Table Of ContentThe
Historian s
’
Toolbox
Robert C. Williams is Vail Professor of History and Dean of Faculty Emeritus
at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. He is the author of numerous
books and articles in modern Russian, American, and European history, and
a founding board member of History Associates Incorporated. He previously
taught at Williams College, Bates College, and Washington University in
St. Louis. He currently lives in retirement in Center Lovell, Maine, where he
persists in doing history.
The
Historian s
’
Toolbox
A Student’s Guide to the
Theory and Craft of History
THIRD EDITION
ROBERT C. WILLIAMS
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2012 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2012, Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, Robert Chadwell, 1938–
The historian’s toolbox : a student’s guide to the theory and craft of history /
by Robert C. Williams. — 3rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7656-3326-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-7656-3327-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. History—Methodology. 2. History—Research. I. Title.
D16.W62 2011
907.2—dc23
2011023507
No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN 13: 9780765633262 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765633279 (pbk)
History as a Discussion Without End
You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you,
and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too
heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In
fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got
there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the
steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide
that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in
your oar. Someone answers you; you answer her; another comes
to your defense; another aligns herself against you, to either the
embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon
the quality of your ally’s assistance. However the discussion is
interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do
depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
—Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form
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Contents
Illustrations and Tables xi
History as Fun xiii
Part I. The Craft of History
1. The Past 3
2. Story 7
3. History 11
4. Metahistory 20
5. Antihistory 27
6. The Present 33
7. The Future 39
Part II. The Tools of History
8. Doing History: An Overview 47
8.1 Choosing a Good Paper Topic 47
8.2 Reading History 48
8.3 Taking Notes 51
8.4 How to Write a Good History Paper 52
9. Sources and Evidence 56
9.1 Primary and Secondary Sources 56
Primary Source: The Wannsee Protocol (1942) 57
Secondary Source: Denying History: Who Says the
Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (2000) 57
Summary 59
vii
viii
9.2 Documents 59
A Revolutionary War Ancestor’s Pension Application
(1832) 59
9.3 Maps 61
Sebastian Munster’s Map of the Americas, c. 1540 61
9.4 Artifacts 64
Digging Ancient Moscow 64
9.5 Images 66
Sharpshooter’s Home or Photographer’s Studio? 67
9.6 Cliometrics: Using Statistics to Prove a Point 70
The Black Population of Colonial America 70
9.7 Genetic Evidence 72
Welsh and Basques, Relatively Speaking 73
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings—What’s My Line? 74
10. Credit and Acknowledgment 79
10.1 Notes 79
10.2 Bibliography 81
Styling Your Bibliography 81
Types of Bibliographies 82
A Selective, Annotated Bibliography 82
10.3 Acknowledging Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism 83
10.4 Professional Plagiarism: How Not to Do History 86
11. Narrative and Explanation 91
11.1 The Language of the Historian 91
Paul Revere and the New England Village 92
11.2 Chronology 95
The Life of Margaret Fuller 97
11.3 Narrative 100
Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg 100
11.4 Argument 104
“‘Little Women’ Who Helped Make This Great War” 105
11.5 Causation 106
11.6 The Reasons Why 108
Explaining the Mann Gulch Fire of August 5, 1949 109
ix
12. Interpretation 112
12.1 Reviewing History 112
Bellesiles’s Arming America 113
12.2 Historical Revision 116
The Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy (1822) 116
12.3 Historiography 119
World War II 120
12.4 Women’s History: The Leo Frank Case 124
13. Speculation 128
13.1 Historical Speculation 128
Will the Real Martin Guerre Please Get an Identity? 128
13.2 History as Fiction 130
The Soldier Who Never Was 131
13.3 Conspiracies 133
Who Really Really Killed Lincoln? 133
13.4 Forgeries and Facsimiles 136
Is a Document Genuine? 136
Is a Collection of Documents Authentic? 138
How Can Forgeries Influence History? 138
Is a Newly Discovered Collection by a Well-Known
Author Authentic? 139
If It Is a Forgery, Who Is the Forger? 139
13.5 Fiction as History 141
13.6 Film as History: Fact or Fiction? 143
Films Can Help the Historian Understand the Past 144
Films Can Hinder Our Understanding of the Historical Past 145
Part III. The Relevance of History
14. Everyday History 151
14.1 Studying Ordinary People 151
The Burgermeister’s Daughter 151
14.2 Everyone’s a Historian 153
15. Oral History 156
15.1 The Perils of Memory 156
