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Remembered Today:

Primary v Secondary Sources


PhilB

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I wonder if the term primary source was invented by the father of modern history von Ranke -he was really the first to emphasise the use of primary sources

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Tony,

Arithmetic as well as History,that is a fine meet. :D

The primary is 1,and the secondary is 2.Unless someone has invented a better and more logical counting system,that can be applied to History.

George

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I agree, in particular with the points PGL has made concerning the "original" nature of the source as being one of the indicia of whether a source is primary or secondary. In many instances the difference between the two will be obvious: there is an original document (primary) and a text book which makes reference to that document and interprets it or discusses it or draws conclusions from it.

I think some confusion has arise here because some forum members are confusing "originality" with inherent reliability or accuracy or weight. The nature of a source as secondary or primary has nothing to do with its reliability. Neither eyewitness accounts nor summaries of actions prepared shortly after a battle are necessarily reliable or unreliable, but they are original documents and constitute primary sources. A handwritten letter prepared five years after the war describing an event will still be a primary source. Whether it is deserving of any weight as to accuracy or reliability is an wholly separate issue. To use another example, the Malins film is a primary source. Whether it depicts "true" events (i believe the consensus is that many, but not all scenes were staged) is irrelevant. Whether or not, as a primary source of what was filmed that day/days, it is an accurate depiction of men in action is obviously another more significant question. That is where the important part of the analysis kicks in: is the film reliable, are there staged events?, are there sequences which are inaccurately portrayed? etc..

Clearly there will be some flexibility in the two definitions but here is the point. Consider the exercise we all go through when we read a bare assertion that something is true. Using an example just plucked from the air, oh, i don't know, let's say we read a text that says there were women snipers at Gallipoli (don't know where i got that one from), in our minds we immediately ask, what is the basis for that conclusion? where are the diaries or battalion reports or photos etc.. which form the basis for that conclusion? Then, once or if we are guided to those diaries or reports, the documents prepared or photos taken at that time, for example, we then read those items to see if they are reliable or worthy of consideration in support of the assertion made by the text.

Another good example is the story of the general who is driven along a rode to the front and breaks down in tears at the sight of the battlefield only to be told by the driver that it gets worse up ahead. (i am summarizing) This is a story repeated in several texts and apparently traced to Liddel-Hart who in his footnote only refers to private documents in his possession as the source. (something along those lines) The secondary source is the text, the primary source is the original account---which apparently has never been produced...

anyway, enough from me. i am enjoying this discussion and have found all posts really interesting and informative,

peter

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I would always caution against using a secondary source to make the point made by the primary source. Does that make sense? If the secondary source author uses a primary source to make a point or conclusion of his own, then use that secondary to cover that authors point. But if secondary only wishes to show the point of the primary then always check the primary source. Failure to do so can open you up to poor research and wrong conclusions.

As an instance in the recent Harris biography on Haig he cites three Corps commanders as going home due to poor (or not) performance at Cambrai. If I use Harris as a source to show they did in a work I am doing then I am showing bad research. If I check his source I can see he has used Becke's order of divisions (a poor source for the conclusion he makes IMO) on this 'discovery' and given my previous knowledge anyway I dismiss his conclusion and hence the value of that secondary source. if I do not know 'my previous knowledge' and I take it as read I am perpetuating the false conclusion for others to do like wise.

I am almost certain that has made no sense what so ever! But I am happy I understand me. Welcome to Arm's world.

Regards

Arm

Ps. Of course just because a primary source is just that does not make it right, just right as he/she saw it. I always try to cross source information to get a second opinion if you like before i draw a conclusion where possible- this is often very difficult.

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I would suggest a third category - pre-primary source - one which was produced before the event which it describes and is therefore free from post-event bias.

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Tom,

What about orders of battle?

Some of them turned out to be figments of imagination :D

George

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What about orders of battle?

