Questions to Ask a Historian
Good questions to ask a historian after a lecture, in a school or career interview, on a panel or across a dinner table. They cover the work itself, sources and archives, how historians reason, live debates, what history can say about the present, and the job. Each has a note on what a good answer sounds like or what to ask next. The guide underneath sets out the questions historians themselves ask of a source and of a period, including the five taught in school.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Start here
What made you want to be a historian in the first place?
Why ask it
Usually an older story than how they chose their period. Listen for whether it began with a teacher, a place they grew up near or a family story nobody could confirm, and whether the pull was the stories or the puzzle of checking them.
What are you researching at the moment?
Why ask it
Better than asking what period they study, because it gets the live problem instead of the job title. Most projects have one stubborn chapter or one source that will not resolve, and that is where the interesting talk is.
What questions do you ask when you first pick up a source?
Why ask it
The standard set is who made it, when, for whom and why, and what it leaves out. Asking a working historian gets you their own order, plus the one question they add that the classroom list lacks.
What do people most often get wrong about your period?
Why ask it
Ask about their own period rather than history in general, and you get a precise correction instead of a lament about public ignorance. Expect either a myth with a traceable origin or an anachronism about how people thought.
What is the best thing you have ever found in your research?
Why ask it
Finds are rarely treasure. Expect a misfiled letter, a note in a margin or a name turning up somewhere it should not be. Ask what they did in the five minutes after, since most reading rooms frown on shouting.
How did you end up working on your particular period?
Why ask it
The route is rarely tidy: a document found by accident, a language they happened to learn, a supervisor's suggestion. The answer also tells you how much of their field was chosen and how much was inherited.
What does a normal day of research actually look like?
Why ask it
Outsiders imagine discovery, and the reality can be photographing four hundred pages before lunch, then reading them months later. Hearing the ratio of tedium to insight makes their conclusions more credible, not less.
If you could spend one day in your period, where and when would you go?
Why ask it
The time machine question, narrowed to the years they know so that it stops being a parlour game. Do not be surprised if they choose an ordinary street on an ordinary day over the famous event, because the everyday is what their sources leave out. Ask what they would look at first.
If you could put one question to someone from your period, who would you ask and what?
Why ask it
The question they pick tends to be the hole in their evidence: where a letter went, why a decision was made, what somebody meant by one word. Then ask whether they would believe the reply. A historian treats testimony as one more source to check.
What is the best question a member of the public has ever asked you?
Why ask it
Do not be surprised if it came from a child on a school visit. An outsider's question can expose an assumption the field stopped noticing, and the one they pick tells you what kind of curiosity they welcome.
Sources
Where do your sources physically live?
Why ask it
Historians work in particular archives with particular rules, and the detail is half the fun: parish registers in a church cupboard, ledgers in a company basement, files released a decade ago. It also shows whose records survived and whose did not.
What is the oldest thing you have held in your hands?
Why ask it
Most people who work with originals remember one object or document they were allowed to touch, down to the paper, the ink and the smell. It also opens the question of what the handling rules are and why some material is now off limits.
How do you decide whether to trust a single account?
Why ask it
You will hear about corroboration, who the author was writing for, what they stood to gain, and what the document was created to do in the first place. The same checks work on a news story or a post that everyone is sharing.
Can you give me an example of a primary and a secondary source from your own work?
Why ask it
The classroom definition is tidy and the working one is not. An old textbook is a secondary source on the war it describes and a primary source on the decade that printed it. A good answer includes a case where one item changed category depending on the question.
Whose voices are missing from your sources, and what do you do about it?
Why ask it
Records are usually made by the literate, the official, and the propertied. A good answer describes actual workarounds: court testimony, tax lists, letters written by scribes for others. A historian who says nothing is missing is not being careful.
Have you ever come across a forgery, or a source that was not what it claimed to be?
Why ask it
Outright fakes are rarer than misdated copies, memoirs tidied up years later and translations that smooth over the awkward parts. How they noticed, whether a wrong form of address or paper that was too new, is a short lesson in close reading.
What can objects, buildings or landscapes tell you that documents cannot?
Why ask it
Paper holds what people chose to write down. A worn step or a much-patched coat holds what they did. If they work with physical evidence, ask for a time it contradicted the written version.
