THE SKILLS OF THE HISTORIAN
In your study of history, you will acquire a great deal of knowledge about the past. But history has much
more than this to offer. Your study of history also offers you opportunities to acquire certain skills. Modern
history syllabi now identify at least four groups of skills which students of history should develop:
• INVESTIGATING and RESEARCHING SKILLS - skills which help you find relevant information.
• PROCESSING AND RECORDING SKILLS - skills which help you to select and record information in a
useful way.
• EVALUATION SKILLS - skills which enable you to judge the worth of the information you find.
• COMMUNICATION SKILLS - skills which enable you to speak and write clearly about what you have
found and what judgements you have made.
In order to encourage the learning of these various skills, history teachers now use a great variety of new
devices and internal assessment tasks. No longer is the "history essay" the sole means of teaching skills. No
longer is the history exam made up entirely of essay-type questions. The following are just some of the new
tasks which students may be required to complete, tasks which require special skills:
- research essays, in which students have to work more independently on a special topic, often a topic of
their own choosing;
- documents exercises, in which students have to analyse the meaning and evaluate the worth of various
types of documentary evidence, ranging from memoirs to propaganda posters;
- empathy exercises, in which students have to use their imaginations to write about their experience of a
past situation;
- lecturettes;
- debates;
- dramatic re-enactments.
This chapter looks at the various skills you will need if you are to get the most out of these new tasks.
A. INVESTIGATING and RESEARCHING SKILLS
The skills of information gathering are, of course, absolutely vital for an efficient researcher. This year you
may well be asked to complete a research essay as part of your internal or school-based assessment. Here is
the place to begin.
For the purpose of this chapter let us imagine that you have selected this as a research essay:
Why did the German government seek an armistice during October-November 1918?
Let us assume that you have chosen this topic because you are very interested in it, and, therefore, that you
have done a little preliminary reading (such as chapter one of this book). Your next task is to assemble a
bibliography (a list of relevant sources). Naturally you will approach a library to begin your work.
Remember that in many towns and cities there will be other libraries which will supplement what you can
find in your school library: suburban libraries, central public libraries, university libraries. It is well worth
visiting a larger library. If you live in a smaller town, remember that even small libraries have an InterLibrary Loan system through which you can order books from the bigger libraries.
Now, what skills will you need to employ in order to assemble a good bibliography? Let us consider each
skill in turn.
The ability to ...
a) USE A LIBRARY CARD CATALOGUE
Although some large libraries are now installing computer-based on-line catalogues, most libraries will
continue to rely upon card catalogues for some time. These catalogues are of two kinds:
• subject catalogue;
• author-title catalogue.
Remember that when beginning research upon any subject it is a good idea to move from the most general
works to the most specific. The subject catalogue is, therefore, the best place to start, as you will be able to
choose general headings first.
For example, with the topic above in mind, you might begin in this way:
• find the drawers marked "Germany" in the subject catalogue;
• find the section marked "Germany-History";
• find the section marked "Germany-History-20th Century";
• find the next division, probably marked "1914-1918".
Note how the system uses general headings and then sub-headings which become more and more specific.
Now you have access to a range of books, both general and specific, possibly containing relevant
information for your essay.
Remember that general works will often provide a good starting point as such books are likely to contain a
chapter or even part of a chapter relevant to your topic. These "overviews" are easier to understand early in
your research. A card for such a general book might look like this:
Germany-History-20th Century
DD 232
C 312
H
Carr, William 1921A History of Germany, 1815-1945. [London]
Arnold [1969]
462 p. maps
b) DISTINGUISH PRIMARY SOURCES FROM SECONDARY SOURCES
Historians generally identify two types of evidence. Primary sources are any sources originating within the
period that the historian is studying. There is a vast array of different types of primary sources ranging from
physical remains such as buildings or cemetery headstones, to printed sources, such as conference
proceedings or memoirs, to written sources, such as diaries and letters, or to pictorial records, such as
paintings, photographs or films. Secondary sources are the products of historians who have worked over the
period. They are "second" in line, as they are themselves dependent on the primary sources.
In practice, dependent as most of you will be on libraries for your research, the possibilities for the use of
primary sources are limited. Your primary sources are most likely to consist of:
• collections of original documents (assembled by historians);
• memoirs written by participants;
• published diaries or letters;
• collections of original photographs and posters.
You will need to be able to recognise these and distinguish them from straightforward secondary studies.
Here are some things to watch for:
• if the author is identified as an "editor", this means the book may contain material assembled by rather
than written by the author - often, a collection of documents:
Sutton, Eric, editor, Gustav Stresemann: His Diaries, Letters and Papers
Mayer, Henry Cord, editor, Germany: From Empire to Ruin
Lutz, R.H., editor, The Fall of the German Empire
• the publication date - and watch especially for "first published" date which will show you the period in
which a book first appeared:
Kessler, Harry, Germany and Europe (Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971, first published 1923).
