How Reliable is Oral History and/or Memory as a Historical Source for War?
How Reliable is Oral History and/or Memory as a Historical Source for War?
Oral history is a relatively new method of studying history and one which has the most scope to be used more frequently by modern historians. The age of technology is enabling more accurate recordings to be used as sources, rather than just a transcript of what happen which could be less likely to be regarded as a definite fact. For war specifically, it has only been very recently that historians have been able to use other reliable ways to remember wars as journalists and the media began to travel to the war zones instead of relying on stories being relayed to them from afar. However, memory itself can be an unreliable way to record history as it always become distorted by those who tell it, perhaps just over time or from personal trauma. Also, for the interviewer to be totally unbiased in their questioning of the person is near impossible due to every person having their own opinion of events which have happened. Oral history is generally seen to have started with the ideas and writings of Allan Nevins with regard to the American Civil War. It was a new style designed to complement the traditional forms of history, such as written documents and, albeit new themselves, photographs. However, it was seen by some historians, including Avery Craven at the University of Chicago, to be too journalistic rather than historical in nature1. As a result, oral history became less popular for use amongst major events, but it began to find new strength with it being used to discover what the general populace “wanted to do, what they believed they were doing, what they now think they did2.” This is particularly exemplified by the work of George Ewart Evans, who collected vast quantities of oral records from East Anglia before publishing them into several books3. Despite this, oral history remains very low in the hierarchy of sources available to the modern historian particularly as it is often
Oral history is a relatively new method of studying history and one which has the most scope to be used more frequently by modern historians. The age of technology is enabling more accurate recordings to be used as sources, rather than just a transcript of what happen which could be less likely to be regarded as a definite fact. For war specifically, it has only been very recently that historians have been able to use other reliable ways to remember wars as journalists and the media began to travel to the war zones instead of relying on stories being relayed to them from afar. However, memory itself can be an unreliable way to record history as it always become distorted by those who tell it, perhaps just over time or from personal trauma. Also, for the interviewer to be totally unbiased in their questioning of the person is near impossible due to every person having their own opinion of events which have happened. Oral history is generally seen to have started with the ideas and writings of Allan Nevins with regard to the American Civil War. It was a new style designed to complement the traditional forms of history, such as written documents and, albeit new themselves, photographs. However, it was seen by some historians, including Avery Craven at the University of Chicago, to be too journalistic rather than historical in nature1. As a result, oral history became less popular for use amongst major events, but it began to find new strength with it being used to discover what the general populace “wanted to do, what they believed they were doing, what they now think they did2.” This is particularly exemplified by the work of George Ewart Evans, who collected vast quantities of oral records from East Anglia before publishing them into several books3. Despite this, oral history remains very low in the hierarchy of sources available to the modern historian particularly as it is often
Bibliography: Gerald L. Fetner, Immersed in Great Affairs: Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004) Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991) George Ewart Evans, Where Beards Wag All: The Relevance of the Oral Tradition (Faber 1970) Jules Michelet, Le Peuple, 1846 John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (Pearson Educated Ltd, 2010) http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-words/201109/is-nonverbal-communication-numbers-game http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8450603.stm James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Blackwell, 1992) Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (State University of New York Press, 1990)