The Historian's Source: Pitfalls and Prevention

Intrinsically, the value of evidence depends on the specific topic historians wish to address. The questions that historians investigate will influence the amount of value each source such as posters, eyewitness accounts or documentaries sustains for their argument. All sources have strengths and weaknesses that historians must be conscious for and be capable of identifying. For example, Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf will not provide sufficient detail and impact as a source to historians investigating the infringement of human rights in Canada during World War II since there is little contextual and geographical correlation between the question asked and the source examined. Conversely, declassified legal documents from Japanese internment camps are useful in this situation to support the historian’s question because unjustified paranoia and prejudice from the Canadian Government against Japanese Canadians was weld into actions that transgressed their human rights. However, Mein Kampf will be a crucial and pertinent source for historians documenting what the Nazi’s view of the Jewish people were, as it was authored by the man who established Nazi Germany and fueled its Anti-Semitism doctrine in the duration of World War II. Therefore, the value of evidence and documents precisely depends on the questions that historians are posing and not necessarily what the evidence is. There is no better source; all sources are valuable to historians to the extent that historians are able to understand and identified when best to use the source in company to their argument. Nonetheless, the importance of each varying source to historians also decreases with the increase of editorial bias and other limitations.