Trusting Records as Historical Evidence: Modern Historical Methods

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, scientific historians like Ranke believed that the critical examination of documents would reveal the past “as it actually happened”. Twentieth century historians are more constrained in the claims they make concerning the historians capacity to know the past based on the evidence that has survived into the present. That notwithstanding, the techniques of modern historical criticism, like modern rules of legal evidence, reflect a substantial degree of continuity with those established at the end of the nineteenth century. Over the last fifty years, they have been refined, extended, and qualified in response to changes in recordkeeping practices and to shifting perspectives concerning the nature and limits of historical inquiry. This chapter explores the salient characteristics of modernist historical methods, some contemporary critiques of those methods, and the response of the historical community to the methodological challenges posed by electronic records.