18 Frtvoduction very often decidedly more progresie intone. Such historiography pi cally secks w inlade a wider vary of istrialactors han fstriay of the pas thought worty of snd. Iroten seks, moreover to expose tre ‘ays the poieal, socal, and intelectual hierarchies hat we ave inher. ited from the past were fashioned, inthis wy working to demyetlythove hierarchies, making wat once seemed naar and unchangeable sppeer arial and malleable, Hinwrians today thas employ methodotees Somevat diferent fom thse of thir predecewors Alot all ae i tore skepcal about the kinds ofuths the historian can dove, aboet the kinds of wath buried in sources Most approach tele evidence with snany more queséons abouts provenance and is limitations than thei predecesors might have had. This doesnot mean, however, hat hier as today ae free of the pst. The best of tern borrow her fiom thet Predecesors, wing their 008 to place and decipher source often the sag on similar seatgies to manipulate and order them. While they do ne le the une lind of histories 3 thee predece they eld not "re it lat aw ott her vet i ey et not ae HOWELL, HAR THA AND WALTER PRevenier .(2001). Prom wlieble sources 5 on ty rE, NR) BORIC 3 river sie, Treg. | | | CHAPTER ONE @ The Source: The Basis of Our Knowledge about the Past A. What Is a Source? ources are artifacts that have been left by the past. They exist either nesses to the past. “The first kinds of sources, relics or remains, offer the researcher a clue about the past simply by virme of their existence. The wooden columns found at the site ofa prehistoric settlement testify, for example, to the ex- istence ofa people and tell hitorians something abuut their culture, The peys or dowels they used to fasten building materials further enlighten scholars about their technical stills and artistic capacities. By comparing their artifacts with those from other places, historians can further learn someching of their commercial or intellectual relations (for example, by comparing frescos from the Cycladen island of Santorini with those from Grete. In contrast, testimonies are the oral or written reports that describe an ‘event, whether simple or complex, such as the record of a property ex: change (for example, the donation of land to a medieval monastery or the sale of shares on the New York Stock Exchange). Speeches or com- mentaries are also testimonies. Vaclav Havel's speech during the “Velvet Revolution” in Prague ia 1989 is one such example; in it, he fulminated against the communist hardliners and reformers and claimed -the “Prague Spring” of 1968 as historical precedent for his own revolution. ‘The authors of such testimonies can provide the historian information about tice buppened, how and in what circumstances the event occurred, end whyit occurred, Nevertheless, few sources yield this information inay a8 The Smerce equal measure, and itis the historian's job to supplement the raw mete fllamable a the source nel Toth relics and testimonies were usulyeeited forthe spac par poses ofthe agein-which they wore made, Whatere called eis wee, Op Tey objec of praccal ue in daly it and ony ltr, inthe get followed came fo be seated as historical sourees. The sane i tre of tat tsimotica, whether orl ceva. They wore corioded fb re vide contemporihes proof ofan ator of ight erin order to info them abouts fact Only sy were the esiged for thew of porte although tat sometimes occured. In contrat rele, the content of Desc ede analy noe ett es ee. a such a report often tell the alert historian a great den to thls poi ve ville tar, Il perhaps unnecesary fo poi out atone of te bie toia'sprinlpal st is to uncover the orginal purpose or function of therelce or tetimenias that have come downto pom vn wt ‘te they ere intended to serve and what purposes they acca sere dat the dine they ware create Testimonies and arfacs, wheter oral or wien, may have been tenonaly rete perhaps to sere ns ecord or they ght hve been created for some other purpoe entry, Scholars somcames think ofthe fac however, the dsnciontnot wear at lemay ata seem, fora boston dar ous ple eerie ay aD hitorans For example, fm taken to record ane event but wie ia vertentycaptised another might ell be “usinestonal” i coneepeon, au wat helm of President John F. Kennedy's asasinaon fake by ap Sander who meant only to Tecord the parade for hs priate enloment That lm’ cole in history and in soi Interpretation hax, however, been profoundly more important. A memoir wren to explana ie legal bret desig to prove «ewe it court anda porta commissioned by a noblewotsia obvious not innoceat of dg tnd mete, fo ‘hey were produced ith mec purpotes ia nnd, To tings ai tentionasouree rtm aa ‘unintendona i notto argue ha one nore Cupar ate mile tan ance. Unica osteer act dae tenional ony inthe sen tht they mere not prodoced vith the hist fan's questions in mind) they are not, Rowerer, otherize “innocent? Conversely, intentional sures contin fates not under the contol af their authors and have ves beyond thelr orginal intentions A meme Intended to juny the choices author made during het fe ayia face lnadvetiendy reveal the unceraindes end ona a dhe aught cans IS mocnont, ve Yun Sutaed te only uneapected What Isa Source? 19 sways, therefore affecting the future in ways the author would never have intended. “Historians must thus always consider the conditions under 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 *peliabilie." They must also consider the historical context in which it was produced-—the events that preceded it, and those that followed, for the significance of any event recorded depends as much on what comes after 1s it does on what comes before. Had the Boston Tea Party of 173 not been followed by the American Revolution, it would have had consider- ably less significance than historians have since given it, and the very same newspaper report of the uprising, in the very same archive, would have hhad a very different status from the one itactually aquired, Thus, tustor fans are never in a position—and should never imagine themselves as being in a position—to read a source without atention to both the histor. jeal and the historiographical contexts that give it meaning, This, of course, is the heart of historical interpretation. Sources are thus those materials from which historians construct meanings. Put another way, a source is an object from the past or test mony concerning the past on which historians depend in order to create their own depiction of that past, A historical work or interpretation is thus the result of this depiction. The relationship between the two can be illustrated by an example: The diary left by a midwife who lived in colonial New England constitutes a source. On the basis of such source, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich created a prize-winning historical study, ‘A Midwife's Tale (19g¢). A source provides us evidence about the exis tence of an event; a historical interpretation is an argument about the ‘Althoug’ when we use the term “source” we have in mind these pri- ‘mary sources, such sources can themselves be direct or indirect. A direct source might be the letters or chronicles that ccme to us from eighteenth- century businessmen, a law code written in 846, or a poem penned just yesterday, An indirect source might be an eighteenth-century inventory listing the letters and books found in an educated woman's stedy, from “which scholars could deduce something about the kind of training she had received and her intellectual interests; or, to pursue the examples siven here, it might be an eleventh-century register cataloging the con- tents ofa princely archive that named the ninth-century code; or it could bea computer printout of sales of poetry volumes from the Barnes and Noble at Broadway and 82nd in Manhattan. ‘The boundaries Between a source (whether direct or indirect) and a20 The Source istorical stady are not always, however, so clear. Although an ancient ‘weapon—a spear or a catapult for instance—or a deed transferring own ership ofa piece of land is, obviously, a source in the usual sense, certain documents have an ambiguous and shifting status, Herodotus and Thucy- dides, for example, each of whom provided accounts of events in their cnm days, ean be considered both historians of their ages—creators of historical interpretations—and authors of sources in that they provide ‘modern-day historians evelence both about these events and about the im- tellectual culture of the ages in which they wrote. In many cases, moreover, the sources that former historians used to compile their own accounts are Jost to che present, so the historical interpretation they constructed serres preseatday historians aso asa ‘Source of sources," their only route to lost evidence, The church history left by Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 265—310 2), for example, mentions countless texts that are now lost; is work this serves not only as historical interpretation concerning the fist Christan centuries, but also as an indirect source about this era. [eis thus one of the primary responsibilities of the historian to distin _guish carefully for readers between information that comes literally out of the source itself (in footnotes or by some other means) and that which is a personal interpretation of the material, For the literal content ofa cit Hon—-yrbat js transcribed from the source itzelfitoriane have no ethi cal responsibility for the meaning they impart to that material, of course, they are entirely responsible B. Source Typologies, Their Evolution and Complementarity Written sources are usually categorized according to a tripartite scheme! as narrative or “literary,” as diplomatic/juridical, or as social documents, Although these categories are arbitrary and, as we shall see, can distort as much as clarify the status of the evidence a particular source can provide, itis important to recognize that sources do, in fact, have generic qualities, (One kind of source can not be read exactly like another, and each should be analyzed in terms of its formal properties as well as in terms of content. Sources eradiionally classified as narrative or literary include chronicles or tracts presented in narrative form, written in order to impart a particu lar message. The motives for their composition vary widely. A scientific tract is typically composed in order to inform contemporaries or succeed: ing generations; 2 newspaper article might be intended to shape opinion: the so-called ego document or pessonal narrative such as a diary or mem- Source Typologies a oir might be composed in order 1o persuade readers of the justice of the author's actions; a novel or film might be made to entertain, to deliver a moral teaching, or to further a religious cause; a biography might be-writ- ten in praise of the subject's worth and achievements (a panegyric or ha- giography). Such sources thus take many different forms, which are highly dependent upon the conventions of the age in which they were writen, The category of “aarrative source” is therefore considerably broader thaa what we usually consider “fiction.” Novels and poetry—the archeypical fictions —are, nevertheless, a subset of this category, a kind of Source, although they were not composed with the purpose of informing ‘gmecessors about the time in which they were written ‘Questions of intentionality, diseussed above, become especially impor. tant in the case of “ego documents,” Diaries, for example, can almost never treated as reliable reports about an event, but must be read in terms cf the very individual perspective from which they were written, as an index of what the avthor (that is, che “intellectual author,” a term we will define later) considers is truth! Memoirs are similarly selective ac- counts, alvays highly edited versions of the life being recorded, almost al svays highly teleological in structure (in that they are written to explain the outcome of life, not co record its prdcess). In general, then, ego dac- “uments zecord the anthor's perception of events, berhaps even his mem- ory of how he experienced them, and ghey can often tell us a great deal about the writer's political iatentions and his tactics, as well as his ideo! ‘ogy and the culture of the age. i ‘Diplomatic oures are understood to be those which document an exist ing legal situation or creace a nev one, and itis these kinds of sows that professional historians once treated as the purest, the “best” source. The classic diplomatic source is the charter, a “legal instrument,” what Ger- smans call the Urkunde the French the charte or diplime. This is 2 docu ment, usually sealed or authenticated én some other way, intended to pro- vide evidence af the completion of aiJegal transaction or proof of the existence of juristic fact and which could serve as evidence in a judicial proceeding in the event of dispute. Scholars differentiate those legal in struments issued by public authorities {such as kings or popes, the New York Court of Appeals or the U.S. Congress) from those involving only private parties (such as a will or a mohtgage agreement). ‘The form of any particular legal instrament is fixed. It possesses spe- cific formal properties (external, such as the hand or print sje, the ink, 1. Teh be sure slippery notion forthe ividual recounting an event See, for further daascon: Borah. Spence, Narratie Truth and Mira Pru Maanng arte ‘rotation Pgtoonas (Sew Toth, 1982).The Source BCE, writing was invented in Mesopotamia, thus inaugurating the ical” age in human history. Thereafter, Greeks and Romans devel for that reason that scholars have so much deeper and cd! knowledge of these ancient societies than of others. Thi explanation for the profound influence these cultures have own. During the early Middle Ages, however, oral communication be- came relatively more important, and it was only around the ovelfth cen- tury that written communication achieved dominance even in elite circles in