A mildly diverting post at Crooked Timber today, on William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal, noting
the introduction where he extols the merits of archival research, as against the kind of “subaltern history” that pads out existing secondary sources with large dollops of theory…
Now, it’s not my field (and I recognise the rhetorical get-out-of-jail-free card in the words ‘the kind of’), but this resembles a not uncommon move amongst archive-based historians: what you might call the ‘my sources were harder than your sources’ gambit. (Think of Monty Python’s four Yorkshiremen sketch, but with historians.)
Points are awarded according to a number of factors, in particular:
a) the difficulties involved in getting to the archive;
b) the obstacles to getting into the archive;
c) the physical condition and accessibility of the documents;
d) the obscurity of the language or script of the documents;
e) the illegibility of the handwriting;
f) the monstrousness of the archivists;*
g) the discomfort levels of the environment, including the chairs, room temperature, lighting, etc;
h) the awfulness of the canteen food.
The higher your Archival Endurance Points score, the more rights you acquire to condescend to your printed-sources brethren, and to disdain Theory.
What are the equivalents in other disciplines? They must have their own pissing contests, surely?
…
*NB that I’m not suggesting archivists generally are monsters. But you don’t get AEPs for the nice ones.
