ASU HST 104 Master Document List
The following is a single file that includes most all directions and critically important files for
HST 104: assignment directions, guidelines, and grading, extra credit information, and test and
quiz review sheets. While it is recommended that these documents be printed, particularly
assignment directions and guidelines, this file allows for quick reference. Please use the
following table of contents to quickly navigate the document.
1
Table of Contents
Assignment Directions and Formatting .......................................................................................... 3
Paper Guidelines ......................................................................................................................... 4
Standards Essay .......................................................................................................................... 5
Source Analysis Assignment: For Unit #____ ........................................................................... 6
Quiz Directions: .......................................................................................................................... 7
Exam Directions.......................................................................................................................... 9
Formal Paper Project................................................................................................................. 10
Unit Discussions (Optional).......................................................................................................... 14
Unit 1 Discussion Questions:.................................................................................................... 15
Unit 2 Discussion Questions:.................................................................................................... 34
Unit 3 Discussion Questions:.................................................................................................... 52
Unit 4 Discussion Questions:.................................................................................................... 53
Unit 5 Discussion Questions:.................................................................................................... 69
Research, Sources, and Citing ...................................................................................................... 89
Finding Sources and Other Resources for Projects: ................................................................. 90
Research Questions................................................................................................................... 91
Research question example and thinking:................................................................................. 93
How to use your research question: .......................................................................................... 94
Academic Sources and Citations .............................................................................................. 95
Correcting citation errors: ..................................................................................................... 97
Writing Seminar Articles ........................................................................................................ 100
Grading and Rubrics ................................................................................................................... 106
How to read and interpret instructor feedback:....................................................................... 107
Grading Symbols, Phrases, & Short hand: (What they mean)............................................... 108
Grade Reactions FAQ:............................................................................................................ 109
General Writing Rubric: ......................................................................................................... 112
Extra Credit Assignments and Rubrics ....................................................................................... 117
Extra Credit Opportunities...................................................................................................... 118
Paper Presentation................................................................................................................... 119
Presentation Rubric................................................................................................................. 120
Formal Paper Extra Credit: Annotated Bibliography ............................................................. 121
Study Guides............................................................................................................................... 122
Quiz Study Guides: ................................................................................................................. 123
Study Guide: Quiz 1............................................................................................................ 123
Study Guide: Quiz 2............................................................................................................ 127
Study Guide: Quiz 3............................................................................................................ 132
Study Guide: Quiz 4............................................................................................................ 136
Study Guide: Quiz 5............................................................................................................ 140
Exam Study Guides: ............................................................................................................... 145
Study Guide: Exam 1 .......................................................................................................... 145
Study Guide: Exam 2 .......................................................................................................... 146
Example Papers........................................................................................................................... 147
Standards Essay Examples...................................................................................................... 149
Formal Paper Examples .......................................................................................................... 161
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Assignment Directions and Formatting
3
Paper Guidelines
All essay assignments, including exams, must adhere to the following guidelines:
1. Assignment must be an original work (i.e. no plagiarism). To avoid accusations of
plagiarism, please fully and correctly cite every sentence that used source information
2. Assignment must be turned in by the designated due date
3. Assignment cannot use first or second person (I, we, us, you, etc)
4. All sources must be academic primary or secondary sources, no wikipedia, dictionaries, or
encyclopedias, etc. Do not use anonymous secondary sources.
5. Assignment must be typed, 12pt Times New Roman font
6. Assignment must be double spaced (except the heading), with no additional spacing after or
before paragraphs
7. Assignment must have 1 inch margins on all sides (do not use headers)
8. Assignment cannot use contractions, slang, text-message abbreviations, or emojis
9. Assignment must follow MLA parenthetical (author & pg #) OR Chicago NotesBibliography citation conventions; do NOT use APA (author & date)
10. Assignment must have a properly formatted MLA Works Cited page (or Chicago Style
Bibliography)
11. All internet based sources must include a working URL (not DOIs) in the works cited entry
12. No block quotations and no quotations that exceed 30 words
13. Assignment must have a heading with the following format: student’s name, class name,
assignment, and the meeting day and start time in the top right corner of the first page,
single-spaced. Not in the header. Example:
John Smith
History 100
Assignment
Tu/Th 5:45
Failure to follow these guidelines may result in loss of credit for the assignment, return of
assignment un-graded, or a grade of 0 for the assignment (at instructor's discretion). If you have
any questions regarding these requirements please contact your instructor immediately.
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Standards Essay
Purpose of Assignment: The primary goal of the Standards Essay is to provide a framework and
guideline for the writing in this class while at the same time allowing for some investigation of
important historiographical issues. As historiography is basically the history of the discipline of
history, including writing, method, perspectives, style, and even historians themselves, looking
these topics will both widen student understanding of history as an academic discipline as well as
student interpretations the past. However, as these topics can be complex and difficult to discuss
without prior knowledge, the Standards Essay allow students to formulate some idea of the topic
before entering the in class discussion that will occur on the essay's due date. By having each
student arrive to class with a prepared idea, discussion will be varied, fostering competing views,
ideas, and, hopefully, debate. More importantly, the Standards Essay allows for a low point
evaluation of students' writing abilities. This gives students a low risk way to learn the grading
and writing expectations for the course early on. Furthermore, an early essay such as this will
provide students with feedback before tackling larger writing projects.
Directions for Assignment: Using the prompt provided after the "Required Prompt" title, write
300 to 400 word argument responding to the prompt. Make sure to cite at least one academic
source in the argument. If you are unsure if a source is academic or not, please refer to the
“Academic Sources and Citations” guide in the Master Document List. All essays must follow
the “Paper Guidelines” found in the Master Document List. Standards Essays will be graded
using the general writing rubric, found in the Master Document List. It is highly recommended
that students print these resources as they will be used throughout the course as the foundation of
grading and writing. Finally, three essay prompts are listed as extra credit and are NOT required
to complete the course. These prompts act as additional "Standards Essays" that allow students to
test their compliance with course writing requirements without point risk. These extra credit
essays need to follow the above directions and can be turned in anytime before the end of the
course, though they must be properly labeled. Each of the extra credit essays are worth up to
10pts of extra credit each.
Required Prompt: How does one “do” history?
Extra Credit Standards Essays (up to 10pts each):
1. How should history interpret mass society, such as the working classes, women,
children, etc, that are normally “left out” of historical narratives?
2. Should history and historians morally judge past events, such as the nuclear bombing
of Japan? Defend your response.
3. Why does modern society still need history, historians, and historical research?
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Source Analysis Assignment: For Unit #____
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to allow students to become familiar with the idea
of interpreting and analyzing source materials, which is a crucial aspect of all historical study.
Directions: Select a source for the current corresponding unit from those provided in the course
Source Book found on Canvas and use it to answer the questions below. If more space is
required, please use the back of this sheet, numbering responses accordingly.
Resolution on imperialism and colonialism (1958)
1. Name of the chosen source (2pts)? ______________________________________________
2. What type of source is it (circle one, 3pts):
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
3. If known, who is the author/creator of this source (not the editor or translator); if unknown
The author/creator of this source is unknown and this is bad as a source should have a
explain why this is bad (3pts).___________________________________________________
author or creator as to who exactly made the source for readers to know and give proper
citation to.
4. Explain why the source is, or is not, an academic source (3pts)._________________________
This
source is an academic source because it was referred to other college/universities websites as well as other resources,
_____________________________________________________________________________
also it was not peer reviewed.
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
5. What is the bias of this source (provide examples to defend your response (3pts)?__________
The
bias of this source is African people and colonialists and some examples of this are in the source it states on number 4,
______________________________________________________________________________
"Whereas all African peoples everywhere strongly deplore the economic exploitation of African peoples by imperialist countries thus
______________________________________________________________________________
reducing Africans to poverty in the midst of plenty." Another example to backup the bias of this source is on number 1 it states,
______________________________________________________________________________
"That
the All-African People's Conference vehemently condemns colonialism and imperialism in whatever shape or form these evils
are perpetuated."
6. How does the source support the unit as a whole? (Use specific examples)? (6pts)___________
______________________________________________________________________________
This
source supports the unit as a whole as it helps provide backup information and more exploitation to
colonialism
and what was happening behind the scenes and the rules and policy of colonialists. Also, this source
______________________________________________________________________________
also
supports
the unit as a whole to explain further on the situation of colonialists and imperialism and how that
______________________________________________________________________________
affected colonies. some examples of this are in the document it states, "Whereas the great bulk of the African
______________________________________________________________________________
continent has been carved out arbitrarily to the detriment of the indigenous African peoples by European
______________________________________________________________________________
Imperialists,
namely: Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Portugal." lastly, another example to provide
______________________________________________________________________________
backup
for my answer is that in the source it also states, ") Whereas fundamental human rights, freedom of
speech,
freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom of worship, freedom to live a full and abundant
______________________________________________________________________________
life,
as
approved
by the All African People's Conference on 13th December, 1958, are denied to Africans through
______________________________________________________________________________
the
activities
of
imperialists."
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
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Quiz Directions:
Purpose and Explanation: A test or quiz is essentially a tool used by instructors to gauge
whether or not a student has gained and understood the necessary content of whatever is being
tested or quizzed. As such, tests and quizzes should generally not seek to surprise or intimidate
students, which would make tests more of a punishment than an academic tool. Educational
theory describes knowledge and comprehension as two of the lower forms of learning, meaning
that these are considered the easiest level at which a student can learn and grasp new materials.
This does not necessarily mean that knowledge based questions are easy; rather, it means that
they are easier to answer and study for since knowledge and comprehension questions usually
focus on providing an answer to a basic fact-based question.
The questions in the quiz study guides all fall into the knowledge and comprehension
category, with each question having a specific, often clearly factual, answer. Some of these
questions will appear on the quiz; however, not all questions will appear. Each quiz will use the
study guide as a question bank, which will be used to randomly create a quiz for each student
when the quiz is initiated. Quizzes can be retaken multiple times until the quiz closes on the due
date and time. Starting the quiz over or taking it again will create a new random set of questions
from the study guide. Thus, the best way to prepare for the quiz is to answer all of the questions
in the study guide first, using the unit readings.
Generally speaking, the course readings will contain the majority of the answers, with
some coming directly from the text in a word-for-word fashion. The quiz will consist of these
questions, with some only slightly reworded to fit the format of the quiz itself, which will use
"Multiple Choice" questions. In some cases, students will need to connect or extrapolate an
answer, but these are rare.
Directions: Unit quizzes will be due on the date listed in the syllabus and via the online learning
system. However, students should start working on the study guides as soon as possible.
Remember, there will be extensive readings; do not fall behind. The quizzes are formatted and
design so that completing the study guide is the simplest and fastest way to succeed on the quiz.
Quizzes can be taken multiple times before the due date, with the quiz always retaining the
highest score. However, each new quiz attempt will pull a new set of random questions from the
question bank. Also, each question can have more than one answer selected. Students may select
1, 2, 3, or 4 answers. In other cases, the correct choice may be to select "None of the answers
listed." Guessing and Googling questions often takes far more time than simply completing the
study guide, but approach the quiz however you prefer. Remember, you are able to take it
multiple times and the quiz will always keep the highest score - so there is no penalty for trying
many times. Just make sure the quiz is complete before the due date.
