Topic 1 of 6 · Form 5
Historical skills: sources, interpretations and essays
Provenance (author, date, purpose, audience), content, tone and context; comparing sources (agreement and disagreement, with reasons); evaluating reliability and utility; using sources to test a hypothesis.
Notes for this topic 1 file, in order
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Source analysis
Provenance (author, date, purpose, audience), content, tone and context; comparing sources (agreement and disagreement, with reasons); evaluating reliability and utility; using sources to test a hypothesis.
Historical interpretations
How and why historians disagree (different evidence, approaches, contexts); schools of thought (e.g. orthodox, revisionist and post-revisionist interpretations of the Cold War); evaluating interpretations against knowledge.
Essay writing
Analyse the question; form a clear argument; organise paragraphs around factors or themes; support with precise evidence; evaluate the relative importance of factors; reach a substantiated judgement.
Worked example: Plan for "How far was the Treaty of Versailles responsible for the Second World War?"
Introduction (judgement); Versailles grievances; Hitler's aims; appeasement; failure of the League; Depression; conclusion weighing long- and short-term causes.
Check yourself
- What is provenance?
- Why do historians disagree?
- What does "substantiated judgement" mean?
Show answers
- The origin of a source – who produced it, when, why and for whom.
- They use different evidence, ask different questions and are influenced by their own contexts and approaches.
- A conclusion supported by evidence and reasoning.
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