medieval Europe. With the invention of the printing press at the end of the fifteenth century, western European history came to be based princi- ppally on writen sources, The press permitted exact reproductio mntity, of documents of all kinds—news reports, statutes, tions, poetry, drawings—thus assuring their long survival and lation. The introduction of writing and printing had an enormous influ- cence on intellectual history as well, or they gave scholars more extensive land more accurate access to the thoughts of their predecessors. torians do not rely entirely on written sources for their ich the printed text existed. More coral, or for that matter between are arbitrary. Although historians have traditionally oral sources apart from written, thereby calling c differences among them and the dangers of treat. ing them the same, skilled researchers know not to assume the dilfer- sider them critically. Today most scholars are use a mix: ‘en, and other material sources as the situation requires for example, about the people of the “Ancien much of France and western Europe to refer le Ages to about 1800)—about their ac- fences, b to the period from the tions, ideas, bel teenth and twentieth centuries have 'd new kinds of sources that cortinue to blur the boundaries be- -n, oral, and “material.” Tp a certain extent, such innovation 1 the photograph and, above (are in some ways more realistic Sonirce Typologies 35 than the painted or dravm image. The years between 1602, when Thomas ‘Wedgeood invented the phologramm on silver nitrate paper, and 1888, ‘when Kodak introduced the Blm roll, were the decisive decades in the his tory of the stil photograph. The period between 1832, when Joseph Plateau began experiments with moving film, and 1893, when Thomas Edison perfected techniques, vas the crucial age for the development of technology for moving picesres. It was only around 1950, however, that the technology became available to preserve films adequately, and itis still more recently tha efforts have been made to copy and thus preserve fleas made before that period. Until 1900, most films were what we cal “documentaries,” reports of current events or of natural phenomena. Dramatic fms were made after that date, though it was not unti after 2927 that we had “talkies.” Sotind recordings date from the late nineteenth century, at least from ‘Thomas Editon's creation of 1877. The gramophone recording followed, and since the 1980s we have hadi the compact disk. The collection of oral information on agrand scale began, however, with the tape recording, frst , and were rarely, recorded or saved. In contrast, tape or cellu- loid flm recording events had a much greater chance of being saved, but it was only between about 1940 and 1970 that these media were wit used. These tapes do not, however, constitute a secure source. Typi they have not lasted, and as they have deteriorated, information has been, lost. Even the saved information is sometimes inaccessible. The French TV sysiem, to cite just one example, has over 500,000 documentaries on ake them easily accessible to researchers. Tele- ical source has, then, some distance to go. les on which a huge quantity of tape—but has no way! 's potential asa similar problems beset the compu recent decades’ social documents ar that a huge portion of the fiscal records kept by the United States govern- ment were inaccessible, because the Japanese company which had sup- plied the original technology for reacting these records was no longer26 ‘The Source here is not so much technical 2s organizational led is political and financial commitment to maiataining tl of these material. sourees, although different from one another, are in m: ways complementary. Oral records obviously can complement the ten, a realization that was for too long stories handed down from one generation to another in that culture were as stable and reliable accounts of their past as were the written chronicles and personal narratives that have survived from the western European ‘Vansina’s argument was, in essence, methodological, for he was not say- Il oral accounts achieve this level of reliability; they do so several tests, Vansina’ jarrativé come to che the transmission of the narrative? does th pistically co form to the linguist nd juridical norms of the period and the place fom ld (or pretends to originate Vansina's contribution to historical methodology was significant, for hi rians had by and large not understood thatin many societies (including Bux zope of the tenth and eleventh centuries) social relations were sustained through oral acts, and that the most importaat legal transactions achieved their authenticity by means of oral witnessing and the lke, Oral communi rarely indicates arbitrary action and social anarchy, ‘mark of a complex and well-ordered sociopolitical system orians can place trust in oral sources only to the extent that verified by means of external evidence of another ki comparing the: understood cultures and by analysis of the archaeological reco: this case historians were able to use the present to understand the past. Tt ‘would, however, be a mistake to conclude from: this instance that such 4) Vasin, Det tration le isc mds Niu Terrien, 1963): in Engi 0 at Tron at tory (Mion, Wie, 1084) . Sevure Typologies a7 comparisons will always be fruitful. Human cultures do not remain un- changed over time. Even before the period of colonial rule in Africa, we know, sociocultural upheavals of enormous importance took place on that continent; thus, neither there nor anywhere else dare we assume that the social codes and cultural patterns are in any sense “eternal.” Indeed, the anthropologists impulse, to look for basic—and somehow unchang- ers, should be complemented by the historian's bias—to ex- pectand look for change. Tris not only premodern cultures that produce oral sources of use to the histoans ll ultares do sp, andin certain instances oral reports can provide erically important evidence. fa times of social uphesval (during, Svs revolt and sks, for example), wines are aot inclined to write Tow thelr cxperiencesresisters have to fear their occupiers, strikers thet Dones and the lay For that reason, incerviewe can sometimes subst tute forthe perional acount th cannot be written. Al Santoli's orl his tory ofthe Vietam War provides one revealing example ofthe value of such techniques, Santoll interviewed thirypehree veterans of die conic, who ceporel evens that never made into the oficial documents com- tang the military agchives. ‘The men interiewed told of their initial dptimiam and bravado and then how the realities of combat—the body ror, shock, and lost—destoyed bags, carnage on the’ battlefic ‘morale and humanity among them. Interviewing—or the kind of interviewing that can serve the careful his- torian—is, however, no simple art. The questions asked must be carefully designed, in accordance with an overall plan about the kind of informa tion sought and about the tess of relibiliry