Exactly. Perhaps "describes" was inapt - maybe "appertains to"? The items prepared before events like battles are among the most reliable of sources, I would have thought. In fact, it`s difficult to think how a "pre-primary source" could be as potentially misleading as post-event sources, be they primary or secondary?

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This same misconception that primary somehow implies a degree of reliability. It is simply an indication that the report is made by a witness. As I have already said, it could be of extreme accuracy and telling it exactly like it was. On the other hand, it could be totally biased or even deliberately misleading. If the person making the report was there and it describes events of which he had first hand knowledge, it is a primary source. An OOB would be a primary source since it is a prescriptive document. As George says, it could be wrong. A description of a battle by someone who was not a participant and relied on the OOB for the forces on the field would be a secondary source and would be as accurate as his primary sources.

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A document like an OOB is likely though to be an honest forecast of troops engaged. It may turn out to be incorrect due to the exigencies of war but at least it`s likely to be free of biassed writing. Much more likely than a post event primary or secondary source. As I said, I think we all understand what primary and secondary sources, by definition, are.

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I agree an OOB is a primary document.It lays out troops involved,objectives,timings,etc.

When things went awry,during the battle,first hand accounts,of the effects would also be primary documents,for factual information but any personal comments giving reasons e.g. bad planning,the inadequacies of supporting artillery,troops,breakdown in communications,etc would be secondary.

George

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Very interesting thread. I recall in Green's book, reading about all the massive amount of trouble took by Edmonds (and team) when writing the Official History to cross check sources. The war diaries where returned to the OH section, they even sent men out to collect them up. He would write time lines to check the facts, and often wrote to the people involved to clarify what had been writen. He soon established that in quick moving events even what was in the war diary had to be double checked, because often the people involved did not write up the WD, i.e killed, captured, wounded, or in 1918 in the advance.

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One wonders how his team checked the facts of War Diaries years after the event?

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for me the value of a primary source is that its raw, its not been interpretated by an historian, a secondary source has already been written for example by an historian who may have an agenda or an axe to grind or a particular angle. in my work i use seconday, but for some new research i want it without someone else opinion on it. a war diary for exampe is writtena the tme, and no its not always relaible we know that, but a piece of work that has used it may say that the entery on a particular day is becasuse...or in my opinion....that is usefull yes, but for new research i want it without annotations, opinions ect.

matt

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But the writer of the primary source may well have a bigger axe to grind than any subsequent visiting historian.

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True, Phil, yet the visiting historian's subsequent work can only ever be his or her summation of what was read in its preparation, making it a secondary source. While accepting all that's been said about the potential for primary sources being inaccurate and/or biased, secondary sources are inevitably and inherently biased simply because they are the author's interpretation of the source data used. Readers have no way of knowing whether the historian has read widely and analysed and compared many sources or skimmed a few text books and perpetuated the errors of others. That's the danger for us all.

Keith

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When an author makes use of a primary source that has previously not been used or cited in the literature, as a matter of courtesy the next few authors making use of the same source should acknowledge the original author's discovery of the material. There is a subtle dishonesty, whether conscious or unconscious, about making use of another author's footnotes or endnotes to identify sources and then presenting the research as being one's own.

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Pete,

You bring a deeper problem into the equation.

Author-to my mind the word means two things,and probably has many more meanings :D

Someone who writes a Book is an Author,whether their Book is a work of fiction,based on fact,or set in a particular period,and their research draws from reality at the time,and advances it to modern day culture,I commend.

An Author,who writes a Book,about historical events,must source their material from primary sources,to inform,educate,etc.

Two Classic examples of the latter are the 16th Royal Scots and the Civil Service Rifles.

Both Books concentrate on the formation of the Battalions,gloss over,the reality of War,but make it very clear the comradeship that existed,among the survivors,for many years.

George

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QUOTE (Phil_B @ May 9 2009, 03:55 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
One wonders how his team checked the facts of War Diaries years after the event?

