the traditional method of writing historical research

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The Princeton Guide to Historical Research

Zachary Schrag
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Language: English
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Copyright year: 2021
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;General/trade;
Main content: 440
Other: 2 b/w illus. 1 table.
Keywords: Newspaper ; Primary source ; Writing ; Narrative ; Oral history ; Technology ; Publication ; Public history ; Secondary source ; Americans ; Storytelling ; Archivist ; Slavery ; Finding ; Scientist ; World War II ; Paragraph ; Archive ; Headline ; African Americans ; Textbook ; Deed ; The Other Hand ; Note-taking ; Illustration ; Bibliography ; Literature ; Historiography ; Institution ; Thucydides ; Blog ; Website ; Archaeology ; Politics ; Word processor ; Politician ; Database ; Historical figure ; Ideology ; Manuscript ; Instance (computer science) ; Writer ; Military history ; Tax ; Popular history ; Career ; Memoir ; Result ; The Newspaper ; Topic sentence ; Critical reading ; Thesis statement ; Google Books ; Reference Manager ; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich ; Racism ; Big History ; Librarian ; Monograph ; Autobiography ; Edition (book) ; Eugenics ; Classroom ; Advertising ; Periodization ; Pamphlet ; Exploration ; Biography ; Local history ; Adviser
Published: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 9780691215488

History at MIT

Theories and methods in the study of history.

T 2-5, E51-385

Examines the distinctive ways in which historians in different parts of the world have approached the task of writing history. Explores methodologies used, such as political, social, economic, cultural, and popular histories through the reading and discussion of relevant and innovative texts. Introduces a variety of sources (archival documents, statistical data, film, fiction, memoirs, artifacts, and images) and the ways they can be used to research, interpret, and present the past. Assignments include an original research paper. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Related Subjects

Offered fall 2024.

Catalog	Subject	Faculty	Level	HASS	Category
	MW 11-12:30, 4-146		Intermediate	HASS-H	CI-H

Not Offered This Term

Catalog	Subject	Faculty	Level	HASS	Category
	Not offered regularly; consult department		Intermediate	HASS-H
		Staff	Intermediate	HASS-H

Doing History in Public

How do historians write?

By Tom Goodwin , @tgooders

Thomas is an MPhil student in Early Modern History. He is currently researching sixteenth-century Italian heretics and their use of the printing press.

I spent the morning putting in a comma; I spent the afternoon taking it out – Oscar Wilde

Writing history remains something of a dark art. From the beginning of your degree in history, there is a great deal of focus on how to do research: that is, how one should approach sources and analyse historical arguments, covering a wide range of different methods and theoretical approaches. However, when it comes to the next stage, which consists of transforming research into essays, dissertations, articles, and books, budding historians are generally left to work it out for themselves. Their knowledge of working methods other than their own is, correspondingly, often limited.

Why is this the case?

Keith Thomas, the eminent historian of witchcraft, once suggested that ‘just as the conjuror’s magic disappears if the audience knows how the trick is done, so the credibility of scholars can be sharply diminished if readers learn everything about how exactly their books came to be written.’ [1] In the same essay, Thomas outlines his highly idiosyncratic approach, which involves laboriously cutting the handwritten notes from his research into pieces – one ‘fact’ per piece – and then stuffing them into envelopes devoted to a particular theme (such as ‘Muggletonians and animals’). [2] Writing then involves a long process of shifting through envelopes, often re-visiting sources to check for mistranscriptions and passages taken out of context, and then ‘[trying] to create some coherence out of these hundreds of pieces of paper.’ [3] Not all historians take such a labour-intensive approach. Nowadays most make use of a word-processor, at the very least, for making notes and writing; digital documents have the great advantage over paper notes of being keyword-searchable. Some directly annotate PDFs of their sources, such as manuscripts. [4] And others are even organised enough (how I envy them) to be able to employ colour-coded spreadsheets. [5]

However, how do historians turn notes, in whatever form they may be, into prose? It would appear, from the above, that many historians envisage research and writing as separate stages, something perhaps encouraged by the convention of presenting the results of one’s research as a finished product, with details of the research process correspondingly muted: ‘one doesn’t need to bring the cooking to the table’, as the nineteenth-century historian Lord Acton is memorably supposed to have said. [6]

By contrast, I personally struggle to separate the processes of research and writing. That is to say, I can’t do research for very long without sketching out a few paragraphs, and I can’t write for very long without getting stuck: the writing process guides the research and vice versa. This has several implications. Most importantly, I have little sense, beyond the vaguest outline, of the structure of my argument before I begin to write. It tends to shift a great deal throughout the writing process, often even reversing completely when I come across a new piece of evidence or when I reach a dead-end when I find that a line of inquiry that I was following falls down because of a lack of sources. It is only near the very end that the pieces of my argument finally begin to fall into place in my head, and then the long process of clarifying it on the page can begin (another implication of my method is that I write extremely slowly: generally I fail to reach even one thousand words in a day).

It might be argued that writing in such a way could unduly influence the research process, by allowing one’s preconceptions about as-of-yet unread sources to prejudice how they are read. In other words, that it undermines the objective mindset that historians are supposed to achieve when confronted with their sources. But then the pursuit of objectivity and the avoidance of presuppositions, an ideal rather than necessarily an achievable goal, is a problem for all historians, regardless of their approach.

Should historians be given explicit training in how to write? Are all approaches to writing equally valid? And how much of the research process should be evident in the finished product?

7 thoughts on “ How do historians write? ”

Thanks for a thought provoking post. It was really interesting to read about your process of writing – the idea of beginning to write without a sense of argument is something that I have never attempted, and which I fear would probably end in disaster!

Partly this is because, for me, the process of gathering data has already started to impose form on the data… and that brings me to my my colour coded spreadsheets. This was a technique that developed over many years, and which is mainly in response to ‘information overload’. My main challenge in my two most recent research projects has been how to synthesize and impose order on a very large amount of primary data – trying to categorise and group information as themes emerge when I am collecting that data seemed to be a logical thing to attempt. After the themes have emerged, I then try to organise them. Thus by the time I get to the stage of writing, it’s a case of ‘joining the dots’ – fleshing out the themes in a coherent way.

This is a strong contrast to your description, but it seems that the amorphous, organic process of writing might be more similar that it appears for both of us. My themes are not the same as argument, and I certainly make new discoveries in my source material as I write, and my writing leads me to conclusions in a way that reflecting on or categorising data does not. The actual conversion from notes into prose thus remains as obscure – as you suggest.

That’s rather a long comment, but that’s because I think you have really put your finger on an intriguing aspect of history. If it is part science and part art, then writing is surely the most artistic, and least theorised and understood aspect of the discipline.

Thanks for your very thoughtful comment. I am delighted that you liked my post, since it was partly inspired by your similarly themed post on the writing process: I was also struck by how you approach it very differently to me.

Perhaps in part this is due to differences in our source materials: so far I have not encountered the problem of ‘information overload’ very much since I have tended to use a fairly small body of primary sources very intensively instead. This developed quite naturally while I was doing my undergraduate dissertation, since it was on Italian history and my Italian skills were rudimentary, to say the least! I was (and still am to an extent) restricted to using a couple of key sources in Italian and what was available in translation. But I suspect I will have to change my approach a bit in the future since I’d like to make use of some quantitative stuff as well, which obviously can’t be approached in the same way.

Nevertheless writing is also a sort of therapy for me, I suppose, in that it helps impose some order on my thoughts and reveals where my reasoning is flawed or isn’t quite as supported by the evidence as I supposed it was. Thus it becomes a cycle of reading some sources, writing about them, which helps me decide what I should read next, which then compels me to rewrite what I had already written, and so on until I have to hand it in because there is a deadline.

I completely agree with your last point. It seems to me that historians would be well served by thinking more about the form and style in which they choose to write. It seems to get overlooked in an overwhelming concentration on content much of the time. I read a great post today by Ian Mortimer, a historian and writer of historical fiction, about this: https://ihrconference.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/why-historians-should-write-fiction/

Lastly I’d like to say how much I enjoy the many-headed monster! It’s exemplary of how historians should approach academic blog-writing, in my opinion.