to which it wil be subjected; at the'same time, however, the interviewer must be flexible, able to shift the terms ofthe interview to pursue unexpected avenues and avoid dead tends. In general, “hard” interviews ean be distinguished from “soft.” In the first-—the kind of real value to historians—the interviewer has worked hard to reconstruct the historical situation in which the informa order to get beyond the simple narrative about what did or did not hap- pen. A good interview is one in which the story becomes richer, more nu- anced more understandable in the telling, not one in which guilt or in- novence is proved, a cause an interview constructed sometning much more; be analyzed with extreme care, 4: Sato, ming Me Hed. An Or try of te nam ry Thi-tt Airitn Sob re ao Mark Baker, Nem Th Von Nar oe orks28 The Source C. The Impact of Communication and Information Technology on the Production of Sources choices among the materials left by the past, Jerarchy of evidence, they must choose from certain Hinds of potential evidence was produced yy given age, only some of that was preserved, and only a portion of to any given historian. If they are to make wise c among potential sources, historians must thus consider the ways = d, why and how it was preserved, and why rary, oF any such research site general, very much determined by tech: ins under which a given culture received and mation. The snechanisms of communication and the speed. irculated are both elements of this technological ‘ory can be divided into three periods, was transmitted by people who walked or ran been stored in an archiy informat esurvedic eon, for example, of Bjng fags at hal mast to maria deth or te practice of ging srens to sound an alan. In thesecond phase information was transported using pack animal “This phase began about 2000 NEA in cent At, about 19603. inthe Mediterranean area, and sometime ding the satecathcentyaroong in Per, andi sil ped in some parts of South America aad form of transportation were at least dow rest fire ifonmation ws ce i people, Other ecnialdeelopinensfmber improved is tnodeofiie ere ing ly tte to record ie Phoenicians developed an alpha more efficient. Persian Kings created n hich mestages were handearied by Spe tod later osed both in Byeantiur and ia 7 cari ota ar drning ao ‘The Enpact of Communication and Information Technology’ 2g mail had been worked out to connect the Flerentine banking and mer ‘chant houses to the trade fairs in Champagne (France); the system was adopted by the pope in the following century. By the end of the fifteenth century Europe had a net of postai connections tha: had been developed by the Milanese firm of Thurn and Taxis; in 1505 the firm was granted a ‘monopoly for the Spanish past ‘in 1496, a trip between London and Venice took 2g to 51 days, and ia 1442, a joumey from Genoa to Bruges lasted 22 to 25 days. Thus, dis tance traveled daly averaged 30 to about go miles. Between the fifteenth and the nineteenth cennuxy, this rate of travel was.to double, thanks to the long-distance routes that were constructed during this period. ‘Three categories of information were transported in this period, each of which required a slightly different technology of literacy. ‘The frst in- chided seeret correspondence ('litterae clausae") of various kinds (eco- nomic or business, diplomatic, military) which had to be written in code. ‘The second was general correspondence ("litterae patentes") which, in time, was taken over by the newspaper, the third category. The forerun- ners in the production of this genre were the Venetians, who regularly penned commentaries (called avvis) to accompany the business corre spondence they sent all over Europe; they were followed by the German. trade cities like Nu ich produced what they sll call Zeitengen (newspapers). Tene, printed newspapers with a regular periodicity appeared frst in Strasbourg (2609) and Antwerp (1629). It was only Inter that a distinction was made between simple newsshects (which had no explicit editorial content) and “newspapers of opinion.” ‘The third phase of communication is, of course, defined by mechani- cal media, In 1830, the tram increased the speed at which informa‘ion could be transmitted to 40 to 35 miles per hour. With the invention of the telegraph in 1844, information transmission became almost instamta- neous. By 2896 it required dniy seven minutes to transmit a message from one place on the globe to another. The more recent innovations ying this technological revolution were organizational changes in the ‘way informacion was gathered and delivered. The nineteenth century saw provide news services to thousands of small clients; most newspapers rely entirely on these services for information from beyond their own locality and thus bave no independent sources by which they can verify the data they receive. Tis evident that the speed atwhich a piece of information can be tran30 The Source , along with its ubiquitousmess, directly affects its influence. Today's (CNN, for example) make the world a “global village,” and that is in some sense a cheerful thought, for it means that people today increas ingly have access to exactly the same information at the same time and often react similarly But it also means that an incident such as the Cuban Missle Crisis of ug6e elicits an immediate reaction, in Moscow and Wash- ‘ington alike, with all the risks that such speed entails Sul, there are real advantages to the speed of communication possible today. Consider, for ‘example, that when the harvest filed in fifteenth-century England of the es, it ook two months before grain could be purchased in {ic area and another two months before it arived where needed— far too late for a huge portion of the population. ‘Tae power of modern-day commusications with their steady stream of fashion changes and technical innovations, depends, however, 0 just the speed at which messages travel but also on the quality of and ofthe distribution system. Italso depends on the readiness ience to accept the innovation. tis, for example, no accident that the mechanical clocks were developed in Tay in the fourteenth century and were first imitated and distributed in Flanders and England, where Italy had good commercial relaions and where the commercial infra: structure and socioeconomic system were similar. ¢ material qualities of the message itself afect its influence as well. id TV, messages have in some ways become one can say that the quality and accuracy of ‘ers and manuscripts replaced oral wansmis- tals replaced handwritten. Marshall 1 Cuban missile crisis, E.R. May and P.D. Zelikow, The Kenly Tapes Inside the sing the Cub Mure Cater, Mast 1999), The Impact of Communication and Infirmation Technology gy the war ereated for a great many Americans, especially young Americans, a single experience, an experience that galvanized political resistance to the war. The lesson, it shoud be noted, was not lost on the American mil- itary. Media coverage of the