Causation in History

The search for causes is crucial in historical analysis. E.H. Carr argued that ‘history is first and foremost a study of causes’. It is generally considered that the historian’s role in historical research is to find out the answers to questions like What, When, How, and Why. When approaching the questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’, the application of causation becomes critical. The answer to a why-question is typically a causal statement, in which the researcher expects the answer to begin with “because…”. When studying an event, historians try to explain why a particular event or phenomenon did or did not occur. Thus the theory of causation focuses on the relation between cause and its effects. To Carr, the organisation of causes is the highest stage of historical investigation: the ‘essence of [their] interpretation’.

The term ‘cause’ is derived from the Latin word ‘Causa’ which means ‘a relation of connectedness between events’. A cause is that which produces an effect. It refers to a thing, event, or person that makes something happens. It indicates how a certain result, situation, or event happens. It is one of the factors which help to explain why a historical event took place. It is a tool useful for the performance of the historian’s task of narrating the events of the past.

Nature and Types of Cause

The causes are not specific events that occur before certain other events whose origins can then be traced back to the former. The causes are conceived as a set of conditions under which particular events take place. These conditions provide both the necessary and sufficient ground for the occurrence of certain events. Moreover, causes are generally sought to explain a phenomenon.

It is generally considered that Montesquieu laid the foundations for modern causal history. He outlined ‘general causes’ which may have been applied to other instances in history. Louis Gottschalk recognizes that historians may seek to identify long and short-term causes for events. However, the identification of ‘long’ and ‘short’ term causes is dependent on the time period being analysed by the historian. One may be able to identify long-term causes stretching back thousands of years. There are several types of causes in history such as immediate causes, principal causes, essential causes, sufficient causes, real or actual causes, general causes, secondary causes, advantageous causes, necessary causes, efficient causes, etc. Historical changes may occur as a result of multiple causes.

Causative Factors in History

From the beginning of historiography, historians tried to find out the forces behind the occurrence of historical events. The general forces attributed as the causative factors for the change and progress of historical events are discussed as follows:

Role of Divine Will

Many historians, particularly Christian historiographers attributed the causes of history to the divine will. They formulated the providential philosophy of history to explain changes in the events and historical progress. They firmly believed that the motive force of the historical events is the Divine will. They attempted to prove that history has proceeded according to a definite divine plan.  

Role of Individuals

Writers like Carlyle, Nietzsche, and Spengler consider the individual hero as the ultimate factor in historical movement. The heroes of history are the makers of the past, the present, and the future. They may serve as the force or spirit of the age. They may bring about change either through positive means or through negative ways. They may take hold of society, convert it to their conviction and decide its destiny. All great men of history have attracted the attention of their contemporaries and whose memory is preserved by historians. They have influenced the world to varying degrees.

Role of Ideas

The role of ideas in causing changes in the course of history is well recognized by historians. Human actions are external expressions of ideas. R.G. Collingwood defines history as the history of ideas because historical events cannot be separated from the historian’s mind. The variations of philosophical doctrine belong to the area of ideas. The different theories advanced to explain historical phenomena and to interpret social change centre around ideas. Several theories have given a lot of interpretative ideas of great originality which opened the eyes of historians to new thinking. The concepts of fate, karma, and divine will are philosophical ideas. Monarchy, Capitalism, Socialism, Federalism, etc. are practical ideas. Renaissance, Reformation, Cartesianism, Anti- Cartesianism, Enlightenment, Romantic Idealism, Utilitarianism, Positivism, Scientific Socialism, Historical Determinism, Free will Doctrine, Historicism, Relativism, Dialectical Materialism, etc. are nothing but an expression of ideas.

Importance of Causation in History

• The approach of causation provides an answer to one of the most important questions of historical research – ‘why’
• Helps to discover the connection between one event and the other
• Causation helps to establish a relationship between facts - without it, historians are left with a collection of unrelated facts.
• Causation links events and issues to one another, giving coherence and meaning to the past.
• Without an adequate grasp of causation, history merely becomes a collection of facts and events. It is a key to historical methodology and to all historical explanations.
• Employing a causal approach is essential in helping to better explain and understand the past.
• Causation helps to link facts and events with ideas and concepts and thereby outline generalization.

