TYBA-SEM-6-PAPER-9-Research-Methodology-and-Historical-Sources-English-munotes

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STEPS IN HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Unit Structure :
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Identifying research question or research problem

1.3 Literature review

1.4 Hypothesis

1.5 Data Collection: Identify primary and secondary sources

1.6 Evaluate the authenticity an d credibility of source materials

1.7 Analysis of Data: Interpretation and Generalization

1.8 Presentation of research report
1.9 Summary
1.10 Questions
1.11 References
1.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit the student wilt be able to :
1) Know how to i dentify research question or research problem
2) Grasp meaning and concept of Hypothesis
3) Understand the steps in research process.
4) Know about Care to be taken while interpreting and generalizing the
data.
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Historical research is evidence -based and is a well -organized process. It
includes many small and important steps . From selection of the topic of
research to collection of information for research, checking its veracity,
processing it, and finally publishing the research are the indivisible
component s of this process. As most historical studies are all largely
qualitative in nature, the search of sources of data, evaluating analyzing,
synthesizing and summarizing information and interpreting the findings
may not always be discreet, separate s equential steps. Following are some
important steps need to be followed by researcher in research process. munotes.in

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Research Methodology and Sources of History
2 1.2 IDENTIFYING RESEARCH QUESTION OR
RESEARCH PROBLEM
This is the first important step in research. Ideas for historical research
topics can come from many different sources, such as the
accomplishments of an individual, a political policy, or the relationship
between events. According to Borg, in historical research, it is especially
important that the student carefully defines his problem and appraises its
appropriateness before committing himself too fully. Many problems are
not adaptable to historical research methods and cannot be adequately
treated using this approach. Other problems have little or no chance of
producing significant results either b ecause of the lack of pertinent data or
because the problem is a trivial one.” Beach has classified the problems
that prompt historical inquiry into five types:
1. Current social issues are the most popular source of historical
problems in education. e.g. Ru ral education, adult and continuing
education, positive discrimination in education etc.
2. Histories of specific individuals, histories of specific educational
institutions and histories of educational movement. These studies are
often conducted with “the s imple desire to acquire knowledge about
previously unexamined phenomena”.
3. A historical study of interpreting ideas or events that previously had
seemed unrelated. For example, history of educational financing and
history of aims of education in India may be unrelated. But a person
reviewing these two researches separately may detect some
relationship between the two histories and design a study to
understand this relationship.
4. A historical study aimed at synthesizing old data or merges them with
new histo rical facts discovered by the researcher.
5. A historical inquiry involving reinterpretation of past events that have
been studied by other historical researchers. This is known as
revisionist history.
In order to identify a significant research problem, Go ttschalk
recommends that four question should be asked.
1) Where do the events take place?
2) Who are the persons involved?
3) When do the events occur?
4) What kind of human activity are involved?
The scope of the study can be determined on the basis of the exte nt of
emphasis placed on the four questions identified by Gottschalk i.e. the
geographical area included, the number of persons involved, the time span
included and the number and kinds of human activities involved often, the
exact scope and delimitation o f a study is decided by a researcher only
after the relevant material has been obtained. The selection of a topic in munotes.in

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Steps i n Historical Research
3 historical research depends on several personal factors of the researcher
such as his/her motivation, interest, historical knowledge and cu riosity,
ability to interpret historical facts and so on. If the problem selected
involves understanding an event, an institution, a person, a past period,
more clearly, it should be taken up for a research. The topic selected
should be defined in terms of the types of written materials and other
resources available to you. This should be followed by formulating a
specific and testable hypothesis or a series of research questions, if
required. This will provide a clear focus and direction to data collection ,
analysis and interpretation. It provides a structure to the study. According
to Borg, without hypotheses historical research often becomes little more
than an aimless gathering of facts.
1.3 LITERATURE REVIEW
This step involves identifying, locating, and col lecting information
pertaining to the research topic. The goal of this step is to compile
background and starting information so you can evaluate the validity and
strength of your topic. When conducting background information, a
researcher is looking to br oaden the breadth of knowledge in the topic. A
researcher will dig deeper for more in -depth information and research later
in process. It may include published books, research articles in magazines
on the subject of research. I t will give primary ideas abo ut the research
done by the other researchers. Under literature review, we study any
already existing literature or research journal related to our research topic.
1.4 HYPOTHESIS
A researcher must present original topic and idea in the hypothesis. He
should enhance the scope of topic to create the strongest topic possible for
research needs. A hypothesis is a description of a pattern in nature or an
explanation about some real -world phenomenon that can be tested through
observation and experimentation. The mos t common way a hypothesis is
used in scientific research is as a tentative, testable, and falsifiable
statement that explains some observed phenomenon in nature. We more
specifically call this kind of statement an explanatory hypothesis.
However, a hypothe sis can also be a statement that describes an observed
pattern in nature. In this case we call the statement a generalizing
hypothesis. Hypotheses can generate predictions: statements that propose
that one variable will drive some effect on or change in an other variable in
the result of a controlled experiment. Many academic fields, from the
physical sciences to the life sciences to the social sciences, use hypothesis
testing as a means of testing ideas to learn about the world and advance
scientific knowle dge. In order to clarify thoughts about the purpose of
thesis and how researcher plans to reach research goals, he should prepare
a synopsis. A synopsis is a short, systematic outline of your proposed
thesis. It serves to ensure that supervisor gets a cle ar picture of proposed
project and allows him or her to spot whether there are gaps or things that
a researcher has not taken into account. munotes.in

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Research Methodology and Sources of History
4 1.5 DATA COLLECTION: IDENTIFY PRIMARY AND
SECONDARY SOURCES
The sources provide solid base to the research. The entire process of
research depends upon source material as history is based on sources. It is
not fiction work. Identifying the right sources is challenging but necessary
task.
Primary Sources :
Gottschalk defines a primary data source as “the testimony of any e ye
writers by any other of the senses.” In other words primary sources are
tangible materials that provide a description of an historical event and
were produced shortly after the event happened. They have a direct
physical relationship to the event being studied Examples of primary
sources include news paper report, letters, public document, court
decisions, personal diaries, autobiographies, artifacts and eye witnesses’
verbal accounts. The primary sources of data can be divided into two
broad categories a s follows.
1) The remains or relics of given historical period. These could include
photographs, corves skeletons, fossils tools, weapons, utensils
furniture and buildings. Though, these were not originally meant for
transmitting information to future gener ations. They would prove very
useful sources in providing reliable and sound evidence about the
past. These relics provide non -verbal information.
2) Those objects that have a direct physical relationship with the events
being reconstructed. This includes d ocuments such as laws, files,
letters, manuscripts, government resolutions, characters, memoranda,
wills, newspapers, magazines, journals, files, government or other
official publications, maps, charts, books, catalogues, research
reports, record of minute s of meetings recording inscription,
transcriptions and so on.
Primary sources are the pieces of evidence that historians use to learn
about people, events, and everyday life in the past. Just like detectives,
historians look at clues, through evidence, a nd reach conclusions. Diaries,
letters, certificates of birth, death, or marriage, deeds, contracts,
constitutions, laws, court records, tax records, census records, wills,
inventories, treaties, report cards, medical records, passenger lists,
passports, visas, naturalization papers, and military enlistment or
discharge papers can be considered as primary sources.
Secondary Sources :
A secondary source is one in which the eye witness or the participant i.e.
the person describing the event was not actually present but who obtained
the descriptions or narrations from another person or source. This another
person may or may not be a primary source. Secondary sources, thus, do
not have a direct physical relationship with the event being studies. They
include da ta which are not original Example s of secondary sources include munotes.in

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Steps i n Historical Research
5 text books, biographies, encyclopedias, reference books, replicas of out
objects and paintings and so on. It is possible that secondary sources
contain errors due to passing of information fro m one source to another.
These errors could get multiplied when the information passes through
many sources there by resulting in an error of great magnitude in the final
data. Thus, wherever possible, the researcher should try to use primary
sources of da ta. However, that does not reduce the value of secondary
sources. The literary sources for the study of ancient Indian history and
culture may be divided into two major categories. The literary sources to
reconstruct Ancient Indian history can be classifie d between two broad
categories 1) The Religious literature and 2) Secular Literature. It includes
Genealogical tree, Biography, Periodicals and newspapers, Census Report
and published works.
1.6 EVALUATE THE AUTHENTICITY AND
CREDIBILITY OF SOURCE MATERIALS
External criticism or critical scholarship would enable a researcher to
solve the problem of authenticity. This job of criticism would be over once
the author; place and time of the document are established. At this stage
only the credentials of these three elements are checked without going into
the detailed contents. The technique of testing the degree of authenticity of
document is called External Criticism or Heuristics or Lower Criticism.
The ‘External Criticism’ is of a less intellectual type of critic ism of the
documents. It includes examinations of document like manuscripts, books,
pamphlets, maps, inscriptions and monuments. The problem of
authenticity of document arises more in case of manuscripts than the
printed documents because the printed docum ent have already been
authenticated by the editor.
Critical scholarship is a part of external criticism. In the 19th century it
became very popular in Europe, because this task was most scientific. It
did not involve writing of history but merely textual c riticism to eliminate
all possible chances of forgery. Consequently, few people did not regard
this work has very meritorious for it did not involve any exposition or
interpretation. It was mechanical to some extent as was the application of
certain princi ples and technique almost to evolve kind of text finding out
the authenticity and editing the text with elaborate notes. This kind of
work did not find favor with those who were real historians with an
interest in interpreting the past.
External criticism is followed by internal criticism which is known as
higher criticism. The first preference is given to close and minute study of
each of the ideas contained in the document. The main task is analysis
which is to separate the different ideas and cut the who le document into
organized parts. Analysis is at the root of interpretation and it is a very
important mental activity which helps us to know the nature of the
historical fact. Analysis isolates each of the hundreds and thousands of the
ideas contained in document and puts it in the crucible of criticism in
order to test its validity. The essential point to remember is that each idea
is separately analyzed and tested, for among all ideas contained in the munotes.in

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Research Methodology and Sources of History
6 document some may be true and others may be wrong. It is the business of
internal criticism to know which one is true and which one is false.
Analysis is thus necessary of criticism and criticism begins with analysis.
Internal criticism is more complicated, more varied in range and more
intricate in techniqu e than external criticism. There are two operation s
involved here. The first is the analysis of the content of the document
which is called positive interpretive criticism, and the second is the
analysis of the conditions under which the document was produ ced which
is known as negative interpretive criticism. The purpose of positive
criticism is to know what the author really means by making a particular
statement and the purpose of negative criticism is to verify whether what
the author has said conforms t o what really happened. In other words the
task of positive interpretive criticism is to get at the literal real meaning of
the author's statements and that of negative interpretive criticism is to
eliminate the possibility of error in his statements.
It is research scholar s work to detect which events are true and which of
them are false. The sources we use might have been the result of either
observation or experience or he arsay recorded by some author in the past.
This is certain by a process of scienti fic investigation which is the main
job of internal criticism which establishes the value of document. Many of
the documents are returned with inadequate knowledge or with motivation
or prejudice.
1.7 ANALYSIS OF DATA: INTERPRETATION AND
GENERALIZATION
The ma in job of framing formula or generalization is to press all the
details of the narratives to yield a very significant result. It sums up the
entire research within a few cogent and well thought out passages. It is the
epilogue, the gist, the final assessme nt or estimate of the whole work.
Naturally it becomes the very essence of whole research. It has the same
force in history as general formulas or laws have in
science.Generalizations are inherent in the very arrangement of presenting
historical facts. The historian collects the data of the past and arranges it in
chronological sequence. Whereupon its meaning would emerge or reveal
itself. In other words , the historian‘s task is only to test the validity of data
or to certify their authenticity, and not to interpret it, i.e., generalize in
relation to it.
The selection o f a particular topic or emphasis on a particular topic is
followed automatically or purposely according to the historical nature of
the research. Therefore, every historian selects the mater ial need to be
highlighted. Furthermore, it is not even a question of selection of facts, for
even that assumes that facts are lying before the historian, in a plate as it
were. In reality, the historian has to search for them, and that assumes
some princi ple of selection. Second, gathered facts have to be arranged
and grouped. Both involve explanation and causation, motivation and
impact. In other words , analysis is vital to history as a discipline. In munotes.in

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Steps i n Historical Research
7 reality, except in a very limited sense, information b ecomes information
only as a result of a generalization.
1.8 PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH REPORT
The research scholar presents the research outcome in form of
presentation. It can be in form of research article, research book or
synopsis. Report writing is interes ting, entertaining, and attractive way of
presentation of historical research. It is a very skillful, challenging and
tiresome task. It requires a lot of patience, imagination, thinking capacity,
effort, mastery over language and objectivity. Without all t hese qualities,
the researcher cannot write a good and effective report. The aim of the
report is to tell the objectives of the research, what and why the researcher
has done, and what the results of his research are. The report should be
such that any per son should be able to understand it. It should be simple,
interesting and its flow should be constantly maintained throughout.
Report writing indicates presentation of the research for experts and
masses. The nature of report varies accordingly. The read ers should find it
interesting to read the report and it should stimulate the curiosity and
imagination of the readers. The researcher writes the report not for himself
but for others. It is in the public interest that he presents his findings
through arti cles in newspapers, speeches on radio, television or through
public speeches. The aim of all these efforts is to communicate his
findings and research efforts to the common people. It has introduction,
main part and conclusion at the end. It is authenticat ed by reference
section or bibliography.
1.9 SUMMARY
The research begins with identifying research question or research
problem. Literature review may include published books, research articles
in magazines on the subject of research. I t will give primary ide as about
the research done by the other researchers. A hypothesis is a description of
a pattern in nature or an explanation about some real -world phenomenon
that can be tested through observation and experimentation. The most
common way a hypothesis is use d in scientific research is as a tentative,
testable, and falsifiable statement that explains some observed
phenomenon in nature.The sources provide solid base to the research.
External criticism or critical scholarship would enable a researcher to
solve t he problem of authenticity of the collected data sources. Finally, the
research scholar present s the research outcome in form of presentation.
1.10 QUESTIONS
1) Describe how to identify the research question or research problem .
2) What are the steps in histor ical research?
3) Explain the importance of data collection and data analysis as
important steps in research process. munotes.in

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Research Methodology and Sources of History
8 1.11 REFERENCES
1) Ali Sheikh, History: Its Theory and Method, Macmillan India Ltd.,
Madras 1978.
2) Beach Derek, Process -Tracing Methods: Fou ndations and Guidelines,
University of Michigan Press,
3) Carr, E. H. What is History? Macmillan, London: 1964.
4) Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History, Oxford University Press.
Oxford 1978.
5) Garranghan, G. J. S. J. A Guide to Historical Method (Ed), Jean
Dela nglez S. J.(Fordham University Press, New York, 1957.
6) Gottschalk, Louis, Understanding History, New York, Second
Edition, 1969.
7) S. M Sayanekar, Element in Research Methodology in Social Science.
Manan Prakashan, 2016.
8) K. N. Chitnis, Research Methodology in History, Atlantic Publishers,
New Delhi, 2006.

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9 2
METHODS OF HISTORICAL ENQUIRY
Unit Structure :
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Verifying Authenticity and Credibility of Sources
2.3 External Criticism (Heuristic)
2.4 Internal Criticism (Hermeneutics)
2.5 Summary
2.6 Questions
2.7 Reference s
2.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit the student wilt be able to :
1) Know Methods of Critical Enquiry in history
2) Grasp meaning of Authenticity and Credibility
3) Understand External Criticism (Heuristic) and Internal Criticism
(Hermeneutics)
4) Know process of analysis and Synthesis
2.1 INTRODUCTION
History writing is different from fiction as fiction writing is based on
imagination. It is a hard effort of a history writer to present the past in a
perfect manner therefore his word depends upon the variou s available
sources from which he develops his hypothesis. A historian has to follow
certain methodological frame work, within given parameters, historical
explanations & interpretations written in a narrative form. A critical
enquiry of the sources is req uired to verify the genuineness and reliability
of the sources. The following methods of critical Enquiry need to be
followed by historical researcher in research process.
A) Verifying Authenticity and Credibility of sources
B) External criticism (Heuristic): Analysis and Synthesis
C) Internal criticism (Hermeneutics): Positive and Negative Interpretive
Criticism munotes.in

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10 Research Methodology and Sources of History 2.2 VERIFYING AUTHENTICITY AND CREDIBILITY
OF SOURCES
Authenticity stands for checking reality or genuineness of source.
Historical sources may be cons idered more reliable than others but many a
times source may be biased in some ways. A researcher tries to seek
someone with first hand knowledge of an event and naturally want s to
verify the contents of the document, working with the information from
other sources that have been prov en legitimate. To authenticate the
sources researcher must also ask some significant questions.What type of
source is this? Who produced it? Where were they? In what condition?
Why did they produce this text or object and for w hat reason.In case of
official report the writing seal etc. is to be checked. Historical account and
other supporting facts to be checked. A fictional reconstruction or analysis
of newspaper reports.
There are criteria for determining whether the source is reliable or not.
1) Accuracy: The information gathered by a researcher against the
information found in the source, need to be checked in right manner.
There is criteria for determining whether the source is reliable or not.
2) Authority : One must make sure tha t the source is written by a
reliable author or institution.If one is using a web page than can
usually identify the publisher by url link or check for copy right
statement. Make sure the author has proper credentials on the subject
matter.
3) Coverage : A res earcher will also want to examine of the content of
source and how to fit in the research information one needs. After
identifying that it is relevant for the topic and valuable in subject
matter, one must also make sure that It provides enough information .
The records preserved in archives, libraries churches may not be true
unless those are verified by a historian or a researcher.According to
GiambattistaVico generally there are five errors (to be avoided) in history
writing 1) Prejudice andExaggeration. 2) Nation’s Complex presenting the
past in glorious manner 3) Prefixing concept of past 4) Boasting 5)
Difficulties in analyzing old documents.
External Criticism (Heuristic) and Internal Criticism (Hermeneutics)
Analytical operation has been divided into two branches namely external
criticism and internal criticism. External criticism is called Heuristic
which literally means inciting to find out or helping or guiding in
discovery. It is also called lower criticism as opposed to higher criticism.
Higher c riticism is internal criticism otherwise known as hermeneutics or
interpretive criticism. Hermeneutics is the science or art of interpretation
which was special ly used for the scriptures . The main job of these two
types of criticism is pronounce whether a given idea is acceptable as fact
or not . Even occurrences and happenings as presented in the records may
or may not be confirmed to reality, for the y might have been distorted ,
twisted or miste represented. Their true picture will be revealed only when munotes.in

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Methods o f Historical Enquiry
11 their masks are lifted in order to find out the truth Methodology uses two
different apprentices heuristic and hermeneutics.
2.3 EXTERNAL CRITICISM (HEURISTIC)
External criticism (Heuristics) or critical scholarship would enable a
researcher to solve the probl em of authenticity. This job of criticism would
be over once the author, place and time of the document are established.
At this stage only the credentials of these three elements are checked
without going into the detailed contents. The technique of testi ng the
degree of authenticity of document is called External Criticism or
Heuristics or Lower Criticism. The ‘External Criticism’ is of a less
intellectual type of criticism of the documents. It includes examinations of
document like manuscripts, books, pa mphlets, maps, inscriptions and
monuments. The problem of authenticity of document arises more in case
of manuscripts than the printed documents because the printed document
have already been authenticated by the editor.
Historical records are tampered wit h not only for some material advantage
but also for variety of other reasons. Pride,vanity, sympathy, antipathy,
personal rivalry, political differences, social distinctions, religious disputes
or patriotic favour could induce certain individuals to distor t original
records.in such cases two question to be asked is who could carry out the
forgery and why? Sometimes documents have been fake to be sold for
gain. A scholar might produce fake document to provide a missing link in
sequence of event he had imagin atively reconstructed.
The next important step is to detect forgery. Paleography help us in this
field particularly for ancient Indian history which is reconstructed mostly
with the help of lithic and copper plate records. The characters of writing
have c hanged from time to time. If in a forged epigraph the alphabet do
not confirm to the type prevalent at the point of time to which it allege
belong to We suspect some foul play. Likewise the handwriting , spelling ,
dictation style and other characteristics f eatures to through a hint as to
whether tampering has taken place or not.
Critical scholarship is a part of external criticism. In the 19th century it
became very popular in Europe, because this task was most scientific. It
did not involve writing of hist ory but merely textual criticism to eliminate
all possible chances of forgery. Consequently, few people did not regard
this work has very meritorious for it did not involve any exposition or
interpretation. It was mechanical to some extent as was the appli cation of
certain principles and technique almost to evolve kind of text finding out
the authenticity and editing the text with elaborate notes. This kind of
work did not find favor with those who were real historians with an
interest in interpreting the p ast.
Verification Procedure
Afetr collecting and systematizing the information obtained from the
sources, it is necessary to proceed to the verification procedure. This also
includes an explanation of the nature of the information contained in the
source, the nature of the author's views, and so on. After establishing the
informative content of the sources and determining the nature of this munotes.in

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12 Research Methodology and Sources of History information, the synthesis phase begins, that is, the translation of the
source information into a scientific language , the creation of scientific
explanations, schemes, hypotheses, concepts, etc. in accordance with this
or that direction of historical research.
Generally person taking to research faces three types of situations. First he
finds the sources for already cla ssified and amended. If he is a student of
ancient Indian history, many his sources will be archaeological and
epigraphically which have all been edited in several volumes. Secondly,
the preliminary work is done partially but not wholly done. Thirdly, the
sources are in bad state and require great labour to make them bit for use.
This is the case with sources referring to contemporary history where
many biles are still in government custody. The material is so tendentious
that great care has to be taken to establish their accuracy in the first two
cases the necessity for division of labour may not arise, but first two cases
where the sources are scattered, corrupt and untrustworthy assistance of
specialized agency such as of critical scholars becomes and imp erative
need. Few research scholars ded icate their lives to editing an classifying
documents. A few combine the tasks of external criticism and historical
reconstruction, l ike Waitz, Mommsen and Haureau o f Germany, and
Jadunath Sarkar of India. Even the ta sks of critical scholarship is not
without its charms and scholars find utmost satisfaction in it.
A further question is 'what exactly is the job of external criticism?' The
answer is that it has mainly three function to perform. The first is the
establish ment of authorship of the document to be definite as to who was
responsible for the writing of that document. The second is the
determination of the place of the document from where it original
originated. The third is the fixation of the time offer docume nt, if possible
the exact date, month and year of writing. All this information is useful
not merely to know the genuineness of the record but also for determining
the value of the record in terms of the motives and intentions that
prompted its writing.
The second question is determination of the place of the document which
we need in order to judge the value of the document. If the event has taken
place in one area and the record has been built up in another area the value
of the record would be greatly re duced. An Idea as to the place of
document could be indicate the circumstances setup and surrounding in
which it was drawn up and this information is helpful in assessing the
importance of the evidence.
2.4 HERMENEUTICS (INTERNAL CRITICISM)
External critic ism is followed by internal criticism which is known as
higher criticism.The first preference is given to close and minute study of
each of the ideas contained in the document. The main task is analysis
which is to separate the different ideas and cut the whole document into
organized parts. Analysis is at the root of interpretation and it is a very
important mental activities which helps us to know the nature of the
historical fact. Analysis isolates each of the hundreds and thousands of the
ideas containe d in document and puts it in the crucible of criticism in munotes.in

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Methods o f Historical Enquiry
13 order to test its validity. The essential point to remember is that each idea
is separately analysed and tested, for among all ideas contained in the
document some may be true and others may be wron g. It is the business of
internal criticism to know which one is true and which one is false.
Analysis is thus necessary of criticism and criticism begins with analysis.
Internal criticism is more complicated, more varied in range and more
intricate in tec hnique than external criticism. There are two operation
involved here. The first is the analysis of the content of the document
which is called positive interpretive criticism, and the second is the
analysis of the conditions under which the document was p roduced which
is known as negative interpretive criticism. The purpose of positive
criticism is to know what the author really means by making a particular
statement and the purpose of negative criticism is to verify whether what
the author has said confor ms to what really happened. In other words the
task of positive interpretive criticism is to get at the literal real meaning of
the author's statements and that of negative interpretive criticism is to
eliminate the possibility of error in his statements.
It is research scholar s work to detect which events are true and which of
them are false. The sources we use might have been the result of either
observation or experience or he arsay recorded by some author in the past.
This is a certain by a process of s cientific investigation which is the main
job of internal criticism which establishes the value of document. Many of
the documents are returned with inadequate knowledge or with motivation
or prejudice.
Content analysis
This approach uses published works as its data and subject them to careful
analysis that usually includes both quantitative and qualitative aspect
content analysis has been particularly useful in investigating construct
such as race caste etc. Content analysis is a research technique for m aking
inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified
characteristic of content of document . This a method of collection and
analysis this used to gathering data from archival records document,
newspapers diaries, letters minute of meeti ng and they like the content of
the written material serves as a basis of inference the analysis is made
objectively and systematically. Objectivity refers to making analysis on
the basis of explicit roles which enable different researcher to obtain the
same result from the same documents systematic analysis refer to making
inclusion or exclusion of content according to consistently applied criteria
of selection. Only materials relevant to research hypothesis are examined.
Content analysis is used for vario us purposes such as
1) To understand the role of mass media in moulding public opinion on
occasion like general election
2) The study newspaper stand toward current issue like sati, terrorism in
Punjab, India’s peace keeping force role in Srilanka etc. munotes.in