Well it depended upon the action they where writing about, and what level, 1914 was treated much differently to 1918. They certainly wrote a timeline and crossed referenced the war diaries, and wrote to the authors if there where "problems", who often owned up to the slap dash approach and that they had a war to fight!

CID office also wrote to the German OH production unit , and others . Much of the work he initially did was to index the various War Diaries, and I often think that those indexes should be published in full on the internet. I understand most of the timelines where completed by the early 30's. Andy Green goes into some detail about the process and the various drafts, and often the questions left unanswered where in the footnotes and appendices, and new information after the publication resulted in the Addendums. Isn't Principal Events just his top timeline? Many captured documents where also used

I often think that if one could digitise the OH's, timelines and WDs and then do clever searches to cross link to the war diaries it would be very illuminating, and a powerful research tool.

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The thing is that all humans use sources for their own purposes, and according to their own point of view. Malin used actual combat film as well as staged mock-ups; and passed them off as an actual sequence of events. He edited and spliced the various recordings to create a cinematic experience which would enthrall a paying cinema audience. His product was not an attempt to recapture an event in a neutral and objective way. What was it: primary or secondary?

Think of those photos of the Battle of Gettysburgh where photographers were allowed to move and pose dead soldiers to recreate their ideal of the battle. Were those staged photos primary or secondary? I've seen them in KS 4 curriculum textbooks noted as primary evidence. Blair's speech to Parliament regarding the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - primary or secondary? Does it matter? Interested people will use whatever evidence for their own purpose and the whole idea of differentiating between'primary' and 'secondary' is worthless.

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MartH: Excellent point about the difficulties of overreliance by taking at face value war diary entries and content as 'gospel.'

Geraint: Do NOT agree about the valueslessness of differentiating between primary and secondary sources. FIRST person direct eyewitness accounts even written under difficult conditions and AFTER the event are preferable in FACTUALLY establishing what happened to someone writing a generation or more after the fact. Speculation is what ALL historians must do since clearly events involving masses of people over a large area cannot possibly be supremely accurately recorded due to inter alia the sheer naturee of military operations alone. Official records with very careful vetting can be extraordinarly useful. Think of all the books written by modern authors on the war: what if NO official histories had been PUBLISHED? :blink: Detecting biases therefore is supremely important: what is UNSAID and UNDOCUMENTED can be MORE useful and realistic than what IS said or written. For example, at a recent historically slanted talk on the 1918 influenza epidemic's consequences figures of 20 million to estimates of 50 to 100 million were thrown out by a medical epidemiologist. Clearly the death rates were very significantly impacted by OTHER causes such as malnourishment (including starvation), typhoid fevers and pneumonia generally. However we typically hear and read about the worst epidemic in history practically being this 1918 epidemic. Clearly many many people especially younger fit people atypically died quick painful deaths. What happened in central and eastern Europe and influenza? Are the death tolls for influenza inadvertently conflated with the ravages of war, civil war, anarchy, societal collapse, famines, mass refugee migrations especially in this latter part of Europe during 1917 to c. 1922?

John

Toronto

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I have to agree with the points John made above. It is incredibly useful to distinguish between primary and secondary sources. I could write an account of the battle of Neuve Chapelle in October 1914 as accurately as I possibly could but it would not be an eye-witness account as I wasn't there. However, I could use eye-witness accounts (John F. Lucy, "There's a Devil in the Drum") to determine how the battle unfolded. I think I would be obliged to anyone reading such an account to highlight what information came from men like Corporal Lucy who was present during the battle and what was gleamed from 'secondhand' newspaper accounts - the origins of which are not always clear.

The terms 'primary' and 'secondary' are only convenient (but defined) labels for describing a source and whether it is a recollection of the author or an interpretation by the author of someone else's (possibly unattributed as is so often the case with newspaper accounts of the time) material.

The terms are not exclusively the province of history and are rigidly defined in the scientific field. Primary sources, even in science, are not always trusted which is why experiments are re-created and re-evaluated by other researchers - eg the 'cold fusion in a test-tube' case of a couple of decades ago.