Did you have to learn a language or an old style of handwriting to read your sources?
Why ask it
Old scripts and clerks' abbreviations are learned slowly, usually by failing at one page for a week. The answer also tells you how much of the field sits behind a language barrier, and so who gets to write about it.
How has digitization changed your research, and what does a search box miss?
Why ask it
Keyword search finds what was transcribed correctly and catalogued under the word you thought of. Ask what they still only find by turning pages in order. That answer explains why archive trips have not gone away.
Do you ever feel uneasy reading letters or diaries that were never meant for you?
Why ask it
A lot of the best evidence was private: a love letter, a doctor's note, a diary its writer wanted burned. Historians of recent decades have living relatives to think about as well, and each archive sets its own rules on what may be quoted. Ask where they have drawn the line.
What do you wish people in your period had bothered to write down?
Why ask it
The everyday goes unrecorded: what a street smelled like, how a joke landed, what people did while they waited. It is a gentler route to the limits of the record than asking what is unknowable, and it tends to get a rueful laugh.
How far do you trust people's memories of events they lived through?
Why ask it
A recollection is evidence of two things at once: the event, and everything the person has heard about it since. Historians who record interviews can tell you how they check a vivid memory without insulting whoever shared it.
Method
What question is your research trying to answer?
Why ask it
Historians start from a question, not a topic. 'The railways' is a topic; 'who paid for them and who lost land to them' is a question. If they can give you theirs in a sentence, the rest of what they say will be much easier to follow.
How do you work out why something happened when there are a dozen possible causes?
Why ask it
Cause is the hardest claim in history to defend. Listen for how they separate a trigger from a condition that had been building for decades, and how they decide which one carried the most weight.
What changed in your period, and what carried on much as before?
Why ask it
Change and continuity is one of the standard questions historians put to any stretch of time. Textbook dates mark the changes, yet plenty of lives ran on as before across them. Ask for a supposed turning point that the people living through it barely noticed.
How do you decide what is significant enough to write about?
Why ask it
Significance is a judgment, not a property of events, and it shifts with whoever is asking. To make the answer concrete, ask what they cut from their last book or article and still think about.
How do you avoid judging people in the past by today's standards without letting them off the hook?
Why ask it
No working historian claims a clean solution. The better answers describe a practice, such as finding out who objected at the time and what it cost them, instead of a slogan about context.
How do you stop hindsight from making the outcome look inevitable?
Why ask it
Nobody in the past knew how their story ended, and writing as though they did is the commonest distortion. A useful follow-up: what did the people involved expect to happen instead?
What do you do when the evidence will not answer the question you set out to ask?
Why ask it
Most projects change shape midway. Hearing how they reframed the question, or settled for a smaller claim, shows the discipline of not overreaching. A student stuck on a dissertation or a long essay can borrow the move directly.
How much of what you write is inference, and how do you signal it?
Why ask it
Watch for the vocabulary of hedging: probably, plausibly, the evidence suggests. A historian who explains how they mark the line between documented and inferred is showing you how to read their book properly.
What is a question about your period that simply cannot be answered?
Why ask it
Ask why it cannot: the record was burned, was never made, or was kept by people who did not care about the answer. Someone who can say exactly where the evidence stops is someone whose firm claims you can lean on.
Can a historian keep their own views out of their conclusions?
Why ask it
Most will say not entirely, and that the honest course is to show your working so that others can check it. Be wary of a claim to perfect neutrality, and just as wary of anyone whose findings always match their opinions.
How do you know when you have read enough to start writing?
Why ask it
There is always another box. Their stopping rule, often a deadline or the point where new documents stop surprising them, is worth borrowing for any project of your own.
What questions are historians asking now that nobody asked fifty years ago?
Why ask it
The past stays put while the questions put to it move: weather, disease, childhood, ordinary work. Hearing which are new in their field shows history as a running conversation, and hints at where a student could still find open ground.
Debates
What has your research made you change your mind about?
Why ask it
Someone who has spent years on a subject has usually dropped at least one position they arrived with, and can often name the document that did it. If the answer is nothing, ask what they expected to find before they began.
What do historians in your field genuinely disagree about?
