Reading, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College, 2004
http://academic.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ 1
2.b.
How to Read a Primary Source
Good reading is about asking questions of your sources. Keep the following in mind when reading
primary sources. Even if you believe you can’t arrive at the answers, imagining possible answers will
aid your comprehension. Reading primary sources requires that you use your historical imagination.
This process is all about your willingness and ability to ask questions of the material, imagine
possible answers, and explain your reasoning.
I. Evaluating primary source texts: I’ve developed an acronym that may help guide your Assessment
of primary source texts: PAPER.
C Purpose of the author in preparing the document
C Argument and strategy she or he uses to achieve those goals
C Presuppositions and values (in the text, and our own)
C Epistemology (evaluating truth content)
C Relate to other texts (compare and contrast)
Purpose
C Who is the author and what is her or his place in society (explain why you are justified in
thinking so)? What could or might it be, based on the text, and why?
• Why did the author prepare the document? What was the occassion for its creation?
C What is at stake for the author in this text? Why do you think she or he wrote it? What
evidence in the text tells you this?
C Does the author have a thesis? What — in one sentence — is that thesis?
Argument
C What is the text trying to do? How does the text make its case? What is its strategy for
accomplishing its goal? How does it carry out this strategy?
C What is the intended audience of the text? How might this influence its rhetorical strategy?
Cite specific examples.
C What arguments or concerns does the author respond to that are not clearly stated? Provide
at least one example of a point at which the author seems to be refuting a position never
clearly stated. Explain what you think this position may be in detail, and why you think it.
Reading, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College, 2004
http://academic.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ 2
C Do you think the author is credible and reliable? Use at least one specific example to explain
why. Make sure to explain the principle of rhetoric or logic that makes this passage credible.
Presuppositions
C How do the ideas and values in the source differ from the ideas and values of our age? Offer
two specific examples.
C What presumptions and preconceptions do we as readers bring to bear on this text? For
instance, what portions of the text might we find objectionable, but which contemporaries
might have found acceptable. State the values we hold on that subject, and the values
expressed in the text. Cite at least one specific example.
C How might the difference between our values and the values of the author influence the way
we understand the text? Explain how such a difference in values might lead us to misinterpret the text, or understand it in a way contemporaries would not have. Offer at least
one specific example.
Epistemology
C How might this text support one of the arguments found in secondary sources we’ve read?
Choose a paragraph anywhere in a secondary source we’ve read, state where this text might
be an appropriate footnote (cite page and paragraph), and explain why.
C What kinds of information does this text reveal that it does not seemed concerned with
revealing? (In other words, what does it tell us without knowing it’s telling us?)
C Offer one claim from the text which is the author’s interpretation. Now offer one example of
a historical “fact” (something that is absolutely indisputable) that we can learn from this text
(this need not be the author’s words).
Relate: Now choose another of the readings, and compare the two, answering these questions:
C What patterns or ideas are repeated throughout the readings?
C What major differences appear in them?
C Which do you find more reliable and credible?
II. Here are some additional concepts that will help you evaluate primary source texts:
A. Texts and documents, authors and creators: You’ll see these phrases a lot. I use the first two
and the last two as synonyms. Texts are historical documents, authors their creators, and
vice versa. “Texts” and “authors” are often used when discussing literature, while
“documents” and “creators” are more familiar to historians.
B. Evaluating the veracity (truthfulness) of texts: For the rest of this discussion, consider the
example of a soldier who committed atrocities against non-combatants during wartime.
Later in his life, he writes a memoir that neglects to mention his role in these atrocities, and
may in fact blame them on someone else. Knowing the soldier’s possible motive, we would
be right to question the veracity of his account.
Reading, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College, 2004
http://academic.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ 3
C. The credible vs. the reliable text:
1. Reliability refers to our ability to trust the consistency of the author’s account of the
truth. A reliable text displays a pattern of verifiable truth-telling that tends to render the
unverifiable parts of the text true. For instance, the soldier above may prove to be utterly
reliable in detailing the campaigns he participated in during the war, as evidence by
corroborating records. The only gap in his reliability may be the omission of details
about the atrocities he committed.
2. Credibility refers to our ability to trust the author’s account of the truth on the basis of
her or his tone and reliability. An author who is inconsistently truthful — such as the
soldier in the example above — loses credibility. There are many other ways authors
undermine their credibility. Most frequently, they convey in their tone that they are not
neutral (see below). For example, the soldier above may intersperse throughout his
reliable account of campaign details vehement and racist attacks against his old enemy.
Such attacks signal readers that he may have an interest in not portraying the past
accurately, and hence may undermine his credibility, regardless of his reliability.
3. An author who seems quite credible may be utterly unreliable. The author who takes a
measured, reasoned tone and anticipates counter-arguments may seem to be very
credible, when in fact he presents us with complete balderdash. Similarly, a reliable
author may not always seem credible. It should also be clear that individual texts
themselves may have portions that are more reliable and credible than others.
D. The objective vs. the neutral text: We often wonder if the author of a text has an “ax to
grind” which might render her or his words unreliable.
1. Neutrality refers to the stake an author has in a text. In the example of the soldier who
committed wartime atrocities, the author seems to have had a considerable stake in his
memoir, which was the expunge his own guilt. In an utterly neutral document, the
creator is not aware that she or he has any special stake in the construction and content
of the document. Very few texts are ever completely neutral. People generally do not go
to the trouble to record their thoughts unless they have a purpose or design which
renders them invested in the process of creating the text. Some historical texts, such as
birth records, may appear to be more neutral than others, because their creators seem to
have had less of a stake in creating them. (For instance, the county clerk who signed
several thousand birth certificates likely had less of a stake in creating an individual birth
certificate than did a celebrity recording her life in a diary for future publication as a
memoir.)
2. Objectivity refers to an author’s ability to convey the truth free of underlying values,
cultural presuppositions, and biases. Many scholars argue that no text is or ever can be
completely objective, for all texts are the products of the culture in which their authors
lived. Many authors pretend to objectivity when they might better seek for neutrality.
The author who claims to be free of bias and presupposition should be treated with
suspicion: no one is free of their values. The credible author acknowledges and expresses
those values so that they may accounted for in the text where they appear.
Reading, Writing, and Researching for History
Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College, 2004
http://academic.bowdoin.edu/WritingGuides/ 4
E. Epistemology: a fancy word for a straight-forward concept. “Epistemology” is the branch of
philosophy that deals with the nature of knowledge. How do you know what you know?
What is the truth, and how is it determined? For historians who read primary sources, the
question becomes: what can I know of the past based on this text, how sure can I be about it,
and how do I know these things?
1. This can be an extremely difficult question. Ultimately, we cannot know anything with
complete assurance, because even our senses may fail us. Yet we can conclude, with
reasonable accuracy, that some things are more likely to be true than others (for instance,
it is more likely that the sun will rise tomorrow than that a human will learn to fly
without wings or other support). Your task as a historian is to make and justify decisions
about the relative veracity of historical texts, and portions of them. To do this, you need
a solid command of the principles of sound reasoning.

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