Getting Original and Critical with Research

As I read Tiff’s post yesterday, I had to laugh at my own reaction to it. She wrote:

“Britain was causing unrest amongst the American colonists due to what colonists termed ‘unfair taxes’; many colonists began seeking a better way of life separate from British rule; Britain tried maintaining a hold on their colonies while fighting against the French for greater control of this 'new world' land…”

My immediate reaction was to come to the defense of the British; after all, they were engaged in a war with France at a dear cost—in lives and in gold. They saw the New World as a source of new natural resources, which were, even in the 18th century, beginning to run low in the British Isles. They were losing young men by the scores and hundreds as younger sons made their way west across the Atlantic to make their fortunes—if they stayed in England, their choices were limited; and with the conflict with France escalating, most faced entering the army or navy (or being pressed into service) and being sent to war. I could go on about how those in England felt it was only right that the British subjects living in North America should also help support the war effort by funding it . . . but I think you see the point we’ve been trying to make this week.

Because most of my research has focused on the Regency/Napoleonic era of British history, I have been fascinated by how little “play” the War of 1812 got from the popular authors of the time in their stories and novels. My novel begins the summer of 1814, shortly after Boneparte’s abdication in April. Most of the Royal Navy has been recalled to England, the officers and sailors dismissed to civilian life. There is an air of celebration throughout the country—finally, after decades’ continual conflict with France, the war is over. As someone in the 21st Century, I know this peace is to be short-lived, but I have to remember that my characters had no prescience of Boneparte’s impending escape from Elba and the final culminating battle at Waterloo. (Again, getting myself into the headspace of my characters at the moment in time I have placed them.)

I have, unlike Jane Austen, brought the American war into my novel. In one conversation about the “other” conflict, my heroine remarks she is glad of the blockade of American ports—especially those in the Gulf of Mexico—as it has kept sugar from Louisiana from getting to market, lowering the supply when the demand was ever increasing and driving up the price, which benefits her family’s sugar plantation in Jamaica. And yet she can also sympathize with those sugar growers whose crops are rotting in the fields because they have no way to get their product to market, because of the fear of something like that happening to her.

So, how do we get into the mindset of our characters at a given time and cultural setting in history?

The absolute best way is to read books and periodicals published in that time and place (I know, this is hard to do the further back you go in history). For centuries, people kept diaries or journals, recording everything from how many eggs were gathered that day to important historical events. After the 15th or 16th Century, when printed materials started to proliferate, newspapers came into existence and more and more books were published. Although difficult to read, original source materials are the best resource for understanding the people of a historic era.

Another source to help us in understanding an era is to read literary criticism of the works published during our time periods. Academics who have studied the literature can offer insights to some of the tiny details we might miss because we do not have the cultural background to pick up on them. As an undergrad, I did quite a bit of critical work on Jane Austen’s novels, focusing mainly on the themes of wealth and social status. Most of my work was researching the historic context: what were the laws of inheritance, the value of the Pound, the meaning of being a landowner versus a merchant or even a barrister, why were men’s fortunes given in annual figures while women’s in total sums? While I did turn to a few history texts, most of my information came from critical essays about her novels which explained these topics using examples from the stories and making the concepts that much easier to understand.

Because there are not a lot of local resources in Nashville for British history, I do much of my research online. One of the tricks I’ve learned when doing a websearch is to include “.uk” in my search so that it brings up websites originating in Britian. That way, I am more likely to get sites written from the British perspective.

For even more information on places I’ve found source material for research, see the entry I posted in October 2006: Favorite PASTimes: Getting Creative with Research.

What are some of your favorite sources for research? Some of the most unique resources you've found?