A new academic year is upon us and, with it, new opportunities to expand our field of knowledge. In history, as in all disciplines, research comes with potential pitfalls. Trained historians, though imperfect, quickly learn to avoid conceptual and methodological missteps. Problems are more frequent when practitioners of other disciplines or casual writers attempt to use the past in service of an argument.

Matters of Fact

Bad history can take all sorts of forms. At its most basic level, it may consist of inaccurate statements presented as fact. As an example, one recent publication repeatedly (and exclusively) refers to well-known historian Armand Chartier as Cartier. In a discussion of Franco-American churches, the authors write, “[i]n 1874, ten years after its inception as a French-Canadian parish, the bishop of Springfield appointed an Irish pastor to take over Notre Dame de Lourdes in Fall River.” This lone sentence gives the wrong year and the wrong bishop. This may fit the bill of bad history. On the other hand, this example—offered not in derision but as something to be corrected—may simply be a kind of inattentiveness that can appear in any field.

Regardless, bad history is typically less about inaccuracies than larger methodological issues. One of my former professors defined history as the best possible interpretation of the past based on the best available sources and methods. This definition has the notable virtue of separating stories from disciplinary history, each having its legitimacy so long as it isn’t passed as the other. With well-executed disciplinary history, in principle, a reader who has access to the same sources and uses the same methods should come to a conclusion very similar to the author’s.

The issue of methodology—how are we accessing the past? how are we using the traces it has left behind?—is an important one. History goes beyond references to past events offered in passing. As a field of inquiry, it involves attention to context, to a multiplicity of voices and factors, to human agency, to change over time, and to authorship and bias. Seeking to understand historical actors in their own time and from their own perspective, it should avoid presentism while drawing conclusions that speak to the present, a delicate balance.

Primary and Secondary Sources

Recently, I had a spirited exchange with an occasional writer of history who made inexact claims about French Canadians who were involved in landmark events of the eighteenth century. The person quoted a historical work published several generations ago, which would by no means disqualify it were it not for surviving primary sources that tell a very different tale. Documents from the eighteenth century squarely and unquestionably refute the claims of the book. Either errors had crept into the author’s work or he did not have access to the primary sources that I have read and that are today accessible to other researchers. This serves as a reminder that we should strive always to get as close as possible, through our sources, to the events we aim to understand and depict.

In this sense, good history is detective work. If you are investigating a car accident to understand exactly what happened and assess responsibility, you won’t make an appeal to authority by speaking to someone who is trusted, but wasn’t present. You will want to get as close to the event by looking at its physical traces and interviewing participants and witnesses. The causes and context will matter; the state of the car will matter; the interests and mindsets of the participants will matter; the immediate aftermath will matter. No self-respecting insurance agent or investigating officer would rest their claim on a single quotation without taking into account all of these factors—and so it should be with history.

To be clear, we can and should cite trusted secondary sources—trusted because their authors have shown their work and because disinterested experts have reviewed it. But hardly ever will those secondary sources become definitive, for new evidence and methods are likely to develop and spur a better understanding of the past. The significance of that past to the present is also likely to change. That, in fact, is the nature of history. If we knew everything about the past, there would be no need for disciplinary history. We would sew the whole thing shut.

Thus it is that historians either chuckle or roll their eyes when folks who don’t like their findings dismiss these as revisionism. All pursuit of knowledge is revisionistic. The theory of evolution was revisionistic. The theory of relativity was revisionistic. Inoculation was revisionistic. Complainers want cozy stories; they are not interested in the search for truths that might prove uncomfortable. Like many other fields that speak deeply to a group’s identity, Franco-American history has sometimes been handled as a cozy story, which has its value as something other than history. One important reason why the late historian Yves Roby stood out, aside from the near-universal trust placed in his work, was his willingness to use the scalpel as well as the soothing balm we find elsewhere.

Oral History

There are primary sources, there are secondary sources—and then there is oral history. In the absence of documentary evidence, or to complement it, we sometimes turn to oral testimony, which can seem more authentic. The information is not mediated by a physical item or by more powerful individuals who have shaped the written record. It is nevertheless incumbent upon us all to apply the same standard of analysis that we use with traditional documents and peer through the triple lens of authenticity, credibility, and bias. We must also acknowledge that while a physical document is static, a person’s memory evolves and stories are reshaped as they are passed from one person to the next.

