Document Analysis (Spring 2011)

World History Since 1500
Document Analysis

“Sources lie, but they’re all we have.” — Jonathan Dresner

The most fundamental part of doing history is reading primary, or original, sources and using them to understand what you are studying. The fundamental question in each assignment is: what questions does this document help me answer if I read it correctly?

You can’t trust documents. Not without other evidence. Just because it says something in a document doesn’t make it necessarily true. Use the textbook and other sources to check. To critically analyze a document requires that you pay attention to:

  • Context: what’s happening when and where this is written? Is this a response to something specific? Is it part of a broader historical or local issues?
  • Authorship: who the author is, their status or personal situation, and especially their relationship to the events described and possible biases. Is the author an ordinary or extraordinary person for their time and place?
  • Content: what the author says and how they say it, and what they are trying to accomplish. Important points and tone.
  • Response: who was the intended audience (or audiences) and how those audiences (might have) responded? How might other people – unintended audiences – respond? Was this taken seriously? What happened to the author? Some speculation may be required, but be clear about what evidence you have and what the foundation for your guesses is.
  • Historical Use: What’s interesting about this document, person, time? Does this document have a noticable effect on events? What questions does this evidence help to answer? Would historians have to watch out for biases or errors, and why?

The documents you’re reading this semester are mostly what are called “prescriptive” – attempts to define the way things should be rather than descriptions of events or opinions – texts, and so the questions need to be narrowed down a bit.

  • Context: what’s happening when and where this is written? Is this a response to something specific? Is it part of a broader historical or local issues?
  • Authorship: who the author is, their status or personal situation, and typicality. In the case of legal documents, authorship is often collective, institutional, so attention to the process by which the laws were created is important.
  • Content: what the document says and how it says it, and what it is trying to accomplish. Who benefits and who doesn’t? What are the important points and what tone does it take?
  • Response: who was the intended audience (or audiences) and how those audiences responded? How did other people – unintended audiences – respond? Was this taken seriously? What happened to the author? Some speculation may be required, but be clear about what evidence you have and what the foundation for your guesses is.
  • Historical Use: What’s interesting about this document, person, time? What questions does this evidence help to answer? Would historians have to watch out for biases or errors, and why? Since these are prescriptive rather than descriptive documents, the focus needs to be on the intent and beliefs of the author(s) rather than on using them as evidence of what happened. Does this document have a noticable effect on events?

For each document you will write a short answer (100-300 words) for each of the categories above – authorship, context, content, response, historical use – drawing on the document and the textbook. Don’t copy material: you need to be able to paraphrase – put it in your own words – basic information and you need to be able to put evidence from different sources together in a coherent argument.

Due 2/4 (F): Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq: “Turkish Letters”

Due 2/21 (M): “English Bill of Rights

Due 3/4 (F): Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, 1791

Due 3/18 (F): “Japan’s Meiji Constitution,” 1889

Due  5/1 (F): UN “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” 1948

Grading

When you make a claim about motives, responses, effects, etc., you should be able to show the evidence that supports your conclusions. It might be a passage from the reading, a page from the textbook, or something you already knew from high school, but you have to show your reader how you got from the document to the conclusion. As a corrollary, if you’re going to use textbook material, paraphrase it — put it in your own words — instead of copying (which is plagiarism).

The point of asking these questions is to come to some conclusion which is supported by the evidence. The grade will be based primarily on the completeness of the basic answers (authorship, context, content) and the quality of the historical arguments that you make – use of evidence, thoughtfulness — in the more complex sections (response, historical use).

Specifics

  • No Title Page. Include your name, the course and section, and the assignment at the top.
  • Mark each section with the appropriate label — authorship, context, content, response, historical use – and keep the answers in the 100-300 word range.
  • Double-spacing is not required or recommended. Reasonable font, however, is: something standard and readable and a nice size. Normal margins are also a must: 1-1.5 inches.
  • Don’t try to make the paper look longer or shorter by playing with font and margins.
  • Spellcheck and grammarcheck your work. Don’t assume the computer is right, however: read it over yourself (reading out loud often helps). I don’t take off points for grammatical or spelling errors unless they are so numerous as to distract from the message of the paper. That doesn’t mean that I enjoy reading papers with errors, or that I won’t mark them when I notice them.

Plagiarism and citations

Plagiarism is the use of the words or ideas of another without proper attribution and will not be tolerated. For details see the plagiarism page on the website, or ask. If you cite material from the textbook, you only need to note page number; for outside sources you must include bibliographic information, either in a note or in a works cited section. You shouldn’t need outside sources to answer these questions, however, and using outside sources instead of course materials will result in penalties. The emphasis is on learning to read and use the primary sources assigned.