THE EVIDENCE OF HISTORY

THE EVIDENCE HISTORIANS have to work out what they think happened in the past from their sources. This means things that have survived from the past. These sources are not always easy to use. So before a historian can use them as evidence to answer a particular question about the past, the sources must be tested to a certain degree. First the sources provenance- how and when it was created, and how it was handed down to us. Second its reliability- whether the sources or part of it, is accurate or not. Third its utility- how useful it will be. The answers to these questions are usually linked, as you will see from other sources that we will treat later. The picture attached is a picture of a working class family in London just before the First World War. Invariably a historian might still decide a source could be used as useful evidence even if it was not reliable. Conclusively on evidence, 1. It is important for historians to know the source or provenance of their sources. 2. There are many reasons why all or part of a source might not be reliable. 3. Historians can only decide about the reliability of a source when they know what they want to find. 4. Historians may sometimes find sources useful even they don’t think they are reliable. If we are to write good history, then we have to make sure that we understand not only what people in the past did but also what they thought about things. History is not only what happened but also why it happened. To understand this, we have to remember what or the ideas that people had in those days or times, because this helps understand why they did things. Historians sometimes called this the EMPATHY