Quizzes are timed, just to reinforce the idea that one should do the study guide first,
rather then hunt for answers during the quiz itself. If you keep running out of time, then complete
the study guide and make sure to write page numbers from the textbook next to your answers for
faster reference during the quiz.
Completing the study guide is the surest way to know all the answers. Despite this,
students are free to complete the quiz in any fashion they see fit, as long as it is completed before
the due date. Students may attempt to Google answers (not advised), take the quiz multiple times
to improve the score, use the textbook during the quiz, guess at correct answers across repeated
quiz attempts, record answers, take pictures, or whatever method they find desirable. Using the
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book is the most recommended method. Develop a strategy for the quizzes and implement it.
Developing such learning techniques on your own is a crucial online learning tool and a
necessary skill in collegiate education.
For further explanation of the quizzes, how they work, and some tips, see this video:
https://youtu.be/gSP_jntO4ig
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Exam Directions
Exams will be two short, argumentative essays. Exams will be posted several days to one week
before the due date listed in the syllabus.
Purpose (part 1 and part 2):
Exam Section 1 (analysis and evaluation): Like knowledge and comprehension,
analysis and evaluation are part of a hierarchy of learning. Educational theorists place both
analysis and evaluation at the higher levels of this learning ladder. This is mainly because both of
these concepts require more thought and a greater understanding of the content of a topic than
fact-based questions (as seen in the quizzes). Indeed, these types of questions or prompts require
knowledge and a reasonable argument. As such, the best way to represent analysis and
evaluation is through writing, which allows students to demonstrate these skills.
Exam Section 2 (synthesis): Similar to analysis and evaluation, synthesis is a high level
of learning that requires writing to accurately express. However, instead of merely taking a
stance on a predetermined idea, synthesis-based questions require students to develop their own
stance and use argumentation and their knowledge to defend this position. Thus, synthesis styled
questions can be seen as the ultimate demonstration of subject knowledge, as they force an
individual to have enough knowledge on a topic to develop an independent stance and then
support that position with relevant information. In many cases, a student's response can even
reject the original premise of the question, though doing this can significantly increases the
difficulty of the question and also run the risk of alienating the reader. Still, it is the added step of
self-expression and independence of choosing one's own position that makes synthesis questions
the best way to judge a student’s complete comprehension of a topic or piece of content.
Directions (section 1 and section 2):
Exam Section1 (analysis and evaluation): From the six prompts listed in Section 1 of
an exam study guide, two prompts will be randomly selected for the exam. Students will then
select ONE prompt, to either DEFEND or REFUTE what the prompt says, using some form of
fact-based, historical knowledge to support the position selected. It is highly recommended that
students take a firm stance either supporting or refuting the prompt. Taking a stance that can be
interpreted as neutral will be seen as NOT following the directions for the exam and will be
accompanied by a deduction in the essay's score. Student will need to cite at least one academic
source (like the class textbook) when completing Section 1. Additional academic and credible
sources may be used. All sources used must be fully and correctly cited. The exams essays must
follow the paper guidelines and will be graded with the general writing rubric.
Exam Section 2 (synthesis): From the eight questions listed in Section 2 of an exam
study guide, three questions will be randomly selected for the exam. Students will then select
ONE question, writing a thesis-driven essay to answer the selected question. Student must cite at
least one academic source and follow the paper guidelines when writing this essay. Students
should also take particular care to make sure the thesis of the essay is clear and answers the
question directly. "How" questions tend to seek methodologies and processes, while "why"
questions tend to want a thesis that gives justification or causal analysis. Finally, it is important
to remember that a thesis should NOT merely repeat question as a statement, as this is not an
answer to the question.
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Formal Paper Project
Purpose: The primary goal of this assignment is to allow student to expand their knowledge of
the historical research process and the content of the current course. Chiefly, it is important that
student realize the impact of historical events or persons beyond the specific concept covered in
class lectures and the assigned readings. However, as the staggering breadth of information about
almost any historical event might overwhelm a beginning research project, this assignment seeks
to focus students onto particular, pre-selected topics (see topic lists). These topics will only
represent starting criteria for the research project, from which students will develop a research
question to guide their investigations of the topic.
Directions: Students will select a topic in class from the list below, which will serve as the
starting point for their research paper. Using this topic, students will develop a research question,
which they will seek to answer in a 3 to 5 page argumentative essay (for more information on
creating a research question, see “Research Questions” in the Master Document List). This essay
will require a minimum of 4 academic sources. At least two of these must be primary sources
and ALL of the sources used for the assignment must be non-internet sources (books, journal
articles, etc). The course textbook may be used, but it is not considered a primary source. If you
are unsure if a source is academic or not, please refer to the “Academic Sources and Citations”
guide in the Master Document List. If you are unsure if a source is primary or secondary, please
verify the source with your professor. All papers must follow the “Paper Guidelines” found in
the Master Document List. Essays will be graded using the general writing rubric, found in the
Master Document List. It is highly recommended that you print these resources as they will be
used throughout the course as the foundation of grading and writing.
Throughout the course of preparing and writing the Formal Paper, students will have a set
of deadlines for project components. Each of these "component deadlines" will see students
turning a portion of the Formal Paper project. While the project is worth 200 points and is
entered into the grade book as one grade, the final draft of the paper is only worth 130 points,
with the remaining 70 points being divided among several components of the paper, to be turned
in before the final draft. The following is a break down of the projects components:
Research question
Rough draft
Formal Paper Checklist
Formal Paper final draft
15 points
50 points
5 points
130 points
Due: ________________
Due: ________________
Due: ________________
Due: ________________
Due dates for each of the above components can be found in the course syllabus. These
assignments must be turned in on time. The Formal Paper checklist can be found on the
following page. Please use it to ensure that the paper's final draft meets all minimum
requirements for the assignment. The completed checklist should be stapled on the back of the
Final Draft and the checklist will not gain any point if any items on the list are not followed.
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Formal Paper Final Draft Check List
Check each of the following as they are verified:
€ Paper is 3 (entirely full pages) to 5 pages long
€ Paper has a properly formatted (MLA) works cited page with a minimum of 4 academic
sources, two of which are primary sources
€ Every source used is a "non-internet" sources (books, journal articles, etc)
€ Paper's introduction contains the research question in some form and clear thesis that
answers the research question
€ Paper supports the thesis throughout the body paragraphs, providing detailed, source
driven arguments
€ Paper properly cites ALL materials take from sources, whether it was a quotation,
summary, or just an idea (not doing so may result in a grade of 0 for plagiarism)
€ Paper follows all the requirements laid out in the Paper Guidelines found in the Master
Document List
€ Paper has been proofread for general errors in mechanics
€ I fully considered the extra credit opportunities outlined below
Extra Credit Opportunity: The Formal Paper Project also provides numerous chances at extra
credit. Researching for the sake of personal curiosity is well and good; however, within academic
disciplines, research should also reflect a need to inform a larger audience. Therefore, before
turning in the final draft of the Formal Paper, students may opt to perform a short “paper
presentation” for up to 10 additional extra credit points. This presentation does NOT replace the
need to turn in a final draft or refute any of the directions stated above. Details for the paper
presentation can be found in the “Extra Credit” section in the Master Document List. Paper
presentations are NOT required, but are highly encouraged. Finally, details for further, and
different, extra credit can be found in the "Annotated Bibliography" section in the Master
Document List.
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Topic List: The topics below are all pre-approved. One student per topic. If you are interested in
a topic that is not listed, please discuss it with your instructor to have the topic approved. The
topics under each section are confined to those timeframes. For example, if the topic "women"
was under the section "Renaissance" then the student must examine women in the timeframe of
the Renaissance.
Topic List 1: Imperialism/Unifications
Australia & New Zealand
Commonwealths
Berlin Conference
Boxer Rebellion
British & Sati
British East Indian Company
Communist Manifesto
Congress of Vienna
Crimean War
Giuseppe Garibaldi & Italy
Impressionist Art
Indian National Congress
Karl Marx
Mathew Perry & Japan
Meiji Restoration
Napoleon III
Opium Wars
Otto von Bismark
Queen Victoria
Quintuple Alliance
Raj (British Rule)
Revolutions of 1848
Romanticism
Sepoy Rebellion
Shaka Zulu
Sino-Japanese War
Social Darwinism
Suez Canal
Theory of Evolution
Unification of Germany
Unification of Italy
White Man’s Burden & Rudyard Kipling
Wilhelm I and Germany
Topic List 2: WWI & Russian Revolution
Balkan Wars
Battle of the Somme
Bolshevik Revolution
British Conscription: Kitchener's Army
Death of Tsar Nicholas II & Family
Dough Boys: U.S. Soldiers
Entangling Alliances
Gallipoli Campaign
German Manufacturing (eve of WWI)
Habsburg Imperial Family
League of Nations
Manfred von Richthofen: Red Baron
Militarism
Modernization of Russia
Nietzsche
Postimpressionist Art
Post-War Lit.: All Quit on the Western Front
Post-War Lit.: The Lord of the Rings
Russian Civil War: Red Army
Russian Civil War: White Army
Russo-Japanese War
Schlieffen Plan
Sigmund Freud
Suffrage & Women’s Vote
The Black Hand
Trench Warfare
U-Boats & Unrestricted Warfare
War Propaganda
Woodrow Wilson
Zimmerman Telegram
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Topic List 3: WWII
Adolf Hitler
Auschwitz/Treblinka
Battle of Stalingrad
Battle of the Bulge
Buchenwald
Capture of Berlin
Codes: Enigma machine
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Einsatzgruppen
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
French Resistance to Occupation
General George S. Patton
General Irwin Rommel (Desert Fox)
Germany’s Pre-war Economy
Inflation in Germany pre-WWII
Invasions of Normandy & D-Day
Jospeh Stalin
Kristallnacht
London Blitz
Maginot Line
Mussolini
Nuclear Bomb in use
Nuremburg Trials
Operation Barbarossa
Pearl Harbor Attack
Schutzstaffel (Nazi SS)
Soviet Pogroms
Tanks in WWII
Treaty of Versailles' role in WWII
U-boats
Use of Aircraft Carriers on Pacific Front
Winston Churchill
Topic List 4: Cold War
Berlin Airlift
Berlin Wall
Communist Revolution in China
Communist Revolution in Cuba
Concept of the "Third World"
Formation of NATO
Formation of the European Union
Formation of United Nations
France & Vietnam
Ho Chi Mihn
Hydrogen Bomb & Neutron Bomb
Kashmir (India vs. Pakistan)
Korean War
Mahatma Gandhi
Mao Tse Tung
Marshal Plan
Mutually Assured Destruction
Republic of China
Space Race Soviet Union
Space Race U.S.
Terrorism in Europe (20th-21st century)
The Nuclear Triad (Subs, Bombers, ICBMs)
Vietnam War (U.S.)
Warsaw Pact
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Unit Discussions (Optional)
Purpose: Some history courses benefit from the fact that the scope and timeframe of study is
highly reduced when compared to western civilizations or world history courses. However, even
broadly scoped courses can have moments of deep introspection. Such moments require a
slightly different approach than mere lecture. It can become very difficult to fully comprehend
historical nuances of a particular era or timeframe. Missing such connections can produce a
narrowed or flawed view of the past and different civilizations. It can therefore be helpful to
analyze the nuances of a civilization, time period, or region with some specific textual or source
examples. Discussions are a good method that accomplishes all of these facets at once; however,
it requires students to gain a set of basic knowledge before the actual analysis can take place. In
this context, the course will use a series of unit discussions, each of which seeks to help students
connect events in a deeper and more meaningful way. These discussions will require students to
read additional materials. A copy of all materials used in the discussions can be found below (see
table of contents for page numbers). This material can also be used on exams, though it must be
cited. Guiding and discussion questions for each discussion are also provided below as well, so
that you will have an idea of what is expected while completing the material. All materials
include a footnote citation linking to original sources if possible.
Directions: Student will be assigned readings to review prior to the discussion. Discussions will
take place in class at the date listed in the syllabus (during class hours). Discussions will use the
questions provided below as a starting point, then grow from there, with the instructor asking
further questions and guiding the discussion as needed. The instructor reserves the right to
"ostracize" a particular student from the discussion. This is not a reprimand; instead, this process
is designed to prevent one student or a small group from dominating the discussion. These are
not graded discussions, though completion and participation is highly recommended, as they
will help students understand course content in a more fluid and dynamic manner. Student who
do not wish to participate will be allowed to leave class early, while any students that remain
must participate in the discussion (you cannot “lurk” and not participate, those who stay MUST
respond to the questions and others).
How to cite discussion readings: To cite the sources, replace the “#” sign in the title with the
discussion materials you wish to cite and replace the “pg# of the Master Document List” with the
correct page number in the document.
Parenthetical:
(“Discussion # Readings” pg# of Master Document List)
Example: (“Discussion 1 Readings” 17)
Works Cited:
“Discussion # Readings.” Master Document List: ASU HST ***, 2023.
Example: “Discussion 5 Readings.” Master Document List: ASU HST ***, 2023.
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Unit 1 Discussion Questions:
Directions: Using the materials below, be able to answer the following questions before the last
day of the unit. Questions will be discussed the same day the unit’s Source Analysis is due.
Please make sure you are prepared.
Questions:
1. What unified the post-Revolutionary quest for historic identity and the Revolutionary
attempt to co-opt singing?
2. Why is revolution an inescapable part of French identity?
3. How did the French Revolution(s) weaponize culture?
4. How does the shift in historical modes after the French Revolution magnify the idea that
the Revolution invented new political language and iconography?
5. Why did the French struggle for a new post-Revolutionary identity in their histories?
6. Why was song a vanguard of the French Revolution?
7. How does Mason’s analysis help elucidate the “failures” of the French Revolution?
8. Why was song more successful at fostering a unified French identity than postRevolution histories?
15
Materials:
France: Historians, the Nation, and Liberty1
In 1815, after twenty-five years of turmoil, France was left a nation united and safe in her
existence but without a clear identity. The calls for liberty, egality, and fraternity had grown
much fainter but the question remained whether these ideals had been best realized in the
Girondists' limited monarchy, the Jacobins' republic, or Napoleon's Empire, and to what degree
and in which form they should be asserted now. Although the Bourbons, once more in power,
simply tried to ignore the immediate past, the problem of the proper model for France's society
did not fade away. For nearly sixty years France shaped and reshaped her body politic in a search
for that proper form, and historians were her most prominent guides in that endeavor. That role
turned out to be as powerful an incentive for writing history as the quest for national unity had
been for German historians.
Advocates of tradition and continuity.
After 1815, the Catholic church, in contrast to secular institutions, offered a continuity
undamaged by revolutionary ideals or changes. It never had rejected the Old France or viewed
the Revolution as a fulfillment of France's destiny. On the contrary, shortly after the Reign of
Terror had ended, one of the church's advocates, Joseph de Maistre, defined the French
Revolution not just as a conspiracy by an evil few but as a consequence of collective sin, a view
which made revolutionary ideals unworthy of shaping French development in the future. The
Catholic view of the past was presented much more elaborately by Francois Ren de
Chateaubriand in his The Genius of Christianity (1802). The past knew only one truly
revolutionary event, when the modern age was created "at the foot of the Cross" and the human
condition changed completely. All human attempts to change conditions radically and quickly
had to fail because they were based on the dream of human control over forces which were
unknown, forces subject only to Divine Providence. The French past illustrated how the true, the
gradually changing, and the lawful always prevailed over all sudden and violent changes. Hence,
the church, a stable, essential, and moral force, offered a more reliable basis for France's future
than the untested ideas of rationalists and revolutionaries.
Chateaubriand rejected the idea of a secular progress. Indeed the cultivation of rationality
in isolation from emotion and imagination was not only of no social benefit, it destroyed a
civilization by eroding age-old tradition. Rather than resembling a staircase leading up to the
present, the past showed a sequence of equally valid periods. Chateaubriand particularly wished
to rescue the reputation of the France of chivalry. That appreciation fit well into the Restoration
period's sense for the French past. It was then that a whole period, the Middle Ages, was rescued
from the derision of rationalists. There was also the desire no longer to skip over centuries of the
French past and celebrate the Roman Republic and its heroes as idols of the Revolution. Now it
made sense to do what Joseph F. Michaud did: go to the archives and spend years in studying
and writing about the History of the Crusades, those endeavors considered sheer folly by the
philosophes. With the renewed affirmation of God's Providence obviating the need to find an
order immanent in human events, J. F. Michaud and Prosper de Barante, in his History of the
Dukes of Burgundy, 1364-1477, could without embarrassment follow the precept of the ecole
1
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 238-246.
16
narrative: "write to tell, not to judge." Historians of that school painted grand and colorful
pictures, rich in detail and drama. History became a tableau of magnificent evocations of the
past, but they stood side by side, lacking any sense of development. The French narrative
historians drifted with the broad current, which also pushed along Sir Walter Scott, Prosper
Merim6e, and countless Romantics.
The age was too agitated by the wish to find and secure the proper French form of social
and political organization to be satisfied by the historical portraits of the ecole narrative. The
contemporary intellectual climate and the sense for development engendered by the Revolution
were detrimental to history as a series of portraits. Instead a new stage began in the old quest for
clarifying the French identity; one as old as Fredegar's tale of the Trojan origin of the Franks.
Fittingly, the early attempt by Augustin Thierry not only favored the Gauls as true ancestors but
also provided a dynamic explanatory scheme for France's development throughout the ages. He
found it while preparing his History of the Conquest of England by the Normans (1825). "One
day when... I had attentively read over some chapters of Hume, I was struck with an idea which
seemed to me a ray of light; and exclaimed, as I closed the book, 'All this dates from a
conquest; there is a conquest underneath.'" A people conquers a people and the repercussions
shape history. In England the resistance to the Normans explained almost everything, including
the "guerrillas anglo-saxonnes" after 1066, the deeds of Robin Hood, and the murder of Thomas
a Becket, whose fight for church sovereignty was really a deed on behalf of the Anglo-Saxons.
Eventually the conquered won out with the triumph of the middle class. In a similar manner, the
Germanic migrations in early French history brought conquest, domination by the Germanic
element in the Carolingian period, and finally a liberation of France by the Gallo-Romans. At
first, in France, it was a straight conflict between the "race of conquerors" and the "race of the
conquered." Later that conflict became a more subtle social struggle, and Thierry's definitions of
the two "races" grew a bit hazier. He continued to speak out, however, for the "conquered," who
once were "our forefathers-the GalloRomans," ensconced in the towns, and who later were
identified with the Third Estate, which included simply "la masse de non-nobles." Thierry's view
of history as an ongoing struggle between two unevenly powerful groups, proceeding relentlessly
along a predetermined course and toward a known end, impressed no less a man than Karl Marx.
Subsequently the search for the true spirit of France went forward once more along lines
that some sixteenth-century legists had suggested and that the Abb Dubos had reenforced in the
eighteenth century. In his History of the Gauls, Augustin Thierry's brother Amidee championed
the thesis of France's Celtic origin, which in the 1850s became a favorite view. Henri Martin's
popular volumes on the History of France celebrated the Celtic spirit of France, while Michelet
credited the Celtic element with contributing the love of equality to the French spirit. Only Gallic
France was truly unique, because she was genuinely free of Germanic ties. At that point,
however, the search for the unique French character still remained at a safe distance from
chauvinistic cravings since it satisfied mainly the Romantic need for national selfassertion rather
than any desire to belittle other people. Thus, the leading liberal historian, Francois Guizot,
respected the Germans and liked the English; he celebrated the French as cultural leaders but
considered them to be a racial mix between Celts, Romans, and Germans.
The Romantic quest for a French history based on the supposition of a unique French
spirit-one transcending all partisan divisions-culminated in the works of Jules Michelet. After he
produced a short textbook on the History of the Modern World, he earned the chance to enter
into academic institutions of rank, particularly the College de France, and to become, through
Guizot's sponsorship, head of the historical section of the National Archives.
17
Vico and, to a lesser degree, Herder influenced the young Michelet. He translated and
abridged, some would say paraphrased, Vico's New Science. Coming, like Vico, from the world
of the Catholic faith with its essences and stability, Michelet, too, felt the need to come to terms
with change. Vico could accept history as the tale of the rise and fall of cultures because he
believed in God's Providence. Michelet, lacking Vico's trust in Divine Providence, found a mere
sequence of cultures depressing and instead depicted the line of successive cultures as an
ascending spiral whose aim he later defined as ever-fuller human liberty.
From his eighteenth-century mentors, Michelet gained an understanding for the concept
of Volk, and an enhanced appreciation of the central role of language and of myth. But he
proceeded beyond such understanding to a radical affirmation of the cosmos as an organic
whole. Nature, France, the people, and individuals were one in essence and development. Hence
he could speak of himself as France, and speak of history as rousing the dead. The same cosmic
spirit obliterated the divisions of time and pervaded his work through the documents to which he
as archivist had easy access and which he cherished. He viewed the archives as "catacombs of
manuscripts, this wonderful necropolis of national monuments," and the documents as "not
papers, but lives of men, of provinces, and of nations." Attempts to explain the development of
the French spirit and nation as the work of abstract forces or physical conditions were, of course,
futile. Michelet also rejected all explanations of history on the basis of race or conflict (Thierry),
laws of stages (Vico), and environmental determinism. The spirit of a people unfolded
spontaneously, except that throughout time the different spirits of peoples have contributed to the
general growth of human freedom. Now, in the mid-1800s France had become the principal
agent of freedom, a role formerly played by the Germans, and had to pay a corresponding price.
