> If one wants to get one's own position on whatever-it-is one must look at the primary sources for themselves You can't. The archive isn't available. The huge

> If one wants to get one's own position on whatever-it-is one must look at the primary sources for themselves You can't. The archive isn't available. The huge majority of materials are not digitized and the digitization process loses a huge amount of important content (e.g., marginalia, letter forms, even the location within the archive). Archivists won't let laypeople touch old documents because you'll destroy them if you aren't trained. I think there is a general lack of respect for the actual expertise that historians have when people suggest that laypeople just form their own opinions based on the primary sources. The various historians I know each know like six different languages and had to read 200-300 manuscripts for just their qualifying exams. A layperson won't even be able to read the primary sources even if they are in a language they know just by virtue of problems like handwriting. This ignorance of the field comes through in your criticism of the modern project focusing on subaltern voices. History is in dialogue with other history. A historian that engages in this sort of critical reevaluation isn't throwing out the other material but is instead speaking to it. I think you'll find that the historians that you criticize have way more respect for the work that you think they oppose than the typical layperson.