Hello historians, I want to know how do you do research for a specific event or a region in history? What is the methodology? What journals do you generally follow?
I'm not a history major but I love history. And I would love to learn how to dig it out the facts and make my own interpretations.
Thank you.
My primary interest lies in the early history of British Columbia and the Indians, fur traders, gold miners and settlers that lived there. It started after reading just one book about the history of the area I grew up in. The "Peace River Chronicles" by Gordon E. Bowes gave a fascinating insight to the hardships, challenges and adventures of my home town as an easy to read chronological series of short stories.
From this beginning I learned the origins of many mountain and waterway's names in the region and read many personal accounts that left me wanting more. I started looking for more local history books to satisfy my interest. Libraries, estate sales, pawn shops, thrift stores and second hand books stores brought me many excellent and cheap books that further fueled my interest
From these books I noted the original sources of information cited in the bibliographies and end notes and started tracking down copies of those books. As the books got older the author's sources became closer and closer to the original unadulterated manuscripts. I now have several first edition journals that were written by the first fur traders that entered British Columbia back in the late 1700's and early 1800's.
From digging up books I moved on to spending time on my holidays looking for information from the Provincial Archives, National Archives and Hudson's Bay Company archives. These archives hold copies of journals, legislation, debates, letters, newspapers, books and even university thesis and research papers that I can comb through. The dangerous part of doing this is incredibly easy to lose focus and become sidetracked gathering information on another tangent.
The Guggenheim Project has been a godsend for me and has helped me expand my collection of books and papers exponentially in the past few years. Now I can purchase recently printed copies of two hundred year old originals for $15 and up instead of the $300-$900 prices I was paying to buy the originals. The last time I counted I have over 1800 books filling two walls of floor to ceiling bookshelves that I don't have time to read and more arriving every week.
Fortunately I am blessed with an understanding and patient wife, although she still thinks she will be able to limit the size of my collection to just one room in our basement.