That’s enlightening about your source base – it certainly suggests the differences are about research, not about actually writing. I’m not sure I agree with everything that Ian Mortimer says (because academics are not just seeking to recreate the past, but to understand and explain it, which, alas, involves technical language and theory), but I certainly endorse the notion that historical writing should be good, and interesting.

Many thanks for your kind words about the monster – I’m very pleased to have come across yours too, looking forward to reading more!

A very interesting piece! I like the style)

Thank you! That’s lovely to hear

Pingback: What We’re Reading: Week of Feb. 16 | JHIBlog

Excellent piece. I’m very much like you. So many times I’ve started something and then found that my original idea or concept was wrong or not the best – tear it up and start again. Plus loads and loads of post-it notes!

I stumbled on to your piece from Keith Thomas’s idiosyncratic writing process.

HIST 290 Historical Methods & Theory

Thinking Like a Historian
Finding Books & Videos
Finding Articles

What is a Historiographical Essay?

Historiographical essays, evaluating secondary sources, acknowledgement.

Citing Sources This link opens in a new window
Need Help? Ask a Librarian This link opens in a new window

A historiographical essay:

Is based on a broad, less focused topic or theme, e.g., Reconstruction in the United States)
Critically examines secondary sources written by historians
Puts emphasis on the historian, the historian's bias and how the writing of a particular topic has changed over the years
Examines and compares other historians' arguments in opposition to each other

The purpose of an historiographic essay is threefold:

To allow you to view an historical event or issue from multiple perspectives by engaging multiple sources;
To display your mastery over those sources and over the event or issue itself; and
To develop your critical reading skills as you seek to answer why your sources disagree, and what their disagreement tells you about the event or issue and the very nature of history itself.

Selected Titles About Historiography

What information is given about the author? Is the author an historian?
Can you identify the historian's school of thought?
Read the table of contents, preface and other introductry material. Does the author set up his/her thesis (or point of view) in these sections? Who is the intended audience? Is it written for historians or for a general audience?
What is the date of publication? If the book or article is old, it will not highlight recent scholarship. Is this important? Is it a reflection of the histories of the time or does it deviate from the norm?
What primary source material does the author use? What primary source material may have been available to the author at the time?
Consider the bibliography. Do the sources listed indicate serious works that are relevant to your topic? You may want to consult works used by the author.

All materials from: Historiography: Ramapo College, https://libguides.ramapo.edu/HIST201rice

<< Previous: Finding Articles
Next: Citing Sources >>
Last Updated: Aug 28, 2024 3:23 PM
URL: https://library.mcla.edu/historiography

Write a Historiography

1. narrow your topic and select books and articles accordingly, 2. search for literature, 3. read the selected books and articles thoroughly and evaluate them, 4. organize the selected sources by looking for patterns and by developing subtopics, 5. develop a thesis statement, 6. draft the paper, 7. review your work.

Resources for Gathering and Reading the Literature
Resources for Writing and Revising
Additional Resources and Guides

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Consider your specific area of study. Think about what interests you and other researchers in your field.

Talk to your professor or TA, brainstorm, and read lecture notes and current issues in periodicals in the ﬁeld.

Limit your scope appropriately based on the assignment guidelines (i.e., focusing on France's role in the Second World War, not the whole world, or on the legal agency of women in medieval Scotland, not all medieval European women).

Four Steps to Narrow Your Research Topic (Video) This 3-minute video provides instructions on how to narrow the focus of your research topic.
Developing a Research Question + Worksheet Use this worksheet to develop, assess, and refine your research questions. There is also a downloadable PDF version.

Define your source selection criteria (i.e., articles published within a specific date range or written through specific historical lenses; or research applying specific theories and methodologies or focusing on a specific geographic region, chronological period, or historical event).

Using keywords, search a library database. If you need help finding the literature, contact a librarian through

Ask Us Contact a librarian via chat, email, phone or the AskUs desk on the main floor of McLaughlin Library
Book an appointment Book a consultation to get research help.

Published articles and books always cite earlier studies in the footnotes, endnotes or bibliography: you can use these to trace the development of the subject.

Include studies with conflicting points of view to help create a more engaging discussion within your historiographical paper.

