Historical method, sources and historiography
Historical method, sources and historiography is the section many candidates neglect, yet it carries straightforward marks. You are tested on how historians build arguments from evidence, how sources are classified and criticised, and on the major schools of interpretation.
Core concepts
- Source types. Primary (contemporary: inscriptions, coins, charters, diaries, official files, oral testimony) and secondary (later synthesis). Both can be biased; primary does not mean true.
- Criticism. External criticism establishes authenticity - date, authorship, provenance; internal criticism tests credibility and meaning.
- Auxiliary sciences. Epigraphy, numismatics, palaeography, archaeology, iconography, oral history, archival research.
- Schools. Colonial/imperialist (James Mill's Hindu–Muslim–British periodisation, Vincent Smith); nationalist (R.C. Majumdar); Marxist (D.D. Kosambi, R.S. Sharma); Subaltern Studies (Ranajit Guha); Annales (Braudel's longue durée); feminist and postcolonial approaches, including Said's Orientalism.
- Key skills. Causation versus chronology, objectivity and bias, periodisation as a deliberate choice, and the distinction between fact, inference and interpretation.
Worked example
Question: How would you evaluate sources for the Bengal famine of 1943?
Reasoning: list the official Famine Inquiry Commission report, provincial government files, newspaper reports and literary testimony such as Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's Ashani Sanket. Apply external criticism (who produced each source, when, for what audience) and internal criticism (does the claim fit other evidence?). Then argue that official records expose policy assumptions while newspapers and literature capture experiences the state under-recorded. Triangulating the two produces a stronger account than trusting either alone.
Traps
- Assuming a primary source is automatically reliable.
- Confusing "primary" with "important".
- Claiming that any historian is wholly objective.
- Reducing Subaltern Studies to "history from below" without naming Guha.
- Mixing up Marxist and Annales approaches.