*Meaning and Relevance of History

History allows one to make more sense of the current world. One can look at past
economic and cultural trends and be able to offer reasonable predictions of what will happen next
in today’s world. One can understand the existing rules in the modern world by engaging selves to
history. More broadly, history enables us to understand different cultures.

*Primary Sources and Secondary Sources

Primary sources provide direct or firsthand evidence about an event, person, or
object. These sources are contemporary to the events and people described. In the context of
historical research, primary sources are sources that were created during the specific time period
being studied.
Some examples of primary sources include:

* Newspaper articles
* Diaries
* Letters
* Memoirs and autobiographies
* Speeches
* Photographs
* Novels, poems
* Government documents
Secondary sources were produced sometime after an event took place. Unlike
primary sources, secondary sources do not provide firsthand evidence. Instead, they
provide information that has been analyzed or interpreted in some way. Secondary
sources often analyze information that has been gathered from various primary sources.
Examples of secondary sources include:

* Book reviews
* Scholarly articles (those that interpret or analyze other sources)
* Literature reviews
* Biographies
Kinds of Primary Sources

1. Public Records. All levels of government--city (local), state, and national (country)--collect
information about people and places.
2. Censuses. The goal is to gather and record data about every living person in the country.
The censuses included a great deal of information.
3. Birth and Death Records. Birth and the death are two events that occur in any person’s
life.
4. City Directories. The City Directory was like a telephone book without the telephone
numbers.
5. Church Registers. In any community, houses of worship play an important role in recording
history.
6. Affidavits of Petition. Affidavits of Petition are legal documents, sworn under oath, that
make a request of some sort.
7. Maps. Maps are wonderful tools for reconstructing the past.
8. Photographs. Photographs and their predecessors, stereographs and
daguerreotypes, are another kind of record that helps us understand the past.

9. Manuscripts. The papers, letters, diaries, account books, wills, and other records
that have been preserved by museums, libraries, archives, churches, and families
together provide the building blocks for the historian.

10. Handbills. Handbills were used in the nineteenth century (and

before) as a tool for communication--for "getting the word out" on
events and newsworthy items. (We still use handbills today; only we call
them posters or advertisements.) A close "reading" of a handbill can tell
us a lot about the event it describes.
11. Political Cartoons. Political cartoons, which appeared in all kinds of
newspapers and periodicals in the nineteenth century, are visual documents
that can be "read" in the same way that text can be read.

12. Newspapers. Some newspapers appear daily; others are weeklies, monthlies,
bi-monthlies, or even quarterlies.

13. Objects. Constructed objects that are available for interpretation and
discussion are known as artifacts.
EXTERNAL CRITICISM

* The practice of verifying the authenticity of evidence by examining its

physical characteristics.
* Consistency with the historical characteristic of the time when it was
produced.
* The materials used for the evidence .

Examples of the things that will be examined when conducting

external criticism of a document include the quality of the paper, the type of
ink, and the language and words used in the material, among others
INTERNAL CRITICISM

* Looks at content of the source and examines the circumstances of its

production.
* It looks at the truthfulness and factuality of the evidence by looking at the
author of the source, its context, the agenda behind its creation, the
knowledge which informed it, and its intended purpose. It entails that the
historian acknowledge and analyze how such reports can be manipulated to be
used as a war propaganda
* Validating historical sources is important because the use of unverified,
falsified, and untruthful historical sources can lead to equally false conclusions.
Without thorough criticisms of historical evidences, historical deceptions and
lies will all be probable