Book 3 Part 3 

Preparing for A150 before the course starts: historical evidence

One of the most important aspects of studying history is the need to respect the evidence of the past. We cannot know the past directly because we cannot experience it in person, but we can use the remnants of the past – archaeological remains, the relics of material culture, written documents and, for more recent periods, film, TV and electronic media – as evidence for the events, developments and beliefs of the past. To use this material we need to come to it with open but informed minds. We have questions we want to ask of it, but we cannot require that it prove a case. We also need to understand the circumstances that created it and the preconceptions of its creators.

One of the most important aspects of studying history is the need to respect the evidence of the past. We cannot know the past directly because we cannot experience it in person, but we can use the remnants of the past – archaeological remains, the relics of material culture, written documents and, for more recent periods, film, TV and electronic media – as evidence for the events, developments and beliefs of the past. To use this material we need to come to it with open but informed minds. We have questions we want to ask of it, but we cannot require that it prove a case. We also need to understand the circumstances that created it and the preconceptions of its creators.


[In approaching a historical source one might start] by answering the following questions:

1. Who wrote it?
2. Who was the intended audience?
3. When was it written?
   
   Now consider:
   
4. what type of document is it (public, private, official, published, etc.)?
5. What was its historical context?
6. What comments can you make on specific points in the text?

 #A150
#BOOK3

#Prepare Your Self

#History
# History Evidence
#Open University
   

Preparing for A150 before the course starts: what history is

From Book 1, Reputations, Chapter 5 Stalin, p. 126.

Activity

Look up the terms ‘history’ and ‘myth’ in a dictionary, and then take some time to reflect on the differences between them.

Discussion

I expect that most answers to this activity will point out that, in relation to the past, a myth is a distorted account of events, whereas a historical account is more ‘truthful’. This is not inaccurate, but the issue is slightly more complicated than this. 

I looked up ‘myth’ in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). At first sight it didn’t seem that the definition helped very much: ‘A purely fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural person, actions, or events, and embodying some popular idea concerning natural or historical phenomena.’

Obviously we can’t use a definition of myth that emphasises the purely fictional, but we can work to some extent with a definition that stresses a ‘popular idea concerning ... historical phenomena’. We need also to revisit the ‘fictional’ aspect of the OED’s definition, because our definition should look something like ‘a popular idea concerning historical phenomena, which distorts the reality of past events, or cannot be fitted with the weight of the available evidence’.

When I looked up ‘history’ I found a large number of possible definitions and a multitude of examples of their use. There seemed to me to be two definitions given by the OED which are relevant to us: ‘A written narrative constituting a continuous methodical record, in order of time, of important or public events, esp. those connected with a particular country, people, individual etc’; and ‘That branch of knowledge which deals with past events, as recorded in writings or otherwise ascertained; the formal record of the past, esp. of human affairs or actions; the study or formation and growth of communities and nations.’

The question of what history is, of course, is a complex one, and there are many definitions and much academic dispute over them. All we need here is a provisional working definition. ‘A written narrative constituting a continuous methodical record’,as the OED puts it, is often the end result of historical investigation. In order to answer what history is, we need to combine our sense of the end product with the description of history as a field of knowledge contained in the second definition. Let’s define history as an account of past events based upon the interpretation of all the available evidence that relates to the particular aspect of the past it is studying.

The key, therefore, to grasping the difference between myth and history is that where myth is a distortion and cannot be fitted with the weight of the available evidence, history is an account that aims at capturing the truth about the past through a careful interpretation of evidence. It is worth noting that the issue is slightly more complex, for myths about the past play important roles in shaping the actions of historical actors. Historical accounts of the past are often constructed as replies to mythical accounts. Therefore, even though they are distinct, in practice the two are locked in continuous dialogue with each other.

I’d like you to put to one side any notes you have made on this activity for now. We will revisit and expand upon some of these themes later in the chapter.

 #A150
#BOOK3

#Prepare Your Self

#History
#Open University
   

Book 3 Part 2 

 

Preparing for A150 before the course starts: historical sources

From Book 3 Cultural Encounters, Chapter 1 The art of Benin: changing relations between Europe and Africa I, pp. 16-20.

1.2 The Conquest of Benin in the 1890s

In 1897 Benin was conquered by the British. This was not only a traumatic break in the history of Benin, which brought to a sudden end the independence of the centuries-old kingdom; it was also a key ‘cultural encounter’ in the discovery of Benin art by Europeans. This section will examine the occupation and why it happened. It will also focus on how we know about the occupation. Earlier in the course you have looked at the nature of evidence about the past and about how it has been used by historians. The occupation of Benin raises interesting questions about the relationship between the two: how the evidence available shapes how history is written [...]

We have, therefore, no shortage of first-hand reports on the events surrounding the British conquest of Benin. As I hope you will have spotted, however, all the sources listed were written by British participants. Benin was an oral society and there are no accounts written at the time by the people of Benin. Nor is this simply a story of two sides. The British expeditions used large numbers of African carriers, and most of the soldiers involved in the conquest of Benin were also African. The written accounts all come from a small and quite atypical group of witnesses.

However, the written accounts were not the only way that the events were remembered. As in many oral societies, oral records were important in Benin society: ‘the recounting of history has been a highly valued form of intellectual activity [...] The transmission of oral tradition in Benin is done through story-telling’ (Layiwola, 2007, p. 84). A first written history of Benin based on such sources was published as early as 1934 (Egharevba, 1960 [1934]). Oral narratives, many of them relating to the royal house, and often supported by mnemonic devices – songs, proverbs, or visual artefacts which prompt memories and act as reference points – are an important source of information about Benin’s past. The events of 1897 were also integrated into oral narratives, which are widely remembered in Benin to this day.

Such narratives, however, work in a different way from historical documents. Whereas a written source preserves the words used at the time, so that the problem for the historian is to understand the document in its contemporary context, in memories and oral traditions ‘the past provides a subject in which the present continually interacts in order to produce a new consciousness’ (Layiwola, 2007,
p. 83). Oral tradition does not preserve the sources in an independent form. Instead, it provides a continually developing interpretation which helps explain past events.

It would be easy to see this distinction as the same as that between history and myth which you encountered when exploring Stalin’s reputation earlier in the course. Myth, you will recall, was defined as a ‘popular idea concerning historical phenomena’, whereas history is ‘an account of past events based upon the interpretation of all the available evidence’ (see the introduction to Chapter 5 in Book 1). In fact, oral tradition has made a major contribution to African history. Later in this section we will look at one example of how it has contributed to our understanding of the conquest of Benin. The section, however, focuses on a different issue. What happens if ‘all the available evidence’ from the period was written by one party? Does the fact that all the documentary accounts of the conquest of Benin come from British records mean that any history based on them will be irretrievably biased? Can historians write ‘history’ when the evidence is tainted in this way?

 #A150
#BOOK3

#Prepare Your Self

#History
# History Sources
#Open University