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To answer such questions, it might be helpful to begin with an outline of the essential components of Hilary Conroy’s method, or philosophy, of doing history.
We start with empiricism. Consider my father as a kind of modern-day Hume. He began a 1963 essay (never published) on some religious matters with the following: “David Hume, in his wonderful essay, laid miracles so low that scholarship has had little interest in them since.” This represents the main current of my father’s thinking processes: he lays overly bold claims to rest—occasionally religious, but mainly ideological—by looking up the evidence. This takes him to archives and documents. He has often described his professional work as principally “documentary history.” Moreover, his empiricism leads to an important offshoot: realism. Just as David Hume used caution not only in metaphysics but also in ethics and relied on experiential data like utility rather than on idealized moral principles, so Hilary Conroy often points out danger when government officials rely too much on idealistic political principles, such as patriotism, justice, and moral purity, instead of just admitting that they, like the officials of other lands, mainly are acting realistically. So in both epistemology and ethics, my father, then, starts out as a kind of Humean empiricist.
That said, I need to qualify that some other things tinge my father’s empiricism. In his case, the following three influence his thoughts and writings: