Answer to Question #313116 in History for Miso

Question

What are the main source historians use to reconstruct the events of the early 19th century that are often known as the mfecane

Answer 1

History is reconstructed by the use of “documents,” “artifacts,” and “chronicles” a category which includes official accounts of events, memoirs, and personal correspondence. They use these remnants of a bygone time, by exercising both inductive and deductive reasoning, to support hypotheses and to validate theories. For example, the kings and queens of medieval Europe had a member of their retinue called a “chronicler,” whose job was to record daily events surrounding the monarchy; these were then published as yearly records with the official seal of approval. These “chronicles” are fruitful sources for historians and other writers such as Shakespeare, for example, used the Chronicles of Holinshead and Froissart to write his history plays and ironically, we now use Shakespeare’s plays as sources of history, forgetting that he put fictive elements into his plays as well. Personal diaries and memoirs also offer much historical evidence.