Hi all,

basically, I am wondering how one is expected to deal with other historians that have written about the same historical events/development one wishes to write about.

Of course, at the beginning of an article/thesis chapter I discuss the literature that has previously covered the events I wish to write about and explain how I will discuss/interpret these events differently in the article/chapter. I then normally continue to unfold my argument mainly using primary sources and some secondary literature for background and possibly for some summary of the parts of the events I do not cover in detail.

However, even if one's own focus, interpretation of the events and argument is different from previous scholarship on these events and one mainly uses primary sources as evidence for one's writing, I feel that at times one is still bound to make some small points that are not the same but similar to what other historians have said. I am not talking about major arguments here, but rather about small parallels. For example, if I discuss the negotiation of a treaty between country A and country B and country B manages to improve the terms of the treaty for itself during the negotiations, this is something that I can show with primary sources (and probably do so more accurately than the previous literature), but others might have mentioned before. In this case, would I need to acknowledge everyone that has mentioned the fact that country B managed to improve the treaty terms?

I am unsure about this because of course one is taught that one should acknowledge the ideas of others. But I do not know if citing them at the beginning of the article/chapter is enough. At the same time, I think that having to acknowledge every parallel with other historians would mean a great increase in footnotes and practically make it impossible to write about events that have been covered by several historians before. I also do not see historians acknowledging such similar points. For example, I recently even came across two books that were published on the same topic and time period and the author of the second book published somewhat later than the first only acknowledged in the introduction that this first book exists and how his own work is different, but does not mention the first book again (except to criticize it) during the rest of the book, even though there are bound to be some parallels.

Apologies for the long post and thanks in advance.