Sources of History – serie

This book is meant to be useful and readable. It assumes some experience in ordinary historical techniques, but no expert knowledge. In discussing the various kinds of source material for early Irish history, the problems each kind raises and the sort of questions it will answer, the author discusses many of the major historical issues. Her book is therefore not so much a bibliographical guide as a work of historical analysis and discussion. It deals with the main sources of Irish history between c. 400 and c. 1170, and has nine chapters: on archaeology (with appendices on aerial photography and coins), the secular laws, ecclesiastical legislation, the annals (with an appendix on the genealogies), secular literature, ecclesiastical learning, hagiography, art and architecture, eleventh- and twelfth-century histories and compilations. A bibliography and index complete the book.

The Tudor revival of government and administration in Ireland dramatically increased the quantity of written sources concerning Ireland. This book attempts to survey this documentary material. It analyses of the written sources for early modern Irish history for the period 1534-1641. It discusses the different types of sources available and also provides descriptions of transcripts, copies and summaries of manuscript material which has been destroyed. This is very valuable, because much of the original documentation for this period was destroyed when the Public Record Office in Dublin was burnt, at the beginning of the civil war in 1922. The final chapter in the book includes an assessment of the historiography of early modern Irish history. In the light of the need for historians to understand the administrative machinery which produced the documents they use, the book also includes an account of the civil and ecclesiastical administration of early modern Ireland.

English local and regional history has attracted widespread attention in the last twenty-five to thirty years. Its study has expanded at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in universities, polytechnics, and at other institutions of higher education, and it has long retained its popularity as a subject for adult education classes. In schools the teaching of local history in its own right, and as an ingredient of general history, environmental studies, and local and social studies, is well established, and commonly involves the use of original sources. The expansion of genealogical studies into the wider area of family history has involved many individuals and groups in the investigation of the local conditions, which existed where former generations lived and, in this pursuit, increasing use of local records has been made. Many who seek to involve themselves in this work, however, find that they are ill-equipped in the knowledge of what sources exist, where they are to be found, or what techniques are suitable in making the best use of them.

If a scholar wishes to create a picture of a topical society in all its aspects, there is little of what he needs to know that he cannot know, although there may still be much that he cannot understand. For the history of Greece and Rome, there is a great deal that is simply unknowable. From the end of the archaic age of Greece, there is an unbroken sequence of works by Greek and, later, Roman historians down to the end of antiquity. Their vision and range of interest were often limited and much of what they produced has been lost. Some help may be derived from the documentary material supplied in antiquity, material that was the product of officials organising public activities, or heads of families organising their affairs, or individuals leaving their mark on the world. Beyond this, the evidence of archaeology and numismatics may also be helpful. The four essays in this book set out to characterise the nature of the ancient literary tradition, the inscriptional material, the archaeological and numismatic evidence and to explain how and for what purposes they may be used.

In the year 1200, the English Government initiated regular series of record-archives; in 1640, the fall of Charles I's personal government led to the abolition of several central offices and their archives. These events, which both profoundly altered the state of the evidence for the historian, therefore set the limits of this book. For though those 450 years must be studied from a great variety of sources, to the historian they constitute above all the period for which he depends overwhelmingly on official records of all kinds. The core of this book, therefore, is an analysis and description of such materials - their origin, present state and usefulness. However, other materials are not ignored, from the chronicles which provide the main outline of the history that can be known, through the records of the law, private letters (almost non-existent before 1450, suddenly plentiful after 1550) and estate documents, to less familiar historical sources like books, buildings and landscape, and the contribution of the archaeologist.

Contemporary history poses its own particular and very difficult problems. On one hand, the materials are usually available in overwhelming quantity; on the other, a great many things that historians of earlier periods familiarly rely on remain secret for those concerned with very recent times. The actors in the story sometimes remain accessible, but while this has its advantages it also poses unusual problems of assessment and evaluation. Above all, the historian lacks the perspective, knowledge and preliminary sorting bestowed by the passage of time. In this book, a notable practitioner in this difficult field sets out to describe the types of sources available for the history of Great Britain since about the beginning of the First World War, and analyses the advantages and the difficulties involved in their use. For this period the student has to rely in particular on vast masses of official paper, the recollections of participants (in written or spoken form), and the accounts of contemporaries (especially in newspapers). None of these materials, nor the lesser sources of evidence, can be effectively used without instruction of which far too little is at present available. Professor Mowat brings his range of experience to bear on the problem providing it.

The modern diplomatic system, originating in Italy, spread rapidly over the rest of Europe around 1500. For 'history' this had a two-fold result: an enormous amount of historical documentation produced by the new diplomatic machinery, and a vastly important new area for historical study - the relations of modern states with each other. Two large, overlapping bodies of historical materials are thus the subject of this volume: documents of diplomatic origin, which might be about anything and in fact are important sources for political, economic and other kinds of history besides diplomatic; and the sources essential for writing diplomatic history, which include types that are neither manuscript in form nor even documentary in nature.

Probably no period in the history of any country has been studied so thoroughly as the United States from the early national period to the end of the nineteenth century. Amidst the vast number of books and articles it is easy to lose sight of the source material on which they depend. This book examines the nature of the principal sources, the kind of information they yield and the limitations to their use. It is not a guide to specialised research, but a survey of the raw materials from which all history must be made. Nor is it a book about the philosophy or methodology of history; but from it emerges a very positive statement about the way in which history ought to be studied and written.

The purpose of this book is to put before the student of politics and the general reader an overall conspectus of the sources from which political ideas took their origin. The author, who is an acknowledged international authority on the subject and who over many years of intensive research has acquired an intimate familiarity with the material, makes his specialised knowledge available to the non-specialist. The book traverses ground that is virtually uncultivated, and it does so in an exciting way - by taking the reader into the chanceries of governments, of public organs and functionaries, and into the lecture halls of the great scholars in the universities. It shows upon what presuppositions publicists, litterateurs, government advisers, scholars and learned writers have proceeded to arrive at their political views. This variegated mass of material is here comprehensively presented.