Without necessarily providing definitive answers, centers like the Acadian Archives help researchers square inherited stories with documentary evidence (or vice versa). Sometimes we are able to trace the origins of stories. For instance, Antonine Maillet’s Pélagie-la-Charrette was taken by some readers as based in fact: although the idea did not originate with Maillet, the book popularized the notion of a large convoy of Acadians returning home by land following the Seven Years’ War. Historian André-Carl Vachon has persuasively shown that no such thing occurred—even setting aside the logistical near-impossibility of a convoy of this kind.

At the Archives, we also hear quite frequently of a Native great-grandmother or at the very least of Indigenous roots. We do not dismiss these claims, but we do use the historian’s toolkit. It may be that a visitor’s grandfather saw “Native” in a New Brunswick census, assumed the term referred to Indigeneity, rather than a place of birth, and passed the story to his children and grandchildren. Or yet, they may claim Iroquois lineage by virtue of a mental association between Indigenous roots and the Iroquois River in New Brunswick—when this river, once La Raquoise, has no connection to the Haudenosaunee peoples of the Upper St. Lawrence and Great Lakes region. A healthy skepticism should accompany all of our approaches to the past.

Bite-Sized History

The past is infinite. Historians necessarily pick out the pieces that seem most relevant to their research. Their training should lead them to be as comprehensive as possible and to acknowledge information that seems at odds with their argument. The guardrails of training and peer scrutiny do not ensure universally indisputable results, however.

An article about racemaking in the nineteenth century published a decade ago exemplifies what appears to be a growing trend. The article’s author, a scholar of francophone literatures, selects a few instances of people using the word race, sometimes sixty years apart, to make a point about French Canadians’ place in the Anglo-Saxon world. Readers do not learn about the revolution in the conceptualization of race that occurred between the 1830s and the 1890s. Writers of popular works who, similarly, dabble in history often fall prey to Malcolm Gladwell Syndrome: picking one piece of evidence, picking a second, then letting inspiration fill the gaps. “It makes sense” does not suffice in disciplinary history.[1]

This is closely related to the inattentiveness I discussed in the first example. Both reflect the state of our mediatic environment. For many people, that the finer points are not exactly right does not matter so long as they lend themselves to a bigger picture that is intuitively correct. All writers face the unconscious temptation of reverse-engineering their political views to create a usable past. I have written about this as it concerns Quebec, but it is present everywhere. Training and peer review can do a great deal to mitigate such biases or help us become aware of them. We should hope that such awareness would carry over to the realm of civic action.

Everyone a Historian

Scientists get annoyed with amateurs who misunderstand and misuse science—as do plumbers and electricians who have to follow laymen and fix their “redneck repairs.” Yet, the farther removed we are from tangible fields and applied sciences, the more we seem to arrogate expertise. Because everyone can access the past—everything is in the past—there is a sense that anyone can do history. And it’s true. Bad history, at least.

Though these remarks might grate, they are not meant to get people out of the business of history, but into it as a discipline that has its distinct methods and even its ethics. In short, this does not come from elitism, though our populist world would see it as such. It stems from a stubborn commitment to the truth, a truth we are continually refining.

Get as close to the events as possible. Begin with the particulars rather than a general theory. Gather evidence systematically. Seek out a variety of voices. Investigate: ask questions of the sources. Challenge authors and storytellers and their biases. Challenge your own biases. Understand historical actors through their context but also as agents. Show your work, share your definitions. Welcome nuances. Be attentive to details. Allow for the continued development of our understanding.

Rant over; I yield the rest of my time to yours. The comment section is open.

Further Reading

• The Monuments Debate: One Historian’s Take
• Writing a Scholarly Article: A Checklist
• One Story to Rule Them All
• Histoire du Québec : Rectifier le tir
• Dystopia? It’s a World Without History

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[1] That something seems logical does not make it true. Charles H. Carter adds, with humor, that “alongside the role of chance in history, one must make room for the role of stupidity” (First Images of America, 1976).