Primary Source Analysis Principles

Based on A Guide to Reading Primary Sources by Paul Garfinkel (History 225, Spring 2011)

General Advice
A thesis is an argumentative claim about the meaning/significance of your source(s). A good thesis will be
debatable; in other words, someone should be able to disagree with your claim and offer a counterargument
against it. Similarly, developing a thesis requires creativity: you have to use your historical imagination as well
as your knowledge of historical context.... Of course, your creativity must be disciplined and responsible, and
your claims must be grounded in textual evidence: you cant just make things up.

Ask good historical questions. The key to analyzing and interpreting primary sources is knowing how to ask why
the author wrote what he/she did, not what he/she wrote. [This will help you to analyze rather than merely
summarize the source.]

Remember: our job isnt to praise or condemn our historical subjects, but to comprehend them.

Questions to Keep in Mind as you develop your thesis:

What kind of document is it?

For whom was it written or spoken? A public or private audience? A present or future audience?
Ask yourself questions about the author and his/her motives for writing the document.
e.g. What is at stake for the author of the document?
[What might the answers to these questions suggest about the reliability, usefulness, or credibility of the author
and the source?]

When was it produced? Why was this document produced precisely at the moment that it was? And what
does its appearance tell us about the society at that particular time? [In other words, consider the historical
context that is pertinent to this document.]
In what ways is this document a useful one for historians? What can we learn, for instance, from studying this
document that we might otherwise not have known?
What are the documents strengths and weaknesses as a source?
What questions does this document raise?
What questions does this document leave unanswered? What is left out, glossed over, or slighted? What do these
silences tell us?

Examples of Common Types of Interpretations advanced by historians when they analyze primary
documents:
Uncovering hidden/underlying assumptions.
Exploring the implications of rhetoric or imagery [consider the language and/or the tone employed by the
author].
Exposing unresolved inconsistencies, ambiguities or inner conflicts.
Unmasking a hidden motive or intention.
Relating the substance of the document to the society as a whole; that is, showing how the document is (or is
not) broadly representative of its time and place.
Finding similarities where one might expect differences [between different sources, for example], and vice versa.
Finding continuity where one might expect change, or vice versa.
Tracing a pattern of evolution or development over time.
Showing that a source fashions a middle way between two extremes.
Identifying discernible differences between rhetoric and historical reality.