Criticism of Causation

Eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume questioned the prevailing views of causal relationships. He argued that a cause-and-effect relationship could not be proven. Hume believed that the human mind formed the causal link between the two events. But, he was reluctant to fully reject the notion of causation. The postmodern historians Hayden White and Keith Jenkins have criticised the subjective nature of causal selection and interpretation. They argued that causal explanations are not concerned with the past. They are battles between historians for the primacy of position and interpretation. Despite the fact that some historians have rejected the role of causation in historical explanation, the majority have accepted that it has an important role to play.

Generalisation in History

Generalisation is a process of framing principles, theories, and concepts by establishing relationships between facts. Generalisations can be drawn out from the facts through systematic analysis and interpretation. Though historians have different views regarding the role of historical generalisation, it is widely accepted as an inevitable part of historical research. In the words of Lord Acton “History is a generalized account of the personal stories of men united in bodies for any public purposes whatever”. E.H. Carr emphatically contended that history is a social science, not art, because historians, like scientists, seek generalizations that help to broaden the understanding of one's subject.

In the development of historiography, several historians tried to find out general laws or principles in explaining the historical process. Thucydides synthesized historical facts in order to construct general principles based on morality and ethics. St. Augustine formulated his providential philosophy of history to present historical progress. Positive philosophers formulated new principles and generalizations on a scientific basis. Many philosophers of history and theoreticians tried to explain historical events through theoretical and conceptual frames. An array of intellectuals like Rousseau, Gibbon, Carlyle, Niebuhr, Ranke, Comte, Mill, Kant, Hegel, Buckle, Spengler, Marx, Toynbee, and so on used history to draw generalizations to explain the fundamental forces and factors that prompted historical events.

Lower and Higher Levels of Generalisation

There are two levels of generalisations: Lower and Higher.

• A lower level generalisation is a descriptive statement about the past delivered by the historian after the verification of his various sources and its interpretation. Here, Generalizations are descriptive statements of relationships between two or more concepts. In the presentation of research work, a historian makes several general statements about the past, which he/she thinks are correct.
• Higher-level generalisation aims to formulate general principles, theories, and concepts about the past by establishing relations with the facts. Empirical disciplines, like history use theory to generalize from many specific findings. Ideas are indispensable for generalizations.

The Process of Historical Generalisation

• The initial stage in the process of generalisation is the formulation of a hypothesis, which helps the researcher, to begin with, a focus.
• Then, the process of generalisation begins with the grouping of the facts. Facts must be grouped, arranged, and organised according to their similarities and dissimilarities.
• Reasoning and further interpretation of the facts help the researcher to organise his facts in a defined manner. In the process of interpretation, events may be serialised on the basis of the facts.
• Establishing a connection or relation between the facts is the next stage of generalisation. This factual connection enables the researcher to outline general schemes or principles. It helps the researcher to generalise the related facts by connecting them with concepts.

Features and Importance of Generalisation

• Many historians consider the purpose of generalization is to learn lessons from history.
• Generalisations are necessary in history in order to explain the fundamental forces that prompted events in the past.
• A generalisation of a series of historical events will help draw all the separate details into an overall pattern.
• Generalisation enables the historian to predict the future by outlining overall patterns in historical progress. 
• Generalisations enable us to explain the processes and events we experience.
• Generalisation often explains the cause and its effect.
• Generalisation describes two or more concepts and relationships among them.
• Generalizations link facts and concepts and summarize human experiences.

Debate on Historical Generalisation

The idea of historical generalisation was rejected by many historians. They argue that in history, it is not possible to formulate generalizations, because the fact cannot be directly observed. History deals with a sequence of unique events, hence it is not possible to draw generalisation. History does not repeat itself and thereby, generalization is not possible and the future cannot be predicted with certainty.

Another view holds that the generalisation is the duty of every historian, which makes his account knowledgeable. History can offer broad principles and generalizations and exhibits common trends, tendencies, and patterns. Cultural content is common to humanity. All the known civilizations have developed along similar lines. This repetitive nature of history enables the historian to generalize. Generalization is possible because historical events are strikingly similar.

Conclusion

A generalization must be based upon a balanced approach. Theories are one of the prominent sources of generalisation in history. Many historical generalisations are driven by life experiences. Historians also derive generalisations from the study of the present. Also, derive generalisations from active data collection and its systematic analysis. In short, “All historians practice generalization anyway”.

