lists of citizenship registrations), or building a modern construction such as a subway or sewer
of a political administration (lists of rulers, cabinet officers line. For example, in 1993, Native American burial grounds
legislators). were discovered in New York City during excavations for
new subway construction.
26 The Source
Source Typologies 27
Written sources of these kinds, although certainly essential
to most historians’ work and although sometimes imagined Coin hoards, and sometimes hoards of paper currencies,
to be the exclusive suppliers of historical data, are by no have similarly provided historians which valuable
means the only kind of historical source. Unwritten information about the institutions of government, about
sources, both material and oral, are as essential elements of economic conditions, about trade relations, about fiscal
the historian’s arsenal. Like written sources, they are of policy. In addition, historians rely heavily on visual
different types, or genres. representations, whether handmade or hand-finished, such
as paintings, etchings, and drawings, or machine-produced,
Archaeological evidence, whether articles from daily life,
such as films and photographs.
artistic creations, such as jewelry or vases, dwellings,
graves, roads, churches, or fortifications, counts as one of
Oral evidence is also an important source for historians. for that reason that scholars have so much deeper and more
Much comes from the very distant past, in the form of tales nuanced knowledge of these ancient societies than of
and the sagas of ancient peoples, or from the pre-modern others. This is also the explanation for the profound
period of Western history in the form of folk songs or influence these cultures have had on our own. During the
popular rituals. Such evidence also comes, however, from early Middle Ages, however, oral communication became
our own day, in the form, for example, of protest songs or relatively more important, and it was only around the
other kinds of artistic performances. The interview is twelfth century that written communication achieved
another of the major forms of oral evidence produced in our dominance even in elite circles in medieval Europe. With
age. In their original form, all these sources were purely the invention of the printings press at the end of the
oral (or visual), and few were recorded in permanent ways. fifteenth century, western European history came to be
Hence, they are lost to scholars today. But some were based principally on written sources. The press permitted
preserved in one way or another, and it is thanks to those exact reproduction, in quantity, of documents of all kinds-
preservations, often accidental, that historians can still have news reports, statutes, letters, fictions, poetry, drawings-
access to them. In the present age of film and radio, a great thus assuring their long survival and wide circulation. The
many oral or otherwise ephemeral sources have thus been introduction of writing and printing had an enormous
rendered “written,” so that in some ways historians are influence on intellectual history as well, for they gave
today even more likely to use “oral” sources. scholars more extensive and more accurate access to the
thoughts of their predecessors.
The degree to which any historian uses oral or material
evidence depends, to a large extent, on the period being Nevertheless, historians do not rely entirely on written
studied or on the particular subject under investigation. sources of their knowledge even of those ages in which the
Historians’ knowledge about prehistoric times-that is, the printed text existed. Moreover, the boundaries between
age written and oral, or for that matter between verbal and
material, are arbitrary. Although historians have
28 The Source
traditionally categorized material and oral sources apart
before written records-is necessarily based entirely on the from written,
material or, indirectly, on the oral record. Beginning about
Source Typologies 29
3000 B.C.E., writing was invented in Mesopotamia, thus
inaugurating the “historical” age in human history. thereby calling attention to the generic differences among
Thereafter, Greeks and Romans developed writing to an art, them and the dangers of treating them the same, skilled
to a highly sophisticated form of communication, and it is researchers know not to assume the differences, but to
consider them critically. Today most scholars are use a Plateau began experiments with moving film, and 1893,
mixture of oral, written, and other material sources as the when Thomas Edison perfected techniques, was the crucial
situation requires. age for the development of technology for moving pictures.