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14 Research Methodology and Sources of History 3) To det ermine the philosophy of social reformers like Jotirao Phule,
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Ramaswami Periyar
4) To determine social literatures.
5) To measures behavior variables like need values, attitudes, creativity
and so enough and analysis of both available mat erials of projective
kind.
6) To study the propaganda techniques adopted by propaganda its to
influence the public . Content analysis of available materials should
not be used indiscriminately. If a researcher can gather data directly
through interviewing or projective techniques so much be the better if
there is no such possibility then available data can be used.
The court historians of the past have written accounts mostly to praise
their patrons either because they were employed for that purpose or
because they were personally impressed by the good or bad deeds of the
rulers that they could not resist the temptations of writing what they
genuinely thought to be reality. Abul Fazal wrote the Akbarnama not to so
much for any monetary gains but because of his genuine interest in Akbar.
Here the personal element which affects truth must be inquired into.
Likewise, foreign traveler might have been guided more by rumors than
by honest efforts to find out the truth or by his own personal experiences.
The British ad ministrators, Civil servants and military commanders, who
have written histories of India where generally influenced by a particular
standpoint in their writing. The job of history and is to check very
carefully the records that appear Atlantic and interna l criticism helps him
in the process of finding out errors and eliminating them.
Positive Interpretive Criticism
Positive interpretive criticism aims at knowing the literal meaning of the
document. The study of every document should begin with and analysis of
its content made with the sole aim of determining the real meaning of the
author. This analysis is a preliminary operations which is distinct and
independent of the other operation where the matter is probed further. In
positive analysis the general se nse of the text is first study and then we
proceed to the object and views of the author. Positive criticism does
requires an enormous expenditure of time in order to know the full and
real meaning of term. Every word has to be determined with reference to
the language of the time the country of origin the author of composition
and the proper context of the situation.
The second stage in positive interpretive criticism after knowing the literal
meaning is to determine the real meaning. The author might have
advocated the real meaning under the cover of an allegory symbolism,
allusions metaphor, simile , hyperbole or an analogy. Medi eval miniatures
show persons living in bed with crowns on their heads. It does not mean
that the monarch of those days were in th e habit of going to bed with their
crowns on their head. It is merely a symbol in the picture to indicate who
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Methods o f Historical Enquiry
15 literal meaning to get at the real meaning which the author has purpos ely
discuss under the inexact form. When Rousseau says in Social Contract
that man is born free but everywhere he is in chains, he is merely trying to
emphasize the importance of liberty and advocacy of the cause of
democracy. It should not be inferred tha t a chain is hanging around the
neck of every individual. Thus, the researcher should absorb the real
meaning of the text.
Negative Interpretive Criticism
Its main task is to ascertain the vital problem of element of truth contained
in the document. The ai m of historical construction is the pursuit of truth
and it is this pursuit which is the main business of the criticism. all other
criticism appear to be preliminary and secondary in comparison to this
ultimate enquiry in which we are called upon to touch the very substance
of the problem. The historian must distrust at first every statement of the
author going to the possibilities of errors indicated above. We must not
postpone doubt till it is force upon us by conflicting statements in
documents. Therefor e, each statement must be examined separately.
Internal criticism leads us to two general rules. The first is that a scientific
proof is not established by testimony. Secondly it must be analyzed into its
element to isolate and examine it separately. If a few incurrences are
perceptible in Bana's Harsha Charita we cannot condemn the whole work.
Sometimes single statement may contain several ideas a few of which may
be valid and others may not be so. These ideas must be separated and
criticism must be applie d to them individually. However, both criticism
and analysis must be perform simultaneously and there should not be any
gap in there sequence. Therefore, criticism comprise of an enormous
number of operations.
Errors of Good Faith
The author views with sym pathy or antipathy the events or persons and
represent them as very different from the actual happenings. This is a
personal prejudice in which the author's likes and dislikes are involved. If
he is well inclined towards particular person or event, he woul d praise him
or it highly or else he would condemn him or it strongly. Burke was not
well incline towards the French Revolution and hence is bitter remarks
when Gibbon, his contemporary had sympathy for events in France. Here
the author become subjective a nd is in client either to external a person
depending upon his likes.
A researcher must detect whether the author has committed the error of
good faith, whether his sincerity or integrity is under question and whether
he has not deliberately attempted to d eceive or mislead others. Author
might draw from a particular statement; the sympathy or antipathy that
prompts him to be subjective the vanity which is responsible for is
interested report; and the literary artifice which kill historical objectivity.
Thes e factors form the basis of historical fallacies and prejudices.
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16 Research Methodology and Sources of History Errors of Accuracy
1) The second series of question that help us to find out the accuracy of
the statement refer to the situation in which the author is very sincere
in his intention to record what he believes to be true, but the difficulty
is that his sources of information is defective and hence once again
errors become invertible. This fallacy can also be detected by putting
a few questions.
1. Does the author make the observation himself or do es he depend on
reports furnished to him by others? In the latter case the possibility of
errors is very great.
2. Those court historians who were not present in the battlefield but
depend upon the reports send by the commander do not have any
access to chec k the veracity of their statements and hence are guilty of
giving a distorted picture of the battle.
3. The author has himself made the observation, does he do it under
condition which were not normal? And element of fear, force
hallucinations and illusion, or prejudice might have prevented him
before observing the phenomena correctly.
4. Is the author in the habit of observing things correctly? It is likely that
a few persons are in capable of doing so owing to reasons unknown to
them. Fraud is a classic examp le of one who would never report and
event correctly.
5. We have to search for motives of falsehoods interest vanity sympathy
and antipathy which give rise to preserve prejudice and unknowingly
the author commits and error. James Mill belongs to the utilitari an
school of thought which prejudiced his mind to such an extent that he
is judged all history only from this angle.
2.5 SUMMARY
Researchers need to check authenticity and credibility of the Historical
sources. Heuristics, a Greek word meaning aiding or gu iding discovery or
external criticism is used to find out the authenticity of the document.
Before examining the content of the documents, researcher has to make
quite sure that the document itself, which has fallen into our hands, is a
genuine one. This p rocess is called external criticism where the job is
preparatory to the main function of higher criticism. Heuristics checks the
credentials of the document. Positive interpretive criticism aims at
knowing the literal meaning of the document.The author vie ws with
sympathy or antipathy the events or persons and represent them as very
different from the actual happenings. Research scholar or historian should
follow path of critical enquiry to make document record true history.

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Methods o f Historical Enquiry
17 2.6 QUESTIONS
1) Explain the me thod of positive and negative criticism a s methods of
Critical Enquiry in history.
2) Describe the importance of authenticity and credibility in historical
research.
3) Explain Heuristic (Eternal criticism) and Hermeneutics (Internal
Criticism).
4) Analyze N egativ e Interpretive Criticism as method of historical
enquiry.
2.7 REFERENCES
1) G. J. Garraghan, A Guide to Historical Research, Fordhan University
Press, New York, 1946.
2) K.N. Chitnis, Research Methodology in History, Atlantic Publishers,
New Delhi, 2006.
3) B. Sheik Ali, History: Its Theory and Methods, Macmillan pub. Delhi,
1978.
4) R. G. Collingwood, the Principles of History and Other Writings in
Philosophy of History (ed. William H. Dray and W. J. van der
Dussen), 2001.
5) Louise Gottschalks, Understanding of Histo ry: A primer of Historical
methods, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1950.
6) Martha Howell and Walter Preceneir, from Reliable Sources: An
Introduction to Historical methods, Cornell University Press, 2001.
7) S. M Sayanekar, Element in Research Methodology in Socia l Science.
Manan Prakashan, 2016.
8) K. N. Chitnis, Research Methodology in History, Atlantic Publishers,
New Delhi, 2006.
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18 3
PRESENTATION OF HISTORICAL
RESEARCH
Unit Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Objectives of historical research report
3.3 Types of research report
3.4 Structure of a Research Report
3.5 Care to be taken while organization historical re search report
3.6 Summary
3.7 Questions
3.8 References
3.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit the student wilt be able to
1) Grasp the objectives of research report
2) Know types of research reports
3) Understand structure of historical research r eport
4) Recognize the steps in organization historical research report
3.1 INTRODUCTION
Presentation of historical research in the form of research report is the
final and very important step in the process of research work. The research
report i s a mean s for communicating one’ s research experiences to others.
It requires different type of skills. Research report is a narrative but
authoritative document on the outcome of a research work. It presents
highly specific information for a clearly targeted audi ence. A well written
research report is a means of presenting the studied problem, the methods
of data collection and analysis, findings, conclusions and
recommendations in an organized manner. The research scholar present
the research outcome in form of p resentation. It can be in form of research
article, research book or synopsis. Report writing is interesting,
entertaining, and attractive way of presentation of historical research. It is
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Presentation of Historical
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19 formulating policies and strategies relating to subject matter studied. It
provides systematic knowledge on problems and issues analyzed.
3.2 OBJECTIVES OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH
REPORT
1) The research report presents a concrete proof of the histor ical study
undertaken and provides a framework for any work that can be
conducted in the same or concerned areas or historical subjects.
2) The recorded document in the form of research report presents a
knowledge base on the topic under study for academic purposes.
3) The research report documents all the steps undertaken and the analysis
carried out. It authenticates the quality of the work carried out and
authenticates the results obtained.
4) Historical research report encourages or stimulate further research.
5) It narrate the effects or findings of research to other researchers and
concerned persons, so that the policy framers, planners, reformers and
national leaders can be benefited. They can formulate policies of social
reformation and progress o n the basis of these findings
Significance of Report Writing
Research report is considered a major component of the research study as
research work remains incomplete till the report has been written. The
purpose of research is not well served unless the f indings are made known
to others. All this explains the significance of writing research report.
There are people who do not consider writing of report as an integral part
of the research process. But the general opinion is in favour of treating the
presen tation of research results or the writing of report is the last step in a
research study and requires a set of skill than the earlier stages of research.
3.3 TYPES OF RESEARCH REPORT
There are many types of research reports undertaken in historical
presen tation. The nature of report varies according to the aims and
objectives of the research.
Technical Report
In the technical type of reserach report the main emphasis is on
methodology used, assumptions made in the course of the study, the
detailed presenta tion of the findings including their limitations and
supporting data. A general outline of a t echnical report is as follows -
Summary of results, Nature of the study, Methodology used, Analysis of
data and presentation of findings, Conclusio ns and Bibliogra phy. This
type of historical research presentation is based on the study of particular
region or art and architecture. For example: Rep ort based on pottery in
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20 Research Methodology and Sources of History Popular Report
This type of report is gen erally designed for non -technical users . It gives
emphasis on simplicity and attractiveness. The emphasis is also given on
practical aspects and policy implications. The format of this report is
different from that of a technical report. There can be a lib eral use of
margins and blank spaces. The sty le may be more journalistic and precise.
While writing it, possibly it is made easy to rapid reading and quick
comprehension. The newspaper article or articles in popular magazine on
history are the example of s uch report.
Interim Report
An interim report is published when research process is lengthy or time
consuming. In such a case, the study may lose its significance and
usefulness. This report is short and may contain either the first results of
the analysis or the final outcome of the analysis of some aspects which are
completely analyzed. The interim report contains a narration of what is
completed so far and its results are given. It presents a summary of the
findings of that part of analysis, which has be en completed. The PHD
students or research scholars have to present such report for guide or
sponsoring agencies.
Summary Report
A summary report is generally prepared for the use of general public.
When the findings of a study are of general interest, a s ummary report is
desirable. It is written in non -technical and simple language. It also
contains large number of charts and pictures. It contains a brief reference
to the objective of the study, its major findings and their implications. It is
a short repo rt which can be published in a newspaper. They are in simple
and interesting language and they need not have technical terms,
definitions, and statistical analysis . The summary report only presents the
nature and objectives of the research work and the mai n findings of the
research.
Research Articles or Research Paper
Sometimes the researcher takes up a small topic for research, completes
the research on it and publishes his findings in the form of an article.
Sometimes the research activity may be very va st, but the researcher
divides the subject matter into smalltopics and writes separate articles on
each of them. The researcher publishes his articles in those research
magazines or research Journals . There are research Journals devoted to
particular subje ct and these magazines have their own subscribers
Research Abstract
It is a short summary of the technical report. It contains a brief
presentation of the statement of the problem, objectives of study, methods
and techniques used and an over -view of the re port. A brief summary of
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Presentation of Historical
Research
21 for the convenience of examiner, who can decide whether the study
belongs to his area of interest. Results of a research can also be published
as articles in research journals. A professional journal may have its own
special format for reporting research.
3.4 STRUCTURE OF A RESEARCH REPORT
A report has a number of clearly defined sections in certain order. It can
be described or categorized in following ord er.
1) Introductory part of the report
1) Title page
2) Researcher's declaration
3) The certificate of th e research guide or supervisor
4) Acknowledgement
5) Preface
6) Chapter scheme
7) List of tables
2) Main part of the report: (Main Text)
Theor etical background of the topic
 Statement of the Problem
 Review of Literature
 The Scope of the study
 Objectives of the stud
 Hypothesis
 Definition of concepts
 Chapter Scheme
 The Design
3) Research Methodology and method s used for data collection
 Sources of data
 Data proces sing and analysis
 An overview of findings
 Limitations of the study

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22 Research Methodology and Sources of History 4) Conclusion
In this part, a researcher has to explain:
How the researcher analyzed the collected data, what m ethod he used for
data analysis? What sampling method he used and w hy, what was the
estimate of samplin g error? How he interpreted the collected data, what
difficulties he faced in the interpretation of the data and how he overcome
them. What conclusions he drew, what was the rationale behind? What
was the logical base of his conclusions and how he proved h is
conclusions?
3.5 CAR E TO BE TAKEN WHILE ORGANIZING
HISTORICAL RESEARCH REPORT
The research report writing is not easy task. It need careful preparation,
planning and execution. The researcher has to follow lot of prec autions for
successful research report presentation.
1) Flowing presentation
A research report is a means of communication and it is necessary present
it in effective manner . The considerations of effective communication are
basically linked with the targ et audience for whom the report is written
and who writes this report . The manner in which the research findings are
expressed is also equally important. The researcher must be able to
convince the experts about the significance and relevance of research. The
research student should present final report in lucid language effectively.
2) The identification of target audience
The form and type of presentation and other aspects depend upon the type
of reader or the user of the report. The identification of t he target audience
depends on who is the researcher and what is his intention. The target
audience can be other research students, academic community, the sponsor
of the researcher or the general public. The communication characteristics
such as the level of knowledge, the type of language that is understood and
appreciated, the expectation form the report are not identical for different
groups of audiences. The researcher may adopt different strategy of the
presentation according to the nature of the audie nce.
3) Logical analysis of the subject matte r
The subject matter can be developed logically and chronologically. This is
because logical analysis implies development of the subject from simple
matter to the complex. It is also based on logical connections or
associations between different factors. In historical research the
chronology is very impetrate. The chronological sequence must be taken
into consideration in historical research report presentation.

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Presentation of Historical
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23 4) Logical arrangement of the material
Research outline is a framework of historical presentation on which the
written report is based . It is an aid to decide the logical arrangement of the
material to be included in the report and the relative importance of various
points. Outline is drawn after prepa ration of the format of the report. It
gives cohesiveness and direction to report writing. The outline can be
according to topic or sentence. In the topic outline, the topic headings and
the sub -topic headings are noted and the points to be discussed under each
head are noted in short forms or with key words. In case of sentence
outline, it gives more details about the points to be included in the report.
5) Preparation of final draft
The rough draft follows the outline and the research should write down t he
broad findings and generalizations. The rough draft can also include
various suggestions which help in improving the final writing. A rough
draft is essential to avoid mistakes or omission in the final draft. It is
possible to bring sophistication in language in the final draft. Final draft is
written after a careful scrutiny of the rough draft.
6) Footnotes
It is an evidence that research is based on facts . Citations to sources help
readers expand their knowledge on a topic. One of the most effective
strategies for locating authoritative, relevant sources about a topic is to
review footnotes or references from known sources. It shows the
theoretical foundation of the research and, therefore, you are reporting
your research from an informed and critically engaged perspective.
The list of sources used increases your credibility as the author of the
work .
7) Quotations
Quotations should be placed in quotation marks and double -spaced,
forming an immediate part of the text. But if a quotation is of a
consider able length then it should be single -spaced and indented at least
half an inch to the right of the normal text margin. The reference of the
quotations can be mentioned in footnote section.
8) Preparation of Bibliography
A bibliography is a listing of all th e sources used when researching a
paper. Generally speaking , a bibliography is a list of books on a particular
topic or subject prepared for the reference of a particular library user.
Researcher should mention the book or research material he or she
refer red. The bibliography should be arranged alphabetically and may be
divided into three parts. Fist part may consist of books, second part may
contain magazines, periodical and newspaper articles and the third part
may contain web -addresses. The entries in t he bibliography should be
according to a certain order like name of the author, title of the book in
italics, place, publisher and date of publication, edition, page number if
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24 Research Methodology and Sources of History 9) Abbreviations
The first time any abbreviations is mentioned i n a footnote or at
appropriate place. After that, shortcuts in form of abbreviations should be
used. For ex . Prof. P. G. Patil, (Trs.), Slavery , Collected Work of Mahatma
Jotirao Phule , Vol., 1, (Originally Written by Mahatma Phule in Marathi
Gulamgiri ), The Education Department Government of Maharashtra,
Bombay, 1991, p. xx., hereafter CWMP 1 . Here, CWMP 1 is the
abbreviation of the book.
Along with above cited contents, t he report must present the logical
analysis of the subject matter. Report must conta in necessary charts,
graphs and statistical tables in addition to the important summary tables.
Presentation in a report should be free from spelling mistakes and
grammatical errors. The important rules of grammar relate to: Spelling of
words, punctuations , capitalization and other standard rules, etc.
Footnotes, documentation, abbreviations are used strictly according to the
convention or rules of incorporating them. Every quotation used should be
acknowledged with a footnote. Do not use abbreviations in t he text of the
report. However, abbreviations are desirable in footnotes, tables and
appendices. Index is also an essential part of a report and it should be
properly prepared. Appendices should be enlisted in respect of all the
technical data on the repor t. Index is also an essential part of a report and
it should be properly prepared.
3.6 SUMMARY
Report writing indicates presentation of the research for experts and
masses. The nature of report varies accordingly. The readers should find it
interesting to read the report and it should stimulate the curiosity and
imagination of the readers. The researcher writes the report not for himself
but for others. It is in the public interest that he presents his findings
through articles in newspapers, speeches on r adio, television or through
public speeches. The aim of all these efforts is to communicate his
findings and research efforts to the common people. It has introduction,
main part ant the end conclusion. It is authenticated by reference section
or bibliogra phy.
3.7 QUESTIONS
1) What are objectives and significance of historical research report?
2) Explain the objectives and nature of research reports.
3) Examine the types of historical report for presentation.
4) What are the constituents of main part and conclusion in presentation of
report?
5) Which care need to be taken while writing research report?
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Presentation of Historical
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25 3.8 REFERENCES
1) Garraghan G. S., A Guide to Historical Method , New York, Fordham
University Press 1996. 2) Gottstack, L., Understanding History , New
York, Alfred A. Knof 1951.
3) S. M Sayanekar, Element in Research Methodology in Social Science.
MananPrakashan, 2016.
4) Ali Sheikh, History: Its Theory and Method, Macmillan India Ltd.,
Madras 1978.
5) Marwick, Arthur., The Nature of History, London, First Edition 1970,
Reprinted 1976.
6) Mc Dowell, W. H. Historical Research. A Guide for writers,
Dissertation. Thesis Art book 2005. 7) Agarwal, R. S., Important
Guidelines on Research Methodology, Delhi, 1983.
8) K. N. Chitnis, Research Methodology in History, Atlantic Publishers,
New Delhi, 2006.

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26 4
NEW TRENDS IN HISTORY: LOCAL
HISTORY
Unit Structure :
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Meaning
4.3 Tools of Local history
4.4 Sources of the Local History
4.5 Publishing of the Source
4.6 Summary
4.7 Questions
4.8 References
4.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit the student wilt be able to
1) Grasp the meaning of Local History
2) Understandtool and sources of Local History
3) To judge importance of Local historical resources
4.1 INTRODUCTION
Among the new streams of historiography, the important stream of 'local
historiography' has now come to the forefront. Local history does not have
to be termed local history by the author . In fact many historians writing
local history avoid the term. Local history narratives are created by a wide
range of peo ple for numerous purposes. Some are written by academics
for other academics or for the public at large, while others are written by
amateurs for their local communities. Some are written with the purpose to
engage local audiences. Some are written to tes t a historical theory in
language that is largely unreachable to the commonpeople.
4.2 MEANING
According to Stephanie Pasternak Local history incorporates an array of
research methodologies and is expressed in a variety of narrative styles.
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New Trends i n History:
Local History
27 recorded memories of a place from an earlier time. In these regions the
local histories written in the Anglo -American tradition may not have
appeared until the late nineteenth or early twentieth ce nturies. This
broader view would allow for regional analysis of the development of
local history narrative traditions, perhaps revealing vernacular forms.
Local history may share a space with many academic fields including
ethnic studies, case -studies of national history, public history, regional
history, and urban history, the many place -specific history, environmental
history, oral history, and micro history. Incorporating local history into an
academic history department benefits many, including profess ors,
students, their colleges and universities, as well as members of
surrounding communities. Practicing local history allows historians to
reach a wider audience beyond their academic curriculam. As some
professional historians have pointed out that loca l history narrative is
extremely popular with ordinary people.
Moreover, the historiography of the local history can provide historians
with valuable insight into a community that they may not find elsewhere.
This body of writing about place by local histo rians can provide an
important historiographical base for academic studies of a community. As
William D. Rubenstein noted, while many professional historians have
criticized the bulk of amateur local history for both its lack of analysis and
omission of un savory topics. In most cases local historiography provides a
firm and valuable basis for more sophisticated histories. Even factually
inaccurate local histories can be beneficial to historical research. In
addition local history research is an invaluable t ool that teaches students
the intricacies of historical methods.
Michael Lewis found that having students do original research in local
history case studies to learn environmental history provided students a
deeper understanding of the field than did his usual lecture course on
environmental history. In addition, the live laboratory required and
motivated students to improve their basic skills of reading, writing and
critical thinking more than a survey course would. Incorporating
coursework in reading and writing local history narrative brings value to
any history department. Local history is a flexible form. It can be
integrated as a field of inquiry or even as a single course. It can be an
academic field on its own or it can be subsumed into a variety of subfields
within an academic history department including History, Public History,
Regional Studies, and Narrative History. By incorporating a local history
in mainstream syllabus a history department can add value to the
department, the university and th e surrounding community.
Beginning of Local history
The stream of local history got momentum with the encounters with
Native Americans generally in the form of captivity. The narratives in the
form of memory were another popular topic of late seventeenth a nd early
eighteenth century local history. While stories about the nation may have
been best sellers, according to a survey by George Callcott, between 1800
and 1860 local history about a town, state or region was the most common
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28 Research Methodology and Sources of History end of the nineteenth century. As David Russo describes the typical late -
nineteenth century local history narrative had three parts: a
chronologically sequenced narrative focusing on the settlement and early
years of the community; a series of chapters organized by subject that
described aspects of the community including things such as its
government, commerce, clubs and parks; and finally a set of biographical
sketches of prominent individuals and early set tler.
4.3 TOOLS OF LOCAL HISTORY
Timothy Swenson has described various tools necessary for generating
local history. The right tools can help tremendously in making the work of
historical research much easier. One theme that reseracher will find in
most o f this paper is "going digital", meaning using a computer through all
stages of your work and using it to solve a number of problems. Modern
technology can be very useful in both research and writing. It makes it
easier to find information, easier to store information, easier to recall the
information, and easier to organize information.
Computer
Computer is a good and very useful in local history. Taking notes on paper
is easy to do and comes natural to most of us, but it is hard to find this
information w hen we need it later. If someone else is referring to such
notes, it could also be difficult for someone else to read researcher’s
writing. By keeping notes in text files, they can be easily searched,
updated, passed to others, and read by others. Storing information on the
computer will provide a number of benefits: take up less room, easier to
carry, easier to search, easier to access, and easier to copy and distribute.
In recent times it is more convenient and useful to use a laptop than a
traditional de sktop.Portability is critical in research. Since not all research
will be done from home , having the ability to take the computer on the
road increases its usefulness. If researcher has enough funding he can
make use of laptop for research purpose. The mod ern technological
accessories such as pen drive and hard disk can be used to save the
research The larger monitor should be easier to use than the smaller screen
on the laptop.
Scanner
In the earlier days in research, use of photocopier was a cheap and eas y
way to make copies of sections of books, newspaper clippings, and even
photographs. Most libraries have photocopiers of suchobjects. The
problem is that the photocopy is never as good as the original, and over
time, as a photocopy is made of a photocopy, the end result can look pretty
bad. Photocopies of photographs lacks clarity. It can document what the
image looks like, but it can not reproduce the photograph. Keeping paper
records is useful, but it is not the most efficient. By using a scanner to
copy material digitally, the end result will be just as good as the original.It
will be easier to store (on a hard drive), easier to modify (crop, rotate, etc),
and easier to share (what’s up, e -mail, etc). A scanner is the easiest way to
get old documents and pictures into a computer in digital format.
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New Trends i n History:
Local History
29 Digital Camera
History is not just something that happened in the past.It has many
aspects. History is being created today. A digital camera can be used to
document the present, be it how a building looks today , or what people
look like today. The pictures can be useful for current research, and very
useful to someone in the future. All historical photographs were taken for
some other purpose can be useful for historians. They only became
historical because of h ow old they are. By taking current photographs of
buildings or landmarks and documenting this way it will be clear exactly
what building or landmark is being referred to in the future. A digital
camera is useful in documenting historical objects in a colle ction. The
pictures can then be used in a research paper discussing the object. A
number of the newer digital cameras can record video and this can be very
useful in interviewing people. Most of the cameras save the video in a
format that is easily transfe rred to a computer. The older tape -based video
camer as needed a special cord to connect to the computer and software to
transfer the video to the computer.
Microphone
Getting people to write their memories of the past is not as easy as it
sounds. Some don 't want to take the time, some are not interested, so a
researcher has to be a bit more proactive. Oral histories are a great way to
make it easier to get information from people. Most will find it easier to
talk about the past than to write or type it. Th e limitation of an oral history
is that it needs to be transcribed to be useful. The advantage is that
reseracher have a permanent record of what that person sounded like at the
time. Future generations of that family will probably be very interested in
hearing the oral history.The material that a local historical society or
museum might have:photographs, books, personal collections, newsletters,
old business directories, old phone books, old maps etc.
4.4 SOURCES OF THE LOCAL HISTORY
Genealogical records
In India the traditional geological record keeper known as Bhat usually
come to a village for regular visit. The genealogies of the original clans of
each village and their history are with these people. After coming to the
village, they stay there for at least a month. With the convenience of their
families, they go from house to house on bullocks. Going to every palace,
to the settlement, in front of the people of every household, their lineage is
read out in front of the people of the chopdis (notebook). When they tell
the information of each clan, they first tell the origin of that origin, the
native village. The names of women were not included in the previous
pedigree list; but after the Equal Property Rights Act, they have started
putting the names of girls in the list. If a woman is an heir in the old
pedigree list, her name falls. These information is very useful for local
history.
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30 Research Methodology and Sources of History Census
It provides comprehensive and detailed data on the whole population in
addition to demographic, social and econ omic characteristics by the
lowest administrative or geographical level and related rates and
indicators (population growth rates, age and gender composition, and
educational features).It provides necessary data enabling the assessment
of the population st atus during the inter -census period as well as
monitoring demographic, social and economic changes taking place
during the same period in various administrative divisions.
Cemetery records
Cemeteries are regarded as the location where people are buried aft er
death. They are often known by various terms such as graveyards, burying
grounds, burial grounds, burial plots, 'churchyards', and several other
terms. A cemetery may be operated by a municipality, or it may be
operated by a church or religion, a funera l home or other private company,
or a fraternal order.Written records may consists information recorded the
deceased’s name, date and place of birth and death, age of the deceased at
death, place of origin, names of other persons related to the deceased,
maiden surname, sometimes marriage information.
Donation Declaration at public places
In India provision of drinking water or rest house is made of in public
places. The name of the facilitator is also given there. These records are
essential for the study of local history. Many times the name of the donor
is also mentioned in the temple or public hall.
Local Newspapers
Local newspapers play an important role in the history of the local region.
Local news is given priority in the local newspaper. Local probl ems or
local developments are often not reported in the national newspaper. A
newspaper in Thane district called Thane Vaibhav and Sagar keeps a
special watch on the local developments of the city. Similarly, in each
district, the local newspaper runs a sp ecial article on local historical
events.
4.5 PUBLISHING OF THE SOURCE
Historical Society
Newsletter or Newspaper article is usually a shorter piece of writing,
something that would take up a few pages, and possibly up to five pages.
The article could hav e a couple of photographs accompany it, but it is not
always necessary. The format it is to be stored in will depend on what
requirements the publication has. Most will accept a doc file and the
photographs as jpeg images.
Research Paper
A research paper is a longer piece of writing, something from about 5 to
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New Trends i n History:
Local History
31 but too short for a full book. The paper could be self published or
distributed through a local museum or historical society. The Konkan
History Council (Konkan Itihas Parishad) also organizes conferences to
promote local history in Maharashtra. Research papers are presented and
published on the social, political and cultural issues of Konkan from its
ancient times to the ancient times. This is an important aspect for the
growth of local history.
Book
When the finished writing has over 30 pages, there should be enough to
create a book. To be a proper book, it would normally be printed in hard
copy and it would have an ISBN number . Both of these options cost
money. There are many formats for hard copy, some that are fairly in
expensive, such as a saddle -stapled soft cover book, and others that are
very expensive, such as a hard back book.
Electronic record
A distribution format tha t is becoming more common and more accepted
is electronic. Basically, the document is saved as a PDF file and made
available through a website. Persons who are interested in the document
will connect to the website, download the document, and either read i t on
the computer, or print it out and read it. The process for doing this is easy
and either free or inexpensive.
4.6 SUMMARY
Among the new streams of historiography, the important stream of 'local
historiography' has now come to the forefront. Computer, digital camera
and scanner are used as tools to collect data of local history. Genealogical
records, census, Cemetery records and local newspapers are some of the
sources for local history writing. Local newspapers play an important role
in the history of the local region. The information collected through these
sources can be published as research articles, books or can be kept in
electronic format.
4.7 QUESTIONS
1. Explain meaning and tools of Local history.
2. What are the Sources of the Local History?
3. Describ e the procedure of publishing of the Local history Sources.
4.8 REFERENCES
1) Timothy Swenson, Museum of Local History, Anza Street Fremont,
2011.
2) Stephanie Pasternak, A New Vision of Local History Narrative:
Writing History in Cummington, Massachusetts, Mas ters Theses 1911
- February 2014. 359. munotes.in

