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Revision as of 14:16, 2 February 2007 by Slashme (talk | contribs) (Make some sections)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)In historical scholarship, a Secondary source is a work of history written as a synthetic account, usually based on primary sources and other secondary sources. Most scholarly historical monographs published today are secondary sources. Ideal secondary sources are usually characterized as both reporting events in the past as well as performing the function of generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of the events.
Definition
An example of a secondary source would be the biography of a historical figure which constructed a coherent narrative out of a variety of primary source documents, such as letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, and official records. It would also likely utilize additional secondary sources (such as previously-written biographies) as well. Most, but not all, secondary sources utilize extensive citation.
The distinction between a primary and a secondary source can often be one of usage. For example, biographies are generally considered to be secondary sources, but if a historian were writing a scholarly account of the history of biographical writing itself during in a certain location or period of time, they would become the primary sources for the study—the biographies themselves would become the documents to be analyzed as products of their time. Many secondary sources use other secondary sources as primary sources, in part because all secondary sources are themselves written "in their time" and within a given scholarly and cultural context, a characteristic which is usually more obvious in primary sources.
Authorship
Secondary sources are often peer reviewed, and produced by institutions where methodological accuracy is important to the author's and publishing house's, or research institute's, reputation. Historians subject both primary and secondary sources to a high level of scrutiny.
Many scholars have commented on the difficulty in producing secondary source narratives from the "raw data" which makes up the past. Historian/philosopher Hayden White has written extensively on the ways in which the rhetorical strategies by which historians construct narratives about the past, and what sorts of assumptions about time, history, and events are embedded in the very structure of the historical narrative. In any case, the question of the exact relation between "historical facts" and the content of "written history" has been a topic of discussion among historians since at least the nineteenth century, when much of the modern profession of history came into being.
As a general rule, modern historians prefer to go back to primary sources, if available, as well as seeking new ones, because primary sources, whether accurate or not, offer new input into historical questions, and most modern history revolves around heavy use of archives for the purpose of finding useful primary sources. On the other hand, most undergraduate research projects are limited to secondary source material.
Secondary sources in law
Secondary sources are often used in common law, to allow judges to determine what is actually meant by the language of a particular statute. See legislative intent.
References
- Jules R. Benjamin. A Student's Guide to History (2003)
- Edward H. Carr, What is History? (New York: Vintage Books, 1961).
- Wood Gray, Historian's handbook, a key to the study and writing of history (Houghton Mifflin, 1964).
- Martha C. Howell and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (2001)
- Richard A. Marius and Melvin E. Page. A Short Guide to Writing About History (5th Edition) (2004)
- Hayden White, Metahistory: the historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).