Gulf War (1gg0-92) was much more re sricced, and ifa collective memory survives of that war, it wil surely be of the way it was covered rather than the conflict itself. The Velvet Revolt tion in Prague, the fll ofthe Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square, all in 1989, similarly joined the Wests collective memory, largely as a result of the mass media ‘Mass media and the technology that makes it possible have thus utterly changed the character of news reporting and its relationship to scholar- ship. Very eariyin the bistory of the press, however, even in the days of the sixteenth-century cous! writeen strictly for Ralian businessmen, the mass potential of the press was recognized, and with that development came political control. Even then, governments sought to limit the press's po- tentially subversive character by requiring that such newspapers obtain of- ficial licenses to publish. In the nineteenth century, western European governments often isnposed onerous taxes on newspapers, a practice ‘which restricted their ability to it only under the pressure of public opi in Belgium in 1848, for example, England in 1855, and France in 1881 ‘Today, most newspapers in the West depenid for their finan: interest groups ([’Otereatore Romano) or private firms (Stampa, in Tal, it owned by Fit). Thus, most are subject to politcal and idevlogical pres- sores of various kinds. Somecimes itis subtle, delivered implicitly, some- times it is more direct Dictatorial zegimes have gone even further, often even prescribing what is to be published. An early highpoint (or Tow. point) in government conrrol of the press was reached by Hitler's minis- ter for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, with his Ninisterium flr Volksautk- Heung und Propaganda. The historical consequences of this ominous move are well known, Tn contrast, some press in that they fonction in- dependently of political affiliation or other direet control. The London ‘Times was for years the archetypal newspaper of this genre; on the cont nent, France's Le Monde and Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeng rep- resent the tradition. In the United States, 2 handful of nationally cirew lated newspapers such as the New York Yimas and the Washington Post provide erisical coverage Af polities and are powerfully able to mobilize public opinion. The rapid technological developments of recent years— those making GNN or the Internet possible, for exemple—are oftenBe The Source considered part of this tradition of press “freedotm.” Although the growth of these media is driven by commercial motives, it i frequently argued that they provide such easy access, both for the public and for newsmak- es, that they help preserve the “freedom of the pres.” The press, then, including the nonprint press, is considerably more than a purveyor of news; it can play a decisive role in political processes themselves. Consider, for example, the importance of the Washington Fests coverage of Watergate; or more recently of the New York Time's April 13, 1996, report dat Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was di- recly asodiated with the Bosnian concentration camps run by Serb pars militaries and the systematic extermination of Muslim populations in the tersitory. Ted Turner's CNN goes a step farther, providing tniform, 24 hour per day TV coverage around the world. In Turner's hands, the news becomes a purely commercial, uniform product, and simultancously an important vehicle by which politicians and governments seek to influence ‘world events. In 199i, a pan-Arab channel (MBC) was begun (out of Lon- don), and in 1993, the Europeans launched their own competitor (Eu- renews). I the same year, the United Kingdom's BBC went global No mater the medium in which i is delivered and no matter the care With which editorial freedom is protected, however, every news report is sme sente selective and therefore “biased.” The journalist who com- ‘—or the team of journalists and editors who put it together—is choosing among the thousands and thousands of pieces of information lable, on the basis of what might interest or please the “public,” the the state, one or another interest group, oF a certain idealogical ion. One journalist may decide that, having been told of one in- stance of a development—tet us say the first heart transplant—the public Goes not need to know about subsequent operations of the same type; an- other journalist, in contrast, may decide that the successful repetition of ‘on isthe important point, and she will thus continue to “follow he is not “following” the story; she is creacing it. The owever, that one journalists right and another wong. The wmnalists are always affecting the news, making one story important," making “news” on one hand ind anothe: ter what story he or she is choosing 1 jour. is responsible for verifying sources, for making sure that the bits of scandals in the US. press have ‘can be abdicated. In the rush The Impact of Communication and Information Technology 93 been exposed for making up facts or, in the cae ofa recent erroneour CNN Tine story about the US. government's wc of nerve gases in the Gulf War, have been shown to have done sloppy favestgatons of their ‘etw clos this discussion ofthe press functions with a few comments for the stholar who would use the prese—whether te premodern avis or the modem Internet fash—as a source. To eraploy these sources use- fly the historian aust consider not just the content of the text, but its author and isuer, the publisher and i inseutlonal locaton, the audi- tance, andthe ine cal, ocal, economic) context ofits orig fal publiaton, Tis sure'y tre that sensational or tendentons reports, can have a bigger effect en public opinion then sober, earefal report, fn iemay be that the historian wil have to take the first more seriously than the second, fori ys the ist that had the greater impact. Tn ade tion; the historian must remember that the emission of a report itself can affect the events being eeported, that there is no clear separation between the event and the report othe event. Normally, we imagine, a zepert of a ents about the event, aot part oft But sometimes this relationship is astrted, as when pariipaas ina protest listen o reports about their tetions a they go tothe tees (a common event during the student r= volts inthe United Sates an Europe inthe late 1960s and early 19708), then voters have news of early returns inan election, or when zeperts of polls infuence the next poll—or the vote ite. Finally, the carefl scholar will be attentive to what we might call “shortciteuiting"of information flows, che distortion that occurs as in- formation passes from hand to hand, Scholars using sources from oral cultutesfolkiales, for example—ace very sensitive to such risks, for tales told orally can easly change in the telling, but even those histori tans using printed sources or the repors from eldetronic media are not free of these problems of interpretation. A message delivered electon- ically can be literally distorted, jst asjcan line ‘passed by mouth from generation to getieration. The listener or reader ply because he or she does not ‘can misinterpret what is reported, jeural code in which the message was written, or does not grasp the context of the message. Let us illustrate ‘vith a very simple example: what would a foreigner with very litle abil- ity in the English language make of an exchange between two Ameri- ‘cans being formally introduced?