• whimsical or introspective titles, which often indicate a memoir (i.e., not all memoirs list the word
"memoir" in their titles):
Wolff, Theodore, Through Two Decades
These primary sources need to be distinguished from books which, judging from their titles and publication
dates, are obviously secondary in origin, such as:
Carsten, F.L., War Against War: British and German Radical Movements in the First World War (Batsford:
London, 1982)
Flenley, R., Modern German History (Dent: London, 1959)
c) DISTINGUISH GENERAL FROM SPECIFIC STUDIES
It is very important in your research not to start with too detailed a study of the period first. You will be
overwhelmed by the details. Like a pilot trying to find his or her position in the landscape, you will need to
descend slowly, sighting the big landmarks first before descending to the tree-tops. So, you will need to
begin with the most general surveys which offer an overview of your topic within a few pages. Only then
will you be able to make sense of detailed studies. To do this, you will need to sort the books you are listing
into an order, from the most general to the most specific. Titles provide guidance here.
Books with big, broad titles, offering a sweep of German history over a century or more, most probably
contain a chapter or just a few pages on the coming of the armistice in 1918, such as:
W. Carr, A History of Germany 1815-1945
G. Mann, A History of Germany since 1879
E.J. Passant, A Short History of Germany
V.R. Berghahn, Modern Germany
Books focussing upon the war years, 1914-1918, will most probably contain a chapter on the coming of the
armistice:
M. Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship: the Politics of the German High Command
J. Kocka, Facing Total War: German Society 1914-1918
D. Welch, German Society and the Impact of Total War 1914-1918
F. Carsten, War Against War: British and German Radical Movements in the First World War
Books about 1918 or the armistice itself will probably contain more than one chapter and still more detail on
the coming of the armistice:
J. Toland, No Man's Land: the Story of 1918
S. Weintraub, A Stillness Heard Around the World: The End of the Great War, November 1918
Books by or about important personalities caught up in the armistice negotiations will offer even more detail
on this subject:
K. Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy
Prince Max of Baden, The Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden
d) USE AN ENCYCLOPOEDIA
Another excellent method for gaining an overview of the topic before sinking oneself into detailed research
is to examine encyclopaedia entries. Remember that most encyclopaedia include an index volume. On this
topic, the coming of the armistice, you could try a number of key-words in the index in pursuit of an
overview: "First World War", "Germany-History", "Armistice", "Prince Max of Baden", "Matthias
Erzberger", "Ludendorff", "Hindenburg".
e) USE A BIBLIOGRAPHY IN A BOOK
Another way of finding relevant books quickly is to consult a bibliography listed at the back of a book.
General surveys of German history, for example, will normally provide lists of books for further reading,
and these are normally grouped by subject. There are excellent bibliographies, for example, included at the
back of the following general histories:
V.R. Berghahn, Modern Germany
W. Carr, A History of Germany
G. Craig, Germany 1866-1945
f) USE A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE
In the reference sections of most libraries you will also find many useful research aids. Here you will find
various handbooks, chronologies, and special books devoted to bibliographies. Here are some examples:
P.D. Stachura, The Weimar Era and Hitler 1918-1933: A Critical Bibliography
H. Kehr and J. Langmaid, The Nazi Era 1919-1945: A Select Bibliography
J. Taylor and W. Shaw, A Dictionary of the Third Reich
These books also contain list of sources grouped by special subject.
g) FIND A JOURNAL ARTICLE
In these various bibliographies you will often find special "articles" on more detailed subjects, articles which
have appeared in "journals". A journal is a kind of scholarly "magazine", published two or three times per
year, in which historians present relatively short accounts of their latest findings. You will find these listed
in bibliographies like this:
J.A. Huston, 'The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1918-1919', Journal of Central European Affairs, Vol. 10,
No. 2 (1950), pp. 145-166.
Note the entry gives the author, the title of the article, the name of the journal in which it appeared, and the
volume, part number and page numbers. Often the year of publication is given too. Because such journal
articles often contain detailed research findings, they will often provide stimulating "extras" for your own
research. But, it is important not to attempt to read these too early in your research or you will risk being
smothered by detail.
Some of the most useful journals in which articles upon German history appear are:
Teaching History
The Historical Journal
German History
Journal of Contemporary History
Journal of Modern History
Central European History
Teaching History
History Today
European Studies Review
Most larger libraries and university libraries keep runs of these journals in the "serials" section of the library.
You may find relevant articles simply by skimming through the indexes of these journals which generally
appear every two years or at the end of each volume.