#Silence in the Sources: History at the Margins

Last week, some of my fellow Panel members wrote about the various tools of critical analysis we can employ when working with primary source material. But what do we do when the sources themselves are not just problem but scarcely seem to exist at all? How do we write the history of those who were not in a position, for whatever reason, to leave behind a meaningful, direct footprint in the historical record? How do we learn to read between the lines in the historical record and draw conclusions that are not immediately obvious in the source material? Though it might seem surprising, a great deal of historical research actually depends on drawing conclusions that are not immediately obvious from the source material; rarely do we find a primary source that contains the answers we're looking for spelt out as clear as day.

In this discussion, I will try to offer some insights into how we can draw informed conclusions about subjects that are not immediately apparent from primary source material; about how we can add extra depth to our critical analysis of the historical record and draw insights into the past where there seems to be little room for manoeuvre. For the purpose of this discussion, we are going to focus on my own broad speciality and discuss the problem of silence in the sources from this angle: studying the experience of marginalised people in history. To do that we're going to work with a very simple and flexible concept of what 'marginalised' means: people who are socially excluded so that they cannot participate fully and equitably in wider society.

Depending on your research interests, this could mean women, it could mean ethnic minorities, religious minorities, slaves, serfs, the disabled, the working class and so on and so forth. This write-up will (hopefully) give you a better understanding of how we find and engage with the kind of primary sources that enable us to write the history of these kinds of groups. Whilst the history of marginalised people may not be within your own research interest, the methodological tools I will outline can just as easily be applied to other fields of inquiry where sources are similarly problematic or hard to come by.

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Part 1: Finding Sources on Marginality

So, you know you want to write about marginalised people, and you know that you need primary source material to do that. The question that arises, then, is how do you find those sources? How do you find traces of the past from people who were, by definition, excluded from the positions of power that usually enable people to leave behind an historic footprint?

The precise answer, of course, depends on what marginalised experiences you're writing about. The experience of marginalisation isn't uniform through time and space; different groups of people are marginalised in different ways throughout history and throughout the world. The kinds of material you can draw upon to discuss the experience of slavery in Ancient Rome are going to be different to those you can draw upon to talk about women in late 20th Century South Africa, for example. Particularly if you're an undergraduate, finding altogether new source material is going to be a tall order; not because you aren't smart enough but because it's usually very hard to locate, if it exists at all!

So your first port of call should always be to look to what historians have already written on the topic you're interested in, with particular emphasis on what kind of sources they've made us of and how they've analysed them. Not only does this help you to identify gaps in the scholarship and get a feeling for what hasn't been studied yet, or what hasn't been re-evaluated in a while, but you'll start to understand how accessible marginalised voices are in your period of interest. Ask critical questions of the historians you read when it comes to their use of sources - where did they find them? How have they used them? Is their commentary too superficial or pushing the limits of credibility? Are they taking things too much at face value? Does it seem logical that there could be more sources like this around? Have they rejected a source you think might actually be useful? Do you know of more recent research that brings their analysis into question?

A lot of the work of writing the history of marginalised groups involves retreading old ground even if you are using new source material. The entire field of writing about the experience of slavery in the United States, for example, arose largely from historians explicitly rejecting how some well known sources had been disregarded in the past. For that reason, it's crucial that you be able to interrogate how other historians writing before you have used the existing source material and what kinds of material they have found useful.

In general terms, consider which of the following kinds of sources you might be able to find and use for your topic:

• First and second hand accounts: this kind of material is going to be comparatively rare for most groups, if it exists in any meaningful way, but of obvious importance. What physical traces has your group left behind? Are there books, journals, diaries, letters, biographies, artwork and so on? For example, the southern US has a rich history of slave biographies. If you're writing about apartheid or colonial India, there's a vast body of non-white literature and culture you can engage with. Be aware though that the nature of the historical record means this often comes to us through other means; for instance, many slave biographies were written for a white audience. Do not assume that just because a marginalised person produced a source that it is completely reliable - apply the same standards of source criticism that you would to any other account.
• Elite and non-marginalised accounts: though it might seem odd, we can learn a great deal about marginalised people from the records of the non-marginalised. Sources from the elite are going to be in relative abundance; how they talk about marginalisation, how they justify and interpret and describe it, can tell us a lot about the victims of the process. Don't disregard sources because they aren't by marginalised people; careful and critical analysis of those kinds of sources can shed enormous light on the experience of marginality. Plantation records and the writings of contemporary slaveholders have been absolutely critical to our understanding of the experience of slavery, for example, for they are a key factor in that experience. The mainstream and the marginalised co-exist within one society even if the structure of that society tries to deny it; we can see this impact reflected in how mainstream records address the marginalised. Understanding the experience and mindset of mainstream society help us to put the experience of marginalised groups into context.
• Literature and artwork: the historical record is not limited only to 'factual' sources like newspapers, journals or eye-witness accounts. The cultural work of a society can also offer profound and significant insights into how it envisions itself and those within it. A great deal of superb research has come from historians who turned their attention to literature, artwork and folklore and tried to determine what these works can tell us not only about their authors, but about the societies that gave rise to them.
• Legal texts: the law does not exist in isolation. Our laws usually represent the codification of cultural ideals and norms; they too can tell us a great deal about the experience of marginalisation. For instance, the fact the murder of a slave in the United States was usually punishable by fine or compensation tells us a great deal about their perceived worth; the explicit provisions in law detailing what kinds of violence are permitted against them helps to shape our understanding of how slavery was enforced. Likewise, the law can tell us a lot about a culture's norms, practices and how it frames various issues.
• Archaeological findings: for some contexts, also consider the research and observations of archaeologists and what they have to tell us about the past. Archaeologists may find physical artefacts that tell us a great deal about how people may have lived their day to day lives and what kind of conditions or phenomena they may have experienced.

