A Comprehensive Study of Historical Sources in Medieval and Early Modern Britain : From Analysis of Historical Sources to Interpretation of History

该项目旨在全面分析中世纪和近代英国的各种史料，并通过对史料的解释来重建英国历史。历史资料暂时按以下方式划分。首先，它们按性质分为：政府和行政文件、庄园记录、宪章、叙述来源和私人文件。其次，根据出具主体的不同分为：关于王室司法的文件、关于宪法和法官的文件、关于宫廷的文件、关于国家财政的文件、关于地主家庭的文件和士绅的文件。每个调查者都收集了他或她负责处理的每一个历史来源的信息，并尽可能地查阅手稿。他们在每年举行两次的大会上报告了他们的情况。在大会上，人们从形式、模式、功能和传承方式等方面对各种史料进行了比较。通过这种方式，所有调查人员都可以拥有关于历史来源的各种共同信息。在该项目期间，每年有三名调查人员访问英国，以收集史料并与英国学者讨论，或阅读有关史料的论文。

This project has aimed at analyzing comprehensively various historical sources in medieval and early modern Britain and at reconstructing the British history through interpretation of historical sources. Historical sources are tentatively divided in the following way. In the first place, they are divided by their nature : governmental and administrative documents, manorial records, charters, narrative sources and private documents. Secondly they are divided by the subject by whom they were issued : documents concerning royal justice, constitutions and assizes, documents concerning royal court, documents concerning state finance, documents concerning seigniorial household and gentry's documents.Each investigator has collected every information about historical sources which he or she were responsible to deal with and tried to consult manuscripts as far as possible. They have reported about them at general meetings which were held twice a year. At general meetings each historical sources were compared from the viewpoint of their forms, patterns, functions and the way they have been handed down. In this way, all investigators could have various informations about historical sources in common. During the term of the project, three investigators visited Britain every year in order to collect historical materials and discuss about them with British scholars or read a paper upon them.