Why ask it
The public version of history is settled, the working version rarely is. Asking about the live argument gets you the current state of the field rather than the textbook summary, and it usually comes with the reasons each side holds.
Has anything been found or released in your career that changed the picture?
Why ask it
It might be an archive that opened, files that were declassified, or a laboratory technique applied to old material. Ask whether it settled an argument or started a new one. Either way you learn how much of history depends on access as well as argument.
Is there a famous line from your period that nobody can show was ever said?
Why ask it
Well-known quotations have a habit of first appearing in print long after the speaker died. A specialist can often tell you where the line first turns up and who gained from pinning it on a famous name. It is a quick lesson in asking where a repeated fact comes from.
Why does history keep being rewritten if the events are over?
Why ask it
Revision is the job, not a scandal: new evidence turns up and new questions get asked of the old. A careful answer separates that from bending the story to suit a cause, and tells you how to spot the difference.
Which historian do you most disagree with and still respect?
Why ask it
You get an argument at its strongest instead of a dismissal. It shows how disagreement works in a subject where nobody can rerun the experiment, and it often hands you a second name to read.
Who from your period deserves to be better known?
Why ask it
Every specialist has someone: a clerk, a midwife, a middle-ranking official whose paperwork holds the picture together. It is the kinder twin of asking who is overrated, which you can try second.
How do you feel about the films and series set in your period?
Why ask it
The complaint is less often about costumes than about structure: a modern moral placed in a period mouth, or one figure given credit for what a group did. Ask which portrayal they thought got it right, too.
Past and present
Does history really repeat itself?
Why ask it
Expect a no, or a not exactly, since no two situations share all their causes. The follow-up is what makes it worth asking. Which earlier moment would they compare to something happening now, and where does the comparison break down?
Has this work changed how you read the news?
Why ask it
Some come away slower to accept a confident explanation of something that happened last week, and others stop trusting forecasts. It works better than asking which period explains the present, which invites a glib answer.
How do you react when your period is used to win an argument today?
Why ask it
Comparisons with the past are everywhere in public debate, and a specialist hears their subject bent into shapes it never had. Ask what the comparison leaves out, and keep it about the history, not about whose side either of you is on.
What can the past teach us, and what can it not?
Why ask it
Historians mostly resist lessons that can be lifted out and applied. What they will defend is narrower: a feel for how often confident forecasts failed, and for which comparisons fall apart on a second look.
How should a town or a family deal with a part of its past it is not proud of?
Why ask it
Councils, museums and relatives do put this to historians. Many will say their part is to establish what happened and that the verdict belongs to the people concerned. Ask from curiosity, never to recruit them into a local row.
What will historians of the future find hardest to understand about us?
Why ask it
This turns their method on the present. Answers tend to land on habits we think too ordinary to explain, which is exactly what they struggle to recover from their own period.
What from our time will survive as evidence, and what will be lost?
Why ask it
Emails, private messages and web pages can vanish faster than a shoebox of letters. People who depend on archives think about this a good deal, and what they say may change what you decide to keep.
Why should someone who is not going to be a historian study history?
Why ask it
A standard for school assignments, and worth asking because the stock line about not repeating mistakes is not one every historian would sign. Press for the skill they think the subject trains. Many will name some version of weighing claims you cannot check for yourself.
Careers and advice
What do you love most about the job, and what would you happily never do again?
Why ask it
Anyone interviewing a historian for a class needs this one, and the second half keeps it honest. Do not be surprised if funding applications, marking or meetings come up more than the archive does.
What did you have to study to do this work?
Why ask it
Routes differ by country and by employer, and a university post, a museum and a government office each ask for different things. Find out how it worked for them, and whether they would take the same path today.
Where do historians work besides universities?
Why ask it
Museums, archives, heritage sites, publishers, broadcasters and government departments all employ people trained in history. Ask where their own classmates ended up; that beats any careers leaflet.
What skill matters most that nobody mentions to history students?
Why ask it
Expect something unglamorous: notes you can still follow three years later, reading quickly without reading carelessly, a clear paragraph. Whatever they name, it will apply well outside a history degree.
What advice would you give a student who wants to become a historian?
Why ask it
Good ones answer plainly, including about what the job market is like where they are. To get past general encouragement, ask what they would do differently in their first year if they started over.
What separates a strong history essay from an average one?