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32 Research Methodology and Sources of History 3) Rosalie Triolo, Helen Doyle and Katya Johanson, Writing and
Publishing Local History A Guide for First -time Authors and
Historical Societies, Royal Historical Society of Victoria, 239
A'Beckett Street, Melbourne
4) William D. Rubenstein, “History and ‘amateur’ history” in Peter
Lambert and Phillipp Schofield ed., Making History: An Introduction
to the History and Practices of a Discipline (London: Routledge,
2004), 272 -278
5) Russo, Keepers, John Long and Peggy Tuck Sinko, “The New Local
History,” Public Historian 11 (1989),

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33 5
ORAL HISTORY
Unit Structure :
5.0 Objectives
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Memory and oral sources
5.3 Meaning
5.4 Oral history assists to know the past
5.5 Extent of Oral history
5.6 Reliability of the information gathered through oral history
5.7 Care to be taken while recording digital audio
5.8 Summary
5.9 Questions
5.10 References
5.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit the student wilt be able to
1) Know new trends in Oral History
2) Graspmeaning and concept of Oral History
3) To judge reliability of the information gathered by oral historical
resources
4) Know about Care to be taken while recording oral sources
5.1 INTRODUCTION
Oral history is a history built around peoples narratives. It brings life into
history itself and extends its scope. It allows historians to get historical
information not just from the leaders but from the unknown majority of
the people. It brings history into and out of the community. It brings
dignity and self -confidence to less privileged and hitherto unknown
people.It can giv e a sense of belonging to a place or in time. Similarly oral
history offers a challenge to the accepted myths of history to the
authoritarian judgment inherent in its tradition. It provides a means for a
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34 Research Methodology and Sources of History 5.2 MEMORY AND ORAL SOURCES
Memory is the basic of oral history from which information can be
extracted and preserved. Oral history collects memories and personal
commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews. An
oral history in terview generally contains of a well -prepared interviewer
questioning an interviewee and recording their exchange in audio or video
format. The interview are recorded, summarized, or indexed and then
placed in a library or archives. These interviews may be used for research
or excerpted in a publication radio or video documentary, museum
exhibition, dramatization or other form of public presentation. Recordings,
transcripts, catalogs, photographs and related documentary materials can
also be posted on the I nternet. Oral history does not include random
recorded speeches, wiretapping, personal diaries on tape, or other sound
recordings that lack the dialogue between interviewer and interviewee.
Oral history relies on memory which is a highly individualized an d
personal construction of our past. No two people will remember the same
historical event or place in the same way. Two people may have inhabited
the same house or travelled to the same spot yet how they remember it will
differ. In recent times historians and others have turned their attentions to
the questions circulating around identity, narrative and historical memory
get idea from different people.
During the European conquest of the Americas in the sixteenth century,
Spanish chroniclers relied on oral sources to reconstruct the history of the
indigenous people from the Aztecs to the Incas. They collected the
testimony of survivors of these great civilizations to collect information
about their social, economic, and religious traditions. Although strong ly
colored by the colonizers' cultural assumptions, these histories remain
important sources for the new world's pre -Columbian history of South
America.
5.3 MEANING
Oral history is a sound recording of historical information obtained
through an interview t hat preserves a person’s life history or eye witness
account of a past experiences. A researcher completes the research process
that begin with recording, interviewing, and preserving the records to
create oral history. Oral history recordings help listene rs better understand
how individuals from various viewpoints and different stations in society
encountered the full range of life in their day, from everyday routines to
catastrophic events. Carefully preserved, the recordings carry the witness
of the pres ent into the future, where through creative programs and
publications, they can inform, instruct, and inspire generations to come.
Creating an oral history requires two people one who questions and one
who narrates responses to the questions.

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Oral History
35 Two streng ths distinguish oral history interviewing:
1) Subjectivity, which allows interviewers to ask not only, What
happened?, but also, How did you feel about what happened?, and
2) The partnership of co -creation, which invites narrators to interpret and
analyze thei r personal experiences through their own points of view
and in their own words.
Preserving the recorded interview fulfills the purpose of creating the oral
history in the first place. Preservation begins with making recordings safe,
advances to making the m useful and accessible, and culminates with
sharing them in creative ways with others.Oral history projects are
initiatives planned, designed, and executed by individuals or groups to
create and preserve oral histories. Oral history programs carry out ora l
history projects on multiple major topics or focus on one major theme.
Programs may offer training and consultation services for the broader
community and they often partner with one another and network with
other oral historians through the Oral History Association and its affiliates.
Oral history collections preserve oral histories, including the recording and
accompanying derivative materials and contextual materials (i.e., maps,
research notes, correspondence, photographs, and interview notes).
Collec tions are usually administered by an archivist within a library,
museum, or historical society. Collections are accessed through a catalog
record, finding aid, or digital collection Web portal and are offered to
researchers in accordance with legal agreeme nts signed by the narrators
and interviewers.
Oral historians
Oral historians come from academic settings, government offices, libraries
and museums, medical and military sites, community centers, families,
and anywhere people are studying people and the past:
1) Pursue beyond their immediate research needs to gather broad -based
information so that their interviews address multiple historical
questions; seek out people who may otherwise leave behind little or no
material record for future generations and ask questions that may have
never before been asked about a topic or event
2) Arrange ways to share the results of their interviews with narrators and
their communities
3) Deposit recordings, transcripts, and related materials in archives or
libraries
4) Publish the re cords to distribute widely the information gained in oral
history
5) Uphold professional standards for research through local, state,
regional, national and international organizations.


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36 Research Methodology and Sources of History Who can become an oral historian?
Oral history has always been multidi sciplinary. While many professional
historians conduct oral history, a specific degree in history has never been
a prerequisite for entering the field. Well established scholars sometimes
make poor interviewers.Those who are part of the community or
profes sion being interviewed, if properly trained in conducting oral
history, have advantages in establishing rapport and in prior knowledge.
Law students have interviewed judges, women coal miners have
successfully interviewed other women coal miners, and membe rs of a
community have conducted oral histories with their neighbors. In Alaska,
a portrait artist conducted interviews with the people she was painting to
gain a deeper understanding of the personalities she was trying to capture
on canvas. In Japan, a ph ysician interviewed his elderly patients in a
fishing community that was rapidly disappearing. He wrote the resulting
book from his office over looking a new express way built on the riverbed.
Oral history has room for both the academic and the common peo ple.
With reasonable training, through oral history courses, workshops, or
manuals, anyone can conduct a useable oral history. Oral history
conferences are no table for the variety of participants, among them radio
and video documentary makers, museum cura tors, archivists, journalists,
gerontologists, anthropologists, and folklorists. Regardless of their diverse
objectives, they share many common methods of interviewing.
5.4 ORAL HISTORY ASSISTS TO KNOW THE PAST
Oral history provides a complete and more ac curate picture of the past by
augmenting the information provided by public records, statistical data,
photographs, maps, letters, diaries, and other historical materials. Eye
witnesses of events contribute various viewpoints and perspectives that fill
in the gaps in documented history, sometimes correcting or even
contradicting the written record. Interviewers are able to ask questions left
out of other records and to interview people whose stories have been
untold or forgotten. At times, an interview may serve as the only source of
information available about a certain place, event, or person.
Oral history offers details how individuals and communities
experienced the historical events
Traditional history courses in high school and college usually highlig ht
only on the major events of the past, covering the fundamentals of who,
what, when, where, why, and so what. Oral history brings depth to our
understanding of the past by carrying us into experience at an individual
level. Thoughtful, personal answers t o questions like What did you do in
the war? Reveal the ways decisions made by the movers and shakers of
the day changed the lives of ordinary people and their families and
communities. The subordinates groups in the world including blacks in
America, colo nized people through colonial powers like England, France
etc. and untouchables in India were denied the basic human rights. They
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Oral History
37 untold stories can offer new dimension to history. Th e neglected and
marginalized elements are rarely touched by established historical trends.
The downtrodden and their grievances are not highlighted by the
established historical writings hence the alternative subaltern historical
writing become the vehicle of expression of down trodden elements in
society. Modern historian with subaltern views aims to reconstruct the
history with oral records. Instead of the governmental archival records, it
accepts personal memoirs, letters and traditional anecdotes as the elites
dominated all kinds of prevalent historical records.
Oral history preserves for future generations a sound portrait
Oral history preserves for future generations a sound portrait of who we
are in the present and what we remember about the past. C ertainly, future
generations will view and judge today’s generation through their point of
view. The story of the past is continually revised in the light of new
interpretations. Oral history allows people to share their stories in their
own words with the ir own voices through their own understanding of what
happened and why. With thorough care of preserving our sound
recordings the voices of our narrators will endure to speak for them when
they are gone. By complicating the story with individual experience oral
histories will help future historians avoid sweeping generalizations that
stereo type people engender prejudice and overlook important variables in
the historical context.
5.5 EXTENT OF ORAL HISTORY
A more positive trend triggered the globalization o f oral history. Whereas
past centers of oral history lay primarily in North America and Western
Europe, the digital revolution together with sudden political and social
changes have shifted much of the dynamic of oral history around the
world to include th e former Soviet bloc, Asia, Africa, South America. The
in adequacy of written documentation from previous regimes and colonial
powers has hastened the need and even the demand for oral history. From
the local to the national level governments have come to see the value of
oral history and have authorized and sponsored specific projects. At the
same time, the democratic impulse of oral history has convinced many
practitioners that it is "time to give chance to the common people." Oral
historians are increasi ngly training students and community members to
collect interviews themselves. Since the first appearance of Doing Oral
History, the International Oral History Association has held meetings in
Sweden, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa, each meeting producing
multiple volumes of conference proceedings.
Much of the new material in the book reflects projects under way around
the world. Despite differences in the subjects being studied in their diverse
places, oral historians share many commonalities in methods and
techniques. Universally, they have encountered the tendency of oral
history to confound rather than to confirm their assumptions, confronting
them with often conflicting view points. Oral history derives its
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38 Research Methodology and Sources of History adding an ever wider range of voices to the story oral history does not
simplify the historical narrative but makes it more composite and more
stimulating. Oral history flourishes on talking largely by the interviewee.
The inte rviewer's task is to do thorough research beforehand then ask
meaningful questions, suppressing the urge to talk and listening instead.
Nonetheless it always seems amusing that oral historians who have
disciplined themselves to be silent during interviews behave so talkatively
when they gather at professional conferences. The truth is that oral
historians love to talk. As the only historians who deal exclusively with
the living they have to be convivial enough to establish rapport with
interviewees to put t hem at ease and encourage candor.
Oral historians also find themselves constantly questioning their own
concepts, methods, and applications of new technology. Those who collect
the voices of history make their own voices heard on how to do and use
oral his tory. It is impossible to identify a place on the globe where people
are not now doing oral history. Since the appearance of the first recording
devices from wax cylinder to wire recorder to reel -to-reel, cassette,
videocassette, and digital audio tape, an d mini -disk recorders, interviewers
have questioned politicians and protestors, indigenous peoples and
immigrants, artists and artisans, soldiers and civilians. Oral historians have
recorded the memories of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, the Japanese -
Ame rican internment, and the Soviet Gulags. Interviews have also
captured the everyday experiences of families and communities, whether
in inner cities, satellite suburbs, or remote villages.
When historians came to realize that women and racial and ethnic
minorities were missing from the pages of most history texts, oral
historians recorded their voices to construct a more diverse and accurate
portrait of the past. Archives of oral history interviews exist throughout
the world and in every state and territor y of the United States, ranging
from a few tapes housed in the local history collection of a neighborhood
public library to thousands of transcripts preserved at major university
libraries. Inside the federal government, oral historians have collected
testimony about national parks and historical sites, diplomatic
maneuvering, military strategies, intelligence activities, space flights, and
social security and welfare programs. Over time, this information has been
returned to the public in countless books a nd articles, museum exhibits,
folklife festivals, radio programs, documentary films, and web sites
indeed, the development of the Internet has permitted the worldwide
dissemination of oral history transcripts and sound recordings. The real
impact of the or al history movement may not be fully realized until well
into the future. Most of the collected interviews have been with
contemporary figures discussing recent events. Individual researchers do
not always need to wait for archival oral history collections to release
interviews; armed with their own tape recorders, they can go forth
themselves to question whoever is willing to answer. But as generations
pass and participants in historic events are no longer living, future
researchers will have to depend on what earlier interviews collected,
processed, and deposited in archives. How will these future researchers
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Oral History
39 important supplement to the written documentation of our time, or
dismissed as superficial and superfluous? How much of what we do will
be preserved, and how much will be lost? Oral historians need to look
beyond their own immediate needs to consider the corpus of work they
will leave for the future.
Journalist turned historian, All an Nevins, created the first modern oral
history archives at Columbia University in 1948. A decade earlier, in his
book ‘the Gateway to History’ Nevins had proposed to reinvigorate
historical study in America by making "a systematic attempt to obtain
from the lips and papers of living Americans who had led significant lives,
a fuller record of their participation in the political, economic and cultural
life of the last sixty years." Recognizing that modern communication and
transportation were making letter -writing and diary -keeping obsolete,
Nevins founded the Columbia Oral History Research Office. This new
effort raised complaints from those who considered "Oral History" either
too imprecise or too Freudian.
The utility of oral history is one of the part of subaltern historical writings.
Modern historian with subaltern views aims to reconstruct the history with
all kinds of records. Instead of the governmental archival records, it
accepts personal memoirs, letters and traditional anecdotes as the elites
dominated all kinds of prevalent historical records. In India Depressed or
lower caste and Tribal have not been recorded as they were not viewed as
mainstream population. The oral history is useful to collect memories of
the past from them.
Worldwide politi cal and social changes during the last decades of the
twentieth century confronted historians with the inadequacy of archival
documentation, which often reflected a discredited government rather than
the resistance against it. Newly emerging nations in Asi a and Africa found
that the written documents reflected the views of former colonial masters
and used oral history to revive buried national identities. When the Soviet
Union dissolved, Russian and Eastern European oral historians' efforts
began immediatel y to reexamine and rewrite that region's discredited
official history by collecting personal testimony suppressed under
Communist regimes. In Brazil and Argentina, oral history projects have
focused on periods of military dictatorship to record the experie nces of
those brutalized by state terrorism. South Africans similarly turned to oral
history in their search for truth and healing in the post -Apartheid era.
Interviewers in many nations have found interviewing a critical tool when
confronting issues of re pression and reconciliation
5.6 RELIABILITY OF THE INFORMATION GATHERED
THROUGH ORAL HISTORY
Oral history is as reliable or unreliable as other research sources. No single
piece of data of any sort should be trusted completely and all sources need
to be te sted against other evidence. The historian James Mac Gregor Burns
who was trained under S. L. A. Marshall to interview American soldiers
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40 Research Methodology and Sources of History information (about how frequently infantrymen fi red their rifles in
combat) and also some startling insights (about how many troops were
killed by friendly fire). Burns concluded that "such interviews were a most
valuable contribution to military history, but only if used in careful
conjunction with mor e conventional sources, like documents and enemy
records."
What's the difference between oral history and folklore? Oral historians
and folklorists both use interviews to collect information, but not
necessarily the same type of information. The two practi ces have been
described as opposite ends of a continuum: oral historians concentrate on
recording the personal experiences of the interviewee, and folklorists
collect the traditional stories, songs and other expressions of the
community, fact or fiction. A n oral historian would most likely interview a
husband and wife separately, seeking to identify the unique perspective of
each spouse. A folklorist, being as interested in the way a story is told as
in its substance, would interview the couple together to observe the
interplay as one begins a story and the other finishes it. The folklorist
Barbara Allen has observed that historians "tend to see oral historical
sources as mines of raw data from which historical evidence can be
extracted," while folklorists a re more concerned with "recognizing
identifiable patterns" in the way people shape their narrative. Sharing an
interest in interviewing, oral historians, folklorists, ethnographers, cultural
anthropologists, sociologists, and linguists, each have different objectives
that influence their methodology. "Field -oriented" disciplines rely on
participant observation and may not even take notes in the presence of
those they are studying, waiting to write up their notes later from memory.
Unlike historians, who see k concrete evidence of what actually happened
and to document it as fully as possible, folklorists, ethnographers, and
anthropologists are often less interested in verification of facts and see
folk tales and folklore as no less legitimate than other stori es. Linguists
will often be more concerned with the manner of telling a story than in its
substance. Despite the distinctive way that these assorted disciplines
analyze and use interviews, the intersection of their methodological
techniques has permitted c ollaborative, cross -disciplinary oral history
projects on a range of community, racial, ethnic and immigration issues.
5.7 CARE TO BE TAKEN WHILE RECORDING DIGITAL
AUDIO
Digital technology is enhancing the work of oral historians, but the rapid
developme nt of new devices and formats requires oral historians to keep
alert to changing trends.
1) Seek help from professional s.

2) Get most sturdy and dependable recorder you can afford.

3) Avoid digital voice recorders that create highly compressed audio files
in proprietary formats Select a recorder with an output terminal such
as USB which allows you to cable the recorder directly to a computer
to transfer sound files. You may also want to purchase a USB card munotes.in

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Oral History
41 reader so that you can transfer your sound files from t he removable
flash memory card to a computer.

4) Appropriate microphones for recording oral history interviews should
be condenser types (not dynamic types). Condenser microphones
require a power source supplied either by the recorder device (referred
to as phantom power) or a separate battery. For the most secure and
least noisy input, select a microphone with a balanced XLR
connection, not a stereo mini -plug connection.

5) Test the microphone carefully. Compare recordings made with the
recorder’s internal m icrophone and an external microphone and choose
the setup that works best for your recorder in your unique interview
setting. Some digital recorders have excellent internal microphones.
5.8 SUMMARY
Memory is the basic of oral history from which information can be
extracted and preserved. Oral history collects memories and personal
commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews. Oral
history allows people to share their stories in their own words with their
own voices through their own u nderstanding of what happened. Oral
history collections preserve oral histories, including the recording and
accompanying derivative materials and contextual materials such as maps,
research notes, correspondence, photographs, and interview notes.
Collecti ons are usually administered by an archivist within a library,
museum, or historical society. Oral history conferences are notable for the
variety of participants, among them radio and video documentary makers,
museum curators, archivists, journalists, ger ontologists, anthropologists,
and folklorists.
5.9 QUESTIONS
1) Describe the meaning and utility of Oral history.
2) What are the sources and types of Oral history?
3) Explain the importance of Oral sources in history and care to be taken
while recording it.
5.10 REFERENCES
1) Charlton, Thomas L., Lois E. Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless, eds.
Handbook of Oral History. Alta Mira Press, 2006. Reprinted in two
parts, History of Oral History (2007) and Thinking about Oral History
(2008).

