what are some of the problem that history have to face with the source? give one example.
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Answer:
The major challenges to historical research revolve around the problems of sources, knowledge, explanation, objectivity, choice of subject, and the peculiar problems of contemporary history. Sources The problem of sources is a serious challenge to the historian in the task of reconstructing the past.
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Answer: History may be the past but the reflections on that past and the different mediums that inform and shape us about the past must be examined for their veracity and usefulness. These documents and sources present the historian with many problems as they are often used as a cumulative examination of a period under study. Yet what are the difficulties that are inherent in these sources and testimonies.
Both primary and secondary sources contain pitfalls that can trap and blind the historian in his pursuit of historical accuracy. The veracity of the particular source, the motives behind the source and the origins of the evidence are all concerns for the historian. In conjunction with these problems can be the temptation to subsume personal and contemporary reports and evidence for the purposes of a grander and more wide-ranging historical narrative.
Hew Strachan believes that hindsight can disfigure and reduce the essence of history. Hindsight refers to ‘the ability to understand an event or situation only after it has happened’ [i] 1and Strachan believes that this can imbue the historian with an arrogant view of those who did not see the bigger picture or understand the deeper motives behind historical events. Does this have some truth and if so can it distort history to such a degree that it almost erases the individual struggle or achievement? Or does this problem exist merely within a wider spectrum of historical concerns? History must be about balance so is a merging of both the personal and the panoramic possible?
Strachan writes that hindsight distorts history through fostering arrogance. In his book’ The First World War’ he talks of ‘the fact that just because other ideas and ideologies seem foreign to us, this does not deny their charge for those who went to war in 1914’ [ii] so therefore this muting of the past does not push us to understand it merely obfuscates the truth. Yet what is history, but an attempt to see the grander picture and how ideas fit into individual histories and testimonies.
The primary sources that are around for historical examination bring with them not just their face value but an attempt to recreate the conceits and facets behind them. In 1946 Ellen Hammer wrote in an article on America’s relations with the Vichy government that ‘throughout the war information filtered into neutral capitals but only on the spot sources could report with any authority’ [iii] , but just how problematic are these on the spot accounts?
It is certainly true that primary sources retain an immediacy and relevance that is difficult to ignore. It is through letters, diaries and newspapers that we have built up much of our knowledge of the First World War. Without these sources we would be dependent on fractious second-hand testimony or oral traditions resplendent with hyperbole.
For the historian it is necessary to look at the facts behind the facts. The researcher must certainly avail himself of hindsight and retrospection but must not allow themselves to become victims of them. Isaac Deutscher wrote that ‘the historian deals with fixed and irreversible patterns of events; all weapons have already been fired’ [iv] and as the historical inquiry gathers pace the historian is aware that he is surveying a spent battlefield but how accurate are the bullets he has examined?
There is perhaps nothing more alive in the consciousness of Europe than the concerted attempt to exterminate European Jewry by the Nazis during the Second World War. According to Gilbert in his study of the subject ‘merely to give witness by one’s own testimony was, in the end, to contribute to a moral victory. Simply to survive was a victory’ [v] and it is a testament to the human condition that so many survived. These terrible events have continued to be explored in witness accounts and literature and another event that has been extensively written about has been the Great or First World War. The last remaining survivor of that conflagration recently passed away so now that the survivors have died out and can no longer contribute to their own victories, will future generations have their knowledge shaped by hindsight and retrospection when it comes