Benedetto Croce: “All History is Contemporary History”

Benedetto Croce was one of the most famous Italian philosophers of the first half of the 20^th century. The important contributions of Croce are: (i) the liberation of history from the control of philosophy (ii) emancipation of history from the clutches of science (iii) he exalted history over science and philosophy – defined philosophy as the methodology of history and regards history as the pre-condition of science (iv) he regards all history as contemporary history (v) gave his own meaning to the term historicism, which according to him is the science of history. His important works are:

• The Philosophy of Spirit
• History as the Story of Liberty
• History of the Europe in the Nineteenth Century
• History of Italy from 1871-1915
• History of Naples

History, Croce thought, becomes a reality only in the mind of the historian. Thus he defined “all history is contemporary history”. It means that the past (history) has existed only in the minds of contemporaries. It consists essentially of seeing through the eyes of the present and in the light of its problems. He was also a protagonist of Historical Relativism, which argued that history is present knowledge, which must and does spring from current interests. To him ‘history is contemporary thoughts about the past’. The propagators of this philosophy held the view that there is no one truth about the past but innumerable truths as many as there are perspectives. Their belief was ‘we see different pasts at different times, and what we see depends on our present situation. R.G. Collingwood, the author of The Idea of History, following the footsteps of B. Croce, asserted that “all history is the history of thought”. He goes to the extent of saying that “Of everything other than thought, there can be no history”.

Thomas Carlyle and the Great Men Theory of History

The Great Man Theory was a popular 19th-century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of "great men", or heroes. The Great Man Theory is associated with Thomas Carlyle, an English historian of the Romanticist School. His important works are:

• The French Revolution
• On Heroes, Hero Worship and Heroic in History
• History of Frederick the Great

In his work, On Heroes, Hero Worship and Heroic in History (published in 1841), he put forward the ‘Great Man Theory’ to define history. Thomas Carlyle says that ‘history is nothing but the biography of great men’, and that it is a record of human accomplishment, particularly of great souls’. He believed that heroes shape history through both their personal attributes and divine inspiration. He gave great importance to individuals as decisive players in history. He also felt that the study of great men was "profitable". What history requires according to Carlyle are geniuses and not masses. According to his theory, all major developments of human history are accounted for by the ‘Great Man’.

Human progress is regarded as being primarily due to the work of geniuses who appear in the world from time to time. He argued that “in all epochs of the world’s history, we shall find the Great Man to have been the indispensable savior of his epoch”. In the words of Carl G. Gustavson, ‘they have been able to master the circumstances of their times and re-mould them according to their own ideas’. This heroic view of history was also strongly endorsed by some philosophical figures such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and Spengler. In Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche wrote that: "...the goal of humanity lies in its highest specimens."

Sidney Hook divides heroes of history into two broad categories, viz Eventful Men and Event Making Men. The former owe their importance to the positions they hold and happen to be at the centre of historic events. On the other hand, Event Making Men convert society to their way. They gain control of the situation and drive society in the direction of their decision. Personal ambition, motivation, and exertion of the great men serve as the source of energy that brings about the desired change. Individuals get into the limelight and leadership positions through dynastic or family inheritance, influence of their ideas, organizational and institutional selection. They may bring about change either through positive means or through negative ways.

Criticism

One of the most hurtful critics of Carlyle's formulation of the Great Man theory was Herbert Spencer, who believed that attributing historical events to the decisions of individuals was a hopelessly primitive, childish, and unscientific position. He believed that the men Carlyle called "great men" were merely products of their social environment. He argued that the actions of such great men would be impossible without the social conditions built before their lifetime.

Conclusion

The role played by historic heroes cannot be minimized. They may serve as the force or spirit of the age. They may take hold of society, convert it to their conviction and decide its destiny. The heroes should have influenced and shaped the course of events instead of merely spokesmen of history. All great men of history have attracted the attention of their contemporaries and whose memory is preserved by historians. They have influenced the world to vary degrees. In short, besides other arguments, the role of individuals in history is significant.

E.H. Carr and 'What is History'

Edward Hallett Carr is well known for his work What is History? in which he put forward a well-balanced definition of history. The book was the result of his lectures delivered in a series in 1961. This book discusses the themes: (1) The historian and his facts (2) Society and the individual (3) History, Science and Morality (4) Causation (5) History as Progress, and (6) The Widening horizon of history. One of the prominent aspects of this book is that Carr tried to establish a linkage between the historian and facts. E.H. Carr defined “History is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past”. In this dialogue, the historian represents the present and the facts represent the past. History is the construction of a historian’s interpretation of facts. In this regard, Carr advises the readers to “study the historian before you begin to study the facts”. He argued that any account of the past is largely written from the perspective of the historian.

Carr divided facts into two categories:

§  Facts of the past: These are the corpus of all historical information about the past.

