HISTORICAL METHOD

• The historical method is a set of agreed ground rules for researching and writing academic research of professional history.
• Core protocols are the historians use for handling sources.
• A historian is a fallible human being with biases and own frame of references.
• Historians look for sources to locate and organize the relevant sources on which they base their account.
• Historians verify, date, locate, and identify their intended functions.
• Historians critically examine and analyse the records and survivals of the past.
• Appreciating the importance of historical sources involves understanding two processes: external criticism, which involves authenticity and what the document says, and internal criticism, which involves accuracy of the content of the document.
• External criticism involves understanding who made the document, when it was made, if the author was alive when it was made, and what accounts for its preservation.
• Internal criticism involves understanding if it is likely that what the author says happened really did happen, what if it is just a hyperbole, a metaphor, or a simile, in what context the author said what he said, and if people at the time would have behaved as they were portrayed.
• Internal criticism also involves understanding if the data presented are reasonable.
• Historians also consider if events could have occurred this way, if there was any embellishment by the author, if the author or the originator of the source was a major participant in the event, if the author was competent to describe the event, and if the author was emotionally connected to the event.