Going to the Source: When you have none.

Something really struck me in the article published by Victoria Brown of Grinnell college and Timothy Shannon of Gettysburg college was their discussion of the appropriate response to not having sources for what you want to right about.

In effect, Brown and Shannon claimed that a lack of evidence for the widespread and systematic use of bio warfare during the nineteenth century could be interpreted as corroborating evidence for this trend. Because of the limited knowledge of the people participating in the trend, and of the rather undocumented state of things on the American frontier during the nineteenth century suggests that even though people used bio warfare, they did not record it for whatever reason.

Now, I'm no expert on either the historical process, or on nineteenth century warfare, but it seems to me that relying on this type of inference skates the line between logical mental gymnastics and just plain shoddy history. Firstly, simply because you don't have the evidence to support a particular positions, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. If however, you spend a significant amount of time in the trenches and come back with nothing substantial, I think it might be in your best cards to reassess your topic. There are just some things (however unfortunate it is to admit that) that simply can't be studied properly because of a lack of evidence.

This is so because even if we assume that Brown and Shannon are correct in trusting the inference of the writer, the conclusion is virtually meaningless. The inference doesn't tell us anything about the context, or about the motivation or even about the events in question. If we infer that British did or did not use bio warfare through the conscious spread of small pox, it doesn't radically alter our understanding of the period in questions because it allows us no further evidence.

My opinion is that this inference is the historical equivalent to creationism/intelligent design. Even if we accepted these propositions at face value, they are useless to us as academics because they don't add to our knowledge and might even play a role in detracting from either what we know, or our motivation to know more.