Untitled

The thinking skills historians use are required by the AP European History Exam. In order to do well on the exam, you will need to be proficient in this type of thinking.

The skills you will need to be proficient in applying are grouped into three basic categories.

The AP European History Curriculum identifies interrelated sets of "Historical Thinking Skills" and requires students to apply one or more of them in each section of the exam.

To understand how historians use these skills in creating a historical understanding of change over time, is your first task.

The intellectual skills employed by the historian can be described in many ways. The simplest and clearest way to think of them is to think of them as three interrelated thought processes.

The order in which events happened is called chronological. Reasoning based on the construction of an accurate Key Idea chronology can begin.

Historians want to explain change over time. One way to ponder cause and effect is to create a chronology of events. The Russian Army invaded East Prussia on August 17, 1914, the German Army on the Eastern Front launched an attack against Russian forces on August 23, and the war ended on August 30, 1918. Some cause-and-effect relationships suggest themselves because we know the logical order of the events. The change in command of the German forces on the Eastern Front and the German attack on Russian forces there occurred roughly a week after the Russian Army invaded East Prussia. It is impossible for the German decisions to have caused the Russian attack because they came a week after the attack.

In our example, it is the order in which the first two events occurred and the close proximity of the two events that make the possibility of a cause and-effect relationship between. It is possible that the first two events in our example caused the third, but the logical argument for a cause and effect relationship is weaker because of a lack of close proximity.

It is possible to show that a series of events happened in close proximity to one another. It is important to understand that correlation doesn't mean causation.

The use of evidence is part of the third set of skills identified by the AP European History Exam.

The student of history knows that significant events in history have many causes. In order to explain events, one looks for multiple causes.

If the historian discovers correspondence between high ranking German Army officials that supports the logical assertion that successful Russian incursions into East Prussia caused both a change in command for the Eastern Front and the decision to launch a counterattack, he or she still asks additional questions.

The historian knows that change is hard to come by.

The historian is sensitive to the persistence of certain forms of human activity. The historian has to ask about the forces that were strong enough to bring about change because of their sensitivity to the power of continuity.

The historian is reminded of the importance of continuity in the way in which people live and work because of sensitivity to the power and importance of continuity in the way in which people live and work. The historian is looking for the powerful forces that fostered those changes. Patterns of cause and effect are important to understand and connect the periods being cov ered in AP European History. The four periods covered in AP European History were dominated by the issues of what to believe in religion, what to do about the status of the individual and the mode of government.

The historian looks for patterns when trying to explain change. Asking basic questions, such as who, what, where, and when, can be used to detect some patterns.

Making comparisons is the next step. The historian compares the nature of changes in Britain to those in France and the east. The comparisons reveal both similarities and differences, which the his torian then explores, hoping to establish patterns of both change and continuity.

Historians understand that contingency can play a role in human events. If it is possible but not certain, understand the skills that will be tested. The student of his tory understands that all significant events in history are dependent on the actions of human beings. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 is one of the most significant events in the history of the French Revolution. The fortress in the heart of Paris was attacked by a crowd and the guards who defended it were killed. Historians want to explain the event because of powerful forces, such as the fear that the armies of Louis XIV would descend upon the city at any moment.

Historians know that the day could have gone very differently. The crowd believed that there were many prisoners and weapons inside the Bastille. They know that the crowd was wrong, and that the only prisoner in the Bastille was the Marquis de Sade, who was imprisoned for moral depravity, not political activity. The situation could have been avoided if the guards had abandoned the Bastille. The guards panicked and fired into the crowd. The guards' actions are the cause of the storming of the Bastille.

That means connecting that information to the events and processes occurring at the time and place in which the source of the information was produced.

In practice, contextualization is about asking additional questions about a given event or action in the past. The massacring of the inhabitants of two Irish towns in September and October 1649 is one of the most notorious episodes in the history of conflict between England and Ireland. Oliver Cromwell and his anti-Royalist army were sent to Ireland by the English Parliament to put down an anti-English rebellion that had been simmering there since 1641. Cromwell's army laid siege to the town of Drogheda between September 2 and September 11, 1649. Cromwell oversaw the killing of 4,000 people. These events have earned Cromwell a reputation for being impulsive and unintelligible.

Making such actions intelligible is the task of the historian. The historian has to put the events in their context or construct a context around the event by asking more questions. The answer is none. The Parliamentarians of the English Civil War viewed themselves as "Saints", whose mission was to purify the realm of false religions.

The Catholic Irish were viewed as heretics by Cromwell. If the governor of a town decided to resist, he knew that he was putting the inhabitants at risk of reprisal.