Frenchmen of all conditions, of all classes, remember one thing: you have but one sure friend on
this earth-France. In the eyes of the still subsisting coalition of aristocracies, it will ever be a
crime that, fifty years ago, you attempted to give the world freedom.... Be assured, France will
never bear any but one name in the mind of Europe; that inexpiable name, which is also its true
and eternal one-The Revolution's
The French nation, with its unique spirit, dedicated to freedom and the Cross, was the
central figure in Michelet's History of France. In The People (1846) the spirit of France was
celebrated once more. All social differences and tensions were resolved in the community of the
French, which for Michelet reached beyond the limits of the bourgeoisie to include the peasants
and the workers. "One people! one country! one France!...Never, I pray you, let us become two
nations."
But by then the Cross, one of the two elements which Michelet had discerned in the
French spirit, had suffered in the historian's esteem. A bitter conflict with the Jesuits over the
control of education made Michelet reconsider the role of Christianity. He brought to bear on the
church his judgment on institutions: the assertion that life created the institutional forms but only
the creative drive of life itself has lasted undiminished throughout the centuries. Each historical
phenomenon, be it feudalism or the order born of revolutions, drew its strength initially from the
people's intuitive knowledge of life's needs. But, as time went on, institutions lapsed into a
formalized routine, maintained themselves by bureaucracies, and decayed in the process. The
Catholic church, which he now bitterly resented, had lost its "pure vigor" with Louis XIV. The
French Revolution also fell into the hands of those who calculated, reasoned, and stripped life of
emotion-the villain here was Robespierre. The desire for freedom remained the only visible and
18
uncorrupted manifestation of life's all-pervasive creative force, and the historian must grasp that
desire above all. This notion helped him to justify subjective visions of periods and of people as
substitutes for documented studies. "Guizot analyses, Thierry narrates, I resurrect," he said and
strove to recall the past "from the dead" in vivid and picturesque word paintings, brilliantly
colored and pointillist in detail. Consequently, in the last volumes of the History of France,
history became simpler. Love and hatred had clear objects. The Middle Ages and their clerical
culture lost all their brilliance and were replaced by the Renaissance as the period full of light.
The great lesson appeared clearer than ever: what life and its agent, the people, create, the evil
elites of power and calculation corrupt. The center of French history must be "the people,"
however vaguely defined they were by Michelet.
Historians as champions of liberty.
Michelet's French nation as a mystical whole inspired many but offered little advice on
how to solve France's gravest internal problem: how much influence should the ideals of the
French Revolution be granted in the shaping of the French society and state? The Bourbons, once
restored, defined narrow limits of realization and tolerated no advocacy beyond them. That
provoked a battle for French public opinion. The advocates of widening popular representation
used the editorial rooms of newspapers and the lecture halls of universities as their bastions and
history as their main weapon. The opposition to the Bourbons couched its advocacy of a
moderate realization of the revolutionary ideals in a discussion of the role of the French
Revolution in French history. De Maistre and Chateaubriand had stressed the Revolution's
Jacobin phase, with its Reign of Terror, in order to prove that the continuity of French
development had been broken in the 1790s and the French Revolution therefore stood "outside"
of French history.
In the 1820s Francois Mignet and Adolphe Thiers contradicted such negative assessments
by basing their interpretation on what would eventually become a liberal dogma: the French
Revolution took place in the course of the inevitable development of freedom, which, by
implication, would reach its apogee in the rule of the Third Estate. Its moderate phase (1789-93)
stood well within the French tradition and, by implication, should be continued in a
constitutional monarchy. Its radical phase was brought about by the needs of war. Thiers added
to that another assurance for the necessary triumph of moderation. He used the mechanical
analogy of pressure (oppression) and counterpressure (the demand for justice) to explain why
revolutions have occurred and why after a while they all lose strength. When concessions have
been wrenched from the old ruling group, some social strata, now satisfied, desert the
revolutionary cause and the counterpressure weakens. He explained the Jacobin period as one of
the greatest counterpressure without condoning it. In any case, history showed how peaks of
revolutionary violence have never lasted because every society must offer order as well as justice
and liberty to its citizens. As Thiers saw it, the Jacobins, like other advocates of democracy,
asserted only liberty and thus brought, and will always bring, chaos.
In 1820, Augustin Thierry had demonstrated not only the prominence of conflict but also
how the idea of liberty had all along been a part of the French tradition, akin to the true French
spirit, and the winning cause. He credited the Gallo-Romans with upholding the ideal of liberty
and located the birthplace of institutionalized liberty in the towns of the Middle Ages. Liberty's
historical agent and hence the true carrier of the national interest had been the Third Estate,
which in the Revolution's moderate phase had finally received full recognition and, by
implication, should receive such recognition again.
19
The liberal view of the past also found historians such as Jean-Charles-Lonard Simonde
de Sismondi who went beyond the Romantic notion that the cause of liberty was rooted in a
specific Volksgeist2. Although Jacobin regimes in Geneva had forced the Simonde family into
first an English and then an Italian exile, Charles Simonde, better known as Sismondi, always
dreamed of republics in which all citizens would share the rights and duties of government. Butand most of the contemporary liberals would agree with him on that-he cautiously hedged: "let
power remain with those who comprehend its objects," that is, with those who are educated and
propertied. A History of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages (1807-14) celebrated that type
of liberty. Wherever liberty had been cherished in the past there had been virtue, and its result
was a glorious civilization. "The Italian cities...enjoyed for three centuries the protection and
progressive improvement of their municipal constitutions. These three centuries, [1100-1400]
with reference to the rest of Europe, are utterly barbarous." Florence prospered as a republic with
citizens and decayed as a Medici fiefdom with subjects. Simonde became so enthusiastic about
the Italian role in the history of freedom that he "discovered" an Italian branch of his family and
added Sismondi to his name. The high pitch of excitement on behalf of liberty could not be
maintained in his later History of the French. His nineteen-volume work lacked lustre. It was
soon overshadowed by Guizot's and Michelet's histories much as Sismondi's cosmopolitan image
of the beneficial rule of communal republics proved no match for the union of liberty and the
French spirit.
From 1820 until well into the 1840s these and other French historians transformed French
history into the ultimate weapon for the defense of liberty. To call them propagandists would be
to misrepresent them, for that term erases the faintly drawn but firm line which separates earnest
conviction from propaganda, that deliberate misuse of the past. Guizot, in whose History of
Civilization in France (1830) Divine Providence guided the course of liberty, would have either
not understood the reproach or become angry. For him, the view of French history that depicted
the shifting of power from clergy to aristocrats to kings, and finally to the middle class
(bourgeoisie), was simply the true reflection of the grand scheme of history. God designed it and
humans made it reality. "Men do not make the whole of history; it has laws of higher origin; but,
in history, men are unrestricted agents who produce its results..."; "taking the history of France in
its totality in all its phases, the Third Estate has been the most active and the most decisive
element in French civilization." The Third Estate was superbly fitted to dominate since it was
open to all those who were educated, who were able to discuss things rationally, and who were
willing to do their duty. That was what Guizot had found in his research, what he believed, and
what he proclaimed out of conviction-not for narrow and temporary partisan purposes.
In the gradual transfer of power to the middle class, the Jacobin phase, frightening as it
was, represented a mere sideshow; the logic of events-and Guizot's Calvinist background showed
in his sense of destiny more than in his austere and aloof behavior-tolerated no long-range
deviation from the grand scheme of things, which prescribed a peaceful, gradual progression to
the juste milieu. That proper state of affairs was the constitutional monarchy based on the power
of the middle class. There could be no development beyond the constitutional monarchy, since
beyond it lay only the rule of the Fourth Estate, which for French liberals amounted to mob rule.
In 1848 Guizot lost his position of prime minister by a revolution which had been signaled all
through the 1840s. The kingship of Louis Philippe proved as temporary as the identification of
2
National spirit
20
his limited constitutional monarchy with the apogee of freedom and of the Third Estate. The
monster of republicanism and democracy, as Guizot called it, had come back to life.
In liberal histories the constant advancement of liberty was prescribed by the "logic of
events." Liberty provided the moving force in human events and its fulfillment represented the
aim of all development. In a period of longing for a constitutional government with measured
popular participation, such a "logic of events" provided a rich source of hope for eventual
victory. That it also constituted a deterministic view of the past escaped its advocates but not
Chateaubriand, who criticized liberal history as a "fatalistic school of thought" which deprived
human life of drama and-even worse-of its moral dimension. If all that happened was necessary
or at least advantageous for the cause of liberty, then the Reign of Terror with its thousands of
victims could be condemned no more than the medieval plague, another inevitable event. There
was for Chateaubriand a contradiction in viewing liberty at the same time as a source of
historical necessity and as the greatest moral force.
21
Singing the French Revolution3
3
Laura Mason, Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787–1799 (New York: Cornell
University Press, 2018), 209-220.
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
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Unit 2 Discussion Questions:
Directions: Using the materials below, be able to answer the following questions before the last
day of the unit. Questions will be discussed the same day the unit’s Source Analysis is due.
Please make sure you are prepared.
Questions:
1. Why are the poems anti-Marxist?
2. How was the concept of “civilization” and rationalism twisted by colonialism, empire,
and military glory?
3. Why are the historical modes of progress and Marxism anti-historical?
4. Why is it dangerously reductive to see history as a tool for teaching past errors?
5. Why was progress for the Victorian-era European (see poems) so militaristically defined?
6. How do the poems in the materials exude “progress” as an historical obligation?
7. What is worthy of sacrifice, according to Sir Alfred Lyall?
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Materials:
New Grand Interpretations: Progress in History4
Few interpretations of history have captivated the minds of the multitude to the extent
that the theory of progress has. Its central message declared that "the whole human race, through
alternate periods of rest and unrest, of weal and woe, goes on advancing, although at a slow pace,
towards greater perfection." Past, present, and future were once more linked in a development
with a common direction; this time not toward a spiritual goal but toward human betterment in
this world. And it was this hope which proved to be the powerful persuader. Actually, with the
exception of the Marquis de Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the
Human Mind (1793-94), no one work proclaimed and explained the concept of progress. Rather
progress was proposed, debated, and praised in many works, and belief in it became sustained
less by an agreed-upon theory than by a broadly shared expectation.
History as the emancipation of mankind.
The progress view had a firm support in the conviction of many eighteenth-century
intellectuals that mankind had matured sufficiently to take its destiny into its own hands. God
created the universe, set the orderly system of causes in motion, and from then it moved in
Newtonian orderliness by itself. With the world rationally ordered and beneficent in essence,
everything destructive in it was declared to be "unnatural" and remediable. Similarly, human
beings were seen as basically good and not as inherently sinful. In turn, human goodness was
firmly anchored in human rationality; both qualities were extant even in the distant past, when
strong passions and instincts together with the forces of the environment had suppressed them
temporarily. On that basis some philosophes proceeded to demonstrate the story of human
progress, that is, the gradual liberation of rationality from bondage throughout the centuries and
the civilizing of mankind resulting from it. The unity of mankind's destiny was no longer
vouchsafed by the common descent from Adam and Eve but by the presence of reason in its
every member, and its development bore no longer the marks of Divine Providence but those of
the emancipation of rationality from error and superstition.
