ABSTRACT
What does a society allow and want as a history? Who decideswhat is a history and whether it is a popular or a learned one? In his Writing of History, Michel de Certeau discusses how historians as a professional collective classify certain objects as ‘documents’ and evidence, how they create archives, and how texts become sources. He points out that historians are the creation of their society, which allows them to operate as they do. Historical methods are the means of power by which historians as academics defend their intellectual turf. The origin, form, content and reception of historical books and articles are, in Certeau’s words, all a ‘collective fabrication’.1