It was only around 1950, however, that the technology
What scholars know, for example, about the people of the
became available to preserve films adequately, and it is still
“Ancien Regime” (the term used in much of France and
more recently that efforts have been made to copy and thus
Western Europe to refer to the period from the late Middle
preserve films made before that period. Until 1900, most
Ages to about 1800) – about their actions, ideas, beliefs,
films were what we call “documentaries,” reports of current
and fantasies – comes to the through a wide variety of
events or of natural phenomena. Dramatic films were made
sources, some originally written, some written only after
after that date, although it was not until after 1927 that we
the fact, some never written. Folk songs, monuments,
had “talkies.”
stories and tales, miniatures, drawings and other visual
representations (vanity alone saw to it that we have Sound recordings date from the late nineteenth century, at
countless portraits from the age) take their places alongside least from Thomas Edison’s creation of 1877. The
newspapers and diplomatic documents to provide the gramophone recording followed, and since the 1980s we
material on which historians have based extraordinarily have had the compact disk. The collection of oral
rich accounts. information on a grand scale began, however, with the tape
recording, first made (out of mental) in 1931, and around
Technical innovations of the nineteenth and twentieth
1940 produced synthetically.
centuries have yielded new kinds of sources that continue
to blur the boundaries between written, oral, and The radio began in 1896 and was publicly available after
“material.” To a certain extent, such innovation involved 1902; regular transmission began in the United States after
simply an improvement in quality: the photograph and, 1920. Television saw the first experiments in 1927; in
above all, the film provide representations that are in some 1936it was made publicly available in London, in 1941 in
ways more realistic than the painted or drawn image. The New York. Ten years later it came to most of the European
years between 1802, when Thomas Wedgwood invented countries. This medium did not, however, constitute a true
the photogram on silver nitrate paper, and 1888, when source, at least not in its early years, for the transmissions
Kodak introduced the film roll, were the decisive decades via television were mostly live, and were rarely recorded or
in the history of the still photograph. The period between saved. In contrast, tape or celluloid film recording events
1832, when Joseph had a much greater chance of being saved, but it was only
between about 1940 and 1970 that these media were widely
30 The Source
 Source Typologies 31 Jan Vansina, a Flemish historian who is now teaching in
the United States. A student of West African culture, he
used. These tapes do not, however, constitute a secure
source. Typically, they have not lasted, and as they have 32 The Source
deteriorated, information has been lost. Even the saved
established that the stories handed down from one
information is sometimes inaccessible. The French TV
generation to another in that culture were as stable and
system, to cite just one example, has over 500,000
reliable accounts of their past as were the written chronicles
documentaries on tape – but has no way to make them
and personal narratives that have survived from the western
easily accessible to researchers. Television’s potential as a
European past, that in fact they were of the same genre.
historical source has, then, some distance to go.
Vansina’s argument was, in essence, methodological, for he
Similar problems beset the computer files on which a huge
was not saying that all oral accounts achieves this level of
quantity of recent decades’ social documents are stored.
reliability, they do so only if they meet several tests.
Many are at risk of erasure or inaccessibility; an even
Vansina’s tests concerned both matters external to the text
greater problem is posed by the rapid changes in hardware
(is the narrator [or witness] a member of the group that
and software, for a record made today may be unreadable
controls the transmission of the narrative? Does the
with the technology of tomorrow. In 1983, for example, it
narrative come to the researcher via a social institution or
was discovered that a huge portion of the fiscal records
via a closed caste?) and those internal (is the narrative
kept by the United States government were inaccessible,
stylistically coherent, that is, does the witness’s or
because the Japanese company which had supplied the
reporter’s tale conform to the linguistic, stylistic, ritualistic,
original technology for reading these records was no longer
and juridical norms of the period and the place from which
making it. The problem here is not so much technical as
his tale is told [or pretends to originate]?). Vansina’s
organizational; what is needed is a political and financial
contribution to historical methodology was significant, for
commitment to maintaining the accessibility of these
historians had by and large not understood that in many
materials.
societies (including Europe of the tenth and eleventh
All these sources, although different from one another, are centuries), social relations were sustained through oral acts,
in many ways complementary. Oral records obviously can and that the most important legal transactions achieved
complement the written, a realization that was for too long their authenticity by means of oral witnessing and the like.
lost on most professional historians. One of the first to Oral communication thus rarely indicates arbitrary action
recognize the relation of oral traditions to written texts was and social anarchy; it can, in fact, be the mark of a complex
and well-ordered sociopolitical system.