2) De Blasio, Donna M., Charles F. Ga nzert, David H. Mould, Stephen
H. Paschen, and Howard L. Sacks. Catching Stories: A Practical Guide
to Oral History. Swallow Press, Ohio University Press, 2009.
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42 Research Methodology and Sources of History 3) Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide, Second edition, Donald A.
Ritchie Oxford University pre ss, 2003.
4) Sharon Veale and Kathleen Schilling, Talking History Oral History
Guidelines, Department of Environment & Conservation, (NSW)
National Library of Australia, June 2004
5) http://www.baylor.edu/oralhis tory/

6) http://www.oralhistory.org



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43 6
DIGITAL AND E - SOURCES
Unit Structure :
6.0 Objectives
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Digital and E Sources
6.3 Types of the Digital Sources
6.4 Examples of Digital source
6.5 Referencing Digital sources
6.6 Digital sources Advantages and Disadvantages
6.7 Summary
6.8 Questions
6.9 References
6.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit the student wilt be able to
1) Know Digital and E Sources
2) Grasp meaning and Types of Digital Sources
3) Understand how do referencing of Digital Source
4) Know Advantages an d Disadvantages of Digital Sources
6.1 INTRODUCTION
The digital sources aimed to improve our understanding of a subject and help
us to ensure that collected information is factually accurate. Using only print
resources for research can be limited. We can use digital resources effectively
by researching widely rather than referring to only one or two digital
resources. Researcher should check that all resources are current and accurate.
It is important to be organized while doing research and to keep track of the
resources. One must use referencing and citation to claim the
authenticity. Digitization has made it possible for libraries, archives,
historical societies, museums and individuals to easily share their
collections with the world. Researchers today have unprecedented access
to images of primary source materials with descriptive metadata that, in
the pre -digital age, were available only to those who could visit a
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44 Research Methodology and Sources of History 6.2 DIGITAL AND E SOURCES
1) Internet archives :
Web archiving p rovides online research data source to social scientists and
digital humanities. One of the most notable efforts to record the history of
the World Wide Web is the Internet Archive (IA) project, which maintains
the largest repository of archived data in t he world. Understanding the
quality of archived data and the completeness of each record of a single
website is a central issue for scholarly research, and yet there is no
standard record of the provenance of digital archives. Although present
day records tend to be quite accurate, archived Web content deteriorates as
one moves back in time. The Web Archives for Historical Research
(WAHR) group has the goal of linking history and big data to give
historians the tools required to find and interpret digital s ources from web
archives. Our research focuses on both web histories - writing about the
recent past as reflected in web archives - as well as methodological
approaches to understanding these repositories.
2) Word Cat:
One can find research material from 10,000 libraries worldwide, with
books, DVDs, CDs, and articles up for grabs. You can even find your
closest library with WorldCat’s tools.
3) Google Books :
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search and Google
Print and by its codename Project Ocean is a service from Google Inc. )
searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned,
converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in
its digital database. Books are provided either by publishers and authors,
through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library
partners, through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered
with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives.
4) Ancient India – The British Museum :
The British Museum’s online offerings are impress ive for research
purpose. The Ancient Civilizations websites highlights achievements of
some remarkable world civilizations and explores cross -cultural themes of
human development. Explore the people, culture, beliefs, and history of
ancient India using an imations, 3D models and objects from The British
Museum’s collections. The numerous lesson plans and resources available
at this popular site have been developed by Mr. Donn and other
contributors. Lessons cover: The Mysterious Indus Civilization 3000 -1500
BCE, Aryan Civilization Daily Life 1500 -500 BCE, Vedic Period 1500 -
1000 BCE, Epics Period 1000 – 500 BCE, and Age of Empires Daily Life
500 BCE -700 CE.
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45 5) Audio visual sources :
Audio video record includes the speeches of great personality’s
photographs, film, video, paintings, drawings, cartoons, prints, designs,
and three -dimensional art such as sculpture and architecture and can be
categorized as fine art or documentary record. Some visual resources are
unique while others are reproduced (like prints or illustrations in books
and magazines).
Films which portrays social reality in a departure from narrative history,
we can easily adopt a favourable attitude. For instance films highlighting
systemic exploitation, the underworld, wage slavery, the emotion al trauma
of women or problems of migrant workers and the unemployed need not
fictionalize history - that is the stuff history is made of in any case. They
are necessary to draw our attention to many emotions which written
history either ignores or cannot express. A film like Shyam Benegal's
'Ankur', for example, is at once historical in its focus on rural feudalism in
a region of south India and socio -cultural in its presentation. The same is
true of Govind Nihalani's 'Aakrosh' which underscores the exploi tation of
tribal s by India's ruling elite and their agents.
6.3 TYPES OF THE DIGITAL SOURCES
Digitized Primary Sources
Digitization has made it possible for libraries, archives, historical
societies, museums and individuals to easily share their collecti ons with
the world. Researchers today have unprecedented access to images of
primary source materials with descriptive metadata that, in the pre -digital
age, were available only to those who could visit a collection in person.
There are many different typ es of digital collections online, both freely
available on the web, and via subscription databases available through
libraries.
Websites
Blogs
Forums/ Chatrooms
Search engines
Online libraries and databases
Offline Digital Resources
Photos/ Images
Videos
Audio recordings
Digital Resources Examples
Now we have a basic idea of some of the digital resources that exist, let's
look at some examples of each:
Internet Resource Examples munotes.in

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46 Research Methodology and Sources of History Websites:
A website is any site you can navigate to on the internet. Websites can be
educational, instructional, entertaining, and descriptive and are also
commonly used to sell products and services.
Wikipedia, online retail sites, academic or institution sites, and social
media sites are all examples of websites, but the list rea lly is endless. Not
all websites will be reliable sources for research (for example, you should
not take things you read on social media at face value), so you need to
check to ensure the information you find is accurate.
Blogs:
Blogs are online journals where people record their thoughts, activities, or
opinions about different subjects. Although blogs can be full of helpful
information (e.g., a travel blog), they can also be creative and maintain a
narrative based on the author's life.
Online libraries a nd databases:
These resources are exactly what they say on the tin. Online libraries and
databases are places where you can find books and other materials, such as
journals, academic articles, and newspapers, online.
Your school might have an online libra ry so that more people can access
the same resources at once without having to borrow hard copies from the
physical library.
Everything you'll need for your studies in one place for Digital Resources
StudySmarter's FREE web and mobile app
Offline Digital S ource Examples
Photos or Images: Photos and other kinds of images are some of the digital
sources. Images can be created through photography (taking photos with a
camera) or using creative programs like PhotoShop or Auto CAD.
Video: Videos are created usin g electronic technology such as
smartphones or video cameras. The resulting videos are processed and
stored in pen drive, CD or hard disk.
Most libraries have video sections where from one can borrow DVDs
based on different topics. One can also find videos online on websites
such as YouTube. Asiatic Society of Mumbai launched CD which
contains all the earlier research magazines research articles in soft copy.
Audio recording/ music: Similar to videos, music and other audio
recordings are also created using electronic technology and are made up of
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47 Libraries may also have access to audio recordings and CDs. Remember,
audio can mean more than music, and you might even be able to find some
recorded interviews from the past.
Digital Resour ces in Education
Research in education allows students to practice the skills necessary to
find information, fact -check it, back it up with evidence, and analyze it to
draw conclusions. Digital resources are essential to your research as a
student and can provide versatile learning experiences.
Here are some guidelines on how to get the most out of digital
resources during your studies :
Finding Resources
Look for digital resources that are useful, reliable, and up -to-date. Some
places you can go to for reli able digital resources include:
School’s online library
Academic journals
College and university websites
These sources will only publish articles and information that are reliable
and current.
Useful Digital Resources for English Language
Some helpful dig ital resources to supplement your English Language
studies include:
Archived newspapers, images, videos, and audio recordings
Online text books
Academic journals
Online dictionaries and thesauruses (these can help make your writing
more interesting and pro vide definitions)
One should be able to find all of these things in your school's library
database.
6.4 EXAMPLES OF DIGITAL SOURCE
Digital Sources in Srinivasa Ramanujan Library
Srinivasa Ramanujan Library of IISER Pune is a creative and innovative
partne r in teaching, learning and research activities to support institute’s
vision to establish scientific institution of the highest caliber where
teaching and education are totally integrated with state -of-the-art research.
The library has a rich collection o f reference books, text books and
research journals in electronic as well as in print formats in the field of munotes.in

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48 Research Methodology and Sources of History basic sciences and allied subjects. Online full -text databases, abstracting
and indexing databases and multimedia resources are also part of libra ry’s
collection.
Search OPAC
e-Books
Print Journals
e-Resources: Publisher -Wise
e-Resources: A -Z List
e-Resources: Archives
Remote Access Portal
Bibliographic Database
Digital Repository
Digital Sources in Central Library IIT Mumbai
E-Books
E-Journals (Publisher Wise)
Open Access Resources
CDs and DVDs
Usage Policy and User undertaking
National Digital Library contains books, video article and videos on
following topics.
Government Data
The Data Portal India is a platform for supporting an Open Data initiative
of Government of India. This portal is intended to be used by the
Ministries/Department/Organizations of Government of India to publish
datasets, and applications for the public use. It intends to increase
transparency in the functioning of Government and also opens avenues for
many more innovative use s of Government Data to give different
perspective. Users can access datasets, apps, communities and world wide
data sites etc. n July 2015, the Indian government launched the ‘Digital
India’ initiative to improve online infrastructure and increase interne t
accessibility among citizens (for example, linking rural areas to high -
speed internet networks); thereby, empowering the country to become
more digitally advanced.
The initiative encompasses the following three key objectives:
Establish a secure and stab le digital infrastructure
Deliver digital services
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49 Hathi Trust Digital Library is a huge collection of digitized books and
periodicals. Each full text item is linked to a standard library catalog
record, thus providing good metadata and subject terms. Most items pre -
1925 will be full text viewable. After 1925, a much smaller number will
be full text viewable. You can search w ithin non -full text viewable works
and obtain the pages numbers where your search terms occur. Most US,
and some state, government documents will be full text viewable.
The world is full of objects, archives, records and texts which historians
can study and interrogate to develop and refine our understanding of the
past. These are the primary sources of history; materials, relics, and texts,
that testify and provide traces of the past. Almost anything could be a
primary source. The rings of a tree testify to weather conditions and
changes in climate. Probate records document the material goods
individuals held at the end of their lives. Court proceedings offer insight
into the experiences of the oppressed through the moments they are
dragged in front of th e justice systems that control and marginalize them.
Just as any kind of physical object might serve as a source, as society
increasingly produces digital relics, documents, artifacts and other objects
the evidentiary basis of history will become increasin gly digital.
While things like the rings of a tree have their own value as historical
sources, the bulk of historical work continues to be anchored in archives.
Historian’s ability to study the past is largely directly indebted to
archivists and the range of individuals involved in the production and
management of historical records. Archives come in all shapes and sizes;
massive federal agencies, small local historical societies, manuscript
collections at research libraries to name a few examples. The same digital
shift occurring in sources is occurring in archives.
At this point, historians have access to an ever -expanding wealth of
digitized versions, or digital surrogates, of a selection of primary sources
through online collections. At the same time, an explosion of born -digital
materials is being produced and collected at unprecedented scale
(websites, the contents of a hard drives, collections of emails, digital video
and photos, etc.). While these new forms of sources are emerging so to are
notions of digital archives. Organizations like the Internet Archive, and
projects like the September 11th Digital Archive, and the Rossetti Digital
Archive have emerged with the archive name attached. However, each of
these varieties of digital archives represents a somewhat different vision of
the nature of the concept of an archive.
6.5 REFERENCING DIGITAL SOURCES
You will know by now how important referencing is. Here are some
examples of how to reference digital resources using the MLA style:
To reference a webp age or article on a website , you should use this
format:
Last name, First name.“Name of page or article .” Name of website . Link
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50 Research Methodology and Sources of History Ex.
Raj Desh , “Mahatma Jyotiba Phule : A Modern Indian Philosopher” Book
Analysis , (PDF) Mahatma JyotibaPhule : A Modern Indian Philosopher
(researchgate.ne t), December 2013.
When referencing online news articles, you should include the date that
you read the article.
Checking the Reliability of Digital Sources
When using digital resources, particularly online ones, you must do extra
work to ensure that the sources you find are reliable and up -to-date. Here
are a few ways you can do this:
Look for a date to check that an article or webpage is current. You'll often
find the date under the article's heading, along with the name of the
article's author. You shou ld also look for the term “Last updated on,” as
this will tell you when the article or page was last edited. As far as time is
concerned, if a website looks outdated, over simplified, or just plain old –
you should probably look elsewhere for your informat ion.
Try to find information on the websites of widely recognized and
respected institutions. University websites, foundation websites, and
academic journals will have much more reliable and complete information
than websites created by an amateur. If you see an article written by
someone whose name you recognize (and perhaps you've read or studied
their work before), this is also a sign that the article or page is reliable.
Established authors go hand in hand with established institutions.
Look for referen ces and links to other websites. If you've found a useful
article on a particular subject, scroll down to the bottom to see if the
author has referenced any works on the subject. You might find that
they've cited and referenced academic journals on the top ic, textbooks, or
other web articles that they've found useful. References show that an
article has been researched and is, therefore, more reliable.
This one might seem obvious, but only seek information on websites with
expertise or authority on your res earch topic. For example, you wouldn't
research The Great Gatsby on a cooking website but on websites dedicated
to literature and literary analysis .
6.6 DIGITAL SOURCES ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES
As with any process or medium, digital resources have their time and
place. They can be incredibly useful for several reasons, as seen
throughout this article, but like everything else, they also have their
downsides.
Depending on your research style, you might be someone who loves
researching online and using a multitude of digital aids. Alternatively, you munotes.in

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Digital a nd E - Sources
51 might prefer the old -school approach of heading to the library and getting
stuck into some textbooks. W hatever your personal view of digital
resources, it's important to appreciate their upsides and downsides.
Advantages
They add variety to research and information rather than only using print
resources .
Online resources enable the researcher to cross -reference information
across several sources to ensure information is current and factually
accurate.
Digital tools are more interactive than print resources , giving people more
opportunities to creatively and critically approach topics.
Many digital resources are free or inexpensive, whereas textbooks and
other print resources can be quite pricey.
Disadvantages
Most digital resources require internet access and/or electrical equipment,
which some people might not have regular access to.
Online resources can be difficult to verify, and some information migh t
not be accurate or up -to-date.
Access to too many different digital sources can sometimes muddy the
waters and lead to confusion or overwhelm.
Many distractions on the internet do not exist in real -world environments,
such as libraries or classrooms.
6.7 SUMMARY
All the material directly reflecting the historical process and providing an
opportunity for studying the past of human society is known as source of
history. Historical sources thus comprise every thing created at an earlier
date by human society and available to us in the form of objects of
material culture or written documents that permit evaluation of the
manners, customs, and language of peoples. Written historical sources,
including hand written documents (on rock, birch bark, parchment, pape r)
and the printed documents of more recent periods, constitute the largest
group.These written sources differ in origin (archives of the state,
patrimoniale states, factories, institutions, and families), in content, and in
purpose (for example, statistic al economic materials, juridical documents,
administrative records, legislation, diplomatic and military papers,
documents from court inquests, and periodicals and newspapers.

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52 Research Methodology and Sources of History 6.8 QUESTIONS
1) Explain natures and types of the Digital and E -sources
2) What a re the sources and types of the historical Digital and E -
sources?
3) Describe the Advantages and Disadvantages of the Digital Sources?
6.9 REFERENCES
1) Anirudh Deshpande , Films as Historical Sources or Alternative
History, , Economic and Political Weekly, Vol . 39, No. 40 (Oct. 2 -8,
2004), Published by: Economic and Political Weekly.
2) Garraghan G. S., A Guide to Historical Method , New York, Fordham
University Press 1996. 2) Gottstack, L., Understanding History, New
York, Alfred A. Knof 1951.
3) Stielow Frederick J. Building Digital Archives, Descriptions, and
Displays, Neal -Schuman Publishers, New York, 2003.
4) Shafer R. J., A Guide to Historical Method,Illions : the Dorsey Press,
1974.
5) https ://guides.nyu.edu/primary/digitized -sources
6) https://guides.library.harvard.edu/history/digital
7) http://www.trevorowens.org/2015/12/digital -sources -digital -archives -
the-evidentiary -basis -of-digital -history -draft/


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53 7
SUBALTERN
Unit Structure:
7.0 Objectives
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Subaltern Studies – Origin and Development
7.3 Main Concepts
7.4 Contribution of Subaltern studies
7.5 Assessment of Subaltern Studies
7.6 Summary
7.7 Questions
7.8 References
7.0 OBJECTIV ES
 To introduce students to various Approaches to History.
 To shed light on Subaltern Approach to History.
 To understand the contribution of the Subaltern School of History.
7.1 INTRODUCTION
The Subaltern School of historiography emerged in the 1980s. In the
academic context, Subaltern Studies attempted to foreground social
categories, which were at the receiving end of a range of power structures
at different locations of the Indian subcontinent. Subaltern studies bring to
light the lower sections of the Indian people hitherto neglected by
historiography. Based on the Italian philosopher and Neo -Marxist thinker
Antonio Gramsci’s perceptions and deliberations, Subaltern Studies have
come up with inter disciplinary methods to investigate and analyze the
consciousness and voice of dissent of ‘subaltern social categories.’ The
most visible research on these subject dates back to 1982 with Ranajit
Guha’s writings and his associates who were inspired by Antonio Gramsci
(1891 -1937). They adopted the concept of ‘Hi story from Below’ and
wrote the history of subaltern masses of India by giving emphasis on
subaltern consciousness. They examined and analyzed the elitist approach
of Colonial, Nationalists and Marxist history writing. Though there are
some limitations to Subaltern historiography, Subaltern historians have
initiated the new approach to understand Subalterns through their
historical writings. They explained the resistance of suppressed and
oppressed people systematically by following various theories, ideolo gies
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54 Research Methodology and Sources of History 7.2 SUBALTERN STUDIES – ORIGIN AND
DEVELOPMENT
During the nineteenth century colonial India, many peasant uprisings and
tribal rebellions occurred against the exploitation, subjugation and
oppression of the British government and la ndlords. The social and
religious reform movement also started during this period. It is also seen
that the Dalit movement and the tribal movement were growing. The rise
of consciousness and clarity about subaltern self -identity occurred vis -àvis
the devel opment of modern socio -cultural, economic and political
relations in the mainstream. Subsequently, there was simultaneous
documentation and crystallization of social categories and sub -categories
based on class, caste, religion, gender, language and region . Throughout
the history of modern India, most of the oppressed, dominated and
exploited social groups were identified against the background of the
means of new socio -economic, as well as, political structures,
nationmaking and the spread of modernistic p rinciples. Subaltern
consciousness is also reflected in literary forms that offer alternate
aesthetics of beauty, identity and resistance. The various movements of
these exploited masses in the Indian subcontinent were largely ignored.
These social class m ovements do not seem to reflect in the Colonial
(Imperialist), Nationalist and Marxist historiography. Never the less, the
gap later on is bridged by emergent historiography that started in the
1980s through subaltern studies using new theories, methods an d analysis
of these social classes and their movements.
From its inception, it resulted into a major transition in South Asian
historiography and posed a vigorous challenge to existing historical
scholarship. It was largely by its relentless postcolonial critique that Indian
history came to be seen in a different light. Indian History had thus found
a new approach that was so critically needed. The Colonial and the
Nationalist historiography became the focus of their criticism due to their
elite based anal ysis of history. They also contested the Marxist
historiography due to the fact that their mode of production -based
narratives has a tendency of merging inevitably into the nationalist
ideology of modernity and progress. Moreover, the Subalterns rightly
pointed out that the Marxist found it really difficult to accept the ideology
of caste and religion as crucial factors in Indian History, which to them
was somewhat backward and degrading. They were thus, according to the
Subalterns, totally unable to gather vital historical data from lived
experiences of various oppressed classes, which were submerged in
religious and social customs.
The academic response via Subaltern Studies has been pioneered by
historians such as Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyanendra Pandey, Gyan Prakash, Susie
Tharu, David Hardiman, Bernard Cohn, David Arnold, Shahid Amin,
Gautam Bhadra and Sumit Sarkar (who later left the group), to name a
few. They have produced a rich and complex b ody of work that continues
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Subaltern
55 E.P. Thompson’s framework of ‘history from below’ to create new
philosophical understandings, conceptual tools and methodological
systems for documenting the socio -economic exploitation of Subaltern
groups.
7.3 MAIN CONCEPTS
The concept of ‘Subaltern’ used by Ranajit Guha and his associates is
taken from the famous Italian Marxist scholar and philosopher, Antonio
Gramsci. Gramsci used this concept for those cla sses that are non -
hegemonic and classless subordinate group of people and lower strata of
society. The term ‘Subaltern’ is referred to the subordination in terms of
class, caste, gender, race, language and culture. Subaltern means the lower
class or exploi ted masses. It is applied to the common mass of people in
relation to political power, social hegemony, economic power -position,
religious authority and intellectual excellence. Gramsci has used various
concepts to study the consciousness of the subaltern masses such as
‘hegemony’, ‘dominance’, ‘organic intellectuals’, ‘traditional
intellectuals’, ‘common sense’, ‘civil society’ etc. He used the concept
‘subaltern’ for the oppressed, excluded and marginalised groups, using
newer methods to narrate their his tories. Gramsci’s analysis and the
methodology of subaltern studies gave birth to a new stream of
historiography. Gramsci used the concept of ‘subaltern’ for exploited
people of Italian society whereas Ranajit Guha used this concept for
subordinated people /class from class, caste, gender and administrative
class of Indian society. Subaltern scholars wrote various articles to analyze
the formation of society in Indian context. They studied the various
revolts, movements and agitations of peasants, workers an d tribal groups
of the second half of nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century and try
to locate their autonomous nature which was separated from main stream
elitist freedom struggle through their articles.
Subaltern scholars used the Gramsci’s concep t of ‘common sense’ for
theoretical understanding and interpretation of Indian History. When the
subaltern people understand the reasons of their subordination and
exploitation, they expressed their discontent and leadiness to fight
independently against i t without any forcefully imposed corrupt
leadership. They fought against their exploitation without any elitist
leadership through their common sense spontaneously. An autonomous
Subaltern consciousness has become the centre point of Subaltern
historiograp hy. They have their own action based on their own
autonomous consciousness through which they started various
movements, political resistance and revolts, which are not guided by the
initiatives of superior classes, but they are emerged through their own
autonomous consciousness. This has been created through their collective
action that was studied by Subaltern historians.
Ranajit Guha and his associates used the thoughts of Gramsci to
understand the consciousness of suppressed and oppressed people in Indi a
and therefore they used the concept ‘Common Sense’ of Gramsci, which
highlights the Subalterns contradictory, conjectured, fractured, disjointed munotes.in

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56 Research Methodology and Sources of History and episodic consciousness. The ‘Common Sense’ underlines the
coexistence of two mutually contradicted elemen ts and/or aspects (e.g.,
capitalist and workers). The suppressed and oppressed people have an
autonomous consciousness that is imbedded unknowingly in the labour of
working -class people, which tries to change the world through their
labour. This is the asp ect of ‘common sense’ and the other aspect is
accepted as a past tradition without doing any enquiry. It is taken from the
imitation of upper class and superior class.
Antonio Gramsci uses the concept of ‘hegemony’ to theorize not only the
necessary condi tion for a successful overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the
proletariat and its allies (e.g., the peasantry), but also the structures of
bourgeois power in late 19th - and early 20th -century Western European
states in his book Prisons Notebook. Gramsci, parti cularly in his later
work, develops a complex and variable usage of the term; Gramsci’s
‘hegemony’ refers to a process of moral and intellectual leadership
through which dominated or subordinate classes of post -1870 industrial
Western European nations cons ent to their own domination by ruling
classes, as opposed to being simply forced or coerced into accepting
inferior positions. It is important to note that, although Gramsci’s prison
writings typically avoid using Marxist terms such as ‘class’, ‘bourgeoisi e’,
and ‘proletariat’, Gramsci defines hegemony as a form of control
exercised by a dominant class, in the Marxist sense of a group controlling
the means of production; Gramsci uses ‘fundamental group’ to stand in
euphemistically for ‘class’. For Gramsci, the dominant class of a Western
Europe nation of his time was the bourgeoisie, defined in the Communist
Manifesto as ‘the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of
social production and employers of wage -labour, while the crucial
(because potenti ally revolution -leading) subordinate class was the
proletariat, “the class of modern wage -labourers who, having no means of
production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour -power in order
to live”. Gramsci’s use of hegemony can be understood th rough the study
of his other concepts which he developed, including those of “state” and
“civil society”.
Gramsci spoke philosophically of relationship of human thought, feelings
and will to ‘objective’ social processes. He added that rationality of all
human behavior and products of his activity are related to the global
historical processes. Speaking about the proletariat he called for
intellectuals who could identify themselves with the struggling classes. He
called them 'organic intellectuals'. The wor kers did not need those elites
who could not express the actual experiences and feelings of the masses.
He advocated ‘Open Marxist’ that is an attempt to turn the unrecognized
and unconscious class of workers to class consciousness. He wanted the
strugglin g wars of workers to establish cultural hegemony before gaining
political power.
For Gramsci, intellectuals are a broader group of social agents than the
term would seem to include in its definition. Gramsci’s category of
“intellectuals” includes not only scholars and artists or, in his own terms,
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Subaltern
57 or “directive” capacities in society. Among these functionaries we find
administrators and bureaucrats, industrial managers, politicians , and the
already mentioned “organizers of culture.” According to Gramsci, the
intellectuals are the “deputies” of the dominant group –the functionaries,
exercising the subaltern but important functions of political government
and social hegemony. The organ ic intellectuals of the working class are
defined on the one hand by their role in production and in the organisation
of work and on the other by their “directive” political role, focused on the
Party. In particular, the organic intellectuals are most impo rtant since they
are the ones who actually elaborate and spread organic ideology.
Gramsci’s contribution to Marxist theory is two -fold. On the one hand,
with concepts such as “organic ideology,” “civil society” and “political
society,” “organic intellectua ls,” “hegemony,” etc., as well as his unique
distinction between political society and civil society, Gramsci brought
new theoretical foundations into truly dialectical Marxist revolutionary
theory. Most important, out of these foundations emerged new conc epts
that have given Marxism more consistency and relevance vis -a-vis
contemporary Capitalist reality. Subaltern Studies historiography used
these concepts of Gramsci and applied it in Indian context. They wrote
several essays and published books to unders tand the formation of Indian
society, polity and economy.
7. 4 CONTRIBUTION OF SUBALTERN STUDIES
Subaltern Studies developed a new style of history writing in India by
criticising the elitism of the colonial, nationalist and Marxist
historiography. They were inspired by the works of Antonio Gramsci,
Trotsky, Lukacs, Eric Hobsbawm, E.P. Thompson etc. British Marxist
Historian E. P. Thompson provided philosophical basis to Subaltern
history writing through their non -traditional Marxist approach i.e. ‘histor y
from below’. Rosalind O’Hanlon observes that Subaltern Studies provides
a new orientation within which many different styles, interest and
discursive modes may find it possible to unite their rejection of academic
elitism. Subaltern Studies scholars stud ied the revolts, movements and
agitations led by the peasants, workers and tribal groups in the second half
of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. They discerned
their struggles as autonomous to distinguish them from the elitism of the
mainstream freedom struggle. Rosalind O’Hanlon states that the central
emphasis of their writing was the emergence of consciousness of
Subaltern people in South Asia through the study of Subaltern resistance
to hegemonic social relations. Some scholars of t he Subaltern Studies
group wrote on the movement of the exploited masses at the grassroots
and underlined their lives, ideologies and resistances.
Ranajit Guha was the first Indian historian who has presented the
experiences of suppressed and oppressed peo ple in his writings. He has
augmented the system of inversion through the revolts of peasants. In the
system of inversion, peasants rejected the local and colonial symbols of
power and their subordination. He mentions that there was parallel
movement of pe ople during colonial period and that politics was not munotes.in