Why ask it
One for a historian who teaches or marks. The usual answer is that the strong one argues where the average one summarizes. Ask what the opening paragraph of the best essay they ever read did, and you have a model to work from.
If someone wanted to read one serious book on your period, what would you point them to, and where does it fall short?
Why ask it
The second half is the useful part. Asking for the weakness alongside the recommendation gets you an assessment instead of a reading list, and a reminder that no single account is complete.
If I wanted to research my own family or my town, where would I start?
Why ask it
Historians tend to be generous with this and will name real starting points, such as census returns, land records, old local newspapers or the nearest record office. What exists and how you request it depends on the country, so ask how it works where you live.
Talking With a Historian
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Framing the conversation
Ask about their period, not about history
Questions such as what was the most important event ever produce polite non-answers, because historians are trained to distrust that kind of ranking. The same question narrowed to their own century and their own sources produces a detailed reply.
Ask about evidence, not opinion
How do you know is a friendly question, not a hostile one, and most historians enjoy answering it. It also gets you a method you can reuse, where an opinion is something you have to take on trust.
Expect qualification and do not read it as evasion
Careful hedging is a professional habit. If an answer is heavily qualified, ask what would have to be found for them to say it plainly. That usually gets the direct version along with its conditions.
What questions do historians ask?
Of a source
Who made this, and when? Who was it made for, and what was it meant to do? How did the maker know what they claim to know? What does it leave out, and does anything else from the time agree with it? The same questions go to a diary, a tax return and a photograph alike.
Of an event or a period
What happened, and in what order? Why then and not earlier? What changed, and what carried on as before? Who gained, who lost, and how did it look to people who did not yet know the outcome? Why does it matter enough to study?
The five questions historians ask
School courses often boil all of this down to five questions: who, what, when, where and why, with how sometimes added as a sixth. Another five used in teaching are the five C's of historical thinking: change over time, context, causality, contingency and complexity. Textbooks do not all print the same list, so if an assignment asks for the five, check which five your course means. A working historian tends to add one more, how do we know, and that is where most of the questions under Sources and Method come from.
Turning them into questions for a person
Asked cold, how do you analyze a source gets a lecture. Asked about a document they are reading this month, it gets a story. Take any question from the Method group and attach it to something specific they have already mentioned.
Questions that tend to fall flat
- What if a particular event had gone the other way. Many historians are wary of counterfactuals, and the usual reply is that too much else would have changed to say. Ask what people at the time expected to happen, which the sources can answer.
- Asking them to confirm a documentary you watched. Better to describe the specific claim and ask how well supported it is.
- Treating them as a general expert on the whole past. Someone who works on eighteenth-century shipping may know little more than you do about the Roman army.
- Asking whether history repeats itself and stopping there. It works once you add a case: which earlier situation they would compare something to, and what the comparison misses.
- Asking who was to blame. Ask instead what the people involved thought they were doing, which is a question the sources can actually answer.
Different settings, different questions
After a talk, with an audience listening
Keep it short, ask about one specific thing they said, and avoid a preamble about your own views. A question about a source they cited is nearly always welcome and often produces the best part of the session.
A student interviewing a historian for a class or a career project
Send your questions ahead if you can, open with how they came to the field, and ask before you record. Six or seven questions fill half an hour, so choose a couple from each group that fits the assignment. Keep the last few minutes for the advice questions, then check the spelling of their name and their job title before you write it up.
Interviewing them for a piece
Ask what they would want quoted and what they would rather explain off the record, since historians are wary of being flattened into a headline. Ask early for the correct description of their specialism, and check spellings of names and places before you leave.
A relative or friend who happens to be a historian
Ask what they are reading and what they have been arguing about with colleagues. Avoid asking them to settle a political argument at the table, which is the fastest way to make an academic go quiet.
Follow-ups that keep it going
- How did you find that? Nearly always produces a story about an archive, a catalogue error, or a colleague's tip.
- What did that word mean at the time? Useful whenever a familiar term appears in an unfamiliar context.
- Who wrote this down, and for whom? The most reliable way to deepen any discussion of a source.
- What would change your view? A fair question that invites them to describe the missing evidence.
- What are you not going to have time to work on? Often produces the project they most want someone else to take up.