In the last step, Andrea Kifyasi described the methods of a medical historian. He mentioned source criticism as a key component of a historian’s work.

If you are doing historical research, it is essential to critically situate texts, narrations or statements of any kind. You have to think about the context in which the source was produced – in other words, you must identify its historical background.

To do so, the following questions prove helpful:

• What? What text type (genre) is it? Is it a newspaper article, a scientific/academic text, a biography, a blog post, a policy paper, a legal document or an advertisement? Content: What are its main arguments?

• Who? Who is the author of the text and what do you know about this person? Who are the implied readers, to whom is the text addressed?

• When? At what time and in which historical context did this text come into existence? Which events were meaningful at the time and had an impact on the writing of the text?

• Where? Where was the text written? What is the relationship between the author and the place? Where were the addressees located?

• Why? Did the author of the text follow a particular aim when writing it? What was his/her intention?

Andrea Kifyasi has shared one of the sources he consulted in the Tanzania National Archives (TNA) (Dar es Salaam) with us. You will find a PDF of the source attached to this step. Please read it carefully, answer the questions above and write down your answers in the comment section below.

You will find our suggested answers in the next step.

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