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58 Research Methodology and Sources of History guided by elitist leaders and colonial bureaucracy. Subaltern historians
believe that this was led by working class people and subaltern people and
was not dependent on elitist but was autonomous in nat ure. But it was
completely ignored in elitist unhistorical history writing. Guha considers
the variation of subaltern people’s exploitation as an important feature of
their politics. According to him, on one side the variation of exploitation
and other sid e variation of relations amongst the labourers and he said, due
to these two factors, the politics of subaltern class became an important
feature. Due to these variations, subaltern classes’ politics, we cannot find
homogeneity and gets the multiple dimens ions and values. The factor of
lack of homogeneity makes the politics of subaltern class separate and
distinct from or with elitist politics. Guha observed that Indian labour
movement was not developed properly enough and therefore they were not
able to cr eate the energy or efficiency to capture the national movement by
taking the help of peasants and agricultural labour by keeping aside the
bourgeoisie elitist leadership. Subaltern historian believes that the nation
of India failed to develop the self -imag e (self -consciousness) or self -
identity due to the stagnant phase or stage of bourgeois capitalists and
workers. Ranajit Guha believed that the politics of the subalterns
constituted an autonomous domain, for it neither originated from elite
politics nor did its existence depend on the latter. Subordination in its
various forms has always been the central focus of the Subaltern studies.
But throughout subsequent volumes the whole concept of subalternity
underwent various shifts. The essays of the subseque nt volumes reflect
divergence in interest, motives and theories. But in spite of these shifts,
one aspect of the Subaltern Studies has remained unchanged. It is an effort
to see and rethink history from the perspective of the Subalterns and to
give them their due in the Historical process. The new contributors ended
up giving new form and substance subalternity.
Ranajit Guha’s Elementary Aspects of Peasants Insurgency in Colonial
India is considered to be the most powerful example of Subaltern
historical sch olarship. By returning to the 19th Century peasants’
insurrection in Colonial India he offered a fascinating account of the
peasants’ insurgent consciousness, rumours, mystic visions, religiosity and
bonds of community. In this interesting work, Guha attem pted to uncover
the true face of peasants’ existence in colonial India. He pointed out that
the peasants were denied recognition as a subject of history in his own
right even for a subject that was all his own. Elitist historiographies were
unable to put t he peasants’ conditions and their insurgency in correct
perspective as they could not go beyond limitations that were
characteristic of their historiographical schools. He claimed that there
existed in colonial India an ‘autonomous’ domain of the ‘politics of
people’ that was organized differently than the politics of the elite. This in
a sense summed up the entire argument put forward by Subaltern
historians. Peasant uprisings in Colonial India, he argued reflected a
separate and autonomous grammar of mobi lization in its most
comprehensive form. The Landlords, the money lenders and the Colonial
Government officials formed a composite apparatus of dominance over
the peasants. Their exploitation according to Ranajit Guha was primarily munotes.in

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59 political in character a nd economic exploitation, so upheld and stressed by
the other schools, mainly the Marxist, was mainly one of its several
instances.
A number of earlier essays have revolved around these themes during the
formative years, most important among them being Ran ajit Guha’s Prose
of Counter Insurgency. The difference in the later essays lies in the fact
that while the earlier works wanted to establish the subalterns as subjects
of their own history, the latter works concentrated on various aspects of
dominance con fronted by the Subaltern sections. They also shed new
lights on the domains of culture and politics of the period and their roles in
the whole picture.
Ranajit Guha and Sumit Sarkar highlighted the role of common people in
the anti -partition movement in Be ngal, peasants’ revolts in the Gangetic
Doab and Maharashtra. They also discussed Quit India Movement of 1942
through the angle of Subaltern ideas. Ranajit Guha criticised the writers of
Indian history both Indians and Englishmen for describing the struggl e for
Indian Freedom through the elitist’s standpoint. The Indian leaders who
led the nationalist movement thought of interest of educated elite and the
bourgeoisie class more than the hopes and aspiration of the workers and
peasants. However, Gandhiji the man who identified himself with the
masses of people cannot be described as a narrow minded “elitist”.
David Arnold brings to light the story of a long series of disturbances and
rebellions of hillmen in the Gudem and Rampa hill tracts of Andhra during
1839-1924 (Subaltern Studies Volume I). Studying the Madras famine of
1876 -78 (Subaltern Studies Volume III), the same author writes of peasant
consciousness and peasant action in such crises of subsistence andsurvival.
Arnold complains that the voluminous l iterature on Indian famine does not
treat that phenomenon in terms of human experience, and that peasant
experience of dearth and famine has almost invariably been subordinated
to the descriptions of state policy and relief administration.
Gyan Pandey give s an account of the peasant revolts of Awadh during
1919 -22 and its impact on Indian nationalism (Subaltern Studies Volume
I). Stephen Henningham shows how in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh the
“Quit India” movement of 1942 was a dual revolt consisting of an elite
nationalist uprising combined with a subaltern rebellion ((Subaltern
Studies Volume II). This combination called forth the enthusiasm and
participation of a broad spectrum of society. If, in spite of its drama and
intensity the ‘Quite India’ revo lt has not received adequate scholarly
treatment, Henningham’s explanation is that, for historians operating
within the confines of elite historiography “the substance of the 1942
revolt is difficult to swallow and impossible to digest.”
Gayatri Chakrabort y Spivak in an essay titled, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
wrote: “The Subaltern cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry
lists with woman as a pious. Representation has not withered away. The
female intellectual has a circumscribe task which she mu st not disown
with a flourish.” She cited the examples of widows burnt at the pyre of the munotes.in

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60 Research Methodology and Sources of History husband in her essay. She emphasized the condition of women who are
doubly oppressed –firstly by patriarchy and secondly by colonialism.
Arvind Das demonstrates how er roneous it is to attribute agrarian changes
in Bihar during 1947 -78 to elite -sponsored land reforms (Subaltern
Studies Volume II). The two major attempts at ‘agrarian changes from the
above’, that is through zamindari abolition and the bhoodan movement,
were not elite sponsored but responses to peasant discontent. The first
followed after year; of agitation by Swami Sahajananda Saraswati and the
powerful Kisan Sabha, and the second came ‘on the militant Communist -
led peasant upsurge in Telengana. Both were measures to preempt class
war in the Bihar country side. Says the author: “Any interpretation of
agrarian change primarily as an elite sponsored land reform, amounts
therefore to chasing the shadow without trying to grasp the substances.” In
‘Agricultural Workers in Burdwan’ (Subaltern Studies Volume II), N.K.
Chandra reveals the appallingly poor condition of the mass of the
agricultural labourers and poor peasant in terms of wages and earnings,
underemployment and poverty.
Historians like Partha Chatterjee made notable contributions in this
respect. His works proved crucial at this juncture to understand that
engagement with elite themes is not altogether new to the subalterns.
Partha Chatterjee, in his article ‘Caste and Subaltern Consciousness’
discussed the feudal power system, capitalist (Bourgeoisie) power system
and community power system and used the concept of community power
system to show the subaltern resistance. He analyzed the resistance of
Subaltern people in the context of religious beliefs by following the
concept of ‘common sense’ of Antonio Gramsci. According to him, an
individual and group gets the identity through the membership
ofcommunity and therefore community remains prime important. Through
community leadership, power is not centrali zed to an individual or
position and it is ascribed to community. Community’s relationship with
the members of other community is based on the mutual relation rules and
these mutual relations are based on popular system of religious beliefs,
myths of their origin, folklore and sacred history. Such system creates the
political code or rules of morality and such codification reflects in power -
obedience, coercion -resistance relation directed actions and symbols.
Partha Chatterjee’s this interpretation is very useful to understand the
subaltern consciousness. Subaltern historians approached the caste
problem to understand the Subaltern resistance and consciousness through
the collective behaviour and consciousness.
These writings have been able to outline the wh ole process of history
being written from the point of view of elite nationalism and their
limitations. Mention can be made in this respect to the essay by Shahid
Amin called Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern up, 1921 -
1922 (Subalterns Studies Volume III) and his other essay Approvers
Testimony, Judicial Discourse: The Case of Chouri Choura (Subalterns
Studies Volume V) Communalism also emerged as a significant theme in
Subaltern writings of 90s. Gyan Pandey has some notable works to his
credit about the Hindu Muslims riots in modern India. This theme has munotes.in

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61 become all the more important with the resurgence of Hindu and Muslim
fundamentalism in the recent times. Historian Gyan Prakash in one of his
essays once said that the real significance of the shift to the analysis of
discourses is the reformulation of the notion of subaltern.
The anti -partition agitation (1905) did not arouse as much popular
enthusiasm in Bengal as did the Non -Cooperation khilafat movement of
1921 -22. Sumit Sarkar informs us (S ubaltern Studies Volume III) that the
former did not go beyond the confines of Hindu upper class bhadralok
group whereas in the latter “popular initiative eventually alarmed the
leaders into calling for a halt.” Tribal protest as that of Jitu Santhal’s
movement in Malda, northwestern Bengal (1924 -32), is a favourite theme
for subaltern historiography (Subaltern Studies Volume IV). In 1924, an
anti-landlord tenant agitation developed in Malda under Jitu’s leadership
and continued till 1932 when the leader wa s shot. Even bhadralok opinion
as expressed in the Amrita Bazar Patrika was sympathetic to Jitu’s revolt
but, as Tanika Sarkar shows, in true elitist fashion the responsibility for
the revolt but was taken away from the tribal leader by imputing it
comfort ably to the Swarajist agitator from outside.
Gautam Bhadra observes in his ‘Four Rebels of 1857 (Subaltern Studies
Volume IV) that all the principal modes of historiography on the Great
Revolt of 1857 ‘whether nationalist’ as exemplified by the writing of S.B.
Chaudhari or ‘radical communist’ as represented by Promod Sengupta and
Datta have, with due elitist prejudice, portrayed the great event as an elitist
venture. The ordinary rebel, his role and his perception of alien rule and
the contemporary crises –all these have been left out of the historical
literature of the Great Revolt. Bhandra’s essay rehabilitates four of such
rebel characters of 1857: Shah Mal, Devi Singh, Gonoo and Maulavi
Ahmadullah Shah. Their stories point to the existence in 1857 of wha t
Gramsci calls ‘multiple elements of conscious leadership’.
The decade of the 80s assumes a special significance due to the fact caste,
gender, and religion became important reference points in history writing,
subaltern history in particular understood t he need to document the lives
of all the oppressed people, like peasants and workers, tribals and lower
caste, women and Dalits, whose voices were seldom heard before in
history. Subaltern studies group did not study in large the resistance and
consciousne ss of working -class people except the article by Dipesh
Chakrabarty. He studies the condition of the Calcutta jute mill workers
between 1890 and 1940 (Subaltern Studies Volume II). In another essay
on the jute mills workers during 1920 -50 (Subaltern Studie s Volume III),
he shows how the elitist attitude has crept into socialist and Communist
ranks, leader treating unions as their ‘zamindari’, their contact with the
workers degenerating into the hierarchical terms of the babu -coolie
relationship. He observes that the workers consciousness was not taking
shape in the framework of class consciousness in jute mill industry
whereas it has the basis of primordial loyalties. He challenges the Marxist
view of emergence of class consciousness amongst the jute mill wo rkers
by crossing the religious ideology of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’. He gives
examples of working -class consciousness of pre -bourgeoisie aspects such munotes.in

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62 Research Methodology and Sources of History as the appointment of certain castes on certain posts by Brahmins, Bengali
worker do not allow his wife to wo rk in factory or industry etc.
KanchaIllaiha’s article on caste system and labour consciousness is
included in the ninth volume of Subaltern Studies in 1996. In this article,
he has tendency to glorify the culture and values developed from the
tradition of Dalit -Bahujan castes. He has expressed his appreciation
towards the Dalit -Bahujan labour culture. But he ignored the fact that the
division of labour and work culture, which was doing by Dalit -Bahujans,
is an outcome of caste based graded exploitation. Wh ile glorifying the
Dalit -Bahujan patriarchy as democratic patriarchy, he forgets that
Brahmanical patriarchy is based on the principle of graded inequality,
which is the form of caste exclusiveness. Mahatma Phule, through his
counter culture, made the trad itions of Shudra and Ati -Shudra’s
exclusiveness as public due to its universal nature. KanchaIllaiha’s
alternative has no universal basis and do not have vision to give the
system the rational approach. However, Prof. Umesh Bagade states that’s
Subaltern s tudies project included his article as it is convenient for them to
suit their post -modernist ideology, which opposes universalism, reason
and rationality. In this way, Subaltern studies has contributed a lot in the
historiography of India and analyzed the contribution of subaltern classes
in the making of modern India.
7. 5CRITIQUE OF SUBALTERN STUDIES
Subaltern school has no doubt made great contribution in the realm of
Indian historiography. But nevertheless, it is not totally free from
shortcomings. Ran ajit Guha used the framework of E.P. Thompson’s point
of view of ‘History from below’, Gramsci’s philosophical role and
phenomenology and later number of new philosophical understandings,
conceptual tools and methodological systems to express the exploitat ion of
Subaltern people in the social and economic structure. However, the later
Subaltern historians were contended to understand the subordination of
middle class of colonial period. They provided emphasis on locality,
community and isolation of social c onditions rather than analyzing the
Subaltern people based on class, caste and Gender. However Subaltern
historiography helps to understand the facets of Dalit consciousness. It can
be a useful methodology to understand the anti -caste movement.
Subaltern h istorians studied caste as an important aspect of revolt and the
aspect of its spread; however, they did not study the revolts of Subalterns.
All Subaltern writings became the question of western cultural dominance
and hegemony. They neglected the movement s of Phule, Ambedkar,
Periyar and anti -caste movements. They also neglected the history of left
movements. They did not throw light on caste movements. Though, there
are some limitations of Subaltern historiography, Subaltern historians
highlighted the ‘au tonomous’ character of Subaltern consciousness. They
have initiated the new approach to understand Subalterns through their
history writings. They explained the resistance of suppressed and
oppressed people systematically by following various ideologies an d
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63 Subaltern Studies academicians focused on an isolated study of the
subaltern people, rather than their structural exploitation by the
mainstream. They highlighted the ‘autonomous’ character and agency of
subaltern groups. However, as debat es have underscored there are several
problems that remain neglected. For instance, the rise of subaltern
consciousness has been accompanied by the rise of mainstream
modernism; a relationship that needs to be problematized. Moreover, the
extent to which t he subalterns contributed to mainstream movements
needs exploration.
Critiques of Subaltern historiography by scholars such as Sumit Sarkar,
Umesh Bagade, Vinay Bhal, Himani Banerjee, Hiren Gohain, Vinay Lal
and others argued that they advocated monolithic and abstract
perspectivesin the name of the postcolonial. Sumit Sarkar argued for “The
Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies” in his book Writing Social
History. Partha Chatterjee has himself pointed to how this intellectual
project “was perhaps o verdetermined by its times”. These critiques reveal
that Subaltern Studies cannot singularly engage with the complexity of the
oppressed and the exploited. Its canvas has to be expanded to
intersectionality grounded in the local. Further, one cannot abando n the
task of engaging with the socially vulnerable, nor dismiss Enlightenment
and modernity as inadequate frameworks for critical analysis. Moreover,
the privileged space any researcher occupies needs to be questioned.
Vinay Bhal in his essay “Relevance ( or Irrelevance) of Subaltern Studies
in Reading Subaltern Studies” edited by David Ludden also observes the
contribution and limitations of Subaltern Studies.
The texts of Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, KanchaIllaiha deal with the
issue of caste but this trend seems to have ignored the Dalit movement that
has emerged in various parts of India. Jotirao Phule and Dr. B. R
Ambedkar’s emancipatory movement seems to have been completely
ignored by Subaltern historiography. Before Ranajit Guha, Jotirao Phule
and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar appear to have written on the subaltern movement
and raised the issues of exploited and marginalised groups in India.
Subaltern Studies group also used various post -structural and post -modern
concepts in the later phase of their writing s. Gopal Guru and Umesh
Bagade has underlined the contribution of the new subaltern approach and
also discussed its limitations. No special attention was paid to the Dalit,
tribal, peasant, workers and women’s movement which has emerged in
various parts of India. Subaltern historiography seems to have completely
forgotten the movement of tribal groups in the northeastern part of India.
7. 6 SUMMARY
There is no denying the fact that Subaltern Studies has contributed a lot in
the study of history, economics a nd social sciences in South Asian
countries in the end of the twentieth century. Subaltern Studies generated
intense debates and critiques about social location and historiography by
later historians and scholars. New generations of researchers working on
the past experiences of subaltern masses need to explore a wide variety of
perspectives that have not found space in earlier historiography. Ideas of munotes.in

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64 Research Methodology and Sources of History gender and class inequalities have been at the centre of their historical
enquiry and a considerable effor t is now being made to study
theconvergence of multiple identities on life experiences and explored the
intersectionality between gender, class, caste, and community to identify
the systems, structures, experiences, politics and conflict and locate it
historically.
7.7 QUESTIONS
1) Explain in detail the main concepts of Subaltern Studies.
2) Discuss the origin and development of Subaltern Studies.
3) Describe the contributions of various scholars of Subaltern Studies.
4) Analyze the critique of Subaltern Studies and their contribution in the
Historiography in India.
5) Discuss the Subaltern School of History. Bring out the contribution of
the Subaltern historians to histography.
7.8. REFERENCES
1. Ali, B. Sheik (1978) History: Its Theory and Method, Madras:
McMillan Indi a ltd.
2. Bagade, Umesh (2010) ‘Subaltern Studies Va Bhartiya
ItihasLekhanateelShtityantar’ (Marathi), in Mahesh Gawaskar (ed.),
‘ItihasLekhanMimansa - Nivadak Samaj PrabodhanPatrika’, Vol. 1,
Mumbai: LokvangmayaGriha.
3. Bhagavan, Manu and Anne Feldhaus, eds. (2008) Claiming Power
from Below – Dalits and Subaltern Question in India’, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
4. Bhal, Vinay (2002) “Relevance or Irrelevance of subaltern studies” in
David Ludden’s Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History,
Contested Mea ning and the Globalization of South Asia, Delhi: Orient
Longman.
5. Biswas Amrita, “Research Note on Subaltern Studies”, Journal of
Literature, Culture and Media Studies, Volume I Number 2, Winter,
July-December 2009, pp. 200 -205
6. Chaturvedi, Vinayak, ed. (2 015) Mapping Subaltern Studies and the
Postcolonial, Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
7. Gramsci, Antonio (2009) Selections from the Prison Notebooks,
(Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith),
New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. munotes.in

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65 8. Guha, Ranajit and Others, eds., Subaltern Studies: Writings on South
Asian History and Society, Vol. I -XII, Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
9. Lal, Vinay (2001) ‘Walking with the subaltern – Riding with the
academy: The Curious Ascendancy of Indian history’, Studies in
History, Vol. I -XVII No. 1, Jan. -June 2001
10. Ludden, David, ed. (2002) Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical
History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia,
Delhi: Orient Longman.
11. O’Hanlon, Rosalind (1988) ‘Requiring the Subject – Subaltern
Studies and Histories of resistance in Colonial India’, Modern Asian
Studies, Vol.22, No.1, 1988.
12. Sarkar, Sumit (1998) Writing Social History, Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
13. Zene, Cosimo, ed. (2013) The Political Philosophies of Antonio
Gramsci and B.R. Am bedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns,
London: Routledge.







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66 8
FEMINIST
Unit Structure:
8.0 Objectives
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Feminist History
8.3 Feminist Historiography
8.4 Feminist Approach to History
8.5 Summary
8.6 Questions
8.7 References
8.0 OBJECTIVES
 To introduce students to various Approaches to Histo ry.
 To shed light on Feminist Approach to History.
 To understand the contribution of the Feminist School of History.
8.1 INTRODUCTION
Feminist history refers to the re -reading of history from a woman’s
perspective. It is not the same as the history of femi nism, which outlines
the origins and evolution of the feminist movement. It also differs from
women's history, which focuses on the role of women in historical events.
The goal of feminist history is to explore and illuminate the female
viewpoint of histor y through rediscovery of female writers, artists,
philosophers, etc., in order to recover and demonstrate the significance of
women's voices and choices in the past. Feminist History seeks to change
the nature of history to include gender into all aspects of historical
analysis, while also looking through a critical feminist lens. Jill Matthews
states “the purpose of that change is political: to challenge the practices of
the historical discipline that have belittled and oppressed women, and to
create pract ices that allow women an autonomy and space for self -
definition”Two particular problems which feminist history attempts to
address are the exclusion of women from the historical and philosophical
tradition, and the negative characterization of women or the feminine
therein; however, feminist history is not solely concerned with issues of
gender per se, but rather with the reinterpretation of history in a more
holistic and balanced manner.
8.2 FEMINIST HISTORY
Feminist history combines the search for past female scholars with a
modern feminist perspective on how history is affected by them. While
many mistake it as women's history, feminist history does not solely focus munotes.in

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67 on the retelling of history from a woman's perspective. Rather, it is
interpreting histo ry with a feminist frame of mind. It is also not to be
confused with the history of feminism, which recounts the history of the
feminist movements. Feminist historians, instead, include “cultural and
social investigations” in the job description. Feminist history came into
being as women began writing accounts of their own and other women's
lives. A few of these, such as Susan B. Anthony and Audre Lorde,
documented histories of their feminist movements.
Feminist historians collect to analyze and analyze to connect. Rather than
just recording women's history, they allow a connection to be made with
“public history."However, problems remain in integrating this improved
history into a curriculum appropriate for students. Finally, feminist
historians must now be able to understand the digital humanities involved
in creating an online database of their primary sources as well as published
works done by notable feminist historians. Feminist digital humanists
work with feminist historians to reveal an online integra tion of the two
histories. Harvard's Women’s Studies Database contain sources, like the
Gerritsen Collection, that allow scholarly papers by feminists to be written
and publicly convey the fact that there is more than one history and the
progress made in c ombining them.
Feminist historians use women's history to explore the different voices of
past women. This gathering of information requires the help of experts
who have dedicated their lives to this pursuit. It provides historians with
primary sources tha t are vital to the integration of histories. Firsthand
accounts, like Fiedler's And the Walls Come Tumbling Down? (A
Feminist View from East Berlin) recounts the daily lives of past women. It
documents how their lives were affected by the laws of their gov ernment.
Women's historians go on to interpret how the laws changed these
women's lives, but feminist historians rely on this information to observe
the ‘disappearing woman’. Fieldler even mentioned that “[t]hese feminists
were disappointed when they meant ordinary eastern women who were
good housewives too, while enjoying outside work."Because these
feminists only knew the public history of the German Democratic
Republic, they projected themselves into the imaginary.
Feminist historians see mainly two spec ific histories. The first is the
public, singular history. It is composed of political events and newspapers.
The second is made up of women's history and analyzed primary sources.
The integration of these two histories helps historians to look at the past
with a more feminist lens, the way feminist historians do. Professor Peter
G. Filene of the University of North Carolina recounted in his paper
Integrating Women's History and Regular History that “[his] purpose is to
help students understand the values a nd behavior of people who are unlike
themselves. Through history we enter other lives, analyze the forces that
shaped those lives, and ultimately understand patterns of culture." In fact,
when Filene was asked to teach a course on the history of American
women, the revelations of past women allowed him to recognize that he
wasn't learning heroine history, or herstory, but a compensatory history.
However, this thought limited his studies. He found himself thinking of munotes.in

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68 Research Methodology and Sources of History women's contributions to what men had alr eady written down. Rather than
having the histories of the ‘public’ and the ‘domestic’ sphere, one should
know that this line between the two is imaginary.
Though not all women are politicians or war generals, boys are raised in
the domestic sphere. Not on ly that, but men come back to it every day in
their private homes. Even President Theodore Roosevelt can be quoted to
say “[n]o man can be a good citizen who is not a good husband and a good
father.” Similar to how history needs domestic history incorporat ed into it,
men's history cannot be understood without their private experiences
known. Women's history thus needs their private experiences to be
combined with their public. To successfully integrate these histories, the
world must not have male and femal e spheres that are synonyms for the
private and public. The connections found in public and private men's and
women's history need to be systematically synthesized to successfully
integrate them. So the idea of just two histories creates the challenge that
most feminist historians have.
Upon investigation of eastern women's lives, they found that though the
GDR's socialist policies encouraged women in the labor force, there had
been no women creating these policies. Once again, the patriarch had
created a p ublic history in which women were cut out. The discovery of
neglected cultural accounts, similar to Fiedler's, has allowed women's
historians to create large databases, available to feminist historians, out of
them. These sources are analyzed by the histor ians to compare them to
scholarly works published during the same time period. Finding works
that are within the same time period isn't too difficult, but the challenge is
in knowing how to combine what they learned from the source with what
they know from the works.
Feminist historiography is another notable facet of feminist history. One
important feminist historiography writer and researcher is Judith M.
Bennett. In her book, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of
Feminism, Bennett writes on th e importance of studying a “patriarchal
equilibrium”. Cheryl Glenn also writes on the importance of feminist
historiography “Writing women (or any other traditionally disenfranchised
group) into the history of rhetoric, then, can be an ethically and
intell ectually responsible gesture that disrupts those frozen memories in
order to address silences, challenge absences, and assert women's
contributions to public life” This facet of feminist history inspect historical
writings that are typically assumed to be canon, and reinvents them under
a feminist lens.
8.3 FEMINIST HISTORIOGRAPHY
Feminist historiography is a method of bringing together different kinds of
feminism (e.g., liberal, radical, postcolonial) with ways of re -telling the
experiences of women who li ved in the past. moment to ask yourself: How
might you find stories about women and gender -diverse individuals who
lived in the past, when there is minimal to no information about them on
the internet or in publicly available corporate documents? For examp le, munotes.in