Still, historians can place trust in oral sources only to the and strikes, for example), witnesses are not inclined to
extent that they can be verified by means of external write down their experiences-resisters have to fear their
evidence of another kind, such as archeological, linguistic, occupiers, strikers their bosses and the law. For that reason,
or interviews can sometimes substitute for the personal
account that cannot be written. Al Santoli’s oral history of
Source Typologies 33
the Vietnam
cultural. In one case, for example, researchers studying
34 The Source
travelers’ reports from sixteenth-century Africa were able
to make sense of attitudes and practices described in those War provides one revealing example of the value of such
reports by comparing them to similar behaviors techniques. Santoli interviewed thirty-three veterans of the
characteristic of modern, better-understood cultures and by conflict who reported events that never made it into the
analysis of the archaeological record. Thus, in this case official documents constituting the military archives. The
historians were able to use the present to understand the men interviewed told of their initial optimism and bravado
past. It would, however, be a mistake to conclude from tis and then how the realities of combat – the body bags,
instance that such carnage on the battlefield, terror, shock, and loss –
2. J. Vansina, De la tradition orale. Essai de methode historique (Tervuren,
destroyed morale and humanity among them.
1961, ); in English as Oral Tradition as History (Madison, Wis., 1985)
Interviewing – or the kind of interviewing that can serve
comparisons will always be fruitful. Human cultures do not the careful historian – is, however, no simple art. The
remain unchanged over time. Even before the period of ‘questions asked must be carefully designed, in accordance
colonial rule in Africa, we know, sociocultural uphcavals of with an overall plan about the kind of information sought
enormous importance took place on that continent; thus, and about the tests of reliability to which it will be
neither there nor anywhere else dare we assume that the subjected; at the same time, however, the interviewer must
social codes and cultural patterns are in any sense “eternal.” be flexible, able to shift the terms of the interview to pursue
Indeed, the anthropologist’s impulse, to look for basic-and unexpected avenues and avoid dead ends. In general,
somehow unchanging-patterns, should be complemented by “hard” interviews can be distinguished from “soft.” In the
the historian’s bias-to expect and look for change. first-the kind of real value to historians-the interviewer has
worked hard to reconstruct the historical situation in which
It is not only pre-modern cultures that produce oral sources
the informant lived in order to get beyond the simple
of use to the historians. All cultures do so, and in certain
narrative about what did or did not happen. A good
instances oral reports can provide critically important
interview is one in which the story becomes richer, more
evidence. In times of social upheaval (during wars, revolts,
nuanced, more understandable in the telling, not one in information circulated are both elements of this
which guilt or innocence is proved, a cause is vindicated, a technological history of sources. This history can be
person found out. Thus, even an interview constructed as divided into three periods.
though it were a “fact-finding” expedition is something
In the first, information was transmitted by people who
much more; it is in itself an interpretation, a source that
walked or ran with the news, at a rate probably never
must be analyzed with extreme care.
exceeding six miles per hour. The medium of transmission
was thus the messenger himself. Sometimes messages were
The Impact of Communication and Information Tecnology 35
36 The Source
3. Al Santoli, Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War
by Thirty-three American Soldiers Who Fought It (New York, 1981); also sent by visual signal (flags) or by sound (drums), and
see also Mark Baker, Nam; The Vietnam War in the Words of Men thus news traveled faster, but in none of these cases could a
and Women Who Fought It (New York, 1981).
complex message be delivered with great precision, and in
C. The Impact Of Communication And Information
all of the geographic on climatic conditions could radically
Technology On The Production Of Sources
limit the range and speed of transmission. Today, such
Although historians make choices among the materials left methods are of course rarely used, but some conventions
by the past, treating one object or text as a source and have survive-the custom, for example, of flying flags at
rejecting another or relegating it to secondary status in the half-mast to mark a death or the practice of ringing sirens
hierarchy of evidence, they must choose from what is to sound an alarm.
available. Only certain kinds of potential evidence was
In the second phase, information was transported using
produced in any given age, only some of that was
pack animals. This phase began about 2000 B.C.E in
preserved, and only a portion of that is accessible to any
central Asia, about 1000 B.C.E in the Mediterranean area,
given historian. If they are to make wise choices among
and sometime during the sixteenth century among the Incas
potential sources, historians must thus consider the ways a
in Peru, and is still used in some parts of South America
given source was created, why and how it was preserved,
and Africa. Average speeds using this form of
and why it has been stored in an archive, museum, library,
transportation were at least double, often triple, those in
or any such research site.
areas where information was carried by people.
