Communication and Events in History: Toward a Theory for Documenting the Past

While communication is a central factor in society, the creation and functions of documents of interest to archivists and historians have not been extensively studied. The author reviews several investigations of communication in history along with selected publications from other disciplines that address the nature of communication, especially writing as a social activity. He also delineates the elements of a document-level study of communication through presentation of a study of document functions derived from a set of letters in the Harvard University Archives. The author concludes with the presentation of a three-part classification of document-event relations, which is considered in regard to general areas of historical study.