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69 say you were interested in learning about Black women who worked as
mathematicians during the U.S. race to the moon in the 1950s and 1960s,
but they were “hidden” among more prominent and celebrated White
cismen, like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn. Wha t steps could you take to
learn more about these Black women?
Much of what we can know about the past is captured in documents —
official letters, copies of speeches, court recordings —or in published texts,
such as newspapers and pamphlets, and more recently as digitized
documents. These types of ‘official’ archives are largely focused on
retelling “man’s story”, however, like those space stories surrounding Neil
Armstrong and John Glenn. Undoing discriminatory practices today and in
the future, by sharing hi stories that are more diverse and inclusive, is a
noble goal to strive for; structural barriers, such as governmental or
institutional bureaucracies, that affect what is deemed to be ‘important to
keep’ versus ‘what is to be discarded’ makes attaining this goal
challenging.
Feminist scholars in women’s and gender history, as an example of those
who use feminist historiography, strive for more inclusive processes to be
put in place when practicing social history. Feminist historiographers try
to uncover the stories of women and gender -diverse individuals, and then
strive to share these stories in either academic publications and
conferences, or with the public through workshops and events at museums
and other public places. In so doing, such people aim to cha nge societal
imbalances, in part by bringing individual experiences to light that have
previously been excluded from those ‘official’ archives. women’s and
gender history is a broad field that some may approach as a study of
fragmented ‘factual’ events of the past, even as others see it as an act of
resistance.
Feminist historiographies meld feminism (e.g., liberal, radical,
psychoanalytic, socialist, transnational/postcolonial, etc.) with historical
studies. These types of historical studies are not always focused on
creating “a realistic record of every event and experience in time” ,
however. In their practice, feminist historiographers incorporate oral
accounts retold and passed on through time, personal diaries, personal
letters, blogs, and social media —and, when possible, interviews with the
individual in question. These historians also develop more encompassing
methods, including tracing patterns of thought/ideas in storytelling
practices, and accepting that a fragmented re -telling of the past is a
believable history.
Feminist historiographers also look to social contexts that have rules and
meta -rules that are in place to impose an order; these rules and meta -rules
can be written or unwritten, formal or informal, and can influence how
individuals act. For example, in the 1950s, once a North American woman
married, she was expected to immediately stop working. Feminist
historians attempt to unravel such informal rules in ways that reveal power
dynamics among individuals. One example is that of Doris Jell y (1932 –
2021), a trained physicist, mathematician, world traveler, and a woman
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70 Research Methodology and Sources of History in 1962. Jelly recognized early on in her career that if she wanted to work
in space, she could not ma rry. During the post -World War II period in
which Jelly worked, the practice of taking a non -marital partner was not as
common as it is today. These power dynamics showcase Jelly’s
courageous choices in light of such discriminatory practices. Notably,
while many Western ciswomen were under tremendous pressure to
conform to a meta -rule of choosing marriage over career/work, others had
to live in ‘hidden’ fashion, like Jelly did. Men, on the other hand, did not
have to make such choices.
Feminist historiograp hers also call for the development of more inclusive
archival policies and practices, so that institutional and ‘official’ records
can evolve. Ultimately, these more inclusive sources and methods will
help to undo the ‘hidden’ existence of women and gender -diverse
individuals. Feminist historiographies are, in essence, acts of resistance
against the proliferation of White, masculine -centric narratives and stories
that seem to dominate our understandings of the past and that, as a result,
reinforce the margi nalization of ciswomen and gender -diverse individuals
in the present. By untangling the ‘grand narratives’ of history, and by
looking for more complex and fragmented meanings and lived
experiences, we can arrive at a more nuanced and varied understanding o f
our histories and cultures.
8.4 FEMINIST APPROACH TO HISTORY
In today’s world, the very word “feminism” can stir up polarized
reactions. Feminism has many definitions. For example, feminism is
defined as “a word that has too many excessively long defini tions.”
However, feminism can also be considered “the doctrine advocating
social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.”
Because there are multiple feminisms, it is difficult to find a universal
understanding or truth of feminism. Feminism offers a challenging, yet
interesting, approach to history. Definitions can be dangerous because one
definition can silence other interpretations, but we should focus on the
understanding of feminism as “advocating equal rights” as an approach to
history.
What does an historical feminist approach involve? For some, a feminist
history refers to the re -reading of history from a feminist viewpoint. Part
of this approach is to explore and illuminate women’s perspective of
history because it has been s ilenced or overlooked. The feminist approach
involves investigating history for the role of women’s participation and
influence (be that of female artists, writers, musicians, etc.). This is
different from the history of feminism, which highlights the deve lopment
of the feminist movement through a chronological narrative of movements
and their ideologies. Likewise, women’s history, is not a historical
approach, but rather outlines the role that women have played in history. It
generally involves studying t he growth of women’s rights throughout
recorded history, examining individuals or groups of historical
importance, and the effect that historical events have had on women. In
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71 One of the main a dvantages of using a feminist approach to history is its
potential use as a weapon against chauvinism. For example, we can see
echoes of the suffragette’s methods of direct protest in the recent example
of Malala Yousafzai’s demand for education in Pakista n. When we are
attentive to the history of women’s oppression and the struggles against it,
then we can learn and build from these histories.For instance, after the
death of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797, her widower
published her memoirs. H er writings revealed her unorthodox lifestyle
and unconventional personal relationships, which inadvertently destroyed
her reputation in Victorian society because she contradicted the accepted
norms about woman. However, when feminist historians rediscover ed her
seminal work “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” it became a
widely recognized document and cornerstone for gender equality.
History and historical documents are important guides for feminism
because they provide alternative understandings of ge nder relations
today —we look back so as to go forward. If established gender roles and
in equalities are revealed as socially constructed within a certain historical
context, rather than occurring naturally or universally, then feminists are
able to argue that gender inequalities are open to change. The late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries historians argued that women
were largely absent from the history books. This insight led to an
explosion in research that continues to impact women and gender
relations. The historical works of English feminists such as, Alice Clark’s
1919 Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, Barbara
Drake’s 1920 Women and Trade Unions, and Barbara Hutchins’ 1915
Women in Modern Industry, all illustrate the importan ce of a feminist
approach to history because they transformed historical writing, gender,
and the historical understanding of the U.K.
A feminist approach to history shows that inequalities are not universal;
instead, it rediscovers the lives, experiences, and ideas of women from
historical obscurity. Importantly, feminism re -examines and potentially
rewrites entire historical narratives of gender. Feminism hastransformed
historical work and its understanding, and historians benefit from this
approach. Ano ther example of how using a feminist approach has
rewritten history is the case of Mary Seacole. Her efforts caring for the
sick and injured British troops were largely over looked. Following her
death she was forgotten for almost a century and it seems u nlikely that
Seacole was ever formally rewarded during her lifetime. However,
recently she is being widely recognized and celebrated for her work, and
her story has even been added to the English Primary school curriculum.
In 2005, London’s Mayor, Boris Jo hnson, exclaimed upon learning about
Seacole: “I find myself facing the grim possibility that it was my own
education that was blinkered.” Not only does this outline how history has
been neglectful, it highlights how a feminist approach to history broadens
our understanding of historical events. Similarly, in India a feminist
approach highlights important women like Pandita Ramabai, Anandibai
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72 Research Methodology and Sources of History 8.5 SUMMARY
Feminist history combines the search for past female scholars with a
modern feminist perspective on how history is affected by them. While
many mistake it as women's history, feminist history does not solely focus
on the retelling of history from a woman's perspective. Rather, it is
interpreting history with a feminist fram e of mind. It is also not to be
confused with the history of feminism, which recounts the history of the
feminist movements. Feminist historians, instead, include “cultural and
social investigations” in the job description. Feminist history came into
being as women began writing accounts of their own and other women's
lives.
In conclusion, a feminist approach to history is incredibly useful to
historians. Not only can this method recover unsung heroines, but it can
also inspire change for the future. Femini sm isn’t about getting revenge;
it’s about engaging with the importance of differences and intervening
when homogenous narratives begin to take root within society. It helps us
to realize how histories of oppression continue to inform our social
realities alongside how women and feminism has changed throughout
history. In my opinion, the most significant action that the feminist
approach can take is that of retrieving and saving the stories of those who
were oppressed during their lifetimes and engaging wit h their experiences
as a way to change the way we look at the future as well as the past.
8.6 QUESTIONS
1. Explain in detail the Feminist Approach to History.
2)Write a note on Feminist Historiography.
8.7 REFERENCES
 Ali, B. Sheik (1978) History: Its Th eory and Method , Madras:
McMillan India ltd.
 Dicker, Rory Cooke. (2008) A History of U.S. Feminisms. Berkeley:
Seal Press. ISBN 1 -58005 -234-7
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_history  Stefanie Ruel and Kaitlynn C. Hammel, Feminist Historiography, in
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/showingt heory/chapter/feminis
t-historiography/
 Grace Corn, Elementary Feminisms: How Useful is a Feminist
Approach to History for Historians? In https:// the feminist wire.
com/ 2014/10/useful -feminist -approach -history -historians/

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73 9
POSTMODERN
Unit Structure:
9.0 Objectives
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Background
9.3 Postmodernism and Relativism.
9.4 Postmodern approach to History
9.5 Key concepts of Postmodern Historiography.
9.6 Summary
9.7 Questions
9.8 References
9.0 OBJECTIVES
 To introduce students to various Approaches to History
 To shed light on the concept of Postmodernism and its features.
 To understand the Postmodern Approach to History .
9.1 INTRODUCTION
Postmodernism is a trend in Western philosophy. It is a late 20th -centu ry
movement which is characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or
relativism. It is a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to
the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic
power.
Postmodernism is largely a reaction against the intellectual assumptions
and values of the modern period in the history of Western philosophy. The
modern period can be approximately from the 17th to the 19th century.
Brian Duignan states that many of the doctrines characteristicall y
associated with postmodernism can fairly be described as the
straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints that were taken
for granted during the 18th -century Enlightenment.
There is an objective natural reality, a reality whose existence a nd
properties are logically independent of human beings —of their minds,
their societies, their social practices, or their investigative techniques. It
means that human beings have no control over this reality. Postmodernists munotes.in

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74 Research Methodology and Sources of History dismiss this idea as a kind of immature realism. They say that this type of
reality is actually a creation of social scientists. According to
postmodernists, such reality is a theoretical construct, an object of
scientific practice and language. This point also applies to the
investigat ion of past events by historians and to the description of social
institutions, structures, or practices by social scientists.
9.2 BACKGROUND
The descriptive and explanatory statements of scientists and historians can
be objectively true or false. But the postmodernists reject this approach.
The postmodern thinkers deny this viewpoint because they reject an
objective natural reality. This is sometimes expressed by saying that there
is no such thing as Truth.
The Enlightenment faith gives great importance t o science and
technology. Through the use of reason and logic , and with the more
specialized tools provided by science and technology, human beings are
likely to change themselves and their societies for the better. It is
reasonable to expect that future societies will be more humane, more just,
more enlightened, and more prosperous than they are now. Postmodernists
deny this Enlightenment faith in science and technology as instruments of
human progress. Indeed, many postmodernists hold that the misguided and
unguided pursuit of scientific and technological knowledge led to the
development of technologies for killing on a massive scale in World War
II. They even go to the extent to say that science and tec hnology or for that
matter even reason and logic are intrinsically destructive and oppressive,
because they have been used by evil people, especially during the 20th
century, to destroy, oppress and persecute others.
Enlightenment thinkers and modernists believe that reason and logic are
universally valid. It means that their laws are the same for all. They apply
equally to any thinker and any area of understanding. For postmodernists,
reason and logic too are merely theoretical constructs and are therefor e
valid only within the established intellectual traditions in which they are
used. They only make sense to those who create them and need not apply
to others.
Enlightenment and modernist thinkers attach importance to human nature.
According to them, ther e is such a thing as human nature; it consists of
faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that are in some sense present in
human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social forces.
But Postmodernists disagree with this approach. Postmode rnists insist that
all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially
determined.
Enlightenment thinkers consider language as a mirror of nature.
Language refers to and represents a reality outside itself. According to
postmodernists, language is not such a “mirror of nature,” as the
American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty characterized the
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75 de Saussure, postmodernists claim that language is semantically self -
contained, or self -referential: the meaning of a word is not a static thing in
the world or even an idea in the mind but rather a range of contrasts and
differences with the meanings of other words. Because meanings are in
this sense functions of other me anings —which themselves are functions of
other meanings, and so on —they are never fully “present” to the speaker
or hearer but are endlessly “deferred.” Self -reference characterizes not
only natural languages but also the more specialized “discourses” of
particular communities or traditions; such discourses are embedded in
social practices and reflect the conceptual schemes and moral and
intellectual values of the community or tradition in which they are used.
The postmodern view of language and discourse i s due largely to the
French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida (1930 –2004), the
originator and leading practitioner of deconstruction.
Enlightenment and modern thinkers believe that human beings can acquire
knowledge about natural reality, a nd this knowledge can be justified
ultimately on the basis of evidence or principles that are, or can be, known
immediately, intuitively, or otherwise with certainty. Postmodernists reject
philosophical foundationalism which is the attempt to identify a
foundation of certainty on which to build the edifice
of empirical (including scientific) knowledge. This approach is seen in the
17th-century French philosopher René Descartes’s saying, “cogito, ergo
sum” (“I think, therefore I am”).

Jacques Derrida
courtesy Britannica .

Enlightenment and Modern thinkers attach a lot of importance to
theorizing. It is possible, at least in principle, to construct general theories
that ex plain many aspects of the natural or social world within a given
domain of knowledge —e.g., a general theory of human history, such
as dialectical materialism. Furthermore, it should be a goal of scientific
and historical research to construct such theories , even if they are never
perfectly attainable in practice. Postmodernists dismiss this notion as a
pipe dream and indeed as symptomatic of an unhealthy tendency
within Enlightenment discourses to adopt “totalizing” systems of thought
as the French philosop her Emmanuel Levinas called them or grand
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76 Research Methodology and Sources of History development as the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard claimed.
These theories are false. They effectively impose conformity on other
perspectives o r discourses, thereby oppressing, marginalizing, or silencing
them. Derrida himself equated the theoretical tendency toward totality
with totalitarianism.
9.3 POSTMODERNISM AND RELATIVISM
As discussed in the background, many of the characteristic doctrines of
postmode rnism constitute or imply some form of metaphysical,
epistemological, or ethical relativism. It should be noted, however, that
some postmodernists vehemently reject the relativist label. Postmodernists
deny that there are aspects of reality th at are objective. They do not agree
that there are statements about reality that are objectively true or false.
According to them, it is not possible to have knowledge of such statements
i.e objective knowledge. Postmodernists say that it is impossible for
human beings to know some things with certainty. They believe that there
are no objective or absolute, moral values. Reality, knowledge, and value
are constructed by discourses; hence they can vary with them. This means
that the discourse of modern scienc e is similar to alternative perspectives
including astrology and witchcraft. Postmodernists sometimes mockingly
characterize the evidential standards of science, including the use of
reason and logic, as “Enlightenment rationality.”
The broad relativism ap parently so characteristic of postmodernism invites
a certain line of thinking regarding the nature and function of discourses of
different kinds. If postmodernists are correct that reality, knowledge, and
value are relative to discourse, then the establis hed discourses of
the Enlightenment are no more necessary or justified than alternative
discourses. But this raises the question of how they came to be established
in the first place. If it is never possible to evaluate a discourse according to
whether it leads to objective Truth, how did the established discourses
become part of the prevailing worldview of the modern era? Why were
these discourses adopted or developed, whereas others were not?
Part of the postmodern answer is that the prevailing discourses in any
society reflect the interests and values, broadly speaking, of dominant or
elite groups. Postmodernists disagree about the nature of this connection;
whereas some apparently endorse the dictum of the German philosopher
and economist Karl Marx that “the ruling ideas of each age have ever been
the ideas of its ruling class,” others are more cautious. Inspired by the
historical research of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, some
postmodernists defend the comparatively nuanced view that what counts
as knowledge in a given era is always influenced, in complex and subtle
ways, by considerations of power. There are others, however, who are
willing to go even further than Marx. The French philosopher and literary
theorist Luce Irigaray, for example, has argued that the science of
solid mechanics is better developed than the science of fluid
mechanics because the male -dominated institution of physics associates
solidity and fluidity with the male and female, respectively. Similarly, the
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77 modern linguistics for privileging aspects of language associated, in her
psychoanalytic theory, with the paternal or paternal authority (rule systems
and referential meaning) over aspects associated with the maternal and the
body (rhythm, tone, and other poetic elements).

Michel Foucault
Courtesy Brittanica

Because the established discourses of the Enlightenme nt are more or less
arbitrary and unjustified, they can be changed; and because they more or
less reflect the interests and values of the powerful, they should be
changed. Thus postmodernists regard their theoretical position as
uniquely inclusive and demo cratic, because it allows them to recognize the
unjust hegemony of Enlightenment discourses over the equally valid
perspectives of non elite groups. In the 1980s and ’90s, academic
advocates on behalf of various ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious grou ps
embraced postmodern critiques of contemporary Western society, and
postmodernism became the unofficial philosophy of the new movement of
“identity politics.”
9.4 POSTMODERN APPROACH TO HISTORY
Many times college and graduate students have a very valid q uestion. And
the question that students often ask their history professors is this: ''How
do we know what the textbook says happened in the past actually
happened?'' We understand that this is a loaded question. At first,the
obvious answer might be to refe r to primary sources. After all, primary
sources are created during the time period being studied and provide a
firsthand and authentic glimpse into the period under consideration. But
what happens when two or more historians examine the same primary
source and arrive at dramatically different interpretations? Which one is
true? Can they both be ''true''?
This brings us to postmodernism. It will be beneficial to explore the
postmodern approaches to the discipline of history. This is an
intellectually engag ing topic which requires us to think deeply. The
postmodernist approach to history is one of the least known modes of
historical writing among historians and history educators. There is a need
to enhance historians’ and history educators’ understanding of the
postmodern challenge to the discipline of history. First of all we need to
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78 Research Methodology and Sources of History trajectory as a discipline. Then we can understand postmodernist
historiography’s conceptual underpinnings, methods, principal concepts,
and ideological positions. We can better understand the key debates,
criticisms, and arguments that historians of different historical orientations
are engaged in.
Dr Kaya Yilmaz states that Historians and history educators ne ed to know
the nature of history to effectively plan, implement and assess historical
research. The importance of an adequate understanding of the nature of a
given discipline in the teaching and learning process has been recognized
in science education. A sophisticated understanding of the nature of
science is deemed to be a major goal in science education and a central
component of scientific literacy. Science education organizations and
science educators stress the role that a nuanced understanding of th e
nature of science plays in fostering higher levels of scientific literacy. The
same emphasis on the importance of the nature of subject matter has not
been realized in history education yet.
However, drawing on the insights that historical frameworks pr ovide for
studying the past is crucial not only to develop a rational way of teaching
history but also to adequately address the fundamental issues in history
education. Dr Kaya Yilmaz also states that being familiar with the
different ways through which t he past is made accessible, meaningful, and
comprehensible is a must for advancing historical consciousness at
schools, colleges and universities. In this way we can deal with
confronting the complexity of the past. Unless models in the discipline of
histo ry are identified and used in the teaching and learning of history, any
framework for exploring students’ thoughts about history will be unclear.
Being aware of how historians of different historical orientations construct
differing interpretations of the past is one of the preconditions for students
of history to understand the complexity of the past and to develop an
increasingly better understanding of the past events, people, institutions
and processes. Unfortunately, historiographies of different sorts or diverse
historical approaches to the past are not sufficiently emphasized in history
and that’s why many students lack adequate training in historiography.
Also there is an unclear understanding, on historians’ and history
educators’ part, of how the p ast is made understandable through
postmodernist approach.
Therefore it is important to understand postmodernist historiography to
bring about a more sophisticated and meaningful history education. If
historians become familiar with and appreciate the mul tiplicity of
historical explanations, along with the assumptions and ideologies that lie
behind each orientation, students can not only enjoy more freedom of
choice in constructing their own historical understanding, but also come
up with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the past. But first let
us have an overview of the basic features of history as a discipline or
domain of knowledge and how history came to be recognized as an
academic discipline. Then later, we will study the postmodernist
movem ent in historiography, its characteristic features, the basic words
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79 Dr Kaya Yilmaz states that History is a unique interpretive enterprise
among social sciences because of the fact that it is both th e subject and the
object of its own discipline. In other words, the discipline of history refers
not only to what happened in the past but also to the act of writing about
the past. The nature and function of historical writing is shaped by the
theoretical presuppositions, by means of which the historian reflects on
and writes about the past. Frameworks serve as conceptual tools for
scholarly historical thinking and writing by enabling the historian to filter
the infinite number of possible interpretations to a limited number of
probable ones. Downplaying other historical orientations, the historian
operating under the banner of a given historical framework singles out
particular hypotheses, problems, and questions as significant or legitimate
objects of his torical study. That is, it is the philosophy of history that
provides the building blocks for the study of the past.
Dr Yilmaz shows that Philosophy of history is divided into two basic
branches, speculative and analytic, in terms of its substantive (i.e. ,
propositional) and syntactic (i.e., procedural) features. The speculative
branch (a) focuses on the actual content of history to find meaning or at
least pattern in it, (b) is interested in predicting the future, (c) and aims to
shed lights on the follow ing sorts of questions: Does history demonstrate a
simple giant unfolding history? Do laws govern history? Has human
nature remained the same throughout history? On the other hand,
analytical philosophy of history (a) concentrates on the nature and
methods of history as discipline, (b) deals with such topics as objectivity,
ideology, and historical explanations (i.e., how historians practice their
methods and how they think about what they are doing), (c) aims to
illuminate the following types of questions: What conditions must be met
for a statement about the past to be true? Is there an exclusively historical
way of explaining the past as distinct? Is narrative a satisfactory vehicle
for historical knowledge? Can the historian reach objective truth? On wha t
grounds can historians reasonably demonstrate that they know what they
claim?
Ranke had a tremendous role in the Professionalization of History. His
followers and students who made the Rankean School played a very
important part in the professionalizatio n of history. The
professionalization of historical studies along with the redefinition of their
theoretical and methodological foundations was entrenched in the process
of modernization and nationalism in Europe. The works of German
historians had an enor mous international impact on the professionalization
of history and the development of rigorous methods of historical research.
The belief in the scientific status of history which stressed the non -
rhetorical character of historical writing was central to the process of
professionalization. Leopold von Ranke, celebrated German historian, was
a pioneer in assigning academic status to the study of the past.
Just as Herodotus is deemed to be the father of history, Ranke can be
regarded as the father of the ne w objective school of history. Many
modern historians attribute the intellectual foundations of their discipline
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80 Research Methodology and Sources of History influenced historical scholarship throughout Europe and America. What
was new in Ranke’s approach to history was his attempt to explain the
past in terms of “how it actually was,” without making a judgment on it.
He established the rules of critical historical methods. “Ranke’s elaborate
methodology was based on classical ph ilology with its maxim: check the
source for trustworthiness and against its own context”. He combined a
critical reading of the surviving documents of the past with a careful
reconstruction of the historical circumstances in which it was composed. It
is only by these means, Ranke asserted, could unreliable historical sources
be identified to be used as evidence and the core meaning of the text be
recovered.
If history was to be written in a dispassionate, objective way, Ranke
claimed, “historians should n ot take sides, nor should they seek to make
propaganda out of the past; their task was essentially one of
reconstruction”. It is the strength of these claims that made history become
an academic discipline in its own right. The term “historicism” refers to
this rigorous approach to the past. “Historicism with all its variations is the
key term that symbolizes the genesis of modern historical scholarship”.
The major shortcomings of the historicist Rankean school were (1) its lack
of attention to economic and social forces and (2) its excessive emphasis
on the political aspect of events with almost exclusive reliance on official
documents of state.
The recognition of history as an academic discipline at universities led to
the production in the types of histor ical writing in the nineteenth and
twentieth century. As a result, the boundary among different modes of
historical writing became blurry. Still, we can detect two sharply
distinctive views of history, idealist versus positivist, both of which
characterize d historians’ visions of what history is and how it should be
recovered (e.g., view of history as art or science). For this reason, even
rival historical orientations can be put into the same overarching category
in terms of whether they belong to the posi tivist or idealist tradition. For
instance, for all the crucial differences between the French Annales and
Marxist historiography, both belong to the positivist tradition.
Historians of positivist orientation (or the covering -law model) such as
Popper and Hempel (a) sought to present their findings as general
statements of invariable relationship via the hypothetic -deductive model of
reasoning and the use of the syllogism (e.g., given the same causes, very
similar effects almost surely would occur), (b) foc used their attention on
uniformities and regularities -in the course of human affairs to formulate
generalization - rather than unique or individual events (e.g., instead of
studying the French Revolution, they would investigate the phenomenon
of revolution ), (c) put the issue of causal explanation in the center of
historical theory, and (d) understood the concept causation in the
“efficient” sense as a set of prior conditions.
On the other hand, idealist historians such as Collingwood and Elton (a)
jointly argued that the analogy derived from the natural sciences could not
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81 quite different conceptual schemes, (b) focused on unique and specific
events outside of nature, instead of seekin g regularities and uniformities,
(c) offered that the proper object of historical study center on the human
mind or the activities of human mind, (d) contended that the main task of
the historian is to think himself into the actions of his historical agent in
order to discern his thought (i.e., all history is the re -enactment of past
thought in the historian’s own mind), and (e) understood the term
causation in the sense of “final” cause as the will or intention of a
historical agent. These are the advances in historiography and the
differnce between the positivist and idealist views of history. Now let us
understand postmodernist historiography, which has left an imprint in
historiography.
Dr Kaya Ilmaz reveals that Postmodernism has called into question th e
truth claims of not only history but also all humanities and social sciences.
The basic hypothesis of postmodernism is that society and culture are in
transformation in which old essentialist assumptions concerning
objectivity, truth, industrial growth, rising economic expectations, and
traditional middle -class norms have been shaken. What characterizes post -
modern thought is the attempt to de -center language from the idea of
“being” to that of “function,” and the resulting belief that language defines
but does not refer to reality and our experience of reality is a function of
our language. The rejection of historical realism (i.e., the past was real and
objective) constitutes a crucial theme in the philosophy of postmodernism.
Another major theme of pos tmodern approach to history is the
elimination of the boundaries and hierarchical distinctions between elite
culture and academic culture by means of dehierarchization,
deconstruction, demystification, and dereferentialization. Postmodernism
symbolizes the death of centers. It displays doubt toward metanarratives,
and is characterized by a social formation in which the maps and status of
knowledge are being de -centered, re -drawn, and re -described. Let us
examine the premises of postmodernism in relation to history: In the most
general sense, postmodernism stands for the proposition that western
society in recent decades has undergone a major shift from the modern to
a postmodern era. This is said to be characterized by the final rejection of
the Enlightenmen t's legacy of belief in reason and progress. It is marked
by an all -encompassing amazement toward all narratives giving a
direction and meaning to history, in particular the notion that human
history is a process of universal emancipation. In place of gran d narratives
of this kind, there have come a multiplicity of discourses and language
games. There is a kind of questioning of the nature of knowledge together
with a dissolution of the idea of truth, and problems of legitimacy in many
fields.
Its two prin cipal features may be said to be its conception of language and
its rejection of realism. It is a philosophy of linguistic idealism or
panlingualism claiming that language constitutes and defines reality for
human minds. It says that there is no extralingu istic reality independent of
our representations of it in language or discourse. It regards language itself
as a system of signs that refer only to one another internally in an endless munotes.in