§  Historical facts: These are the information that the historians have decided is important and taken for the interpretation.

He argued that historians randomly determine which of the "facts of the past" to turn into "historical facts" according to their own biases and agendas. He remarks that the historian continuously moulds his facts to suit their interpretation. In the first place, the facts of history never come to us ‘pure’, since they do not and cannot exist in a pure form: they are always refracted through the mind of the recorder.

Carr rejected the empirical view of the historian's work. He points out that “it used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is of course, untrue. The facts speak only when a historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context.” To Carr ‘History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to historians in documents, inscriptions, and so on, like fish in the fishmonger’s slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him’.

Carr believed that everything that happened in this world happened because of cause and effect. Carr holds on to a deterministic outlook on history and firmly believes that events could not have happened differently unless there was a different cause. He feels that the main job of a historian is to investigate the reasons/causes as to why events occurred.

Film - A Source of History

Films represent the most widely accepted visual media of the modern period, which can be used as a source of historical research. People take history written by trained historians seriously because they think the historian knows better than anyone else. But there are historical productions outside the world of historians, which may be used as a source of further historical research. One can’t even think of history, especially modern history, without reference to its visual representation. In this regard, films can claim to present an alternative to written history to some extent. History in film form is developed through the story of the individual because of the manner of the medium. The camera creates a connection between the viewers and the individuals on the screen. The actions of the individuals represent the history of a larger group. The film also depicts history through one story, one perspective of the past. History in the film is always told as a story, with a beginning, middle and, end, which delivers a moral message meant to show how history is progressive.

Hayden White and the Concept of ‘Historiophoty'

Hayden White, the American postmodern historian, coined the term ‘historiophoty’ to describe the representation of history in visual images. The concept of historiophoty refers to the “representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse”. Currently, the term is used by historians to understand how films produce interpretations of the past.  Hayden White argues that the historical process that films and written documents use to interpret their data is the same. The historian and filmmaker both construct their version of a historical document. The historian interprets and constructs the written word from facts. Similarly, the filmmaker interprets the written word into a visual representation.

Historical Films and Mainstream Films

Within the world of cinema, with its various genres, there are different types of films. Rosenstone, a professor at the California Institute of Technology divides historical films into two parts: history as a document – the documentary, and history as drama - the mainstream film. Both the historical films and mainstream films, directly and indirectly, serve as a source of history.

Historical Films

These are consciously produced histories, that represent ‘film as a document’, which carefully recreates the past in great detail. A film in this category often relies heavily on oral history to travel between the past and present in the making of historical documentaries. The popular types of historical films are: 

• Historical documentaries: These were produced on a particular theme with a view to document our history and tradition, and are the result of well-designed research work.
• Biopics: This type of film focuses on the life of an individual with a view to documenting his contributions
• Propaganda films: These are intended to propagate different ideologies, especially used for political propaganda.
• ‘Period’ films: These types of films recreates a particular historical period with its unique aspects of people’s life.
• Costume dramas: These films focus on the display of various costumes of different cultures rather than the people.  

The strength of the historical film lies in emotionalising, personalising, and dramatizing the past. Historical films offer the viewers a window to look into the past. The greatest asset of the historical film is its ability to show history as an integrated process to a curious audience. It is this ability of the film which poses the greatest challenge to written history. Historians also try to paint a holistic picture of the past.

Historical films are essentially fiction, but it becomes a preferred mode of receiving and understanding the past in contemporary society. Historical films are fictional to a lesser or greater extent, otherwise, they would bore the audience and fail at the box office. Without the play of imagination, fictional characters invented minor events, and emotional responses of historical persons the historical films cannot be made.

Mainstream Films

Pierre Sorlin asserts that feature films could be considered a more important source of history than historical documentaries. Here, the camera records history unintentionally and this enables us to reflect on geographical and social reality. Outdoor shooting is important here, it might display significant historical details pertaining to various aspects of life, which can rarely escape from the camera like social relations, urban or rural life, geographical features, trees, roads, bridges, monuments, streets, architecture, onlookers, civic amenities or their absence, means of transport, clothes people wear, expressions on people’s faces, etc. Feature films shoot outdoors tend to incorporate valuable information on topography and infrastructure. All this comprises valuable source material for history.