The availability of sources is, in general, very much
Other technical developments further improved this mode
determined by technology, that is by the conditions under
of transmission. By 3000 B.C.E., Mesopotamians were
which a given culture received and collected information.
using clay tablets to record information; around 1000 B.C.E
The mechanisms of communication and the speed at which
the Phoenicians developed an alphabet, which made writing penned commentaries (called avisi) to accompany the
much more efficient. Persian kings created the courier business correspondence they sent all over Europe; they
system of transport, in which messages were hand-carried were followed by the German trade cities like Nuremberg
by specially designated agents, a method later used both in and Wittenberg, which produced what they still call
Byzantium and in Rome. By the thirteenth century an Zeitungen (newspaper). True, printed newspaper with a
elaborate system for delivering the mail had been worked regular periodicity appeared first in Strasbourg (1609) and
out to connect the Florentine banking and merchant houses Antwerp (1629). It was only later that a distinction was
to the trade fairs in Champagne (France); the system was made between simple newssheets (which had no explicit
editorial content) and “newspapers of opinion.”
The Impact of Communication and Information Technology 37

adopted by the pope in the following century. By the end of 38 The Source
the fifteenth century Europe had a net of postal connections The third phase of communication is, of course, defined by
that had been developed by the Milanese firm of Thurn and mechanical media. In 1830, the train increased the speed at
Taxis; in 1505 the firm was granted a monopoly for the which information could be transmitted to 30 to 35 miles
Spanish post. per hour. With the invention of the telegraph in 1844,
In 1436, a trip between London and Venice took 23 to 51 information transmission became almost instantaneous. By
days, and in 1442, a journey from Genoa to Bruges lasted 1896it required only seven minutes to transmit a message
22 to 25 days. Thus, distance traveled daily averaged 30 to from one place on the globe to another. The more recent
about 50 miles. Between the fifteenth and the nineteenth innovations such as telephone, fax, radio, television, and
century, this rate of travel was to double, takes to the long- satellite have made information transmission truly
distance routes that were constructed during this period. instantaneous and practically universal. Accompanying this
technological revolution were organizational changes in the
Three categories of information were transported in this way information was gathered and delivered. The
period, each of which required a slightly different nineteenth century saw the emergence of huge wire
technology of literacy. The first included secret services such as Reuters and U.P.I., which provide news
correspondence (“litterae clausae”) of various kinds services to thousands of small clients; most newspapers
(economic or business, diplomatic, military) which had to rely entirely on these services for information from beyond
be written in code.the second was general correspondence their own locality and thus have no independent sources by
(“litterae patentes”) which, in time, was taken over by the which they can verify the data they receive.
newspaper, the third category. The forerunners in the
production of this genre were the Venetians, who regularly
It is evident that the speed at which a piece of information commercial relations and where the commercial
can be transmitted, along with its ubiquitousness, directly infrastructure and socioeconomic system were similar.
affects its influence. Today’s media (CNN, for example)
Mass communication can also create collective memories.
make the world a “global village,” and that is in some
By this, we mean that when information about an event, or
sensea cheerful thought, for it means that people today
series of event, is broadcast widely and simultaneously, the
increasingly have access to exactly the same information at
event becomes part of a shared experience, part of
the same time and often react similarly. But it also means
historical memory. The Vietnam War in the late sixties and
that an incident such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962
early seventies provides a perfect example: the daily news
elicits an immediate reaction, in Moscow and Washington
reports about the war created for great many Americans
alike, with all the risk that such speed entails. Still, there
especially young Americans, a single experience, an
are real
experienced that galvanize political resistance to the war.
