Sources

Sources matter to historians. This statement may appear banal and self-evident, but it is only when we examine what historians do and how they do it – particularly the intricate, often dense and unique system of footnoting,1 or the collection of documents that are published in multi-volume editions,2 or if we compare historians with other allied fields – that the emphasis on sources become apparent. A comparison between two sport sociology and sports history books aimed to acculturate young scholars into their respective fields makes the point. Grant Jarvie and Joseph Maguire’s Sport and Leisure in Social Thought (1994), written for aspiring sport sociologists, concentrates on the relationship of different forms of social theory – feminist, figurational, functionalist, globalization, hegemonic, Marxist, modernist and postmodernist – to sport studies.3 Alternatively, Martin Polley’s Sports History: A Practical Guide (2007), targeted toward undergraduate and postgraduate history students, has very little on theory but devotes three of its eight chapters to sources.4 The fact that over one-third of Polley’s book is devoted to the variety of sources, the ways in which sources are used by historians as well as their strengths and weaknesses, rather than some other facet of the production of history, indicates the perceived importance given to this part of the history-making process. This situation raises a number of issues. Why is there so much emphasis on sources in sports history? Given this interest, what are the popular sources and how do sports historians use the evidence derived to create their histories? What are the epistemological and ontological bases for the types of sources preferred and their usage by sports historians? What are the challenges to the philosophical premises that underpin the use of sources by sports historians raised by the aesthetic, literary or cultural turns? Finally, what have been the responses from sports historians to changing perceptions of the types and roles of sources used in the production of history, and what new directions are possible? In the course of this chapter we will sketch some brief responses to these questions. Before these questions are answered, it is necessary to qualify what is meant by several

key and related terms: sources, evidence and facts. Sources constitute the full range of materials from which historians might draw their understanding and ‘encompass every kind of evidence which human beings have left of their past activities – the written word and the spoken word, the shape of the landscape and the material artefact, the fine arts as well as photography and film’.5 They are metaphoric quarries, forests and oceans, in which historians speak of ‘mining’ for evidence, ‘gathering facts like nuts and berries’, and casting nets.6 Sources are usually categorized as either primary or secondary, with the former meaning those materials created close to or at the time in question. Primary sources are those ‘with a direct link, in time and place, to the person, event, situation or culture under study’.7 They contrast with secondary sources, which are those that

‘provide commentary on, or interpretations of, past events’.8 The distinction between the two categories sometimes blurs or, as we will demonstrate, collapses as historians are influenced by other disciplines.9