It isn’t unusual for a historian to look out onto the landscape of historiography on a particular issue and get the feeling that something is amiss. This can be the spark that sends them into the archives (or their existing notes from materials) and the start of a new research project. Or, they notice an unusual gap and—and this is important—believe that this gap hides something important and telling, and then embark on a study of it. These are perfectly normal ways into a new topic. I often see students make an equivalent move, a move that I did many times myself as a student: they begin with the big topic, the idea, or a potential argument and they then set off to find the sources that will determine if the idea or argument holds. If it doesn’t then you modify your idea accordingly.
However, students face one disadvantage in particular when they take this approach: they are often more restricted in the kinds of sources they can consult. This is sometimes due to the limits of their language abilities, or the limits of the resources of their libraries and its databases. And of course, in most circumstances, a student will not have the time or resources to travel to archives and spend time there.
This being the case, I often recommend that students begin with an alternative approach: to begin with interesting primary sources and explore them, keeping one’s eye open for what one finds unusual and out of place, or patterns that one finds revealing. Making a list of such things can become a list of candidates for a class essay or project (in cases when you are determining the topic one ones own). This approach, an “ideas from sources” as opposed to a “from ideas to sources” approach requires a significant up-front investment of time – time for browsing and for exploring through a haystack when one isn’t yet even looking for any particular needle, as the cliché goes. However, this can often pay out wonderful rewards, including less stress and less last-minute investment of time as one struggles to find evidence to support a particular argument.
In my modules on East and Southeast Asia, I include a list of primary sources that we have access to here at St Andrews, or on the open web. There are, of course, many more for those interested in other parts of the world, but they may give you an idea of how much is already at your fingertips: Primary Sources on East and Southeast Asia.
I completely agree that either ‘ideas to sources’ or ‘sources to ideas’ can be strongs ways to begin one’s historical homework on a given research topic. But I also think the better question to ask, even as an undergraduate might be, ‘what is the application’? Perhaps the answer is ‘training in the historical method’, or ‘publishing’, or ‘research grant’, or ‘educational work’, but this is a question I have been asking myself increasingly for the past year about my own interests. In this, I am reminded strongly of a friend who studied French Chinoiserie porcelain as a PhD student, but is now teaching primary school. The research was clearly in its own reward for her, but she has no way to apply it no, and no practical means to sustain it. I don’t think it’s too hard-nosed to ask any undergraduate this same question, given the amount of time and money being spent on their academic training. What is the end goal in one’s research, who can fund it, is it useful or engaging beyond simply being personally interesting; what is your elevator pitch for your own research or passion?