This lesson, it should be noted, was not lost on the
American Military.
The Impact of Communication and Information Technology 39

advantages to the speed of communication possible today.

Consider, for example, that when the harvest failed in 40 The Source
fifteenth-century England or the Low Countries, it took two
months before grain could be purchased in the Baltic area D. The archive is often considered the historian’s principal
and another two months before it arrived where needed-far source of information. The term has two meanings. In
too late for a huge portion of the population. the most general sense, an archive is the collection of
documents held by a natural or a legal person (for
The power of modern-day communications, with their example, a government agency), and possibly also the
steady stream of fashion changes and technical innovations, copies of documents send by these bodies to others.
depends, however, not just on the speed at which messages They are kept, of course, for practical reasons-to have a
travel but also on the quality of the carrier and of the record of previous actions, both to assure administrative
distribution system. It also depends on the readiness of the stability and to preserve useful ways of doing things
audience to accept the innovation. It is, for example, no and to preserve evidence for possible future legal
accident that the first mechanical clocks were developed in proceedings. In a more technical sense, however, the
Italy in the fourteenth century and were first imitated and term “archive” means the place or the institution itself
distributed in Flanders and England, where Italy had good that holds and manage the collection. In principle,
diplomatic sources and social documents are kept in
 archives, narrative sources in libraries. But of course accounts and census data; indexes of archival holdings have
there are expectations. By chance, as a results of gifts been printed and published. Texts have been reproduced
made to special institution or the like, we sometimes electronically so that they can be searched and indexed by
find the reverse. means of sophisticated software programs, a procedure
which allows unparalleled scrutiny of a text’s rhetorical and
The Source phoria that followed the end of French
linguistic features and thus promises to open entirely new
occupation; the volumes contain important (Latin) sources
avenues of research and analysis.
for German history. The Racueil de Historiens de la France,
although fist begun in 1738, was reedited and republished CHAPTER TWO
in 1899 as a celebration of the French state; like the
Technical Analysis of Source
Monumenta, the Recueil is a collection of Latin texts from
the French past. Elsewhere, such publications had a In order for a source to be used as evidence in a historical
somewhat less nationalist impulse, there more often being argument, certain basic matters about its form and content mut
the products of learned societies such as England’s Camden be settled. First, it must be (or must be made) comprehensive at
Society or its Selden Society. Whatever their roots in the most basic leel of language, handwriting, and vocabulary.
romanticism’s nationalistic impulse, all these editions are Is the language o the document archaic, its vocabulary, highly
technical, its handwriting or typeface unfamiliar? Obviously,
Storing and Delivering Information 41
these are more important for some documents than for others,
positivist in method in that they rigorously limit themselves and always more problematic when the source is very old or
to the “provable fact” and seek, I the famous words of has originated in other culture, but they are never absent. A
Ranke, to tell the story “as it actually occurred” (“wie es scholar using letters written in the early twentieth century must
eigentich geweren [ist]”). They owe to positivist in method be as attentive to these matters as must any medievalist
as well the high editorial standards employed, the working with handwritten parchments. Second, the source must
incorporation of learning and technical skills borrowed be carefully located in place and time: when was it composed,
from philology, classics, and Germanic studies. Although where, in what country or city, in what social setting, by which
these published collections have long served and will long individual? Are these apparent “facts” of composition correct?
continue to serve scholars, it is clear that we will never be --- that is , is the date indicated, let us say, in a letter written
able to edit and publish “all” the known historical sources,. from the front by Dwight Eisenhower to his wife Mamie the
And in recent years scholar have begun to explore new date it was actually written? Is the place indicated within the
ways of getting archival sources into the public domain. source the actual place of composition? If the document does
Microfilms have been made of serial data like fiscal not itself provide such evidence --- or if there is any reason to
doubt the ostensible evidence --- is there internal evidence that
can be used to determine a probable date, or a time period
within which the document was created? Can we tell from the
content of the document itself or its relationship to other
similar documents where it was composed?