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82 Research Methodology and Sources of History process of signification that never arrives at stable meaning.
Postmode rnism thus denies both the ability of language or discourse to
refer to an independent world of facts and things and the determinacy or
decidability of textual meaning. By the same token, it also dismisses the
possibility of objective knowledge and truth a s goals of inquiry. The basic
precepts of postmodern thought can be summarized as the idea that all old
organizing frameworks that took for granted the privileging of various
centers, such as Anglo -centric, ethno -centric, gender -centric, and logo -
centric, should not be considered as legitimate and natural frameworks.
As a prominent advocate and practitioner of the postmodernist theory of
history, Jenkins asserts that traditional academic history or lower case
history is just representation of bourgeois ide ology. He accuses traditional
historians of being satisfied with the status quo because he thinks they
study the past for its own sake and thus concludes that they neither want to
change the present nor vision a different future. Why history came to the
fore and received the strongest attack in the face of postmodernist
criticism has to do with the fact that it is a textual subject and full of grand
historical narratives or teleological historical writings. Advocates of the
postmodernist thought assert that “the great trajectories that historiography
has built around nation, class, and religion are grand narratives that confer
an illusory sense of direction on people who think they know about the
past”.
Rather than historical research methods, postmodernist s questioned
historians’ assumptions and epistemological foundations of the discipline
by constructing their arguments around such concepts as truth and
objectivity. On the other hand, historians elucidated their methods to
counterattack the postmodern thr ust, failing to recognize the nature of
postmodern argument. Therefore, neither side did justice to each other. In
his critique of the postmodern turn in Western historiography,
Windschuttle outlines the postmodern critics’ attack on the practice of
conven tional historiography. According to the postmodernist critique of
the discipline, (1) traditional historiography is an authoritarian practice
that reflects the ethnocentrism and cultural hubris of contemporary
Western society (i.e., the views and interests of the white, middle class,
European males); (2) authors of the left, the right, or in between
politically, assert their power over their readers in the name of reality by
assuming a third person voice and an omniscient viewpoint; (3) historians
(a) can o nly express the ideology of their times (b) cannot be objective
enough to see beyond their own class, gender, ethics, or cultural
background.
To eliminate these problems, postmodernists take a demystification
approach to set the stage for those who are cu rrently deprived of the
opportunity to write their own histories and to “free up historians to tell
many equally legitimate stories from various viewpoints and types of
synthesis”. Just as postmodernists have criticized the assumptions and
historical writi ngs of traditionalists, the practitioners of traditional history
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Postmodern
83 According to Zagorin, (a) postmodernism is an amorphous concept and a
synthesis of different yet related theories, theses, and claims , (b) the
skepticism and relativism inherent in postmodernist philosophy cuts the
ground from any moral or political stand its adherents might take, (c)
practitioners of the postmodern theory of history have overtly advocated a
political agenda as much an academic one as Jenkins did, (d)
postmodernists’ skeptical and politicized view of historical inquiry is
deeply erroneous, inconsistent with the way historians think about their
work, and incapable of providing an understanding of historiography as a
form of thought engaged in the attainment of knowledge and
understanding of the human past. Likewise, many have criticized
postmodernist theorists for being responsible for the dramatic shrinking of
historical scholarship manifested by the sharp decrease in the number of
graduate students in history and the number of Ph.D.s awarded in history
that fell by more than fifty percent from 1970s to 1990s in the US.
The debates over the postmodernist theory and practice of history also
found its way to high schools an d universities in the design of the history
curriculum. Windschuttle explains the effects of postmodern discourse on
some curriculum developers. Educationalists who designed the new
national history standards for American high schools downplayed the
notion that doing history should be in line with the principles of
historicism and be identified as being disinterested and above ideology.
According to them, such an approach to describing, explaining, and
interpreting the past is both intellectually obsolete a nd politically
contaminated. They endorsed the argument that it is impossible for
historians to distance themselves and their scholarly work from their
academic training, attitudes, ideological dispositions and cultures.
Their contention was that what par ticular facts, traditions, and heroic
personalities are represented in the textbooks symbolize the ideological
position of the traditionalists and the political Right who think that their
interpretation of history represents the true and objective history that every
citizens should become familiar with. Keeping a faith in the claim that
being non -political is unattainable, they attempted to replace the
traditional account of American history with the one that brings to the fore
the concepts of discriminatio n, exploitation, hostility, and predicaments
that women, blacks, and ethnic minorities had undergone but were able to
surmount those difficulties to challenge their exploiters, stand up for legal
rights, and cross racial boundaries.
But, the Republican do minated U.S. Senate went ahead and prevented this
effort from being put into practice in high schools in November 1994.
According to Zagorin, most postmodernists stand on the left side of
political continuum and thus have tended to be supporters of the
movement in the universities for women's and gender studies, Afro -
American studies, ethnic studies, and gay studies. They have been among
the defenders of multiculturalism and the promoters of cultural and
postcolonial studies. Windschuttle makes similar comm ents on the
position of postmodernist historians. He states that postmodernists are
identified with their supports for structuralism, semiotics, post -munotes.in

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84 Research Methodology and Sources of History structuralism, postcolonialism, radical feminism, queer theory, critical
theory, and cultural studies.
They have recently begun to associate their philosophical orientations not
with postmodernism but with the less provocative term cultural studies
which supports the same combination of anti -realist philosophy and anti -
Western politics. We need to examine hi story’s confrontation with the
postmodernist challenge by seeking answers to the following questions.
To what extent has postmodernism affected the discipline of history? Did
historians take on postmodernist ideas and practice postmodern theory of
history? Has historiography ever benefited from postmodern thought and
criticisms? There are a wide variety of opinions among historians with
respect to postmodernism, ranging from substantial agreement to complete
rejection and uncompromising hostility.
Dr Yilmaz mentions that a small minority of historians such as R. Evans
have embraced at least some postmodernist arguments in order to
counteract against attacks. The majority of historians have been opposed
to postmodernist doctrines and viewed postmodernism as a misconceived
critique and hope that intellectual fashions will change. “Its influence
upon the thinking and practice of historians is not only fading but
increasingly destined to fade, according to Zagorin. Whereas the extreme
relativism inherent in postm odernism is less heard nowadays, “the popular
appeal of well -crafted historical interpretations of topics of current
concern shows no sign of diminishing”. Even though the postmodernist
challenge had a significant impact on historical thought and writing, it was
not able to devastate the continuities with older conceptions and practices.
In short, according to Zagorin as quoted by Dr Kaya Ilmaz in her
document on Post Modernist approach to the discipline of history,
postmodernism is now considered to be a distinctly minority phenomenon
among professional historians, most of whom are unwilling to recognize
its view of history because they find its doctrines so contrary to their
understanding and experience of historical inquiry. For all most historians’
resistance to postmodernist theories, historiography has benefited from
ground shaking arguments of postmodernist thinkers. Postmodernism has
revived the scholarly interest in the problems of explanation,
interpretation, and epistemology. Some give credits to postmodernists for
having exposed the limitations of descriptions so vividly. Evans testifies
that postmodernists were instrumental in destroying the economic
determinism characterizing the historical writing of the 1970s and 1980s.
He further confirms tha t postmodernists’ thought provoking ideas,
especially their emphasis on identity, consciousness and mentality, also
helped today’s historians communicate with a wider range of audiences
from different backgrounds.
Zagorin acknowledges that postmodernist ph ilosophy (a) provoked
historians to be more self -critical and aware of their presuppositions and
procedures, encouraging them to look more closely at documents, and (b)
led historians to recognize the importance of open acknowledgment of the
historians' ow n subjectivity that in turn may make the reader engage in a munotes.in

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Postmodern
85 critical assessment of historical work. Another scholar regards
postmodernist theory as a means to enable students to recognize the
relationship between the historical narratives and the political interests of
those who write historical texts.
Dr Yilmaz concludes by saying that the subject matters and methods of
historical writing have expanded greatly since the inception of history as
an academic discipline. Historiography has become more plurali stic today
than it had ever been. Depending on their philosophical orientations (e.g.,
positivist vs. idealist), world views, belief systems, personal histories, and
academic trainings, historians have offered that the material world,
culture, societies/ci vilizations, common people, internal world of human
beings or human mind be the proper object of historical writing. The
assumptions of authenticity, intentionality, and chronological sequences
determined the structure of historical writing from Heredotus to Ranke and
into the twentieth century.
Today’s history is characterized by particularities and divergences, so it is
safe to conclude that history can no longer address the identity and
experience of all readers through common stories. The kind of histo ry we
have today is the one with the multiplicity of versions competing for
attention and emphasizing alternatively elites or nonelites, men or women,
whites or nonwhites. Historians and history educators need to be cognizant
of different modes of historic al writing or historical orientations in order
to assist students in handling conflicting accounts of the past. Different
conceptual frameworks used to explain the past may contradict, compete
with, or complement one another, but this means that students s hould be
equipped to deal with such relationships. For this reason, history
departments should emphasize training in historiography, by means of
which students can stay away from accepting any historical claims at face
value.
It is not the familiarity wit h the basic concepts of history such as
continuity and change, cause and effect but an understanding of the
processes of knowledge -making. One should understand the construction
of a historical narrative and argument and the nature of conflicting
historica l frameworks. This is the best assurance against dogmatic
transmission of a single version of the past, a practice that violates the core
tenets of the discipline. When students in history and history education
departments are provided with the tools of hi storiography, they will be in a
better position to construct their own interpretations of the past without
uncritically believing in any particular version.
9.5 KEY CONCEPTS OF POSTMODERN
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Firstly, we need to understand what postmodernism i s. Postmodernism
takes many forms, but generally, it is the philosophical view that objective
truth does not exist and that it is largely impossible to understand reality,
in any sort of objective sense. The postmodern tagline is basically:
''Everyone ha s their own truth,'' or perhaps ''Truth is what you make it.'' munotes.in

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86 Research Methodology and Sources of History Postmodernism would especially become popular throughout the second
half of the 20th -century. This view is not isolated to the discipline of
history: postmodernism is especially reflected in ph ilosophy, literature, the
arts, and other disciplines as well.
So let us see what the central views of postmodern historiography are.
Historiography is the study of how history is interpreted. The basic view is
that it is impossible to know exactly what ha ppened in the past, at least in
an objective sense. Postmodern historians typically assert that multiple
truths exist, and they tend to emphasize the subjective nature of the
discipline.
Take the American Revolution, for example. According to postmodern
historians, it may have begun because of republicanism. But it also may
have begun because of class conflict, or because of underlying religious
zeal, or any number of other reasons. It's pretty much impossible to know
for sure because, after all, these are all just subjective interpretations, and
the real event cannot be known.
Nate Sullivan states that postmodern historiography is closely related, or
often aligned, with another historiographical approach known
as structuralism. Structuralism seeks to explai n that history unfolds not
because of critical, decisive actions on the part of key individuals like
Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation for example, but because
of broader, over -arching social, economic, and political movements or
structures. In o ther words, the individual human agency is minimized,
while 'spirit' of the masses is emphasized. For example, Adolf Hitler rose
to power not because he was personally charismatic, but because the social
climate among the German people was ripe for such a leader.

Structuralist historians state that the rise of Hitler was attributed
mainly the social, economic, and political climate in Germany.
Source; Nate Sulllivan, study,com
Ironically, structuralism asserts a specific approach to the exclusion of
another, which in theory contradicts postmodernism. This type of
contradiction has been a key criticism by opponents of postmodernism.
They say: ''How can you assert one interpretation is superior to another if
you deny objectivity all together?'' Neverthele ss, many postmodern
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Postmodern
87 Let us examine who some well known postmodern historians are. Perhaps
the most well known is Michel Foucault (1926 -1984). Foucault, a French
philosopher and historian published a numbe r of works, including The
History of Madness and The Archaeology of Knowledge. Foucault has
become highly esteemed among New Left and postmodern historians, but
he remains controversial in general. Commenting on his crafting of
history, he once stated: ''I am well aware that I have never written
anything but fictions.''
Foucault basically believed that attempts to understand history or reality,
for that matter objectively represented attempts to secure power. He
asserted that various groups compete for powe r, and ''truth'' was merely
what anyone group claimed it to be. By adhering to a particular
worldview, or approach or perspective, a group was essentially trying to
secure power over other groups. For Foucault therefore, asserting a
historical approach rep resented an attempt to put forth an ideology, not so
much arrive at a factual truth.
9.6 SUMMARY
Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed in the mid -to-late
20th century across history, philosophy, the arts, and architecture, marking
a departure f rom modernism. The term has been more generally applied to
describe a historical era said to follow after modernity and the tendencies
of this era. Postmodern thinkers frequently describe knowledge claims
and value systems as socially -conditioned. They con sider them as products
of political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. These
thinkers often view personal and spiritual needs as being best fulfilled by
improving social conditions and adopting more fluid discourses, in
contrast to modern ism, which places a higher degree of emphasis on
maximizing progress and which generally regards promotion of objective
truths as an ideal form of discourse.
Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or
rejection toward what i t describes as the grand narratives and
ideologies associated with modernism, often criticizing Enlightenment
rationality and focusing on the role of ideology in maintaining political or
economic power. Common targets of postmodern criticism include
Universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature,
reason, science, language, and social progress. Accordingly, post modern
thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-consciousness,
pluralism, and irreverence.
Postmodern cri tical approaches gained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s,
and have been adopted in a variety of academic and theoretical disciplines,
including history, cultural studies, philosophy of science, economics,
linguistics, architecture, feminist theory, and literary criticism, as well
as art movements in fields such as literature, contemporary art, and music.
Postmodernism is often associated with schools of thought such
as deconstruction, and post-structuralism. It is associated with munotes.in

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88 Research Methodology and Sources of History philosophers such as Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Michel
Foucault.
Check your progress:
1] Give a brief summary of postmodernism.
2] Examine the contrast between modernism and postmodernism.
9.7 QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the relationship between Postmodernism and Histor y.
9.8 REFERENCES
 Kaya Yılmaz, Postmodernist Approach to the Discipline of History,
Kocaeli Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu Dergisi (14) 2007.
 Jenkins, K. (1991), Re -thinking History, Routledge: London.
 Windschuttle, K. (2002), A critique of the Pos tmodern Turn in
Western Historiography, In
 Q. Edward Wang, & G. Iggers (eds.), Turning Points in
Historiography: A Cross Cultural
 Perspective, Rochester Press: New York.
 Zagorin, P. (1997), Historiography and Postmodernism, In K. Jenkins
(ed.), The Postmod ern
 History Reader, Routledge: New York.
 Danto, "The Historical Individual", in Philosophical Analysis and
History, edited by Williman H. Dray, Rainbow -Bridge Book Co.,
1966.
 Meinecke, Friedrich (1972), Historism, translated by J E Anderson,
London Routled ge and Kegan Paul.
 Troeltsch, Ernst (1923), Christian Thought, translated by F Huegel et
al , London University of London Press.

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89 10
IMPERIALIST
Unit Structure:
10.0 Objectives
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Imperialist School
10.3 Prominent Imperialist School Historians
10.4 Summary
10.5 Questions
10.6 References
10.0 OBJECTIVES
 To introduce students to Indian Historiography.
 To under stand the viewpoints of Imperialist School
 To know about eminent Imperialist School Historians
 To make readers acquainted with salient features of Imperialist
School
10.1 INTRODUCTION
History as a discpline cannot be understood without the study of
historiography. Historiography can be defined as the science of writing
historical account in a systematic way by following proper methodology
and use of authentic sources. As far as Indian history is concerned we
come across different Schools of Historiograpi es. These different Schools
and historians belonging to it have follwed their own style of
historiography.As far as History of Modern India is concerned we come
across various Schools of History writing or Historiography. One of such
Schools is Colonial Sc hool which is also called as Imperialist School of
Indian History. As the name suggests this School came into being during
British rule. And of course, the Historians who floated this School were
British. One of the features of the Imperialist School is th at most of the
Historians belonging to this School were critical of Indian culture and
heritage. Particularly, we realise that these Historians used to look down
upon the ancient ethos of Indians, especially their world view. It would be
informative to stu dy the details of this School further.
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90 Research Methodology and Sources of History 10. 2 IMPERIALIST SCHOOL
Features of Imperialist School
The exponents of Imperialist School thought that the ancient Indian
culture was quite backward. They expressed the need for bringing changes
in Indian society. And these historians or supporters of this School
believed that spread of Christianity and Western European education will
help to bring positive changes in Indian society. In other words they were
of the view that the Hindu ideology and India's ancient c ivilization and
culture will of very little use during nineteenth century and coming days.
John Shore who was the Governor General of Bengal from 1793 to 1798
was also of more or less same view. It can be said that this School also had
the influence of phi losophy of Jeremy Bentham, 18th and 19th century
philosopher from Britain. This utilitarian philosophy believes that the
institutions be it political, religious and social should be judged from their
utility point of view. In other words utility or usefuln ess of the institutions
is very important. Hence, according to them it would be advisable to bring
changes in the institutions in order to enrich them. In order to achieve this
if necessary legal changes also should be effected. James Mill the major
expone nt of Imperialist School believed that Indian culture has become
stagnant hence there is a need to make efforts in order to bring positive
changes in it. These views or ideas about India were expressed by James
Mill and those who appreciated his writings a bout India.
There was one more prominent Imperialist historian who was
administrator in India. But, his views and opinions about India and Indians
were quite different from that of James Mill. The name of this
administrator historian was Mountstuart Elphin stone. He was the
Governor of Bombay Presidency. In the capacity of Governor of Bombay
Presidency he had brought impressive administrative reforms. In his
honour only the Elphinstone College in Bombay (now Mumbai) was
named after him. Elphinstone wrote his famous historical work on India
entitled as 'History of Hindu and Muhammadan India' published in the
year 1841. Elphinstone defenitely refuted the views of James Mill. Hence,
we can say that the opinions of James Mill and Mountstuart Elphinstone
differed from each other even though they are called as Imperialist
historians. And, here we find that there were at least two points of views
about India within Imperialist School. One was that of James Mill and his
followers and second one was that of Elphinstone and his followers.
Nevertheless, the works of James Mill and Mountstuart Elphinstone
entitled as 'The History of British India' (running into six volumes) and
'History of Hindu and Muhammadan India' were used as important
references in Haileybury College where the candidates who would serve in
civil service of East India Company in India were trained.

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91 10.3 PROMINENT IMPERIALIST SCHOOL
HISTORIANS
Let us try to get more information about some eminent historians
belonging to Imperialist School also known as Colonial School.
James Mill
We have already mentioned about James Mill's views about India and his
famous work entitled 'The History of British India' James Mill was
Scottish i.e. he was born in Scotland. After taking higher education he
decided to devo te himself to the profession of serious and scholarly
writing. He was quite intelligent person and built his identity as political
philosopher, historian, psychologist, educational theorist, economist and
also the reformer in the fields of political and le gal affairs. He was in the
service of the British East India Company. One can see that for writing his
'The History of British India' Mill made use of the official correspondence
and papers related to India which were available in the office the East
India Company. Of course, these papers would have been mainly related
to administrative matters. Another important source of Mill's History was
the accounts or writings of the travellers. Experts believe that he should
have reffered to the historical works of t he historians belonging to
Orientalist School. But, one can easily sense that Mill had a dislike for the
Orientalist School of historians. The work of James Mill was praised by
the likes of John Stuart Mill who was none other than his son and
intellectual scholar on his own. But, the historians belonging to Orientalist
School such as H.H. Wilson criticised the book of James Mill,
althoughthey had recognised the hard work put in writing it and
acknowledging as important work on the history of India. Some sch olars
are of the view that 'The History of British India' of James Mill was
responsible for creating a distance between the Indian ruled and British
rulers mainly based on the futile concept supremacy of white race.
Elliot
Sir Henry Miera Elliot was influ enced by the work of James Mill. Elliot
was trained in Haileybury College and served in the service of East India
Company for nearly twenty six years. He rose to the post of Chief
Secretary in the Foreign Department of British Government of India. He
learn t the Persian language, the Court of language of Mughals. He utilised
the knowledge of Persian not only for collecting the Persian sources
related to Delhi Sultanate Mughal rule. Subsequently, he came up with his
work on the history of Mediaeval India, esp ecially the Muslim rule
entitled 'The History of India as Told its own Historians'. It was a
monumental work running into eight volumes. Elliot was assisted by
Professor John Dowson who used to teach Hindustani at University
College in London. This work of Elliot and Dowson strengthend the belief
of the British imperial rulers of India in the principle of importance of rule
of law should be given priority over self -rule for the natives.
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92 Research Methodology and Sources of History Henry Maine
Henry Maine was born on 15th August 1822 in Leighton, Eng land. He
studied at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. He was also tutor
at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He served the East India Company's
government in India. He advised the British government of India on the
issue of need to learn Persian language f or civil servants serving in India.
He was Law Member in British Government of India. He by some
scholars is not considered as historian in strict sense of the term. He had
written a famous book entitled 'Ancient Law'. He also had expressed
negative opinio ns about Indians and their culture.
James Fitzjames Stephens
He was born in London and related to Virginia Woolf, the famous British
author of 18th and 19th century. He had studied at Trinity College,
Cambridge University. He chose the legal career and ha d served in India
as the Law member in Governor General's Council. He wrote many
prominent works. He is known for his famous work entitled 'Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity'. He believed in the idea that for betterment of India
and more civilised India Britis h rule was necessary. In other words we can
say that he ascribed to the views of James Mill on great extent.
Vincent Smith
Vincent Arthur Smith was born on 3 June 1843 in Dublin. At present
Dublin is the capital of the Republic of Ireland. After passing t he Indian
Civil Service examination he was appointed in the then United Provinces
today's states of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh in north India. He spent
his last days in Oxford after retirement from the service of British
government of India. His famous historical works on India include 'The
Early History of India' and 'The Oxford History of India'. After
examiningthese works of Vincent Smith we definitely come to conclusion
that he was Imperialist historian and tried to show how Europeans were
superior t o that of Indians.
William Harrison Moreland
William Harrison Moreland (W.H. Moreland) was born on 23 July 1868 in
the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of United
Kingdom and Belfast is capital of Northern Ireland. He was stude nt of
Clifton College in Somerset. He was also in Tritinity College, Cambridge
University after clearing his Indian Civil Service examination. W. H.
Moreland contributed in the field of economic history. His famous works
on economic history of India includ e 'Agriculture of the United Provinces',
'Revenue Administration of the United Provinces', 'Akbar's Land Revenue
System', 'India at the death of Akbar', 'From Akbar to Aurangzeb',
'Agrarian System of Moslem India', etc. We find that through his writings
Moreland tried to show that economic condition of India under British rule
was better than the previous indigenous rules, especially the the Mughals.
We can come to this conclusion on the basis of one observation made by
Moreland wherein he says that the sal t was much costlier during the
Mughal rule in comparison to that of British times.
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Imperialist
93 Mountstuart Elphinstone
Without mentioning the name of Mountstuart Elphinstone any writing or
discussion about the Imperialist historians cannot be completed. He was
born on 6 October 1779 in Dunbartonshire, Scotland. He was Civil
Servant in the Service of British East India Company. He had served in
different parts of India. He was Governor of Bombay Presidency as well.
His contribution in the field of law and education is still remembered.
Elphinstone acknowledged the rich culture and history of Indians. Hence,
he tried to correct the criticism of India done by James Mill at least in a
sober manner. Elphinstone wrote his famous work entitled 'History of
Hindu and Muhammad an India'. As far as Elphinstone's book is concerned
it was mainly based on his experiences and interaction with Indians during
his service in India and also that of Indian accounts. In his book
Elphinstone had tried to fix the date of the Rig Vedic period as well as the
dynasties mentioned in Puranas. We can see that his emphasis was more
on cultural aspect than that of political one. He writes about the economy,
trade, society, religion, administration, arts, etc. of Indians during ancient
period. Elphins tone had words of praise for India and Indians. Other
historians who followed Elphinstone's style or path include James Grant
Duff and William Erskine.
James Grant Duff
James Grant Duff was born 8 July 1789 in Banff (Scotland). He was in
British East Indi a Company's army and served in Western India (Today's
Maharashtra). Even though he was a soldier he after retiring to Scotland
came up with fantastic work on the Maratha history entitled 'A History of
the Maharattas'. This book was based on the original pa pers of the
Peshwas and also other primary sources found from temples and othersuch
places. Hence, naturally it becomes one of the authentic records about the
Maratha history.
10.4 SUMMARY
.After studying the Imperialist School of historians, we can come t o the
conclusion that broadly speaking James Mill and Mountstuart Elphinstone
followed their own styles of writing history. As far as James Mill was
concerned he criticised Indians and their legacy. On the contary
Mountstuart Elphinstone was in love with I ndia and Indians. Mill and
Elphinstone had their own followers. One has to accept the contribution of
these two traditions of Imperialist School in historiography. Both these
traditions influenced the future historians directly or indirectly.
10.5 QUESTION S
1) Explain the Imperialist School of Historiography.
2) Analyse the Imperialist School of Historiography.
3) Write a note on various historians belonging to Imperialist School.. munotes.in