—one offers her hand and says, "How do you do?”; the otter replies in kind. Only someone deep in the cul- ture can “read” chat text!34 The Source ring and Delivering Information ‘The archive is often considered the historian’s principal source of infor- mation. The term has owo meanings. In the most general sense, an archive is the collection of documents held by a namural or a legal person (for example, a government agency), and possibly also the copies of doc- uments sent by these bodies to others. They are kept, of course, for pract tical reasons—to have a record of previous actions, both to assure admin- fstrative stability and to preserve useful ways of doing things and to preserve evidence for possible future legal proceedings. In a more technic cal sense, however, the term “archive” means the place or the institution ltself that holds and manages the collection. In prin« sourees and social documents are kept in archives, narratives braries. But of course there are exceptions. By chanee, as a result of gifts ‘macdle to special institutions or the like, we sometimes find the reverse is growing and acquiring new material because teenth centuzy in the West, almost all archi ts original owners or by the institution that duced the documents. Churches, monasteries, cities, and 1 ries, and the archives traveled with them as they changed their operations. The medi "the hgh 498, in Ghens, ight a reversal of practice, The new central state. In response, the new govern te archive, which was public; most other each Storing and Delivering Information 35 the region might be the province, or even che county) established a de- pository to which were sent all documents originating in institutions that hhad once been at least partially subject to the rulers of this region. Thus, the collectioas of che Council of Flanders finally ended up the state archive in Ghent, capital city of East Flanders. Similarly, the archives of confiscated ecclesiastical institutions, of noble families, of the notaries who had worked in the district, and of the cities and parishes located in a French département found their way to the regional archive in the capital city of this département, Typically, the national capital (Paris, The Hague, Berlin, ete.) served as depository both for the region and for the nation, in the latter capacity holding the documents emanating from the central government. ‘Some local archives, particularly those of big cities, escaped this confis- cation and today retain their own collections. In some parts of Europe, particularly in England, France, Belgium and The Netherlands, a great ‘many additional local instications have similarly kept their acchives— parishes, monasteries, bishopzics, and private institutions. And every. Where there are some government agencies whose archives remain their own, juse as there are still 2 few ordinary people (to be sure, people of some influence) who keep private archives Ir, addition, in recent years some new independent archives have been created, usually attached to research institutes focused on a particular ‘problem, a group of people, or a place. The new Holocaust Museum in ‘Washington, D.C, is one sach example. In The Netherlands, a center was founded in 1945 for reseorch and study of the Second World War; in its collection is the original Anne Frank diary. Germany has special archives for business affairs in Cologne and Dortmund, and the United States has, for example, a Ford archive in Detroit. Until recenty it was generally accepted that public archives should hold only public documents, that they should not, in fact, acquire the holdings of private families and private institutions, no matter how im- portant historically. Now that has changed. Since 1959 the British Public Record Office has welcomed gifts of private papers, and a law of 1955 al- lowed the Royal Archive of Belgium to colleét private papers of families, ‘rms, and political figures. But these efforts are in many instances too late, As a result, the collections of many private individuals and institur tions, if they have been preserved at all, are held in universities (Harvard University, for example, houses an archive concerning the industrial his- tory of the United States), in private archives (the presidential archives in different locations of the United States), or in museums (Gladstone's pa pers are in the British Museum Library)36 The Source Sources of other kinds, most of them unwritten, are typically held in other depositories. Muscums, for example, are the usual repositories for archaeological finds, aroworks, and similar objects; ibraries often house collections; film and record libraries hare been estab- Reich. rope and Nerth America today follow generally standard ictices in organizing their holdings. For the historieal archive, the most "spect nh othe hirn,jtars poo have to know where «document wa found and yee evan sored if we are to anes import intellect eign place nd tne of ton and se. Let us take x Banal example the adres book belonging wo Janes MeCord, one ofthe men conited of breaking into Demsersee eadquarer in dhe Watexgate Bulling in a97e, with fa cteoner to ard Hunt, Whe House) wld have ha ferent (and probe Sgnifcance had it been found anywhere bt inthe Soom Cord and the other Republcen burglars hed red inthe copen ng ben ound there, played a dei role in the hoy ofthis ce the aden book sugested tat the White Hose and the cx of stil materia i thus, pov cls tcc holdings according othe (os Tecaon at the tne the arte was ing" Ths in the ety nineteenth century, locos aizarding wo de onder ov ther provenance Ie only nce 184 clevire in the West, thar new protects ed under which callecons were hep intact tnd, tin pc ol Icon, he provenance was earfuly noted he nul wf aacicana on ies serninal nance, and archives reaucratic or physic and statelike insttations (the church, charitable and educational establishments, etc.) because by their very nature these bodies produce and must keep records of their exis- tence and their operations, It 10 wonder that the first archives of Ie from the twelfth-century pope Innocent vugustus, So important were these archives a7 Storing and Delivering Pifermation to such princes that they carried them with them, housed in sner guarded trunks, as they voyaged chroughout their realms. How fragile, hhow unsatisfactory, this stem was becomes apparent when we consider that during the batdle of Fréteval in 1194, the entire French national archive went up