University of Phoenix Material

Historical Sources

Historians study records of the past to understand and explain the stories of the people and events of earlier times. These records, or historical sources, form the core of the scholarly practice of history. There are two types of sources on which historians generally rely: primary and secondary.

Primary Sources

Primary sources are firsthand accounts or records. Primary sources provide a view of historical events or people as witnessed by people who were actually there. Primary sources have not been interpreted by others, but use the words, sounds, or images of those present during a historical period. Primary sources often incorporate the interpretation or attitude of the individual who recorded the experience; different people may often record different impressions of a single event. Examples of primary sources include the following:

• A letter written by Otto von Bismarck
• A recording or libretto of a portion of Wilhelm Richard Wagner’s The Valkyrie
• The recording or transcript of a speech given by Jacques Chirac
• The transcript of an interview with an 18th-century factory worker
• Property tax registers from Languedoc
• A photograph of German troops moving through a devastated Polish town during the Nazi invasion
• A reprint of a propaganda poster
• The last will and testament of a Norwegian merchant
• A print of Paul Nash’s We Are Making a New World
• A translation of the diary Anne Frank kept during the German occupation of the Netherlands
• A Punch cartoon lampooning Benjamin Disraeli

Historians prefer to view original versions of primary sources—viewing the enormous mural Guernica or reading the original Candide may provide insights overlooked in photographs or translations. However, faithful photographic representations, diagrams, translations, and reprints are acceptable primary sources.

Secondary Sources

Historians also make extensive use of secondary sources—sources in which another person analyzes or interprets information from primary sources. Such secondary sources are valuable in making sense of the documentary record. Imagining trying to piece together what happened in World War II without prior knowledge and with just boxes of letters from soldiers may illustrate the value of a secondary source that might illuminate the significance of the letters’ contents. Examples of secondary sources include the following:

• A New York Times article from 1937 synthesizing information from four primary sources about the bombing of Guernica into a single article