To make sense of Cromwell's actions, the historian uses the knowledge gained from asking and answering these questions. The Drogheda and Wexford massacres are no longer unintelligible after being put into context. Cromwell was not insane, but he was cruel and impulsive. He did not need to commit more massacres in Ireland in 1649. The governors of the other towns gave up without a fight.

The use of sources is an aspect of historical thinking that is important. Historians use all manner of artifacts that have come down to us from the times and places we wish to study to build their understanding of past events and processes. To gain an understanding of those sources and to use them later as part of an interpretive argument, the historian needs to put the sources in context. The process is similar. The historian begins by asking a number of questions about the sources, the sum of the answers to those questions makes up the context in which the sources must be interpreted.

In her account of the English Civil War, Diane Purkiss uncovered multiple primary sources offering testimony to the events that took place at Barthomley Church. The town of Barthomley was sympathetic to the Parliamentary side during the English Civil War. According to a source, the Royalist party encircled the church and about 20 people took refuge in the steeple. When the people wouldn't come out, the Royalists set fire to the church, stripped them naked, and killed them. One source claims that it was one of many such instances in the area.

Purkiss knows that corroborating reports have to be put in context, even though he has primary-sourced accounts that seem to corroborate each other. The newsbooks were written by sympathizers of the conflict.

Purkiss knows that newsbooks can't be counted on to be reliable accounts of what happened. It is easier to place an event in context if you have a visual or literary back-up. The Resource Guide at the end of the book contains both artistic and literary resources that will help you understand the historical picture.

The historian uses the process of putting sources in context to argue against evidence. A historian would be tempted to argue that there was proof that the Royalist troops at Barthomley had carried out an unprovoked massacre. There is a lot of evidence that shows that the newsbooks were Parliamentary propaganda.

The purpose of propa ganda was to create outrage at and hatred of the enemy. She knew that the propaganda was meant to play on the worst fears of its readers. Purkiss changed her question in order to learn from those sources. She concluded that it was reasonable to assume that the greatest fears of people in that region during the conflict were set fire to the church, stripped and abused, and murdered. She showed that the major themes of atrocity stories in a large number of Parliamentary newsbooks were mirrored by those fears.

An example of how one argues from evidence is presented here.

The Revolutions of 1848 had a lasting effect on European political culture.

The failure of the attempt to bring about liberal, democratic reform in continental Europe caused a large portion of the population to put their faith in conservative, rather than liberal, leaders.

You would need to support and illustrate the assertion you have made by presenting and explaining events that serve as specific examples of what you have said. In February of 1848, King Louis Philippe banned liberal reformers from holding public meetings, which led to massive street demonstrations in Paris. Louis Philippe was forced to abdicate and a new French republic was created. The Assembly of the new republic tried to create a constitution for the French Republic. The French Army regained control of Paris in June of the same year. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon, was elected to power in December. He staged a coup d'etat three years later.

In the first half of the 19th century, violence broke out in the major cities of the German kingdoms. Frederick William IV was forced to order the army out of the city in order to form a parliament. In the wake of that victory, liberal leaders from all over Germany formed the Frankfurt Assembly and promised to write a liberal, democratic constitution for a united Germany. Frederick William IV used military troops to break up the Assembly and reestablish conservative control in the cities in the second half of the 19th century. The troops faced little resistance when they moved back into Berlin in November. Frederick William IV and his conservative chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, were the ones who received popular support for German unification.

There are several steps you can take to do that. The knowledge and attitudes that evolve into skills are contributed to by each one.

This is important to understand context and chronology. The values of a given era are reflected in the meaning of words. They don't agree on either fact or opinion.

This may be done by drawing or writing something down.

Asking questions is a good way to develop guiding questions.

The guiding question of authorial purpose is what should be used to explain a historical event or movement.

Each chapter in this book begins with an overview or summary, followed by a list of key terms. The names of between 5 and 10 people are closely associated with each content area. Some chapters have more than one name. You have to become familiar with these people. Each of the four AP European eras has a different colored index card. Explain the role played, influence exerted, and legacies for each individual. Add the title of the work if the person is famous for writing. The same applies to works of art or music.

The vacuum needs to be broken. There is a history that does not exist in a vacuum. It is made up of events, literature, music, art, philosophy, religion, science, economics, demographic, human and physical geography. There are resources at the end of the book to help you round out your command of historical facts. Novels, plays, movies, the visual arts, and even YouTube videos are some of the resources. These can help you take a break from your textbook review, but they shouldn't replace it.