Evaluate and synthesize the studies' ﬁndings and conclusions.

Note the following:

assumptions some or most historians seem to make.
methodologies, theories, and sources that historians have used to answer historical questions.
experts in the field, usually recognized as names that come up repeatedly in the literature (cited in the text or in the footnotes).
conflicting assumptions, theories, methodologies, and types of sources.
popular theories and interpretations, and how these have changed (or not) over time.

You may not agree with everything you read and, indeed, the point of historiography is to critique (positively and constructively) the work of other historians on a given subject. With that in mind, remember the following historical conventions:

Someone writing in 1883 about the Norman Conquest of 1066 may not consider questions that are central to more recent kinds of history, but this does not mean that earlier historians and antiquarians were unqualified, unintelligent, or uninformed: they simply had different biases and experiences. These are worth discussing (for example, it might be worthwhile to compare how Protestant and Catholic historians of the late nineteenth century wrote about the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation) but avoid condemning the authors outright without a thoughtful explanation of your critiques.
Consider why historians writing in the 1930s were not engaging with questions about gender history and compare the outcomes of their methods and research to the arguments being made by feminist scholars writing since the 1970s. Dig into how different theories, assumptions, and methodologies have led scholars to different conclusions about the same events.

Note the following:

Findings that are common/contested.
Important trends in the research.
Popular sources, important theories, and common methodologies.
For example, the histories of many topics, regions, and periods have had “phases” like the Great Man Theory of History, the Cultural Turn, Feminist History, Disability Studies, and Queer History. Each of these has been tied to contemporary social changes, such as interest in nationalism during and after the World Wars, influences from sociology and anthropology, and different waves of social justice activism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Tip: If your historiography is extensive, ﬁnd a large table surface, and on it place post-it notes or ﬁling cards to organize all your ﬁndings into categories.

Move them around if you decide that (a) they ﬁt better under different headings, or (b) you need to establish new topic headings.
Develop headings/subheadings that reflect the major themes and patterns you detected.

Write a one- or two-sentence statement summarizing the conclusion you have reached about the major trends and developments you see in the research that has been conducted on your subject.

Some example statements to help you get started are:

Historians disagree about X (your topic), but I am the most convinced by the scholars who say Y because…
Historians disagree about X (your topic), but there is something bigger going on, and the whole debate should be reframed with Y in mind.
Historians have come to a consensus about X (your topic), but I disagree and propose a different interpretation (e.g., one that considers gender, one that takes a middle view, or one that incorporates underused primary sources).

Explore the following library resources to help you create and revise your thesis statement:

Templates for Writing Thesis Statements This template provides a two-step guide for writing thesis statements. There is also a downloadable PDF version.
5 Types of Thesis Statements Learn about five different types of thesis statements to help you choose the best type for your research. There is also a downloadable PDF version.
5 Questions to Strengthen Your Thesis Statement Follow these five steps to strengthen your thesis statements. There is also a downloadable PDF version.

Note: The thesis statement is typically located in the first paragraph of a short paper (fewer than 2000 words) but can be left to the second paragraph of a larger paper (more than 2000 words) if you feel the reader needs more contextual or background information before you begin your argument.

Follow the organizational structure you developed above, including any headings and subheadings you constructed.

Make certain that each section links logically to the one before and after.

Structure your sections by themes or subtopics, not by individual theorists or researchers.

Tip: If you ﬁnd that each paragraph begins with a researcher's name, it might indicate that, instead of evaluating and comparing the research literature from an analytical point of view, you have simply described what research has been done.

Prioritize analysis over description.

For example, look at the following two passages and note that Student A merely describes the literature. The writing is strong, but Student A has not explained how these two historians came to different conclusions. The paragraph would be stronger if it followed Student B’s approach.
Student B takes a more analytical and evaluative approach by comparing the methods and sources used by the historians. One thing to look for (and use) in historiographical writing is keywords that suggest there is some evaluation happening. Here, Student B makes logical connections (“conversely,” “this is due to,” and “as a result”). These techniques demonstrate Student B's ability to synthesize knowledge and explain the differences in the studies based on the sources used.