Film as an Alternative Source of History

The positivist and Rankean approaches to history brought the scientific and factual representation of history. This stressed the use of purely historical documents and scientific methods in the writing of history and fixed the necessary characteristics of a historical source. Hence, most historians are reluctant to accept the film and other visual media as historical sources. The fact is that neither a film representation nor a written document can provide a literal truth of history. Instead, the written text generalizes and the film summarizes. Specific images are needed in the film to present a coherent narrative, while the written word can generalize ideas and events. The popularity of historical films beats books. Robert Rosentone’s idea is that “film is a disturbing symbol of an increasingly post-literate world (in which people can read but won’t)”.

Films draw out attention to many emotions that written history either ignores or cannot express. Films often highlight systemic exploitation, the underworld, wage slavery, the emotional trauma of women, or problems of migrant labourers and the unemployed. Written words are often not enough to express complicated feelings in a condensed form. Perhaps this is where the power of film makes a difference.

The viewers’ connection to the film is essential with the film’s use of presenting history through emotion and personalization. Allowing the viewer to experience the history through sensory means immediately makes the viewer feel connected to the past. With its cinematographic and editing techniques, along with the use of sets and costumes, films present the past visually. This, in a sense, brings history to life, or at least attempts to present it in a multi-layered context; the landscape, utensils, homes, clothing, and personal interactions all work together to show the bigger picture, rather than focusing on one fact after another.

While the written text will often sort aspects of history into different groupings, such as politics, religion, economics, and social structure, the film will integrate and connect all the aspects and definitions of history. As Rosenstone states, “history in the film becomes what it most centrally is: a process of changing social relationships where political and social questions…are interwoven.” The film often compresses historical figures into certain stereotypes that offer a diverse representation of the population, using the obvious differences between the characters to illustrate the conflicts and tensions commonly found in that culture or society.

Ultimately every film is a historical artifact or datum. Each is created as mass entertainment; each offers a commentary on the filmmaker’s world through moving images that serve as surrogates for the lived realities of audiences. The patterns of repeated images from the film to film and director to director – the themes they repeat, emotions they stir, and meanings they suggest – allow us to analyze the ‘historical role’ of the cinema of a particular period. The vast holdings of the world's film archives offer to the historian a priceless source material for the study of modern civilisation.

Visual Sources of History

“The camera doesn’t lie” is an old saying that seemed to have considerable truth for many years. Many people consider still “Seeing is believing” another popular maxim, whether in motion or in still photography, people believe what they see. Certainly, for the historian, the knowledge of the modern periods has been enriched greatly by the collection of visual records that have survived. These collections provide life and colour to our understanding of the past and provide a more accurate experience than reading a printed copy. Some images are created as a representation of reality. Photojournalism and documentaries are examples of this area.

There are different categories of visual sources, which can be used as a source of history. Paintings, photographs, cartoons, and films comprise the principal categories of visual evidence most widely used by historians. Each variety provides unique insights and each poses specific analytical questions for researchers. These sources can help us “be there” in the past. They can provide evidence of past history in ways that words on the printed page simply cannot describe. They can also help us interpret the past in new ways by letting us see things visually rather than in our imagination based on our reading. From this body of evidence, researchers can deduce the attitudes, assumptions, and values of the audience.

Paintings

Paintings form the first category of visual evidence. It ranges from the cave paintings of the people of early cultures to the digital paintings of the contemporary periods. In the early times, it was part of 'the work of art' of ancient cultures and many of the original paintings were lost during the course of time. The earliest paintings portray the geographical sceneries, animals, individuals and their aspects of life, etc. The cave paintings provide the primary source for reconstructing a different aspects of ancient cultures. Modern paintings emerged as the cultural expression of a society, which helps the historian to infer valuable clues of the period.

Photographs

Still, pictures have been used to document life since the middle of the nineteenth century. Fortunately, many of these photographs are still available to the historian. Photographs may offer a more accurate visual image than paintings. They may also be staged, with the photography ultimately controlling the picture that is taken. A picture may indeed be worth a ‘‘thousand words’’ but it is the interpretation and analysis provided by the researcher that brings meaning to the photograph. Paintings and photographs are the creations of the artist; yet, the pictures they produce offer another type of evidence of great use to researchers. These sources not only reveal important images; they also provide insights into the mind and world of the artist and the times. The composition of crowds at events may offer unique glimpses of different cultures and present information not intended by the artist or photographer.

