The Historian's Craft by Marc Bloch (1964) ( )

The historian's Craft is the prove of the awareness of man than ever before that they are living and making history

This is the last work of French historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch, unfinished at his capture and death at the hands of the Nazis in 1944. Written without access to his library, and consisting of about 2/3 of the book Bloch intended to write, the Historian's Craft is a personable essay on the practice of history. Bloch presents history as a science that, at its best, reveals truth in contexts -- not in the abstract rules characteristic of sociology and other soft sciences, and also not in the strings of concrete narrative details presented without interpretation by earlier writers. The essay loses its way in the middle with a meandering discussion of probability and coincidence, but offers insights into analysis of documents and the challenges of properly naming historically-bound institutions and concepts. Ultimately, this is an essay to enjoy for its lively turns of phrase and generous advice, rather than for a compelling conclusion or even a main theme. ( )

(notes written 1955)
Few of his points were entirely new to me, but he did put many of them extremely well, eg:
"In any study seeking the origins of a human activity, there lurks the same danger of confusing ancestry with explanation."
The demonstration that the problems of recording the past are no different in kind from those of recording the present.
"Historical research has gradually been led to place more and more confidence in the second category of evidence, the evidence of witnesses in spite of themselves."
Every historian should explain how he reaches his results. It won't be dull: it is the ready-made article that is dull.
The passage on how footnotes should be used - it is only honest to give references; but it is lazy to put the main argument in footnotes.
Dealing with forgeries: "By its very nature, one fraud begets another."
Though immediate causes of events are often uncertain, the fundamental causes are less likely to be so.
Two things may discredit documents: if they are suspiciously divergent or suspiciously similar.
In linguistics, probabilities are not generally upset by human factors: but this is not true of most of the disciplines allied to history.
Many of his examples also are excellent, especially in the section on criticism of evidence:
In villages, children are brought up chiefly by their grandparents. Hence the traditionalisation of peasant societies.
"The Company of Jesus does not permit the profane an access to its collections" [no further explanation given]
Mabillon's De Re Diplomatica, 1681, established criticism of documents.
A list of famous forgeries on p. 94: in late 18th-early 19th centuries, and in 8th to 12th centuries, reached epidemic proportions.
Account of Vrain-Lucas' forgery of documents proving Pascal anticipated Newton, with additional forgeries to meet each objection as it arose.
Errors do not take on life unless they harmonize with popular prejudices: eg clouds are still the same shapeas in the Middle Ages, but we no longer see magic swords in them.
The description of the spread of rumours in the trenches: monastic chronicles were built up on a similar network of oral transmissions.
The most restrained texts are not always the oldest: "The most fabulous of the Passions of St George is the first in date; taking up the old account afterward, the successive biographers have sacrificed, one after the other, those features whose unrestrained fantasy shocked them."
HC Lea noticed that when Templars from different houses were examined by one inquisitor their confessions took the same form; while Templars from the same house examined by different inquisitors confessed to different things.
The earliest known charter in French is of 1204.
Remarkable similarities between Jesuates of fourteenth century and Jesuits: if we did not know the facts to be true, we should suspect they must be two accounts of the same thing.
Condorcet on Middle Ages: "Europe, squeezed between sacerdotal tyranny and military despotism, waits amidst blood and tears for the moment when the new enlightenment will enable it to rise again to liberty, humanity, and virtue."