Historians in the kitchen
I had trouble deciding this week’s issue. I could write about genocide, Palestine and the banality of evil. But in the special issue of LARRUN I could not add anything better than what has already been said. He could also write about the historiographical debate that has taken place in Navarre about Carlism, but Hedoi Etxarte went ahead in Berria. Faced with the massacres, we should not be drunk, but I will not have a liver to write with this raw material. I have decided at the moment to address more innocent and innocent issues: in this case, sources and historical-scientific methodology.
Sources for historians are essential because they bring us closer to the past. They can be of various kinds. The most common and used are public and private documents (political, economic, legal, letters, censuses…), newspaper publications (newspapers, magazines), personal memories and journals, literary sources and so on. Iconographic and audiovisual sources include the plastic arts (painting, sculpture, posters, propaganda, …), music, cinema, videos of all kinds, cartography or photographs. Archaeology, on the contrary, deals with material sources, analyzing buildings, objects or landscape in its context. Oral sources collected through interviews are also important.
Well, all those historical sources are our components. But of course, we cannot use these sources raw. We can't believe this information at all, that's where the culinary ability of the historian lies. First, we have to define and define what our object of research is and ask questions and hypotheses about it. We then look for and select the most appropriate sources to answer these questions or hypotheses (if possible, conform to what is otherwise). Next, and this is the key, we must critically analyse the credibility of the sources. Can we guarantee that the sources are original and from that time? What is the issuer? What is the recipient? Why does this source arise? We must not forget that the sources are not neutral and objective, but that behind them there can be political and social interests depending on their social and cultural context. Once the data is extracted from the sources, all this information must be contrasted, that is, whether it is compatible or contradictory to what other sources say. Finally, we use and serve the prepared. That is, it must be written according to the data obtained, because history ultimately adopts a narrative form. The text should reflect our ideas and arguments and, according to the information obtained, respond to initial questions and provide an interpretation of historical facts.
In short, choose the sources, rigorously judge their content and context, contrast the data obtained and finally publish them. That is the historical-scientific method, which is our recipe.
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