Student A: Keith M. Brown argues that, although James VI had clear ideas about what he wanted the reformed Scottish and English churches to look like, he relied on his relationships with magnates and ministers to ensure the speed, success, and cohesion of reform efforts. A different scholar, Julian Goodare, argues that James VI came awfully close and indeed, in some cases, succeeded at reorganizing Scotland’s dissident authoritative bodies—the kirk, nobility, parliament, and crown—into a centralized and moderately absolutist government. According to Goodare, by the end of James VI’s reign, the state attained sufficient command of its organization to reintroduce an episcopal structure to the contemporary kirk. It also gained the authority to define the role of church and state in the trial and conviction of moral and criminal offences. In other words, the crown itself wielded sufficient authority to govern independently, and Scottish nobles acquiesced to or resisted its demands as they performed their institutional duties, with varying rewards and consequences.

Student B: Julian Goodare and Keith Brown have reached quite different conclusions about the role that the Scottish nobility played in helping or hindering the efforts of Protestant reformers. This is due in part to the bodies of sources each employed. Brown drew on a wide variety of archival sources that provided insight into the lives of individuals and families: family papers and letters, local court records, and documents relating to bloodfeud. For Brown, these records demonstrate that, although James VI had clear ideas about what he wanted the reformed Scottish and English churches to look like, he relied on his relationships with magnates and ministers to ensure the speed, success, and cohesion of reform efforts. Conversely, Goodare offers a more traditional political examination of Scotland’s development from a medieval kingdom into an early modern state. After consulting crown financial documents, proceedings of the general assemblies, state papers, and the records of the privy seal records and justiciary court, Goodare argues that James VI came awfully close and indeed, in some cases, succeeded at reorganizing Scotland’s dissident authoritative bodies—the kirk, nobility, parliament, and crown—into a centralized and moderately absolutist government. As a result, the concepts of personal kingship and crown-magnate negotiations of power so central to Brown’s analysis are absent from Goodare’s assessment, in which the latter argues that the crown itself wielded sufficient authority to govern independently and that Scottish nobles merely acquiesced to or resisted its demands as they performed their institutional duties.

Note: These examples have been reproduced and modified with the permission of the student author. For the purposes of these example paragraphs, citations have been omitted, but you should always indicate your sources using footnotes.

Content

Make an outline of each section of the paper and decide whether you need to add information, delete irrelevant information, or re-structure sections.

Look at the topic sentences of each paragraph. If you were to read only these sentences, would you ﬁnd that your paper presented a clear position, logically developed, from beginning to end? The topic sentences of each paragraph should indicate the main points of your historiography.

Read your work aloud (or use the speech-to-text feature in your word processor to have the computer read it to you). That way you will be better able to identify where you need punctuation marks to signal pauses or divisions within sentences, where you have made grammatical errors, or where your sentences are unclear.

Avoid over-generalizations: societies are made up of individuals and they vary regionally and temporally. Starting your paper with “Since the first history was written...” or claiming that "scholars agree that the Enlightenment was the Age of Reason” is neither specific nor accurate.

Evidence

Since the purpose of historiography is partly to demonstrate that the writer is familiar with the important literature on the chosen subject, check to make certain that you have covered a broad selection of the important, up-to-date, and pertinent texts. What is considered relevant will depend on your subject, region, and period. Good strategies are to pick a few monographs from each decade of the past fifty years and to follow up on authors whose names show up frequently in the historiography sections of other papers. If you need help, ask your instructor or TA for advice once you have picked your topic.

Check to make sure that you have not plagiarized either by failing to cite a source of information or by using words quoted directly from a source. (Usually, if you take four or more words—in a row—directly from another source, you should put those words within quotation marks, and cite the page.)

Formatting

Make certain that all the citations and references are correct and that you are using the appropriate formatting style for your discipline. Most history courses at the University of Guelph ask that you use the Chicago Manual of Style: Notes & Bibliography. If you are uncertain which style to use, ask your instructor.

Sentences should ﬂow smoothly and logically. The text should be written in a clear and concise academic style; it should not be descriptive in nature or use the language of everyday speech (colloquialisms, slang) or excessive disciplinary jargon (specialist words). There should be no grammatical or spelling errors.

