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<marikas@sas.ac.uk>
There is a very serious problem with depending on preserved
archival-- that is, paper sources. Written sources are also
often very biased-- can you imagine relying on police or even
Foreign or Colonial Office sources for some histories? In my
work uncovering aspects of the hidden history of Britain's Black
populations, there are often no written sources. This can be
because archivists discard material deemed to be unimportant at
the time--our government departments have done this. Sometimes
the available written material is catalogued in such a way that
material on Black peoples is omitted--again because they were
deemed of little importance when the cataloguing was done.
At least for modern history, I often have to rely on people's
memories--but one can at least cross check this--memory
certainly not being infallible--with other people who attended
the same meeting, etc. One also has to do one's 'homework', that
is, read up all you can on the background, to enable you to ask
questions based on this knowledge. Sometimes interviews lead one
to new written sources!
I am not at the ICS every day so please don't expect a prompt reply.
Marika Sherwood, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell
Square, London WC1B 5DS. tel: (0)171 862 8844; fax (0)171 862 8820.
PLEASE NOTE NEW TEL/FAX NUMBERS.
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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