In my Freshman Seminar, I’m teaching my students – among many other things – how to approach the reading of different kinds of texts. Today, we will talk about reading history and will then try to apply the rules I list in this post to Bartolome de Las Casas’s A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
Here are the basic rules of reading about history that I’m planning to offer to my students:
Things to remember when reading, watching or researching history:
a. There can never be a fully objective account of history
b. Don’t read accounts of history to find out what happened. Read them to discover what their author says happened
c. Only by accessing and contrasting different accounts can we figure out what took place
d. Every account of history is always ideological
e. There is always a hidden reason for why a person writes about history
Questions to ask:
- Who is the author?
- What do I know about this author? Country of origin, political affiliation, profession, etc.
- How does this knowledge about the author change my understanding of his or her text?
- What is the goal the author is trying to achieve with this text?
- What kind of data is used to support the author’s conclusions?
- What kind of attitude does the author have towards the readers of the text?
- What are the central concepts that organize the author’s thinking about this subject?
Is there anything else I should add? Feel free to offer suggestions (or dispute what I have written here, of course).
Clarissa's Blog 
I would wager this advice would apply to any field, save mathematics.
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Actually, when we get to reading literary texts, I will start offering the opposite advice. 🙂
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Pay attention to the publisher. The company that published the book can tell you the ideology, motivations, and perspective of the book before you even open it.
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Great point! With Las Casas’s text we will be discussing, it is especially relevant to know who published his work and why.
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Surely it has been republished many times, by different publishers?
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It is also true that studying history with a preconceived agenda, whether known or unknown, can nevertheless lead to a major transformation of the attitudes of the person doing the studying. So, I think the points you make are a vast oversimplification. Rather like saying that gravity is what makes things fall down. True enough, but it does not account for other more profound effects, such as the motion of the earth and moon around the sun, and the tides, for example.
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This is a Freshman Seminar. I had to start the course with teaching the students how to find Africa on a map. So yes, I have to simplify a lot for at least somebody to get what I’m saying.
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I agree completely, but this is something that we were coving at GCSE level History. 9/10 times the author of a secondary source text will try to be objective, but of course it is virtually impossible to to truly objective; our own life experiences essentially makes it so.
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I’d add historiographic information, as well. When was the work written in relation to the events it describes? What other perspectives of this event have to be taken into account when interpreting the work?
Sometimes, the audience is known, so I might add to question six: who is the audience?
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Also, is it a primary, secondary, or tertiary source?
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Just curious — why “hidden” in Things to Remember (e)? Don’t some historians state quite clearly that they have an agenda, and say what it is?
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The stated agenda is one thing. But it’s always a lot more fun to look for what is not being stated.
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not bad for a non-historian 🙂 the only thing I’d change is c. I think what you mean is that by c/c different sources we get broader understanding of the ways certain events were understood, interpreted and used by historians in the past, but the way it is worded makes it sound like there is some underlying “truthiness” that could eventually be found. “what took place” is always, and IMHO only, a varied construction by the historian
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“but the way it is worded makes it sound like there is some underlying “truthiness” that could eventually be found”
-God forbid!
““what took place” is always, and IMHO only, a varied construction by the historian”
-That’s exactly the idea I wanted the students to get. They were kind of stunned by the suggestion, though. “So we shouldn’t believe the textbook?” one asked. We’ll get there.
And thank you for the compliment! It’s great to be praised by a real historian. 🙂
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I hope you do not mind. I put up a response on Izgad. http://izgad.blogspot.com/2011/09/guidelines-for-studying-history.html
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Cool! I’m glad you haven’t completely abandoned blogging. 🙂
I’m also happy that “real historians” are engaging with me on this subject. I’m learning a lot here.
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