The philosophes had to reconcile the immense diversity of the world's peoples with their
view of a uniform and unchanging human nature. In taking on that task they relied on the new
concept of culture or civilization which had eluded the sixteenth-century legists and historians
when they had confronted the diversity of peoples and customs. The philosophes could draw on
the insights proposed by the so-called Histoire raisonnee. Between 1660 and 1720, its
representatives had stressed the idea that sets of customs needed to be studied and then compared
with each other. When Francois de Finelon had exhorted historians to study the change of
customs in time he very nearly had formulated the charge Voltaire took up. In his Essay on the
Manners, Customs, and the Spirit of Nations (1754), Voltaire formulated the cultural
interpretation of history precisely and elegantly. After sympathetically treating the Chinese,
Indian, Persian, and Islamic civilizations, he nevertheless held fast to a universal human
progress, thereby affirming, for him, the obvious contemporary superiority of the West. These
historians found the solution to the problem of the diversity of cultures in the concept of the
uneven development of uniform human nature. Westerners differed from the Chinese, Africans,
4
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 205-210.
35
or Indians not intrinsically but solely because of the greater progress of their rationality; the lag
was caused by the irrational forces still gripping the other societies, above all by oppressive
religions, laws, and customs. The same held true for the differences within Western societies
where rationality increased first in the minds of a few with the masses lagging temporarily
behind. And if, as Voltaire and some others maintained, the majority of people might never
become fully rational in thought and behavior, those who were fully civilized could design good
laws and offer good government for the masses. As a result, all people would partake in
rationality's ultimate blessing-happiness.
By necessity, the price of the new historical order, with its progress and perfect future,
was a lack of appreciation of the very diversity which originally had fascinated the philosophes.
In his Essay Voltaire discussed the past views and habits of various peoples sympathetically but
still at a far distance from our present understanding of civilizations or cultures. When, after
1770, the term "civilization" did appear, it referred to a style of life with refined tastes and
manners, presumably brought about by the increase of rationality. Our present contention that all
civilizations or cultures constitute equally valid ways of life would have been scoffed at by
Voltaire and other philosophes. True happiness could not come to people with "uncivilized"
views and customs but only to those with a rational mode of life.
The assertion of progress also devalued the earlier stages of the Western world, which
were at best periods of human childhood, at worst periods of folly and superstition. That very
attitude showed in the philosophes' laments about the Middle Ages. To them these centuries,
dominated by the Christian religion, constituted a regrettable interruption of the liberation of
reason which the ancients had gotten underway.
The kings without any authority, the nobles without any constraint, the peoples enslaved,
the countryside covered with fortresses and ceaselessly ravaged, wars kindled between city and
city, village and village, penetrating, so to speak, the whole mass of the kingdoms; all commerce
and all communications cut off; the towns inhabited by poor artisans enjoying no leisure; the
only leisure which some men still enjoy lost in the idleness of a nobility scattered here and there
in their castles who do nothing but engage in battles which are useless to the fatherland; the
grossest ignorance extending over all nations and all occupations! An unhappy picture-but one
which was only too true of Europe for several centuries!
And while Turgot and Montesquieu considered the medieval church's enhancement of
learning at least one redeeming feature, most others condemned institutional religion as
superstition and considered medieval history excellent proof for Condorcet's judgment that
history was "man's confession" of past superstitions and fanaticisms.
Those more ardent about progress than the somewhat skeptical Voltaire were
revolutionaries in historical interpretation. For centuries the past as tradition had guided human
actions in the present and human hopes for the future. Now, in a total reversal, the expectations
for the future governed the life of the present and the evaluation of the past.
Propellants and patterns of progress.
As the philosophes saw it, progress fought against nearly impossible odds. Throughout
the centuries the forces of darkness, error, and vice had held a tight grip on mankind. Reason
managed to assert itself against such odds, Turgot argued, because the blindly surging human
passions led to superstitions and errors, and the unhappiness they produced in turn stimulated the
36
progress of rationality. But now that reason had become strong, errors and superstitions were no
longer needed as stimuli and hence must be combated vigorously. Condorcet proclaimed his time
to be the historic turning point precisely because the main weapon against error had been found:
"Having long been engaged in pondering the means of improving man's fate, I have not been
able to avoid the conclusion that there is actually only one such means: the speeding of the
progress of enlightenment." The human mastery of the social realm would follow the already
highly advanced mastery of nature much as the advance of the moral (social) sciences followed
that of the natural sciences. For Condorcet the liberation of mankind from the "tyrannies" of
nature and irrational social authority was inevitable, because rationality once set on its victorious
course asserted itself against all obstacles. When human beings had begun to order chaotic
sensations into comprehensive thought, they had initiated the progress of the mind. This progress
would culminate in the final Tenth Epoch when the "social art" would triumph over everything
standing in the way of social harmony. History, besides being the human confession of past
errors, also spurred hope for such a future when it told of the ideal state of affairs to come.
How welcome to the philosopher is this picture of the human race, freed from all its chains,
released from the domination of chance and from that of the enemies of its progress, advancing
with a firm and sure step in the path of truth, virtue, and happiness! How this spectacle consoles
him for the errors, crimes, and injustices that still defile the earth, of which he is often the victim!
It is in the contemplation of this picture that he finds the reward for his efforts on behalf of the
progress of reason and the defense of liberty.
In all of that, the philosophes ascribed an ambiguous role to the natural and social
environments. On the one hand reason had its own liberating dynamics while on the other hand
environmental stimuli played a significant role in human progress. Thus, Condorcet and Turgot
agreed that the improvement in the means of communication had helped the growth of
knowledge by provoking more and more innovations. Condorcet even granted that, in the late
stages of progress, liberty, equality, secular and enlightened government, property, and peace
were necessary for further progress, although, quite clearly, such a social environment
presupposed rational people as its shapers. In general however, the influence of the physical
environment became weaker the stronger human rationality grew; that held true despite the age's
fascination with the shaping force of climate. Montesquieu had elaborated on the role of climate,
and Turgot mused that largescale climatic changes might have caused past changes in
government.
According to Condorcet the march of history had slowed down at times but could never
aim anywhere else but "forward." Those writing before him had not been so sure. Turgot
admitted temporary delays in human progress and gave it a spiral-like path towards the desired
goal. "Empires rise and fall; laws and forms of government succeed one another; the arts and the
sciences are in turn discovered and perfected, in turn retarded and accelerated in their progress;
and they are passed on from country to country." Emile Deschamps envisioned steep rises
alternating with plateaus, evoking the image of steps in a huge staircase. Others tempered their
optimism more severely when they pointed out the unpredictability of life, where a single battle
could truly change the course of events. Condillac and D'Alembert spoke of peaks of civilized
existence alternating with plainly barbaric periods: "Barbarism lasts for centuries and seems to
be our natural condition, while reason and good taste are destined to pass away." Voltaire, whose
own rationalism never persuaded him that all people would ever behave rationally, pointed to
37
mankind's up-and-down development: the civilized Ancient period, the barbaric Middle Ages,
the recovery of civilization in the Renaissance followed by a quick rebarbarization in the
Reformation, and another recovery in the French civilization of Louis XIV's period. Inevitable
progress was by no means an item of faith for every philosophe.
History's role.
While philosophes spoke of progress in terms of advances in human learning and
morality, most of them were also convinced that any increase in rationality would be matched by
a commensurate increase in happiness. In Condorcet's Tenth Epoch of history the conditions for
happiness-peace, justice, flourishing commerce, and equality between peoples and nationsresulted from the triumph of reason as manifested in an ever-increasing knowledge, cooperative
scholarship, and education. And what could history contribute to so favorable a development
besides being "man's confession" of errors?
The philosophes did not study the past just in order to understand it on its own terms.
They mustered little sympathy for the erudites, with their love for the patient exploration of past
experience through documents and without didactic purpose. Montesquieu called them
"compilers who have little to say" and Voltaire told them that not everything happening was
worth knowing. History must teach the progressive enlightenment of mankind, and through it
become one of the instruments of progress. In his Age of Louis XIV Voltaire spoke of history's
cleansing property, since the "history of human stupidity" could bring people to recognize and
acknowledge past errors. Thus in his own otherwise quite traditional History of Charles XII life
should teach kings "how much a peaceful and happy rule is superior to so much glory." Even the
story of the Middle Ages could teach readers, when it shocked them with those "errors and
superstitions" which Voltaire and others found so painful to report. But texts with such lessons
would only be useful if people read them willingly, even eagerly, and so the philosophes strove
for eloquence and elegance in their writing. Voltaire succeeded better than others and fame
became his reward, although he rarely was as original a thinker as other philosophes. Actually an
Englishman best expressed the attitude of the philosophes toward history, when he quoted
Dionysius of Halicarnassus: "History is philosophy teaching by examples."
Dissent from progress.
When eighteenth-century scholars rejected the orthodox Christian views on the course of
history they did not simply affirm random change. Their new order for the world acquired
continuity through progress. But there were philosophes who rejected the optimistic view of
development. Jean Jacques Rousseau regretted the increase in rationality, achieved in isolation
from all other human faculties, particularly emotion. A long time ago, in the state of nature,
reason, passion, and emotion were of a whole and even the instinct of self-preservation
strengthened natural cooperation and morality. Then, in a sort of Fall of Man, things changed.
Property, hierarchy, and self-love appeared and worked to the detriment of concern for others.
The human being acquired an external aspect, a false, deceptive, pretentious, and hence evil wish
to impress others, and this aspect was alienated from the internal aspect, the true self.
Culture was the product and producer of that alienation, one ever more enhanced by the
development of reason in isolation from other parts of the psyche. With culture thus rooted in
vice rather than in virtue, the story of mankind was the story of decadence.
The materialists among the philosophes simply had no use for history, with or without
progress. Human beings were merely complex animals, governed by the desire to gratify their
38
needs in order to find happiness. At all times human life was the same story of need and
gratification and attraction and repulsion. In such a mechanistic world the advance of science,
history included, was irrelevant to human happiness. The world of La Mettrie, Holbach, and
Helvetius knew only a chain of causation, not free will, providence, God, progress, or
immortality. History could teach no useful lessons about such a world of nature to human beings
bound by nature's dictates.
From an entirely different viewpoint, the Scot David Hume rejected all talk about a
benevolent universe and progress. He insisted that all the order we observe around us-causality,
for example-was really a habit of the human mind rather than an expression of an order inherent
in phenomena. Hence neither the presuppositions of science nor the metaphysics of reason can
be accepted as reflecting reality. Historical viewpoints, the progress view included, also were
private matters. Hume wanted historians to rely on a cautious empiricism without grand
schemes, although he himself asserted the highly theoretical concept of an unchanging human
nature. The doubters and opponents of progress had their followers, but Condorcet's optimism
lured the majority. The message of progress evoked enthusiasm and hope. Behind the ups and
downs of empires, states, wars, and nations, there was the steady advance of the natural and
moral sciences. These sciences would defeat the twin evils: ignorance and the caprice of will. In
Condorcet's Tenth Epoch, beginning in the late 1700s, public schools, social mathematics (for
calculating the consequences of actions), and the "social art" (social science) would guarantee
the infinite perfection of the human condition, with happiness as the automatic result. With
Christian universal history in disarray, the West had acquired in the progress theory a new and
viable synthesis of past, present, and future.