in smoke! Tr is even less surprising that the best collec- tions of documents that come to us fom this age treat fiscal and legal matters, for it was documents of this nature that evidenced (and assured) political authority Notarial documents (documents written and authenticated by specially trained and licensed professionals, rather like modern-day lawyers) cre- ated to secure property and legal rights constitute the bulk of the tradi- tional private archival record. The documents have survived so well not Jjust because they were important to the people involved, but because 10- taries were typically obligated to preserve them and to pass them on, at the end of their service, to their successors or to the state that licensed them. The office of notary was created in Roman times and was revived in. thirteentheentury Italy, spreading into the rest of Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Business enterprises and private institutions had equally good reasons to creute and preserve documents of this kind, but because their institu. tional lives were typically shorter or more precarious than those of states, themselves, few archives of this kind remain from the period before 1900. ‘The survival of documents of other kinds—tterary, arstic, personal—de- pends very much on the fortunes of the individuals involved and on bis- torical chance. “Archives are also the creations of scholars end intellectuals who have ized to collect and preserve documents relating to the history of particular places, groups) or movements. Labor orgenizations have, for ‘been particularly active in creating archives and making them (scholars, ar have certain religious and ethnic groups, such a5, the Mormons and American Jewish organizations. The process of archive creation is continuous, as history creates new sources and new needs for their preservation, For example, today the African National Congress is, creating an official archive at both the University of Fort Hare in South Africa and the University of Connecticut in the United States. Tt will house documents that were for years hidded in three dozen countries during the party’s underground struggle against apartheid in South Africa Although there are a dizzying and growing number of archives in the ‘West, they have, in fact, preserved only a very small number of the docu- ‘ments and other materials actually produced in the past. One reason is,38 The Saree simply that so few events were actually recorded. Events considered too banal, too obvious, were not recorded by contemporaries and were noted only in conversation. The same thing still occurs today, of course, espe- cially as the telephone and Internet replace the letter as the primary ‘means of private communication; even the fax is no improvement, for the quality of the print of most fax machines assures the ephemerality of the messages so transmitted. Second, it often occurred that the official who produced or originally collected agiven document did not think it worth saving. Itis modern his. torians' great loss that, for example, medieval princes typically did not ters they sent to vassals calling them to serve or the delivered to the mighty of the realm, Even trained ts have made choices we would surely lament; a social historian for example, have treasured the nineteenth-century sewer plan discarded once the madern sewerage plant was built keep copies af the lectual centers of the ancient world, was lost as the city declined in re antique period; the municipal archive of Naples was demolished for premodern private archive to have survived for us: a bankruptcy that ‘ease and thus moves business papers from private hands '0 the public realm, as happened in 1368 in the case of the banker 'y years—and the ink from a sypical ballpoint pen becomes un. le after a few hours in the sun! Today, the original documents pro- in the Nuremberg trials of 1945 are almost undecipherable, The f the paper used has as great an effect on the durability of doc: Storing and Detivering Information 39) Most of the paper made during the next century was not, for the pine resin used as glue destroys its cellulose fibers (the paper being a wood product). While deacidification processes have since been developed and. are being gradually applied to the most precious surviving records, and ‘not similarly vulnerable, ‘a huge proportion of the documents stored in libraries and archives today is threatened with extinction simply because the paper is rotting, We right well ask ourselves just how durable are the photocopies of our pret- entday letters—ofien the only version that is saved—and the faxes on ‘which we are so dependent, Wallpaintings in caves-—some of them of in- estimable historical and artistic value—become very vulnerable once they are discovered, for the light that enters the ca the growth of organisms that consume the ‘Sith, and somewhat paradoxiegly, archiy there is too much to collect, and archivi task of deciding what to save, what to discard, Since World War I, this problem has become acute. The huge influx of material into small archives with overworked staffs has meant that files cannot be cataloged and prepared for use quickly enough and become, in effec, inaccessible. By the 1960s this situation throughout the West had reached the crisis, proportions deseribed by Alvin Toffier in his Future Shock: the point when information is accurnulating at so dizzying a pace that we are at risk of los ing our social memory, Solutions are being sought by technical means (compact disks, microfilm) and by editing processes (saunpling, selective rofilms can serve as 2 durable substitute for paper that is va the effects of humidity or light. Microfilm has another ad\ can fail scholars berause come overwhelmed by Jac hhas also been used to create 4 kind of shadow archive, a ‘copy of documents whith might be in danger of loss or destruc- ‘Another solution is to create storage centers for documents that have lost their official use but cannot yet be properly archived. Such Record enters have existed since 1441 in England and the United States. In this stem, a document produced by a government agdncy is sent to the Record Center once it has lostits direct, short-term official use. In this in- termediate Record Center the documents retain the cataloging system ‘used by the originating instinution. They can easily be consulted both by the officials of the administration whence they came and by researchers. At this stage, the archivists of the Record Center work with specialists from the historieal archive to select those documents for wansfer to the historical archive and to decide on the final cataloging system, At the end40 The Source of the process, which may require as much as thirty years to complete, the documents are transferred fom the Record Genter to the historical archive. In the meantime, however, they have been available to historians and other scholars, ‘ot only disappear; they aso appear or come into existence, of