Sources when you don't speak the language:

As one of the primary flairs in French history, I have a dark secret; I don’t know French. I’m learning and know more than Omelet du Fromage, but I can’t do more than a basic sentence and certainly can’t read Voltaire or Baudelaire in French. However this does not hold me back as much as it should.

There are two very important things to overcome this, Google Translate and excellent Secondary Sources. “But excellent secondary sources aren’t anything special,” you might say. “Hush, my sweet summer child,” I’d respond, “Because you’ll be joining in a tradition as old as history, stealing sources.”

First Google Translate is a necessity. For a language as codified and well-spoken as French, it is easily translated by the online browser and the phone application, however it must be taken with a grain of salt depending on the language you don’t know. Google translate provides a free app for Android and iOS operating systems that lets users translate things instantly. Of great value is one function that lets you translate languages through the camera. A photo can be taken of a sign or text and it will translate the foreign phrase or except in the text. To ensure constant aid, Google Translate will also allow translation outside of wifi or cell signal if you download the somewhat large (a couple hundred megabytes) language pack for the language you consistently use.

With the ability to translate at a passible level that would still draw the ire of your high school French teacher, you still have a problem. Worry not for that is where high quality secondary sources come in. While ignoring the difference between secondary and tertiary sources, the sources in general are of great importance.

Any historian worth their salt has stolen a source. This isn’t plagiarism but rather seeing a quote or reference, looking for the source at the back of the book or at the bottom of the page, and then using that source as needed, sometimes going to great lengths to procure it. Historians are required to be experts and read more than is human possible, this also goes into how you keep notes and keeping track of it all, of which I just use my brain.

From here it’s a hung for the sources in your language. With luck, some or many of them will be in the public domain while at worse they will be locked away in some state archive that you can only reference their usage as a secondary source of where you read it.

With this, I hope to spread you beyond Anglophone sources, as there is more to history than the American Revolution and World War Two. Download Google Translate, Steal (but don’t plagerize) sources, and shell out for Rosetta Stone or something similar to learn the language you need to, unless it’s a dead language, you’ll have to learn that on your own or professionally.

Edit: Google Translate is best for European languages. This has more to do with support and programming focus.

What do you do if your primary sources are impossible to access?

There are many different reasons why you, as the reader, can't access a primary source. I'm aware that /u/DonaldFDraper is going to cover what happens if you can't read a primary source because it's in a different language, but this isn't the type of inaccessibility that I'm talking about. I'm talking about cases where the source itself has been lost to history, or when the source has been made inaccessible from government interference, or when the primary source is otherwise inaccessible to you.

I have to deal with this myself. Because I'm an American citizen who can't willy-nilly jump to China on a whim to access archives, because I can't read the language (though I'm working on it), and because many of the existing archives are considered state secrets, I can't access primary source data for things like “government organization of various state departments”, reports of riots in the countryside, statistical documents in the original language, etc. This means that what I do know are from translated primary source documents and secondary source literature that references this primary source material that I can't see. Similarly, in the other topic that I'm flaired in (People's Temple), a large number of documents have been deemed classified by the government and haven't yet been released under the Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts. In addition, Guyanese documents related to Jonestown were lost in a courthouse fire, which means that we're missing a huge component of the story.

So what does one do when you can't access the primary source directly?

In some cases, the only reference to the primary source in question is a reference in another primary source that you can access. You could use this to infer the contents of the missing source, if there's enough information about it given. However, this has its own problems, especially since primary sources on their own are biased and have their own agendas. In addition, as I said in my last post about primary sources, the reference is usually lacking on context, which is important to have in order to understand why the reference is significant. What's more important is that references to missing sources in a primary source says that it did exist at one point, even if you can't get at it.

If you get lucky and the inaccessible source still exists, but can't be accessed by you, don't fret just yet! That inaccessible primary source might be cited in secondary source material. What does that mean? It means that while you, the average person, might not be able to access the source, someone else was able to. Even better, they refer to (and might even quote) it in that secondary source you're holding in your hand. This is preferred over the “infer the contents from primary source material”, for one big reason: because the secondary source is likely to go over the context of this primary source. Again, not all secondary sources are reputable, and you do need to figure out how to critically access and to read secondary sources. However, if this is available to you, this is a better way to infer the contents of unobtainable primary source content than going the primary source way.

Finally, sometimes we have to accept that we're never going to be able to access the source in question. We are never going to know all of the information that we want. Data gets lost, sources are locked up and classified, and otherwise we are never going to know everything, even if we wanted to. Historians have to work with this all the time: we will never know everything, but we do our best to construct events based off what we do have. There will always be questions we'll never be able to answer, and there will always be sources that will never be found. That's okay. Part of what you learn is how to work around this problem, and to use the sources that we do have to understand the who, what, when, where, hows, and whys.