History can be far more subjective than science but, IMHO, the definitions are clearly defined. A primary source may be biased, inaccurate, etc but it is still a primary source if it was a firsthand/eye-witness account. To redefine terms such as 'primary' and 'secondary', or to leave their definition open, is to bring doubt and even chaos. Should readers now look at the list of primary sources at the back of a book and think "Wow, this is widely researched! But what does this particular author mean by a primary source? Is it the same definition as mine?". No, let's not go down that road. It would be perfectly acceptable however to ask "Do I agree with the author's interpretaion of his sources?".

"Pre-primary" sources? No. OOBs and plans are primary sources of an intention. However they do not reflect the actuality of the battle and other primary sources - anecdotes, war diaries, after action reports - must be used for that. That is where context comes in. Using plans to analyze how a battle was intended to be fought is fine. Using them to describe how a battle was fought is wrong. That distinction is not whether the source is primary or not - it is a question of analysis, interpretation and context.

Pete1052 raises an important point about sources and endnotes. I would tend to go further than "subtle dishonesty" and claim such acts as plagarism.

As a small, and hopefully slightly humourous, example (which I hope the mods will fogive in order to illustrate a point) here is an account of the Battle of Waterloo:

'I got him to admit he was present at the battle. After two or three more (pints of ale) he got more loquacious and commenced, "Aye, I reckon I wur theer an' it wur a pretty big do. You see it 'appened this way, a danged big Frenchman cum i'front ov me, and I macks a pass at 'im and then he macks a pass at me." With that he paused. "What happened next?" I asked. "You'd a know wot 'appened next if you'd got as big a chump at side ov t'yed as I got." And so ended the only true account of the Battle of Waterloo.' (emphasis added)

Taken from Philip J. Hawthornwaite's "Napoleonic Sourcebook" (p. 199), Guild Publishing, 1990 and attributed to Walter Gibbons in "The Return", Blackpool, V no.143, 6 December 1918, p.7

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I think the bottom line here is that every source, be it primary or secondary--however one wishes to define either--must be approached with a healthy skepticism, with due consideration given to its weight, credibility and reliability. And while every author may bring to a work his or her own biases, predelictions, ideology etc.. that does not mean we discount the work holus-bolus. I can only speak for myself, but with any book I read I will consider not only the conclusions of the author but the material/sources upon which the conclusions are based and the type of analysis which lead to those conclusions. Absolute Truth is elusive, the best one might hope for is a reasonable interpretation of data that leads to a conclusion that might reasonably be true.

cheers,

peter

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I agree wholeheartedly Peter! "Healthy skepticism" by the bucket-full for both primary and secondary. The fact that one sees a battle and fought in it gives that witness a very narrow field of vision, and such eye- witness accounts can only be used in a superficially narrative way in a general account of that battle. The very fog of war deceives the actual participants.

Is a soldier's account of a particular battle worth anything in historical terms if it's written 30 years after the event? I wouldn't call it primary evidence even though he was there. Is an Adjutant's account, at battalion HQ, drawing in the verbal accounts of his company comanders and senior NCOs of a battle; two days later of value? He didn't participate, but I would say his secondary evidence viz the battalion diary or journal to be of far greater value than the individual officers' accounts alone.

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Unlike PGL, I am quite happy to be known as a pedantic PITA. I agree wholeheartedly that we must treat all our sources with a degree of objectivity and weigh what is said against what other sources say and what we already know. A healthy scepticism is a good thing, although drawing the line between healthy and unwarranted might prove difficult. All that said, I must say that I am dismayed at the humpty dumpty attitude which arrogates to the individual the right to define or re-define words to suit what that individual thinks they ought to mean. An eyewitness account, recorded by the eyewitness is a primary source. No ifs, no buts. You may not trust it but that does not alter the fact.

Edited to correct a fatuous error. Sorry, Phil.

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