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Last Updated: Sep 17, 2024 3:16 PM
URL: https://guides.lib.uoguelph.ca/Historiography

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A HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY: A REVIEW AND CRITIQUE OF THE MODES OF WRITING HISTORY FROM ANTIQUITY TO CONTEMPORARY

2019, Bhuban Kumar sabar

Historiography is the art and science of writing history. For a deep understanding of history and the past, it is imperative to discover many aspects such as process, method, ideology, and intention-of history-writing of a given period. Thus, a historical trajectory of various ways of history-writing enables us to understand the past and history as textual artefacts. By examining the various historiographies of different periods of history, we can delve deep to uncover the nexus between history as the reconstruction of the past and history as it really happened. Moreover, the knowledge of various historiographical traditions can reveal the works of historians of different ages in a new perspective by penetrating many buried meanings of history and the past as well. A survey, comparison and contrastive analysis of various historiographical traditions will enrich our critical understanding of history and the past.

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Course info.

Prof. Kenda Mutongi

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Historical Methods

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Theories and methods in the study of history, course description.

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COMMENTS

Reading, Writing, and Researching for History
Formatting basics: Your paper should have a title page, on which appears the title of the paper, your name, the course number, the professor’s name, and the date. Double-space the text, and use a simple font, such as Times Roman 12pt. Number of the pages. Staple the pages together (do not use clips or fancy binders).
Writing in the Disciplines How to write a History PaPer
led instruction.• write in a formal, academic voice. Avoid using the first or second person (e.g., “i” and “you”), and shy away from passive sentence constructions. phrases such as “i think” or. in my opinion” are redundant in. xpository writing.• Proof. for fUrTHer reading. f writing history s.
The Princeton Guide to Historical Research - De Gruyter
The essential handbook for doing historical research in the twenty-first century The Princeton Guide to Historical Research provides students, scholars, and professionals with the skills they need to practice the historian's craft in the digital age, while never losing sight of the fundamental values and techniques that have defined historical scholarship for centuries. Zachary Schrag begins ...
Theories and Methods in the Study of History
Term. Examines the distinctive ways in which historians in different parts of the world have approached the task of writing history. Explores methodologies used, such as political, social, economic, cultural, and popular histories through the reading and discussion of relevant and innovative texts. Introduces a variety of sources (archival ...
The Princeton Guide to Historical Research on JSTOR
Offers practical step-by-step guidance on how to do historical research, taking readers from initial questions to final publication. Connects new digital technologies to the traditional skills of the historian. Draws on hundreds of examples from a broad range of historical topics and approaches. Shares tips for researchers at every skill level.
How do historians write? – Doing History in Public
Writing history remains something of a dark art. From the beginning of your degree in history, there is a great deal of focus on how to do research: that is, how one should approach sources and analyse historical arguments, covering a wide range of different methods and theoretical approaches. However, when it comes to the next stage, which ...
Research Guides: HIST 290 Historical Methods & Theory ...
New Perspectives on Historical Writing Since its first publication in 1992, New Perspectives on Historical Writing has become a key reference work used by students and researchers interested in the most important developments in the methodology and practice of history. For this new edition, the book has been thoroughly revised and updated and ...
Guides: Write a Historiography: Seven Steps to Writing ...
Seven Steps to Writing Historiography - Write a Historiography - Guides at University of Guelph. 1. Narrow your topic and select books and articles accordingly. Consider your specific area of study. Think about what interests you and other researchers in your field. Talk to your professor or TA, brainstorm, and read lecture notes and current ...
A HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY: A REVIEW AND CRITIQUE OF THE ...
The paper presents a broad overview of various approaches adopted in the field of historiography across the ages starting from ancient times. It also discusses the merits and demerits of the major schools of thought and proposes a new methodology for the study of history within the framework of the proposed Twenty-First Century school of Historiography.
Theories and Methods in the Study of History | History | MIT ...
Course Description. This course examines the distinctive ways in which historians in different parts of the world have approached the task of writing history. It explores methodologies used, such as political, social, economic, cultural, and popular histories through the reading and discussion of relevant and innovative texts. It ….