39
Karl Marx Paneconomic Historiography5
In the rapidly industrializing West it was virtually inevitable that the increasingly keen
and broadly shared interest in economic concerns would be translated into an economic
interpretation of human life. But when Karl Marx made such an interpretation he was motivated
not by the general fascination with, even admiration for, industry and its undoubted benefits but
by a critical awareness of its shadowy side, the industrial laborer's sorrow, heartbreak, sweat, and
toil in the emergent industrial society of the mid-nineteenth century. Equally important, Marx's
mind had been shaped by the Hegelian system of thought. It pushed him (and his friend Friedrich
Engels) beyond the writing of critical tracts on what he saw as injustices and induced him to
create a theory based on economic forces, a grand theory which would not only explain all of
history but also deliver the tools for eventual human redemption from all injustice; his was a new
type of prophetic history for a Kingdom of God without God.
Marx's world was a world of matter, of which the human world was merely the most
complex segment. Neither God nor progress nor the absolute idea nor any other metaphysical
entity could explain that world; they all were mere creations of the human imagination. In order
to explain human phenomena properly, one must study how people make a living, what goods
they produce, and how they do it. Marx called these arrangements of productive forces the mode
of production. It shaped every aspect of human life, governed every change, and was itself not
influenced by anything outside of itself, as it supplied its own driving force.
Each mode of production shaped a set of corresponding productive relationships between
human beings, such as who owns what and how much property, specifically the means of
production. Thus whenever the modes of production have changed, the productive relationships
have changed, too, since they were wholly governed by the former. "In acquiring new productive
forces men change their mode of production, and in changing their mode of production, their
manner of gaining a living, they change all their social relations. The handmill gives you society
with the feudal lord; the steam mill a society with the industrial capitalist."' Throughout history
changes in the productive relationships have lagged behind those in the productive forces
because the people with a vested interest in the existing relationships always have resisted these
inevitable changes. When the lag between the new mode of production and the "old" productive
relationships became too great, violent adjustments occurred. In the end any resistance to
adjusting all aspects of society to the development of the productive forces must fail, since no
aspect of life could ever be independent from its economic base.
Marx was especially eager to accuse of harboring illusions those who have viewed
religion, ideas, art, or philosophy as dynamic forces which could bring about change, instead of
seeing that these phenomena were mere reflections of productive relationships, had no value in
and by themselves, and had no strength to change anything. They constituted a superstructure
with no dynamics or strength other than that which they derived form their economic base.
Although Marx never clarified exactly how the superstructure and the basic mode of production
were linked, all Marxist thought relied on that crucial relationship of dependence.
Art, philosophy, political ideas, and religion, once they were defined as mere reflections
of existing modes of production and their concomitant productive relationships, were by
necessity tied closely to those people who uphold the status quo-those who own the means of
production and are called by Marx the exploiters or the ruling class. Indeed, the whole
5
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 293-297.
40
superstructure represents a vast instrument of oppression directed against those who are
struggling to change the productive relationships in accordance with the dictates of history, that
is, to bring about changes in the mode of production. Looked at in this way the state is not an
ethical educator-the idealist view-or an arbiter in the interest of law and order-the liberal viewbut the tool by which the exploiters hold the exploited in check. And religion refers not to a
metaphysical reality but to mere illusions created and perpetuated in the interest of keeping the
exploited servile; religion, for Marx, was the opiate of the people.
The changes originating the mode of production, although not influenced by any external
force, were nevertheless not a matter of chance but followed inescapable patterns. Once a mode
of production had been established, it completed its course, that is, it continued until all its
productive potential was exhausted. However, in the course of that development, every mode of
production evoked forces antagonistic to itself. These were better tools or productive
arrangements, which from a certain point on outdated the old mode of productions, as, for
example, when the windmill prepared the way for and eventually was replaced by the steammill.
These changes brought about corresponding changes, first in the productive relationships and
then in the superstructure. History is "a continual movement of growth in productive forces, of
destruction in the social forces, of formation of ideas; there is nothing immutable but the
abstraction of the movement-mors immortalis"-until, that is, Marx should have added, the ideal
state of affairs is created.
Individual human beings were the agents of change, but they neither originated it nor
determined its course nor set its ultimate aim. They had no choice but to implement the changes
prescribed by the "logic of economic development." The actions of individuals were needed most
for adjusting the productive relationships to the new modes of production, an endeavor that could
not be completed without conflict because of the antagonistic economic interests present in every
society. This concept of an inevitable struggle within every established order, since every mode
of production and the society based on it produced its own contradiction, owed much to Hegel's
dialectic. But while in Hegelianism idea contested idea, in Marx's dialectical materialism social
class fought social class. Every mode of production created such classes, which were groups
whose members held comparable positions in the productive relationships. Marx discerned in his
time, among others, the classes of large landowners, quasi-feudal lords, free farmers, tenant
farmers, merchants, and laborers. But in the class struggle of every age all classes lined up on
two warring sides: one affirming and the other negating the existing order. Victory always went
to those representing the next, higher form of production. So far, according to Marx, there have
been four periods, each with its own characteristic mode of production.
In 1848, Marx and Engels foresaw the imminent collapse of capitalism and proclaimed
their convictions in the Communist Manifesto; although disappointed in that hope, they
continued to present their arguments in many subsequent works. The modern class struggle was
rooted in the fact that although laborers had become the only productive force they reaped a
minimum of rewards and had no proper place in capitalistic society. Their production enriched
fewer and fewer capitalists, in whose hands larger and larger amounts of capital accumulated and
who now confronted a vast, powerless, and impoverished proletariat. Soon Socialism (and later
communism) would be established either through a peaceful transition or by violent revolution.
While Marx remained ambivalent on that issue, he spelled out what the new society would
accomplish: "appropriation of the means of production, their subjection to the associated
working class, therefore the abrogation of wage-labor, of capital, and of their reciprocal
relations." This time, Marx thought, the reorganization of productive relationships would bring
41
about a new order without inner contradictions. The common ownership of all means of
production would bar the forming of social classes and establish a perpetual, stable, and perfect
harmony between the mode of production (assumed to stay forever that of an industrial
economy), productive relationships, and the superstructure.
Without an ongoing class struggle-since there would be no exploiters and exploited-that
part of the superstructure which so far had supplied the tools of oppression would disappear. The
new society of cooperating individuals would need no state apparatus to administer production
and consumption. In the ultimate restraintless society goods would be dispensed on the basis of
needs declared by individuals-"from everyone according to his ability, to everyone according to
his need." With the happiness of all people assured, religion would lose its usefulness and simply
fade away. Could not individuals, out of greed or simple selfishness, violate the order of the
perfect society? Not according to Marx, who did not recognize the individual as a unit
independent of the collective fabric. Individuals represent no more than points of intersection of
social relations. Once these relations would reflect the new social reality, a reality that would
logically exclude greed and selfishness, individuals must then automatically demonstrate a "new
being," too. Only cooperative behavior could occur in the new society.
Old history, with its tales of wars, dynasties, treaties, and economic exploitation, would
end. For a while historians could rewrite in the Marxist manner the story of the past prior to the
great change. In the new age historians would have little to do except record technological
progress, production increases, contentment, and happiness. While generations would come and
go, true historical process itself would have ended and the goal of history would be reached.
History, defined by Marx at one time as the "theory of the conditions for the emancipation of the
proletariat," would have served its purpose. Humans would be eternally free, peaceful, and
happy; or, expressed in other terms, human alienation would be ended and the passage of time
would have lost its decisive importance.
42
Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” 18996
Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden-In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden-No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper-The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
6
Poems here represent a limited slice of mid-to-late 1800s British ideas. Most could fall into the category of
“Victorian poetry.” In this instance, we can also see these works in a the mode of “song” as presented in the Unit 1
discussion materials analysis of songs in the French Revolution. Seeing the poems in this manner allows that to
have expanded value for historical analysis.
43
Take up the White Man's burden-And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard-The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden-Ye dare not stoop to less-Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden-Have done with childish days-The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
44
Rudyard Kipling’s “If-” 1910
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
45
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” 1854
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
46
IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
47
Sir Alfred Lyall's “Theology in Extremis” 1889
"They would have spared life to any of their English prisoners who should consent to profess
Mahometanism, by repeating the usual short formula; but only one half-caste cared to save
himself in that way." --Extract from an Indian newspaper.
MORITURUS LOQUITUR.
Oft in the pleasant summer years,
Reading the tales of days bygone,
I have mused on the story of human tears,
All that man unto man had done,
Massacre, torture, and black despair;
Reading it all in my easy-chair.
Passionate prayer for a minute's life;
Tortured crying for death as rest;
Husband pleading for child or wife,
Pitiless stroke upon tender breast.
Was it all real as that I lay there
Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?
Could I believe in those hard old times,
Here in this safe luxurious age?
Were the horrors invented to season rhymes,
Or truly is man so fierce in his rage?
What could I suffer, and what could I dare?
I who was bred to that easy-chair.
They were my fathers, the men of yore,
Little they recked of a cruel death;
They would dip their hands in a heretic's gore,
They stood and burnt for a rule of faith.
What would I burn for, and whom not spare?
I, who had faith in an easy-chair.
Now do I see old tales are true,
Here in the clutch of a savage foe;
Now shall I know what my fathers knew,
Bodily anguish and bitter woe,
Naked and bound in the strong sun's glare,
Far from my civilized easy-chair.
48
Now have I tasted and understood
That old world feeling of mortal hate;
For the eyes all round us are hot with blood;
They will kill us coolly -- they do but wait;
While I, I would sell ten lives, at least,
For one fair stroke at that devilish priest
Just in return for the kick he gave,
Bidding me call on the prophet's name;
Even a dog by this may save
Skin from the knife, and soul from the flame;
My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it,
But life is sweet if a word may earn it.
A bullock's death, and at thirty years!
Just one phrase, and a man gets off it;
Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears
Whining aloud the name of the prophet;
Only a formula easy to patter,
And, God Almighty, what can it matter?
"Matter enough," will my conrade say
Praying aloud here close at my side,
"Whether you mourn in despair alway,
Cursed for ever by Christ denied;
Or whether you suffer a minute's pain
All the reward of Heaven to gain."
Not for a moment faltereth he,
Sure of the promise and pardon of sin;
Thus did the martyrs die, I see,
Little to lose and muckle to win;
Death means Heaven, he longs to receive it,
But what shall I do if I don't believe it?
Life is pleasant, and friends may be nigh,
Fain would I speak one word and be spared;
Yet I could be silent and cheerfully die,
If I were only sure God cared;
If I had faith, and were only certain
That light is behind that terrible curtain.
