How do historians deal with inconsistencies?
score:9
Those inconsistencies are exactly when historiography becomes crucial to historical understanding. Disagreement between sources raises questions about the quality of the sources and those who reported them. The risk of not addressing these issues is that erroneous information can become accepted, and must then be recast in light of the qualities of the sources.
For example, in the late 1800s when the historian H. H. Bancroft was working on his monumental Histories of California and Alaska, he employed a Russian-speaking researcher and translator named Ivan Petrov. This fellow discovered a number of archival documents about the Russian-American Company that Bancroft cited. Years passed and many other authors cited Bancroft. Much later, historians discovered that Petrov was the author of several fraudulent documents. Bancroft's credulity allowed his work to be tainted by clever fictions, and caused generations of confusion. Now, the only responsible means of using or understanding Bancroft's text is to incorporate the story of Petrov's deceit. Rather than ignoring or denying or emphasizing it, we simply regard it as a key aspect of the works it affected.
Sorry I have no citations, as I am not well-read in historiography.
More post
- 📝 Am I imagining this or did I just found one of the oldest "hidden" erotic artworks ever?
- 📝 Why didn't Japanese attack Soviet Union simultaneously as the Germans?
- 📝 What does "two ells within the selvages" mean in the Magna Carta?
- 📝 Why was Stalin so opposed to genetics?
- 📝 How could a deserter go West in 1863?
- 📝 Sect in England in the 18th century
- 📝 Battle of Seattle
- 📝 Cryptography used by Red Army in Polish-Bolshevik war
- 📝 How aware were the latter Greek-speaking Romans (ERE: Byzantines) of the early history of Rome?
- 📝 Trying to understand the idea of a totalitarian administration from the pages of history
- 📝 What changes happened in law enforcement and criminal trials during the Nazi era in Germany?
- 📝 What was the reasoning behind the Washington Committee's complaint to the Liquor Tax during the Whiskey Rebellion?
- 📝 What criteria are used to determine the popularity of Medieval European rulers?
- 📝 When did FDR announce he was running a 3rd time, and was there any outrage?
- 📝 How did ancient empires account for slow propagation of information e.g. in their legal codes?
- 📝 What day of the week was the Battle of the Eclipse 585 BC?
- 📝 What did other European powers say when Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas?
- 📝 What were Albert Speer's specialties, and how did he apply them when he led Organisation Todt?
- 📝 Did the Zapatistas actually kill anyone?
- 📝 Did the Nazi regime always or often prioritize transport trains to the death camps over military transport?
- 📝 Why did Confederate General Forrest leave the KKK?
- 📝 Are there any cases of rewarding an enemy commander for sparing a city from looting?
- 📝 Should the aluminados be considered to be the roots of the illuminati mythos?
- 📝 How did destroyers protecting convoys operate in bad weather during WWII?
- 📝 Was the term 'renaissance' used during said period?
- 📝 What is the meaning behind this Panama joke published in a 1914 newspaper?
- 📝 What did education look like in occupied countries during WW2?
- 📝 Are there any palaces, temples or monuments built by the Seleucids surviving through to the present day?
- 📝 What are some good references for the history of legal business entities?
- 📝 How difficult was it to spoof the sender of a telegram in 1890-1920's in USA?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How do historians deal with Historical Bias?
- 📝 How do historians deal with inconsistencies?
- 📝 How did people deal with ice on the roads during the horse-and-buggy era?
- 📝 How did the way commanders ask their troops to deal with the immediate death of their comrades vary by country/culture during WWII?
- 📝 How did the Swedish army deal with prisoners of war in the Thirty Years War?
- 📝 How did China deal with the Black Death during the second plague pandemic?
- 📝 How did Nazi concentration camp staff deal with survivors of gassings?
- 📝 How did historical peoples deal with choking?
- 📝 How did early colonial Australia deal with its gender imbalance?
- 📝 How did Germany deal with the East German communist Government structure after unification?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 How did the ancient Romans count with their fingers?
- 📝 How to identify this coin with a bust on one side and the letters S and C on the other side?
- 📝 How do historians verify historical claims?
- 📝 How do historians know the details of a seemingly private event?
- 📝 How does one wash with sand?
- 📝 How could temporary surrender of self-government help Newfoundland with its debts?
- 📝 How did France worsen its relationship with Turkey?
- 📝 How did Azerbaijan come to be allied with Turkey and Israel?
- 📝 How much contact did Sub-Saharan Africa actually have with the rest of the world since the beginning of civilization?
- 📝 How accurate did medieval historians think histories to be?
- 📝 How did the Falasha make contact with Jews outside Ethiopia?
- 📝 During the U.S. Prohibition, how did they get away with drinking alcohol?
- 📝 How was Christian intermarriage with the Muslim Turks viewed by the Byzantines?
- 📝 Was there any way to deal with infections in pre-modern times?
- 📝 How did the US "Greek" fraternity system at universities arise and what is its relationship with ancient Greece?
- 📝 How did lower classes with aspirations to high social standing greet each other in the Paris of the 1630's?
- 📝 How do historians treat gossip?
- 📝 How did agricultural productivity change in Italy with the fall of the Roman Empire and through the early Middle Ages?
- 📝 How close would a peasant from middle ages England ever come to interacting with the king?