Cartoons

Analysis of cartoons raises other issues because they reflect the times in which they were produced in such different ways. In the original meaning, a cartoon was a drawing on more or less permanent paper intended as a prelude to a painting of the same subject. A second meaning of the term is more familiar: a drawing, usually in a newspaper, that may be satirical or humorous. In this sense, cartoons provide rich insights into both the artist’s perceptions and how individuals or events were understood by contemporaries. These sources assume certain knowledge by the viewer and must be used carefully.

Film (See Film as a Source of History)

The film is the final example of a visual source type used for historical analysis. Certainly, the film is a powerful tool for seeing and hearing history. Films can both visualise and document the past. It provides us with the sights and sounds of a recreated past that can have a powerful impact on us. The film may be valuable to achieve an understanding of the culture and times in which the film was produced or to provide insights into what it valued, or found humorous, but films differ profoundly from other visual resources. A film can put us “there” in ways that the printed page simply can never accomplish. But it can also distort, falsify, or simply ignore historical truth.

Dealing with the Visual Sources

• In assessing works of art, it is essential to know something about the artist, as well as the motivation and purpose of the work. Historians need to understand the reasons the creator made the image and the context in which the image was made. It is also necessary to consider: What influenced the photographer to take the picture? What limitations were there? What choices were there in capturing reality? What images were not taken? Were the images modified? How and why? It is equally important to think about how portraits and paintings are to be used in the research being conducted.
• In dealing with the visual sources, the historian must consider the technical and artistic aspects of the creation of that vision. Lighting, focus, positioning, and framing also could be looked at in the analysis of the visual document. In a photograph, it will help to determine the importance of an individual, his dominance, and the projected emotions.
• In utilizing film and videotape, the researcher is confronted by the fact that these media are edited easily. In many instances, it is difficult to perceive the point or nature of the changes. It is therefore valuable to have some understanding of the editing process.
• Since the beginning of photography, the visual record has been manipulated. In the past, the negative or first-generation videos frequently were kept. However, the increased likelihood of the new media cases the frequent manipulations. Manipulation can occur before and after the shot is taken by changing or staging the elements of the picture. Hence, the knowledge of the technology and tools of various visual media is essential for a historian, who uses visual sources.
• Often photographs or videotapes are taken of family, or other events, and provide a record of time and place. Many of these works were done without professional training and, therefore, include technical problems that may contribute to difficulty in analyzing the material.
• The audiences of the period of those visuals also must be considered within the context of their times and expectations.

Docudramas, feature films, and the like are produced for many different purposes. While they may illuminate aspects of the past, they are the creation of the film artist and should not be used in the same way as written, oral, or other visual sources. Susan Sontag in her critique of photography noted the purpose of an image and the role of the historian in understanding the past through that image. “Photographs are not windows which supply a transparent view of the world as it is, or more exactly as it was. Photographs give evidence often spurious, always incomplete—in support of the dominant ideologies and existing social arrangements. They fabricate and confirm these myths and arrangements.” She further states that the images tell us what we should look at what is in the world. The historian’s job is to help make sense of this world through critical analysis—an analysis that has become more important and more complicated in the digital age of the visual.

Note Taking Methods and Techniques

Systematic note-taking from the source materials is an important part of the research work. It helps to arrange and organise the project report in a detailed manner. Notes must contain all the relevant points from all available sources for the writing of history. After the collection of all the raw material or historical data is over, they have to be properly processed. Various points relating to a particular topic or sub-topic have to be brought together and co-related in a rational way. Before taking notes from a particular source, the researcher has to verify its authenticity of a source. The details of a book like, author, title, publishing house, place of publication, year, etc. must be verified. Various topics or sub-topics have to be divided before taking notes. This will help the researcher to take notes separately for different themes. The knowledge of the documentation of a source is also essential for taking notes systematically.

There are four methods of note-taking: 

• Book method
• File Method
• Card System
• Computer Oriented File and Folder Method

Book Method

In this method, notebooks are to be used to take notes. Taking notes of different topics in one notebook may cause confusion. The researcher then has to separate the notes into topics or sub-topics wise. To avoid this, different notebooks are to be used to take notes on different topics and sub-topics. Thus, in the end, there would be many notebooks on different topics. This method is not satisfactory, because separating the notes on topic or sub-topics wise, will be a difficult task for the researcher. The researcher also has to carry all the notebooks with him at the time of note-taking.

File Method

Here, separate foolscap sheets are to be used to take notes topic-wise or sub-topic-wise, which are then filed separately. The advantage here is that the researcher is now able to detach the notes separately to arrange them in any format. But this method is not enough to solve the issue. The main problem is that one sheet of paper may contain notes from different sources. This will create difficulty for the researcher to give references to the consulted source.