49
But what if He listeth nothing at all
Of words a poor wretch in his terror may say?
That mighty God who created all
To labour and live their appointed day;
Who stoops not either to bless or ban,
Weaving the woof of an endless plan.
He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf,
Shall not the season its order keep?
Can it be changed by a man's belief?
Millions of harvests still to reap;
Will God reward, if I die for a creed,
Or will He but pity, and sow more seed?
Surely He pities who made the brain,
When breaks that mirror of memories sweet,
When the hard blow falleth, and never again
Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat;
Bitter the vision of vanishing joys;
Surely He pities when man destroys.
Here stand I on the ocean's brink,
Who hath brought news of the further shore?
How shall I cross it? Sail or sink,
One thing is sure, I return no more;
Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be
Tossed in the depths of a shoreless sea?
They tell fair tales of a far-off land,
Of love rekindled, of forms renewed;
There may I only touch one hand
Here life's ruin will little be rued;
But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard,
To lose them for ever, and all for a word?
Now do I feel that my heart must break
All for one glimpse of a woman's face;
Swiftly the slumbering memories wake
Odour and shadow of hour and place;
One bright ray through the darkening past
Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last,
50
Showing me summer in western land
Now, as the cool breeze murmureth
In leaf and flower -- And here I stand
In this plain all bare save the shadow of death;
Leaving my life in its full noonday,
And no one to know why I flung it away.
Why? Am I bidding for glory's roll?
I shall be murdered and clean forgot;
Is it a bargain to save my soul?
God, whom I trust in, bargains not;
Yet for the honour of English race,
May I not live or endure disgrace.
Ay, but the word, if I could have said it,
I by no terrors of hell perplext;
Hard to be silent and have no credit
From man in this world, or reward in the next;
None to bear witness and reckon the cost
Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost.
I must be gone to the crowd untold
Of men by the cause which they served unknown,
Who moulder in myriad graves of old;
Never a story and never a stone
Tells of the martyrs who die like me,
Just for the pride of the old countree.
51
Unit 3 Discussion Questions:
*** No Unit 3 Discussions or Discussion Materials *** Please use this extra time to complete
your formal paper rough draft, which is due at the end of Unit 3, the same day as Source
Analysis 3.
52
Unit 4 Discussion Questions:
Directions: Using the materials below, be able to answer the following questions before the last
day of the unit. Questions will be discussed the same day the unit’s Source Analysis is due.
Please make sure you are prepared.
Questions:
1. Given the lack of strict structure to “history making” what legitimacy can historical
works like the letters to Truman offer in assessing the atomic bombings?
2. How does the consensus on the use of the atomic bomb in 1945-1946 represent a “hate
history?”
3. Why are later debates on the targets of the atomic bombs misrepresenting the reality of
the decision to drop the bombs?
4. How did the atomic bombs reshape warfare when analyzing their use and justifying their
creation?
5. What poisons any attempt to rationally assess the dropping of the atomic bombs on
Japan?
6. How is the American use of the atomic bomb in WWII a European concern?
7. If source selection is part of the ethos of history, then what does the selection of this
discussion’s sources “say” about the way the world “ought to be?”
53
Materials:
Good History7
No two histories are the same size. Some are so tiny that you can nestle them in your
hand, their translucent pages fluttering with your breath. Others range over many volumes,
challenging the strength of your grip with the combined weight of their leather covers, rag paper
pages and glassine illustration protectors. Some hold us enthralled with split-second events in
tiny places, others stretch our thoughts by accounting for changes over billions of years across
the universe.
It is strange that there is no set size or scale for a history. After all, we have precise and
often globally agreed on ways of measuring all kinds of things. There are committees and
inspectors to check kilograms and the green of traffic lights, for instance. Not so for histories.
This book argues that ethics helps to explain why histories vary in size and scale and that the
variety of histories across time and space is good.
This seems like a banal statement. Why, after all, would people make histories unless
they thought they were good? Moreover, surely hate histories aren’t good. Between any simple
statement and split-second riposte, though, lies a vast field of assumptions. These can be difficult
to get into focus and to hold in view… Our interactions with a world of bountiful and bounded
scales shape us, and us it. Those interactions form part of the ancient expectation that the ethics
of history is of our own making, always. What ‘our’ means in ethics is not universally agreed
upon. This is not a bad thing. The variety of histories now, and across time, is a sign of the
ethical health of history making.
Introductory texts have much to say about making good histories. Our field is blessed
with a bountiful number of these texts, and they offer similar lines of sensible advice. In the
preface to the fifth edition of The Pursuit of History (2010), for example, John Tosh
acknowledges that the discipline of history is a minefield. Disagreement runs through its seams.
Nevertheless, he ventures in, characterizing history makers as responsible: responsible for
thinking about the past, for evading the service of ideology and for presenting ideas and
arguments that are relevant to the present. Addressing history students in The Essential Guide to
Writing History Essays (2020), Kate Antonova also speaks of responsibility. By this she means
the student’s responsibility of self-regulation, of managing time, staying focused, acknowledging
mistakes and asking for help. But it is also the responsibility of the history student to think
critically about cause and effect, understand diversity empathetically, process and analyse
information and not take historical sources at face value. Antoon de Baets goes even further,
signalling in Responsible History (2009) that historians have a duty worldwide to protect the
right of people to memory and history and to protect those who make histories.
Responsibility is a matter of ethics. Ethics is the study of how we should act. It explores
what is good, as well as what is fair and just, to give just a few examples. I can add a few more
terms and note that some people see them as synonymous, and some people treat them very
7
Marnie Hughes-Washington and Anne Martin, Big and Little Histories (London: Routledge, 2021), 1-8.
https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/71547. Text is from chapter 1 of Hughes-Washington and
Martin’s work, with some slight editing for size. See original text for full text and citation apparatus.
54
differently… For the moment, we should note that when people write about the responsibility of
history makers, they are writing about the ethics of history.
We can be responsible in different ways. We can be responsible to and for ourselves, to
and for others. We can be responsible as individuals and as groups. When people write about the
responsibility of history makers and the ethics of history, they tend to have individuals in mind.
The constitutions and codes of conduct of organizations like the American Historical
Association, the Royal Historical Association, the International Committee of Historical
Sciences and the Australian Historical Association foreground the relationship between
individual historians and their subjects. They speak, rightly, of informed consent with the living
and of the just treatment of those with different backgrounds to the historian. Their views feed
into ethics approval processes in which historical subjects are treated as autonomous,
independent agents who are asked for informed consent or as vulnerable subjects around whom
protections are built.
Scaling the ethics of history
There is more to the ethics of history than individual responsibility. In order to explain
this idea, I would like to switch disciplines for just a moment, from history to health. In writing
about the ethics of health, Onora O’Neill opens up an intriguing line of thinking. Public health
responsibilities within and beyond states, she observes, are not necessarily the same as those of
individual health practitioners towards their patients. Public health promotes the wellbeing of
groups—not just individuals—with epidemiology tracking and predicting how those groups are
faring. Whereas a health practitioner prioritises informed consent, a public health body may
argue for compulsory and uniform measures across a group, as with the measures in a number of
states to manage the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID- 19. Does history have something
akin to public health and epidemiology? Not strictly, if evidence of compulsory or uniform
measures like legislation for social distancing, use of seatbelts or plain packaging for cigarettes is
required. Yet there is also a sense in which good history making is not entirely a matter of
individual decision, as the books and codes of conduct I mentioned earlier show. Groups of
people have a view about what counts as good history. If we look across the trends and patterns
of those views, can we discern what—if anything—drives them?
Thomas V. Cohen is not unusual in insisting that the history ‘discipline, perforce,
disciplines’ on the basis of financial and moral capital. History, he argues,
upholds standards of performance, squelching shoddy work and nudging scholars to do their
best. Whether a discipline, in doing all this, stifles or encourages eccentric ideas and novel
methods that deserve a hearing much depends on its habits, and its openness to nonconformist
members and procedures. A discipline channels capital, both the cash it conveys, cascading from
granting agencies outside it, and the less tangible moral capital that lodges inside, in the form of
prestige, recognition, and esteem. This moral capital dwells in the rankings of its journals,
congresses, invited lectures, and awards and in the charisma of host institutions.
For many readers, these words will spark a twinge of recognition and perhaps even
disappointment and anger. Yet this notion of history as a discipline is not ultimately convincing.
Neither the jurisdiction of history nor the activities of history makers are effectively agreed upon.
Insisting that histories are made by those with octorates,
55
or members of professional organisations or people who know multiple languages, to take just a
few examples, does not stop people from making histories. Indeed, a history made without
fulfilling any of these requirements can be a bestseller or even critically acclaimed. History
making has never been a tightly bounded or policed activity, as its own history shows. If
financial and moral capital are the drivers of good history making, it would be hard to argue that
history making is hermetically sealed off from other decisions about what is good in other
disciplines and everyday life.
Take the example of Richard J. Evans’ expert testimony in the case of David Irving v.
Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt. Evans’ contribution proved a powerful counter to those
who wish to minimise or deny the Holocaust. It should not escape our attention, though, that
Evans was asked for expert advice within a court of law and that he did not hand down the
formal judgement. In Cohen’s terms, this is an example of moral capital being disciplined by
law. There are many other examples that spring to mind, as with political decisions to review or
to introduce particular history curriculums or to build museums or memorials to commemorate
particular events or phenomena. Yet neither law nor formal politics account for the variety of
histories made, in the same way that I argued earlier that professional bodies are not in the sole
driving seat of determining what history is.
Hayden White provides another explanation in the idea of history as narrative. He asks us
to appreciate that narrative and genre conventions are powerful shapers of the content of the
form of history. This makes a lot of sense: his accounting for particular histories as tragedies or
romances rings true with the literary devices that history makers use. Yet White never saw
narrative as fully explaining why histories take a variety of forms: he saw it as diagnostic of
ideology and that ideology, in turn, was diagnostic of ethics. As he argued in his classic text
Metahistory,
In my view, there are no extra-ideological grounds on which to arbitrate among the conflicting
conceptions of the historical process and of historical knowledge appealed to by the different
ideologies. For, since these conceptions have their origins in ethical considerations, the
assumption of a given epistemological position by which to judge their cognitive adequacy would
itself represent only another ethical choice.
Ethics shapes ideology, ideology shapes narrative. This is a powerful and intriguing
claim. White speaks of the ethical moment when the history maker selects materials. In the act of
selection, the world goes from as is to as it ought to be understood in the hands of the history
maker. White thereby sharpens and refines our focus on the history maker’s responsibility, as
with Tosh and Antonova. But what is the nature of that responsibility and of that ethics? Where
does it come from? The answer to this question does not rest with White or with any thinker
from our times. Much of our global understanding of the ethics of history as the individual
responsibility of the history maker has its roots in the writings of Plato and, more importantly,
Aristotle. This is not to suggest that history makers acknowledge Aristotle as a progenitor or that
they have followed what he said about ethics either knowingly or strictly. My argument, is,
rather, that he thought about ethics in ways that have had a profound impact on history making.
