How to comment a historical text

Texts are the main historical sources that we are going to use in class. It is important to read and understand them well because they are plenty of valuable information. Read carefully and underline key words or sentences that will help you writing your commentary. Here are the main guidelines to make the most of your work with them:

1/ INTRODUCTION AND CLASSIFICATION

Try not to start writing from the middle of the historical process or facts. Introduce what you are going to do and distribute your ideas properly. Remember, a good start can get the attention of your teacher in a positive way!

In this section you should mention the following points:

SOURCE: we have two options, PRIMARY OR SECONDARY,

o   PRIMARY SOURCE: What is a primary source? Primary sources are materials directly related to a topic by time or participation. These materials include letters, speeches, diaries, newspaper articles from the time, oral history interviews, documents, photographs, artefacts, or anything else that provides firsthand accounts about a person or event. For example, a newspaper article about D-Day (which was June 6, 1944) written in June 1944 was likely written by a participant or eyewitness and would be a primary source.

o   SECONDARY SOURCE: Secondary sources are works of synthesis and interpretation based upon primary sources and the work of other authors. They may take a variety of forms. The authors of secondary sources develop their interpretations and narratives of events based on primary sources. An article about D-Day written in June 2001 probably was not written by an eyewitness or participant and would not be a primary source, but a secondary one, like any extract from your text book.

THEME: It represents the nature of the text. There is a wide variety of themes, and you can even combine them.

o   DIFFERENT THEMES: The most common ones are Social or Political themes. We can also find Religious, Economical, Literary, Legal, and many others although they more difficult to find.

AUTHOR AND DATE: you can find this two features stated, so lucky you. But, if not, you can still know these facts by everything you have studied. For example, if you are reading some article of the Treaty of Utrecht, you should know it was written in 1713. And if the text talks about the separation of powers it may have been written by Montesquieu, right?

2/ ANALYSIS

Now you have to go across the document extracting the important issues you may find. Before heading to the ideas, give your text a historical frame and place it in the right moment in history. And now, the ideas:

MAIN IDEA: This is the message of the text. It may be written or not, it is the sentence which summarizes all the information.

SECONDARY IDEAS: find important information which complements the main idea. Follow the text structure and give some meaning to these ideas. They may be important for explaining what is going on in the next section.

3/ EXPLANATION – HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Here is where you prove that you have studied History. Here is where historical facts help us understand what the text says. In chronological order:

CAUSES – BEFORE: What has happened in history before this source that made it happen. In every unit you will be plenty of different causes for many facts, so be accurate.

CONSEQUENCES – AFTER: our source can be so important that can represent a big change in history. So, now is the moment in which we analyse everything our source leads to.

4/ CONCLUSIONS

In this section, we are going to close our commentary talking about the relevance of the analysed source, in two different moments:

IMPORTANCE THEN: What did these facts changed and how important were they in that moment in history.

IMPORTANCE FOR TODAY: Whatever we have seen in the text may still have importance now. Following the same example of the Treaty of Utrecht, Gibraltar is still British territory. Remember, we study history to explain why the things are like they are today.

AVOID

•           Repeating or copying exactly what is written in the text.
•           Going back hundreds of years in time looking for causes.
•           Explaining something you have studied only because you know that very well.