Card System

This is an ideal method for note-taking. This is also known as the slip method. Here cards of equal size are to be used to take notes. The two most important features of this method are the totality and detachability of each card. On each slip only one point is noted; the point is complete in itself. Each slip is detachable and can be placed anywhere. Slips can be arranged topic-wise, sub-topic-wise, section-wise, or in any other format.

• Each card must contain:
• the details of the book
• the name of the chapter or section or sub-section for which the notes taking
• note or a point 
• page number from which the point is noted

After taking notes on cards, the researcher can arrange them into any format suitable for the preparation of the research report.

Computer Oriented File and Folder Method

The use of computers in research, and activity brought new methods to the collection and organisation of data. Collecting data through the file and folder methods is getting dominant in the age of computers. In this method, separate word files are to be used in taking notes in typed format. Like the card system, it uses one file to store the data about one particular theme. Again the different files of a particular topic can be grouped into one folder. This helps the researcher to prepare his research report in any format suitable for his research. It is an ideal method if the research work carries a number of diagrams, charts, statistical tables, pictures, and other such data. This also helps the researcher to easily prepare his research report because most of the notes are now available in typed format. For better use of the computer-oriented file and folder method, the researcher has to do the following:

• Use separate files to take notes on different topics or sub-topic.
• Name files and folders appropriately to easily identify them and avoid duplication.
• Set a hierarchy of folders by designing a folder structure with broad topics at the highest level and then use sub-folders within these.
• Ensure that your files, whether they are on your local drive, or on a network drive, are backed up.

The proper knowledge of computer applications and standard methods of file and folder organisation is necessary for using this method. Further, the total dependency on computers in organising the research may lead to a mere ‘cut and paste’ of data.

Social History

The label 'social history' indicates a focus on society. The term refers to a sub-discipline of history which concerned with the “history of society”. Social history as a discipline emerged at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries and became a prominent field of historical study in a later period. Two schools of historical writing: English Social History and the French Annales School together contributed to the development of social history. G M Trevelyan, who wrote English Social History defined social history as “the history of a people with the politics left out”.  English social history sought to examine the “manners, morals and customs” of the English people. The Annales School founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre and named after the journal Annales of Economic and Social History intended a new “science of society” that would incorporate all domains of the human and social sciences.

The Annales School influenced the Communist Party Historian’s Group in Britain. Its prominent members included E. P. Thompson, Christopher Hill, and Eric Hobsbawm. They mainly concentrated on the tension between the two classes of society. They wrote about the social transformation from feudalism to capitalism,  and the manners, morals, and customs of the lower classes. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the field of social history found the intervention of feminism and gender studies, which carried social history in further areas of research.

Social history distinguished itself from political history, which had been dominant during most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The important fields in social history consist of:

• Structures of societies and social change
• Social movements, groups, and classes
• Social conditions of work and ways of life
• Families, households, local communities
• Urbanization, mobility, ethnic groups, etc.
• Social problems such as poverty, ignorance, insanity, diseases, etc.
• Everyday life in the home, workplace, and the community
• History from below 

Social history challenged the dominant historical narratives which were constructed around the history of politics and the state. The practice of social history involves a shift of interest from political events to socio-economic structures. It also brought a change in historical methods from narrative to quantitative techniques and interdisciplinary models of interpretation.

Micro History

Micro history refers to the historical study of micro topics or a single unit of society. It has a close relationship with local history and oral history. Its subject matter is often confined to a locality. Moreover, its sources are local in origins and nature. Although it focuses on the locality and the ordinary people, it has nothing traditional about it. It is a late-modern reaction to the dissatisfaction from the macro-level histories. Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, microhistory focussed on the small units, individuals, and groups. The micro historians felt that the micro-level study is the only possible way to know the reality.

Carlo Ginzburg, one of the best-known historians gives the credit of the first use of the term ‘micro history’ to an American scholar, George R. Stewart. In his book, Pickett’s Charge: A Micro history of the Final Charge at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, published in 1959, Stewart firstly used the term. The book is centred on an event that lasted for only about twenty minutes. In 1968, Luis Gonzalez used the term ‘micro history’ in the subtitle of his book which deals with the changes experienced over four centuries by a tiny, ‘forgotten’ village in Mexico. Giovanni Levi was the first Italian historian to extensively use this term.

