Primary Sources

We should approach primary sources differently than secondary sources because primary sources are like diaries, documents, and autobiography that are set in the time you are studying while secondary sources are like textbooks that explain what had happened.

A big question in my opinion is, do you think the author is credible and reliable? Most of the time with primary sources the answer is yes. Of course, there are always times that they are not reliable because let's say there's a person that writes a diary entry, they might not know the full picture on what is happening so you would rely on a secondary source to see if it's correct or not.

It is super important to ask why is it important to ask what the document does not or can not tell us. In some cases, the authors of the document do not know fully what is happening around them. So you would need to find additional sources to fully know what's happening at that certain time.

Understanding Trouillot’s distinction between the two connotations of history “what happened” and “that which was said to have happened” helps us think critically about primary sources. When it comes to “what happened”, it would need to have an author that experienced the incident first hand and there is evidence from different sources to back up the claim. Then when it comes to “that which was said to might have happened”, that's when an author heard it by ear and may over-exaggerate what actually happened without being at the incident.