knowledge and expertise shift constantly, whether be- ‘Veniris's decoding of the Linear B alphabet: Greck history before Homer newly compreh - selves sometimes create sources, when, for example, they conduct inter- views with people who lived though the events being studied. ‘Many aspects about the past will, of course, never be known 10 us or to any historians because the questions we or our successors might ask are so different from those that might have occurred to the people we are stady- fing. In the cleventh century, rulers did mot take censuses hecause the size of the population they ruled was neither their concer nor a problem, ‘And people were extraot vague about such matters. In 1373, for sates of population size fur the ‘West, we have to rely on sources prod {or this purpose (but they can be very h parish records of births and deaths were aot re quired in Christian Europe until the sixteenth century (the French were obliged, as of 1539, to keep such records; for the rest of the Catholic ‘ook an ordinance from the Council of Trent, in 1563). Civil records of this kinc-were not kept until after the French Revolution, Even when an archive exists, itis not always available ta scholars. Private sd and can be consulted only with the permis- lic archives are often restricted. According to mutwally agreed upon international conventions, access to documents thinyy years old can be denied; in practice the limit is often closer ‘owners donate a collection to a hey typically require that access ty years, usually because they da ‘come with public use of their doc- to fifty or a hundred years, When pr public archive (such as a state archi to those papers be closed for thiny not want the embarrassment that co | ‘Storing and Delivering Information a uments. The Vatican archive (Archivio Segreto Vaticano) was made par- tially available to the public only in 1881, and there are stil parts of it that are closed. Tt was only in 1987 that the United Nation’ people involved in war crimes during World War Travailable to the public. Oceasionslly, exceptions are made, as in the Watergate crisis in 1973-74 when a portion of the infamot the courts (additional parts wer ‘Historians are not, however, for primary written source 1450), scholars began to rial, With the advent of printing (ca. sh sources so that they could be consulted by aunerous individuals, in many places, This method of dissemination hs obvious advantages, butitsralve depends entirely upon the quality of the etliting proces, and scholars have over the years developed strict pro- tocols to guide editors and aes chat th sources re reliably transmitted (Gee chapier 2 for further discussion ofthese processes) ‘The earliest published sources were, by and lange, erica! editions of Important philosophical and celgious texts (the New Testament, for ex- ample). A few were intended as supporting evidence for historical argue rents, offered to satisty skeptics typically, these were excerpas from orgi- nal tex or summaries of them. Jt was only in the seventeenth century that entire volumes devo lished, and these wer Maurists were the take on such projects. The 13 with their renowmed Acta somctorum, critical editions of saints’ lives (hagiegraphies) from Christian Europe. The Mauists published the ‘e order, One oftheir number, Dom Jean Ma- techniques (Deve diplo- matters of paleogra;'; larly stady of pphasizing as well the need to consult che originals as well as the edited ver- sion ofa document, Itis no surprise that the eighteenth century—the age of eniightenment—saw an outpouring of critical editions of secular texts ‘Thomas Rymer's edition of papers regarding England's relations with Eu- rope (Foedera, 20 vols, 1704-1836) isa fine example of this age's work. ‘The nineteenth century is, however, the golden age of text editing and source publication, a lowering that had its roots in both romanticism and positivism. The romantic influence is evident in the fact that most edi- tions were founded as national projects, efforts to record and celebrate the national history. The Mionsunenta Germaniae Historica was the creation Of the Society for the Study of German History (Gesellschaft fir aleere Deutsche Geschichtskunde), which was founded in 1819, during the eu-ae The Source phoria that followed che end of French occupation; the volnmes contain Important (Latin) sourees for German history. The Recueil es Historens de {2 Fronce although first begun in 1738, was reedited and republished in 1899 asa celebration ofthe French state; Hke the Monumtmia, the Recueil collection of Latin tex from the French past. Elzewhers, such publ ions had a somerhat less natonalis impulse, there more often being ihe products of learned societies such as England's Camden Society or its Selden Sociesy. ‘Whatever their roots in romanticism’s nationalistic impulses, all these sulons are positivist in method in that they rigorously limit hemscles the “provable fact” and seek, in the famous words of Ranke, to story "as i accully occurred” (“wie es eigendich geweren ‘owe to positivism as well the high editorial standards employ poration of learning and technical skills borrowed frora philology, cla sies, and Germanic studies. Although these published collections have long served and will long continue to serve scholars, itis clear that we will never be able to edit and publish “all” the known historical sourees, and in recent years scholars hhave begun to explore new ways of getting archival sources into the pub- irofilms have been made of serial data like fiscal accounts indexes of archival holdings have been printed and pub- = been reproduced electronically 20 thet they can be srched and indexed by means of sophisticated software programs, a procedure which allows unparalleled scrutiny of a text's shetorical and Tingrisie f: 1 thus promises to open entirely new avenues of re search and anal CHAPTER TWO Technical Analysis of Sonerces historical argument, De settled. must be (or must be made} comprehensible at the most language, handwriting, and vocabulary. Is the language of vocabulary highly technical, its handwriting or typeface unfamili asl, these ismes are more important for some documents than for others, and always more problematic when the soure? is very old or has originated in another culture, but they are never I 1 order for a source to be used as eviden« absent. A scholar using li be as attentive to these matéers as must any medievalist working with handvritten parchments. Second, the source must be carefully located in place and time: when ‘yas ic composed, where, in what country or ci it individual? Are these apparent “facts” of composition correc’ — the place indicated wit the document does not itself provide such evidence—or if there is any rea- son to doubt :he ostensible evidence—is there internal evidence that can be used to determine a probable date, or a time period within which the % it what it pur- ports to be, letus say un agreement for the transfer of land from a secular 8