As a possible historical practice, micro history emerged during the 1970s and the 1980s in Italy. Carlo Ginzburg, Giovanni Levi, Carlo Poni, Edoardo Grendi, and Gianna Pomata are some of the Italian historians who made the world-famous through their writings. Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (1976) represents the best example of this historical trend. 

Micro history is a late modern, sometimes, postmodern, response to the problems of modern historiography. The micro historians are critical of not only the Rankean model but also the macro-historical paradigms developed by Marxism, the Annales School, and even the old social history. Micro history was a path-breaking and radical response and it took the historiography away from its focus on the ‘big structures, large processes and huge comparisons’. Instead, it concentrated on the small units in society. It was severely critical of the large quantitative studies and macro-level discourses because they distorted the reality at a small level. It focused on the small units and on the lives of the individuals living within those units.

Interdisciplinary Approach in History

In simple terms, interdisciplinarity can be defined as a collaboration of two or more disciplines around a joint theme. Roland Barthes maintained that ‘interdisciplinarity means the creation of a new object of study that no existing discipline owns’. The interdisciplinary approach in history refers to the use of methods and techniques of two or more disciplines in historical research. A historian’s perspective is very broad. A historian cannot limit the scope of history. This is a holistic approach and establishes the relationship between history and other disciplines of social science, and it is also related to the natural sciences.

Generally, the interdisciplinary approach is adopted in order to achieve the following objectives:

1.      To answer a complex question;

2.      To address broad issues;

3.      To solve problems that are beyond the limit of one discipline; and

4.      To achieve unity of knowledge

An interdisciplinary study is a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline. It relates to different disciplines by integrating their insights to construct a more comprehensive understanding. The interdisciplinary approach in history represents historians' use of concepts and techniques developed by scholars in other disciplines.

Contributions of Annales School

In the modern context, the interdisciplinary approach in history was well-established by the works of the Annales School of historiography. It was widely considered as one of the most important developments in twentieth-century history writing. Annales School formally emerged with the foundation of the journal ‘Annales of Economic and Social History’ in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. It emphasized the necessity and benefits of adopting themes by breaking disciplinary boundaries.

Consequently, newer themes were taken for the historian’s exploration. Marc Bloch himself created a two-volume book, The Feudal Society, which gives a comprehensive account of feudalism.  Lucien Febvre studied the area of emotions and beliefs and produced a celebrated essay, ‘Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute the Emotional Life of the Past’. History was thus beginning to become a part of the Social Sciences.

It was an invitation to historians to learn from Economics, Sociology, Anthropology and Geography. Later, Annales historians such as Fernand Braudel (studied the Mediterranean by depicting thousands of pictures), Georges Duby (the study of marriage, family, and women), Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Robert Mandrou, Jacques Le Goff (studied the history of mentalities) and many others contributed to the development of the interdisciplinary approach to history.

Stages of Development

The interdisciplinary approach to history mainly passed through three stages regarding its adoption of disciplinary themes.

(i)   At the beginning stage, it was primarily confined to the "social sciences". Historians adopted themes, concepts, and techniques from sociology, economics, political science, and anthropology for new ideas and analysis.

(ii) In the second stage, historians began to use the techniques and methods of statistics and mathematics to a lesser degree. Quantitative analysis of data, diagrams and statistical charts found its way to historical writing.

(iii)    In its later stage, historians have turned to "humanistic" disciplines such as language studies, poetics, literary criticism, and philosophy. Now new theories and concepts like structuralism, new historicism, epistemology, ontology, and other philosophical theories found its place in historical study.

The Postmodern Intervention

The postmodern thinkers totally rejected the idea of ‘disciplinary boundaries’. The writings of postmodern thinkers exhibit this new turn of interdisciplinary studies. Michel Foucault’s books like Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and The History of Sexuality best exemplify this new turn in the interdisciplinary approach. The postmodern thinkers brought philosophical concepts and theories to the study of history.  

Benefits of Interdisciplinary Approach to History

• The interdisciplinary approach broadened and deepened the study of history
• It brought new themes and ideas to historical writing
• It extended the domain of history 
• It elevated history from a mere narration of facts to a knowledge-producing subject
• It brought philosophical concepts, theories, and ideas to historical analysis 
• It brought new kinds of sources, methods, and techniques to historical writing
• It opened the possibilities of using multiple theories, concepts, and methods in historical research
• It integrated the best elements of disciplinary insights to generate a more comprehensive perspective.

On the whole, the interdisciplinary approach in history changed the course of historical writing and initiated the emergence of new branches in history.