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94 Research Methodology and Sources of History 10.6 REFERENCES
1. Sreedharan E., A Textbook of Historiography 500 BC to 2000, Orient
Blackswan Private Limited, Hyderabad
2. Singh G. P., Perspectives on Indian History, Historiography and
Philosophy of History, D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd., New Delhi
3. Jain Laxmi, Historical Method and Historiography, Vayu Education
of India, New Delhi


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95 11
NATIONALIST
Unit Structure:
11.0 Objectives
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Viewpoint of Nationalist School
11.3 Eminent nationalist school scholars/historians
11.4 Evaluation of Nationalist School
11.5 Questions
11.6 References
11.0 OBJECTIVES
 To introduc e students to Indian Historiography.
 To understand the viewpoints of Nationalist School
 To make readers acquainted with salient features of Nationalist
School
11.1 INTRODUCTION
For writing history sources are very important. On the basis of sources
eithe r written or archaeological the history is written. While writing
history of a particular era or an event, historian tries to interpret the
sources in his or her own way. Even though the sources are same but the
interpretation of a particular event might b e interpreted differently by two
historians. Hence, we can say that the interpretation of sources
subjectively by a historian or group of historians have led to different
Schools of history writing or Historiography. One of the important
Schools of history related to Indian history is known as the Nationalist
School. Let us try to understand various aspect of Nationalist School.
11. 2 VIEWPOINT OF NATIONALIST SCHOOL
We can say that from the later half of nineteenth century the fertile ground
for the rise of Nationalist School was prepared. The rise of Nationalist
School can be considered as the fitting reply to the Imperialist School. The
historians belonging to Imperialist School were mainly British. Imperialist
School of historians though did the good job by writing history of India
and bringing fore many unknown facets and facts of Indian history, they
criticised the Indian culture and traditions. Imperialist historians tried to
show that it was to the British rule that India is witnessing good changes in
different walks of life, otherwise Indian society had become stagnant and
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96 Research Methodology and Sources of History The Nationalist historians revisited the sources of Indian history and
reinterpreted it. In order to refute the criticism done by Imperialist
histo rians.The Nationalist historians realised the need for enthusing
Indians about their history, culture and traditions by the closing years of
nineteenth century. That was the time when British rule was firmly
established in India. Not only so the British we re exploiting India
economically. British rulers were systematically making use of the
theories and views floated by the Imperialist historians in order to pointout
India poorly and demoralise the Indians. This strategy was adopted by the
British so that i t would become easier for them to rule India. By doing so
the British wanted to prove the point that British rule was badly needed in
order to develop India which had become a stagnant nation as far as the
development of civilisation was concerned. Unfortu nately many Indians
has also started accepted this diffident state of mind. Educated Indians
were quite happy and satisfied in emulating the British and Western way
of life.
The Nationalist historians came to conclusion that in order to reestablish
the co nfidence of the Indians in Indianness and to make them feel proud
again it was the need of the hour to reinterpret the sources of Indian
history and present the glorifying and positive picture of Indian past. They
thought and thought it correctly that the answers to the present problem of
India could be found in the past of India. They looked towards history not
only just as the recorded events of past but the positive weapon in order to
recreate the confidence and proud feeling about one's own nation. From
this point of view or by keeping this goal the Nationalist historians started
writing the history of India.
Scholars like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee stated that in order to promote
the sense of unity and national pride it is very much necessary to study th e
history of the nation carefully. The work does not stop here but one after
studying history should try to write the history of the country in proper
manner and to build the confidence of the people. Some of the Nationalist
historians defended whatever wa s Indian. Especially, they praised the
Hinduism which was the target of Imperialist historians, Christian
Missionaries and the British rulers. Nationalist School refuted the charge
of the British that India was historically not the united country by
emphas izing that since ancient times there was religious, spiritual and
cultural unity among the Indians, especially the Hindus. The Hindus from
each and every corner of India historically believed in same set of
religious principles and ethos. As we have mentio ned earlier, the
nationalist Historiography was developed by the nationalist historians in
order to defend the Indian culture including Hinduism.
The Nationalist School reexamined the sources of history and tried to
explain how rich the Indian culture and civilization during ancient times.
Historians like K. P. Jayaswal after examining the sources of history
thoroughly came to the conclusion that the political system in ancient
India was highly developed with the democratic features of modern
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Nationalist
97 11.3 EMINENT NATIONALIST SCHOOL SCHOLARS/
HISTORIANS
As we have said above, the Nationalist School Historiography started
taking shape from the closing years of nineteenth century and by the first
half of twentieth century it had blossomed in an awe some way.
Lokmanya Tilak
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, popularly called as Lokmanya Tilak is known to
Indians as great Extremist leader of Indian National Congress. He inspired
generations of freedom fighters including revolutionaries from different
parts of India . He was born on 23 July 1856 in Chikhli village of Ratnagiri
district of Maharashtra in Chitpavan Brahmin family. He was the
intellectual giant by all means. Since his childhood he was genius in the
subject of Mathematics. He also had a great command on S anskrit
language, the language of the Hindu religious scriptures. His scholarly
works include 'The Arctic Home in the Vedas', 'The Orion' and
'Gitarahasya' among others. In the 'Artic Home in the Vedas' Lokmanya
Tilak argued in a scholarly way that the ori ginal home of the Aryans was
the Arctic in the extreme north of the earth and from there the Aryans
migrated southwards. In 'The Orion' Tilak tried to fix the period during
which Vedas, the oldest Hindu scriptures were composed. 'Gitarahasya', as
title ind icates was the commentary on Bhagvadgita. These and other
writings of Lokmanya Tilak definitely inspired the Nationalist School.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee would be remembered forever as the great
inspirer for the educated Hindus in late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries and subsequently as the pillar of guidance to the Nationalist
School historians, of course through his writings. He was born in 1838 in
Naihati in Bengal. He was the Civil Servant. He wrote mainly novels
which inspired many young Hindu nationalists. 'Anandmath' can be
considered as his most inspirational work for the Nationalists. The song
'Vande Mataram' from this book made many Indians to sacrifice for the
sake of their nation. At present 'Vande Mataram' ha s been recognised as
the national song of India. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee believed that in
order to inspire the people and create the feelings of unity, pride and love
for freedom it is important to study history. He also emphasisedon the
point that histo ry writing is very important. In his opinion India was ruled
by foreign power like British at that point time because Indians did not
write their own history.
V. D. Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, poupularly known as Swatantryaveer
Savarkar was a great nationalist. He was born on 23 May 1883 in Nashik,
Maharashtra. He was a Chitpavan Brahmin. He firmly believed in Hindu
philosophy. Savarkar was actively involved in revolutionary nationalism
and inspired many young revolutionaries who were ready to sacri fice their
life for the nation by taking on the British rulers. He was known for his
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98 Research Methodology and Sources of History Independence, 1857 and Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? are two famous
works authored by him among others. As far as th e ‘The First War of
Independence' was concerned he argued in this book that the Revolt of
1857 was not just the Sepoy Mutiny but it was infact, the first great war
declared by Indians on British in order to get independence from
exploitative British rule.
Romesh ChanderDutt
Romesh ChanderDutt was another prominent Nationalist historian. He was
born on 13 August 1848 and studied in Presidency College, Calcutta. He
was Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer. He served in many parts of Bengal
Presidency as governm ent servant. He was associated with Indian National
Congress as well becoming the President of Indian National Congress in
1899. His approach was very scholarly as far as History writing was
concerned. His voluminous work on ancient Indian history entitled as
‘Civilisation in Ancient India' is hailed as one of the classics and scholarly
work of History. It is said that this book talks about the ancient India and
its institution in a very balanced manner and gives beautiful picture of
historical facts. R. C. Duttrealised that literature can be used as vital
source material for writing history. ‘Literature of Bengal’ was another
important work of R. C. Dutt. ‘Economic History of India’ is yet another
scholarly presentation of R. C. Dutt as the title of the boo k indicates this
work talks about the economic scenario in British India. It is very studious
book based on the authentic sources such as parliamentary papers and
statistical data.
K. P. Jayaswal
Kashi Prasad Jayaswal (K. P. Jayaswal) was born on 27 Novemb er 1881
in Mirzapur. He studied from the University of Allhabad. He studied at
Oxford University as well and was also Barrister. His expertise was in the
history of ancient India. His important works include ‘Hindu Polity’ and
‘History of India 150AD to 35 0AD’. Jayaswal’s writings definitely
presented the case of India in a very positive way.
G. S. Sardesai
Govind Sakharam Sardesai was in the employment of Baroda state ruled
by the Maratha rulers Gaikwads. He was born on 17 May 1865 in
Ratnagiri, Maharashtr a. He studied at Ratnagiri and Poona. He was
Secretary to the Maharaja of Baroda. He is also known as Riyaasatkar. His
works mainly dealt with the Maratha history. His most of the works were
in Marathi language but ‘New History of the Marathas’ was written in
English. He had friendly relations with yet another great Indian historian
viz. Jadunath Sarkar. Some other prominent Indian historians included
Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, Radha Kumud Mukherji, H. C.
Raychaudhari, Jadunath Sarkar.
11.4 EVALUATION OF NATIONALIST SCHOOL
The historians belonging to Nationalist School indeed played an important
role by reinterpreting the historical sources. It resulted into writing of
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Nationalist
99 This type of h istory writing played its own role in encouraging and giving
an impetuous to the national struggle of India against British rule. Not
only so, but it also promoted the sense of national pride among Indians.
After reading the great historical works of Natio nalist School historians
Indians started believing that they have the great historical and cultural
privilege and their ancestors had built very advanced and powerful
civilisations and empires. Having said it, one needs to examine the other
side of the coi n as well.
Some scholars point out that one of the defects of Nationalist School
Historiography is certain amount of compromise about the principle of
objectivity while writing history. It could be easily made out that the
nationalist historians definitely wanted to motivate the Indian mind and
provide an impetus to the national freedom struggle. While doing so they
at least in some amount compromised with the methodical aspect of
history writing by following the principle of interpreting sources as per
their convenience in a selective manner. It is said that they also some
times contradicted the views.
Whatever may be said or criticism is done one has to accept the fact that
Nationalist School was successful in creating the sense of pride among
Indians. Ano ther contribution of this School was that it motivated the
Indians to take up the job or responsibility of writing the history of their
own civilisation, culture and nation.
11.5 QUESTIONS
1) Explain the Nationalist School of Historiography.
2) Analyse the Nati onalist School of Historiography.
3) Write a note on various historians belonging to Nationalist School.
11.6. REFERENCES
1. Sreedharan E., A Textbook of Historiography 500 BC to 2000, Orient
Blackswan Private Limited, Hyderabad
2. Singh G. P., Perspectives on In dian History, Historiography and
Philosophy of History, D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd., New Delhi
3. Jain Laxmi, Historical Method and Historiography, Vayu Education
of India, New Delhi


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100 12
MARXIST
Unit Structure:
12.0 Objectives
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Viewpoint of Marxist School
12.3 Eminent Marxist school scholars/historians
12.4 Summary
12.5 Questions
12.6 References
12.0 OBJECTIVES
 To introduce students to Indian Historiography.
 To understand the viewpoints of Marxist School
 To make readers acquainted with salient features of Marxist School
12.1 INTRODUCTION
Marxist School is one of the important School of Historiography of India.
One should not be under impression that the hist orians belonging to this
School were Marxists. These historians rather adopted the method of Karl
Marx for interpreting and subsequently writing history. Marxist Historians
in a way believed that political and historical events result from the 191
National ist and Marxist School conflict of social forces and are
interpretable as a series of contradictions and their solutions and the main
reason behind the conflict is material needs. The Marxist School historians
gave emphasis on reading the historical source s from new angle i.e.
Marxist angle or dialectical materialism by posing new questions and
seeking their answers.
12. 2 VIEWPOINT OF MARXIST SCHOOL
In India Marxist historiography takes the form of Marxian historiography
where Marxian techniques of analysi s are used but Marxist political
intentions and prescriptions are discarded.B. N. Datta, and D. D. Kosambi
are considered the founding fathers of Marxist historiography in India. D.
D. Kosambi was apologetic of the revolution of Mao and thought of
Indian P rime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's policies as pro -capitalist.
Kosambi, a polymath, viewed Indian History from a Marxist viewpoint.
The other Indian scholars of Marxian historiography are R. S. Sharma,
Irfan Habib, D. N. Jha, and K. N. Panikkar.Other histori ans such as Satish
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Marxist
101 Sircar, are sometimes referred to as "influenced by the Marxian approach
to history."
The Marxian historiography of India has focused on studies of economic
development, land ownership, and class conflict in precolonial India and
deindustrialization during the colonial period.One debate in Indian history
that relates to a historical materialist scheme is on the nature of feudalism
in India. D. D. Kosambi in the 1960s outl ined the idea of "feudalism from
below" and "feudalism from above". Element of his feudalism thesis was
rejected by R. S. Sharma in his monograph Indian Feudalism (2005) and
various other books, However R. S. Sharma also largely agrees with
Kosambi in his various other books. Most Indian Marxian historians argue
that the economic origins of communalism are feudal remnants and the
economic insecurities caused by slow development in India.
The Marxian school of Indian historiography is accused of being too
ideologically influenced.Though influenced by Marxist theory B. R.
Ambedkar criticized Marxists, as he deemed them to be unaware or
ignorant of the specifics of caste issues. Also though most criticisms of
Marxian historiography is levied by people who are n ot historians, some
historians have debated Marxian historians and critically examined their
analysis of the history of India.
12.3 EMINENT MARXIST SCHOOL SCHOLARS/
HISTORIANS
Prominent Marxist School historians Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi
Damodar Dharmana nd Kosambi (D.D. Kosambi) is considered as the
main torch bearer of Marxist School of Indian Historiography. He was
born on 31 July 1907 in Goa. D. D. Kosambi's father was also
academician. D. D. Kosambi was a great intellectual who was scholar in
various subjects such as Mathematics, Statistics, German language, etc.
He had worked as Professor of Mathematics in Fergusson College, Pune
and other premier institutes like Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,
Mumbai. He was educated abroad as well in the ins titutes like Harvard,
United States.
Later on Kosambi turned towards study of History. He started his
historical studies with numismatics. He is aptly called as the doyen of
Marxist School Indian Historiography. His famous works on history
include: An Intr oduction to the Study of History, The Culture and
Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline, Exaperating Essays:
Exercises in Dialectical Method, Myth and Reality: Studies in the
Foundation of Indian Culture, etc.
Kosambi was of the view that the traditional European style or method of
history writing would not be useful in case of India, especially ancint
period. This is the case because there was lack authentic sources which is
the mainstay of Western style of history writing. According to him t he
study of tools developed by human being at various stages of life in order
to earn livelihood and advance the lifestyle can be varifiable and would be
reliable source for history writing, particularly the period of pre -history. It
can be seen that Karl Marx more or less had made same type of munotes.in

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102 Research Methodology and Sources of History observations. According to this School there is a close connection between
the means of production and social organisation of human kind.
Kosambi extensively made use of archaeological remains found in India
for reco nstructing or writing the ancient history of India. Archaeological
remains such as graves, houses, instruments of production, caves, etc. are
excavated from various sites in India. These remains were exploited by
him for arriving at conclusions. He made us e of comparative and
interdisciplinary method for his interpretations. He had the knowledge of
Sanskrit knowledge as well which helped him in interpreting the Sanskrit
texts and draw conclusions. He also fixed the dates of punch marked coins
of ancient Ind ia with the help of his expertise on the subject of
Mathematics. He has explained the travel of tribal life to caste formations.
And the economic or agricultural tool like plough might have played an
important role in it. He has opined that during ancient times the non
Brahmanical elements might have got assimilated into Brahmanical
culture and would have resulted into the process of Sanskritisation.
Kosambi has put forward various interpretations about the Indus Valley
Civilization, Aryan and Non -Aryan rel ations as well as rise of religions
like Buddhism and Jainism. According to him changes in technology,
detribalization and rise of urban centers offer the economic backround or
explanation of birth of Buddhism and Jainism during ancient India.
After readin g the works of D. D. Kosambi one has to accept the fact that
he was the great intellectual and employed the knowledge of subjects like
Mathematics and Sankrit in history writing beautifully. Of course, as time
passes some of his theories and interpretation s might be challenged in the
light of new evidences and sources but his works will definitely help and
inspire the future historians.
Romila Thapar
Romila Thapar is another important historian belonging to Marxist School
of Historiography. She was educated from Punjab University and School
of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is also
the recipient of prestigious American Kluge Prize in recognition of her
contribution in the subject of history.
The important works of Romila Thap ar, especially on the history of
Ancient India include: Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Ancient
Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Recent Perspectives of Early
Indian History (Ed.), History of India Volume One and Early India: From
the Orig ins to AD 1300. In her celebrated work Asoka and the Decline of
the Mauryas Thapar has given the indepth analysis of the reign of
Mauryan Emperor Asoka. She in this work has made a point that in order
to keep intact the vast and diverse empire if the Maury as there was a need
of strong concept of state and nationalistic feelings. One can say that
Romila Thapar does the scholarly interpretation of the historical facts and
sources. In 'History of India Volume One' she has made a point that the
political events and economic and social events are related to each other.
Economic changes or changes in economic structure influence the social
relationships as well as political developments. Not only so Romila munotes.in

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Marxist
103 Thapar while describing the political history has beautif uly explained the
inter relationships between religion, economic, social, artistic and literary
aspects. 'Ancient Indian Social History' is another excellent work of
Romila Thapar in which she has talked about various aspects of Hinduism
and Buddhism. In t his book she has also talked about the origin of caste
system and says that the caste system might have originated in Harrapan
culture only. In 'Interpreting Early India' she has questioned the
stereotypes about the theory of Aryan race and absolute use of political
power by the rulers. She has systematically proved that there was rise of
urban centers and flourishing trade during ancient times.
R. S. Sharma
Ram Sharan Sharma was the historian of international repute known for
his Marxist method. He was bo rn in Barauni. He used to teach in Patna
and Delhi University and also was Visiting Faculty at University of
Toronto. He was also the Senior Fellow at the School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS). The prominent works of R. S. Sharma include:
'Sudras i n Ancient India', 'Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in
Ancient India', 'India's Ancient Past', 'Early Medieval Indian Society: A
Study in Feudalisation', 'Urban Decay in India c. 100 to c. 1000',
'Perspectives in Social and Economic History of A ncient India' among
others.
In 'Sudras in Ancient Past' R. S. Sharma has explained that the skills of
Sudras and the profits created by the Viasyas played important role in the
development during ancient times. He has also argued that in the earlier
phase i.e. during Early Vedic times the Indian society was tribal and
pastoral and later on it got converted into class based society. In this book
he has thrown light on the different transformations which took place in
the life and status of Sudras at differen t times in ancient period.
In 'Indian Feudalism' he has pointed out that the political nature of Indian
feudalism can be understood by studying the land revenue systems and
other aspects related to land. In 'Urban Decay in India' R. S. Sharma
argues that d uring the period of 200 BC to 300 AD the urbanisation was at
its peak. Later on the process of decline in the towns started and according
to him the main cause responsible for it was the decline in the trade with
far off empires. This first cycle of declin e in urbanisation was set in after
sixth century of Common Era. 'Material Culture and Social Formation in
Ancient India' is another classic work of R. S. Sharma and the Marxist
method is greatly applied in the analysis and arriving at conclusions in it.
In this book he has explained the reason behind the creation of varna
system. Apart from it he gives many other economic examples which
influenced the society and overall social organisation in ancient India. The
title 'Light on Early Indian Society and Econ omy' itself is an indicator to
the Marxist method of writing.
Bipan Chandra
Bipan Chandra was born in 1928 in Kangra. He was specialist in Modern
Independence Movement of India and also Mahatma Gandhi. He
waseducated at Stanford University among others. T he prominent works munotes.in

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104 Research Methodology and Sources of History of Bipan Chandra include: 'The Rise and Growth of Economic
Nationalism', 'Nationalism and Colonialism in India', 'India's Struggle for
Independence' and 'Communalism in Modern India' among others. Bipan
Chandra has commented on the India n Capitalism and Indian Capitalist
class and its nature in his 'Nationalism and Colonialism'. Bipan Chandra
agrees with the Marxist view that Communalism in India is the one of the
results of the Colonialism. In his book titled 'The Rise and Growth of
Econ omic Nationalism', Chandra has analysed the economic nationalism
of Indian National Movement.
Irfan Habib
Irfan Habib was born in 1931 in Vadodara in educated and affluent family.
He was educated from Aligarh Muslim University and also Oxford
University. H e is perhaps the most famous Marxist School historian
specialising in the history of Medieval India. His father Mohammad Habib
was also historian.
Some of the important works of Irfan Habib include: 'Interpreting Indian
History', 'Caste and Money in Indian History', 'Problems of Marxist
Historiography', 'The Agrarian System of Mughal India', 'An Atlas of the
Mughal Empire' and 'The Cambridge Economic History of India' (Co -
editor - Tapan Chaudhuri).
In his 'Interpreting Indian History' Habib says that the his torian should
give emphasis on interpreting the historical facts, instead of just narrating
it. In this book he has also explained the newly formed social organisation
after the Ghurid and Turkish invasions. In order to analyse it he has made
use of variou s aspects such as slavery, serfdom, wage labour, surplus
value in the form of rent and profit and the system of distribution of
surplus.
It can be said that the most important point made by Irfan Habib in 'The
Agrarian System of Mughal India' was his analy sis of the contradiction in
social formation in Mediaeval India. In this context he says that it lies
between the central political power i.e. state and the class of peasants. The
same contradiction could be witnessed vis -a-vis state and the class of
zamin dars. The demand for increased revenue was the most important
reason behind the conflict between the state, zamindars and peasantry. 'An
Atlas of the Mughal Empire' is the classic work of historical cartography.
Irfan Habib has not only produced the histor ical maps in this great work
but also has given the analysis in the form of notes. It can ne considered as
one of the rare books on historical maps written by Indian Historian.
'Caste and Money in Indian History' is the work trying to interpret the
caste. In this book it has been brought out that this division of labour
based on caste mainly benefitted the nobility and zamindars during
mediaeval period. As the title indicates Irfan Habib has tried to analyse the
Marxist Historiography in critical manner in 'Problems of Marxist
Historiography'. 'The Cambridge Economic History of India', (Volume 1,
1200 -1750) is of course, the interpretation of agrarian economy of
medieval period by keeping in mind the common people and importantly
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Marxist
105 12.4 SUMMARY
One can arrive at the conclusion that the Marxist School definitely is one
of the important Schools of Indian historiographies. It has given a new
vision of writing history. D. D. Kosambi can be called as the Father of this
School and this School produced many other prominent historians from
India viz. R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Irfan Habib, etc.
The Marxist School preffered to give emphasis on writing history from
economic and social aspects. The Marxist School also gives importance to
make use of facts and knowledge from other disciplines such as
Sociology, Anthropology and also Statistical data wherever possible. It
also laid emphasis on trying to explain and analyse the origin of various
human institutions developed in the course of human history. Yet another
feature of Marxist School is that it made use of archaeological as well as
primary sources for writing history. The Marxist Historians of India have
rejected and also tried to prove wrong the western stereotype opinions
about India an d growth of Indian society historically, especially in context
with the economic activity and the process of urbanisation and the so -
called concept Asian mode of production. Judged by any measure one has
to conclude that the contribution of Marxist School is immense to the
Indian historiography.
12.5 QUESTIONS
1) Explain the Marxist School of Historiography.
2) Make an estimate of the Marxist School.
3) Write a note on various historians belonging to Marxist School.
12.6 REFERENCES
1. Sreedharan E., A Textbook of Historiography 500 BC to 2000, Orient
Blackswan Private Limited, Hyderabad
2. Singh G. P., Perspectives on Indian History, Historiography and
Philosophy of History, D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd., New Delhi
3. Jain Laxmi, Historical Method and Historiography, Vayu Ed ucation
of India, New Delhi


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