Precis on Substantive Historical Investigation
 Michaels Wallace

For   nearly  a   century  now   the  go-to   text  for   introductory
historiography  courses has  been  Dr.   Alastair Chrun's  _Historical
Method_ .   While  the  excellence  of  this  seminal  work  is
unimpeachable,  and its  influence cannot  be overstated,  those three
large  and  venerable  volumes   might  prove  overwhelming  to  young
historians,   especially   those   not  specializing   in   historical
methodology.

Such students are often anxious for instructions on doing history
rather than trudging through theory, and this is hardly a blameworthy
perspective.  Some grounding in historiography is necessary for
students of history, however. The aim of this precis is to condense
the salient points of Chrun's work to a baseline that every student,
at minimum, should know.

History is the study of conditions in the past. Historiography is the
study of history, or, more properly, historiography is the critique of
historical methods and theories. Dr. Chrun puts it consisely: "to the
historian, history is what was, method is what he does". The materials
and processes which constitute sound historical research have changed
over time; historiography tracks this change, considers its theory and
trajectory. Study of historiography makes us better historians, and
helps in reading the works of historians past..  The earliest
histories might more properly be called accounts rather than
histories.  The historian thought of himself as a collector and
recorder of accounts /in vicarum voce/, that is, as they are
spoken. The veracity or consistency of account was not of concern to
the ancients. (Aston's epic, /Conquest of the Iilaans/ should be
regarded as fanciful interpretation rather than proto-history.)
Haipolites,

Some theorists have suggested that the apparent lack of concern for
veracity indicates ancient peoples had no concept of objective
reality; that the "event" (a material, rememberable, objective
occurence) is a modern invention. Proponents of this theory are Ramsey
Maddox, Lauren Arthurian, and (famously) Cragan Roul....be discounted.
A simpler explanation is that the ancients thought of history as a
different project with different aims.  An account is a representation
of the world; the work of recorders, as vie ancients understood it,
was to convey for posterity these representations

The idea of meddling w....d accounts in service of a logically
consistent "event" would likely be anathema to the ancients. Such
historical work would be an overstepping on the part of the
historian. Inste....cients are content to collect accounts and present
them as they are. There is a profound sense to this approach, from a
certain point of view.....By the time of decline of the Oron empire,
history as account-collecting war becoming onerous. Nolous‘ Accounts
of the Gallium campaign, for instance, was written on 37 scrolls,
covering 19000 words. This for a work covering g 2 month
campaign. Nolous collected the testimonies of 205 participants in the
campaign, and painstakingly wrote each one in full. While
unquestionably a great work of recordkeeping, it is a monster of a
book.....The accounts are exceedingly repetitive, and the most
important aspects of vie campaign (for instance, vie innovation of
maneuverable blocks of spearmen) are obscured.....Arek the Wise is
began to write summarization history: vie condensation of accounts
into a whole narrative.  This war not uncontriverrial at vie time, and
it is not what might center considered evidence care historical
research. Vie accounts were simply rolled into a Smitjap massivegtd,
Andrew vie historicalagm picked vie best fitting accounts where there
war discrepancy....