More specifically, I hold that the variety of histories stems in no small part from Aristotle’s
account of ethics as our practical and inexact efforts to do good and to live well, as ethos.
My argument: the ethics of history is effort, Ethos
56
… Aristotle did not invent ethics, and he arguably did not invent metaphysics either. He
certainly did not invent philosophy. Nor could it be argued that philosophy worldwide, or history
making worldwide, are simple variations on his work. He did, though, say two things about the
nature of ethics which have played a shaping role in history making and which are
underappreciated. In combination, they help to explain why histories come in different sizes and
scales. Their application has resulted in a variety of views of the ethics of history and of history
making.
Aristotle viewed ethics as practical and inexact. These two ideas play a critical role in this
book and form the basis of my argument that individual histories, and the wider body of histories
over time and space, are expressions of ethos, the effort of ethics.
Like Plato (428–4 to 348/7 BCE) before him, Aristotle characterised ethics as practical.
A practical endeavour is not the study of something for its own sake or pleasure, it should help
us to live well (Eudemian Ethics, 1241a; Nicomachean Ethics, 1139a26–8; 1149b29–32). This is
still our expectation of ethics: ethics helps us in everyday life, particularly when we face tough
questions about what we ought to do. When we think about what we ought to do, we can look to
other people and other sources of information for guidance. This long-standing treatment of
ethics as practical helps to explain why people look to literature, to the law and to history, to
name just a few examples, for guidance on what they ought to do and how they ought to live. It
explains why some people think of history as philosophy teaching by example or history as a
source of lessons that we either heed or ignore. It is a view of the purpose of history making that
has been present since ancient times and which is found in various forms of history making
across the world.
Aristotle also saw ethics as inexact. This, as Brad Inwood and Raphael Woolf have noted,
is one of the most striking and underappreciated features of Aristotle’s ethics. Inwood and Woolf
see this as part reflection of the audience Aristotle sought to address in his ethical works: those
experienced in politics rather than those experienced in philosophy. But it also chimes true when
we consider Aristotle’s further claim that there is no simple relationship between good acts and a
good life… To put it in everyday terms, ethics is not a matter of a checklist or a tick box activity
that we can follow without thinking or without taking responsibility.
Aristotle had more to say about the inexact nature of ethics that is important for our
purposes. He noted that we can have different expectations about exactness and precision in
different endeavours and that the exactness of ethics is more like that of a carpenter than of a
mathematician. Consequently, navigation to any virtue will be an imprecise act, like navigating
out of a dark tunnel by veering from one side to another. He explains the first point in
Nicomachean Ethics 1904b:
Now our treatment of this science will be adequate, if it achieves that amount of precision which
belongs to its subject matter. The same exactness must not be expected in all departments of
philosophy alike, any more than in all the products of the arts and crafts…. We must therefore be
content if, in dealing with subjects and starting from premises thus uncertain, we succeed in
presenting a broad outline of the truth: when our subjects and our premises are mere
generalities, it is enough if we arrive at generally valid conclusions. Accordingly we may ask the
student also to accept the various views we put forward in the same spirit; for it is the mark of an
educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular
subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a
mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.
57
…It is worth letting what Aristotle has to say sink in. The level of precision we need in
ethics is not the same as for other kinds of philosophy. This is not a deficit, but appropriate for
thinking about everyday problems which can have multiple, conflicting answers.
Now instead of thinking of the previous excerpts with the example of a carpenter, what if
we substituted in a history maker and replayed the line of argument? We would read that we
should not expect a history maker to use the same levels of precision as a mathematician. Indeed,
expecting them to do so might get in the way of them being able to engage with the task at hand.
That task is to select and to connect information to account for the world as it ought to be
understood, as theorists like White have suggested. That history maker is responsible for that
selection and connection of information, as writers like Tosh and Antonova remind us. That
history maker, we learn further, cares about ‘right angles’ but turns out slightly different work
every time, as the maker of craft or art. We expect individual history makers and groups of
history makers to produce work that is different. Those differences are not the sign of deficient
work but reflect the effort of ethics.
Aristotle’s ethics helps us to see is that history is not an endeavour to be got precisely
right, once. We should expect there to be histories, plural, and we expect there to be ethics,
plural. We will have to look over time and space to see those histories. The ethics of history is
thus historical and global. Conversely, we should be worried about claims that a history is
definitive or the last word. In Aristotle’s terms, this denotes a backing away from the
responsibility of thinking through ethical problems now and into the future. We expect history
makers to keep exploring topics, even if they have been much explored in the past. Furious
agreement can be the territory of history’s dark angels or hate histories. Another way of putting
this is to say that history making is an unending effort to do good, which Aristotle described as
ethos. He saw ethics as an unending activity in which we grapple with what we ought to do.
…[T]he history of history making is shaped in no small part by ethos, the effort of ethics.
It is not just seen in the ways in which historians treat other individuals. It is seen in acts of
selection and connection that include and exclude humans, living and non-living entities. It is
seen in the choice of tiny and enormous spatio-temporal scales. It is seen in speeding through
and skipping events, and in dwelling on micro-moments. Intriguingly, it is also seen in scale
switching, when history makers slip seamlessly from talking about individuals to groups and
back again or use little histories like blocks to build up a big account of how the world ought to
be understood. And it is seen over time and across the globe. This ethics of history cannot be
described as a simple act of tipping in or taking out evidence, or of folding and smoothing out a
narrative. This is because the dynamic shifts in the sizes and scales of histories over time and
across the world have ushered in repeated challenges to the idea of ethics as being concerned
with humans or even living entities, let alone treating those entities as autonomous or even
distinctive. Practically, too, history makers have repeatedly challenged the idea of codes for the
conduct of responsible research as addressing human, adult history makers. These challenges and
their driver—the underlying expectation that ethics is of our own making and inexact—ensure
that history making is never at rest and never effectively agreed upon. They keep the ethics of
history historical and open to change in the future. Asking whether machines can make histories
and whether there was a bacterial ‘holocaust’ billions of years ago are not destabilising,
destructive questions but signs of the ethical health of history making. When you see a collection
of histories and none of them are the same, you are not seeing a replication crisis. You are seeing
ethics at work. You see good histories.
58
The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki8
Chapter 7 - The Attacks
Hiroshima
Hiroshima was the primary target of the first atomic bomb mission. The mission went
smoothly in every respect. The weather was good, and the crew and equipment functioned
perfectly. In every detail, the attack was carried out exactly as planned, and the bomb performed
exactly as expected.
The bomb exploded over Hiroshima at 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945. About an
hour previously, the Japanese early warning radar net had detected the approach of some
American aircraft headed for the southern part of Japan. The alert had been given and radio
broadcasting stopped in many cities, among them Hiroshima. The planes approached the coast at
a very high altitude. At nearly 8:00 A.M., the radar operator in Hiroshima determined that the
number of planes coming in was very small - probably not more than three - and the air raid alert
was lifted. The normal radio broadcast warning was given to the people that it might be
advisable to go to shelter if B-29's were actually sighted, but no raid was expected beyond some
sort of reconnaissance. At 8:15 A.M., the bomb exploded with a blinding flash in the sky, and a
great rush of air and a loud rumble of noise extended for many miles around the city; the first
blast was soon followed by the sounds of falling buildings and of growing fires, and a great
cloud of dust and smoke began to cast a pall of darkness over the city.
At 8:16 A.M., the Tokyo control operator of the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation
noticed that the Hiroshima station had gone off the air. He tried to use another telephone line to
reestablish his program, but it too had failed. About twenty minutes later the Tokyo railroad
telegraph center realized that the main line telegraph had stopped working just north of
Hiroshima. From some small railway stops within ten miles of the city there came unofficial and
confused reports of a terrible explosion in Hiroshima. All these reports were transmitted to the
Headquarters of the Japanese General Staff.
Military headquarters repeatedly tried to call the Army Control Station in Hiroshima. The
complete silence from that city puzzled the men at Headquarters; they knew that no large enemy
raid could have occurred, and they knew that no sizeable store of explosives was in Hiroshima at
that time. A young officer of the Japanese General Staff was instructed to fly immediately to
Hiroshima, to land, survey the damage, and return to Tokyo with reliable information for the
staff. It was generally felt at Headquarters that nothing serious had taken place, that it was all a
terrible rumor starting from a few sparks of truth.
The staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. After flying for about
three hours, while still nearly 100 miles from Hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of
smoke from the bomb. In the bright afternoon, the remains of Hiroshima were burning.
Their plane soon reached the city, around which they circled in disbelief. A great scar on
the land, still burning, and covered by a heavy cloud of smoke, was all that was left of a great
city. They landed south of the city, and the staff officer immediately began to organize relief
measures, after reporting to Tokyo.
8
United States Army Corps of Engineers, Manhattan District, The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(Government of the United States, 1946). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/685.
59
Tokyo's first knowledge of what had really caused the disaster came from the White House
public announcement in Washington sixteen hours after Hiroshima had been hit by the atomic
bomb.
Nagasaki
Nagasaki had never been subjected to large scale bombing prior to the explosion of the
atomic bomb there. On August 1st, 1945, however, a number of high explosive bombs were
dropped on the city. A few of these bombs hit in the shipyards and dock areas in the southwest
portion of the city. Several of the bombs hit the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and six bombs
landed at the Nagasaki Medical School and Hospital, with three direct hits on buildings there.
While the damage from these few bombs were relatively small, it created considerable concern
in Nagasaki and a number of people, principally school children, were evacuated to rural areas
for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the atomic attack.
On the morning of August 9th, 1945, at about 7:50 A.M., Japanese time, an air raid alert
was sounded in Nagasaki, but the "All clear" signal was given at 8:30. When only two B-29
superfortresses were sighted at 10:53 the Japanese apparently assumed that the planes were only
on reconnaissance and no further alarm was given. A few moments later, at 11:00 o'clock, the
observation B-29 dropped instruments attached to three parachutes and at 11:02 the other plane
released the atomic bomb.
The bomb exploded high over the industrial valley of Nagasaki, almost midway between
the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance
Works (Torpedo Works), in the north, the two principal targets of the city.
Despite its extreme importance, the first bombing mission on Hiroshima had been almost
routine. The second mission was not so uneventful. Again the crew was specially trained and
selected; but bad weather introduced some momentous complications. These complications are
best described in the brief account of the mission's weaponeer, Comdr., now Capt., F. L.
Ashworth, U.S.N., who was in technical command of the bomb and was charged with the
responsibility of insuring that the bomb was successfully dropped at the proper time and on the
designated target. His narrative runs as follows:
"The night of our take-off was one of tropical rain squalls, and flashes of lightning
stabbed into the darkness with disconcerting regularity. The weather forecast told us of storms all
the way from the Marianas to the Empire. Our rendezvous was to be off the southeast coast of
Kyushu, some 1500 miles away. There we were to join with our two companion observation B29's that took off a few minutes behind us. Skillful piloting and expert navigation brought us to
the rendezvous without incident.
"About five minutes after our arrival, we were joined by the first of our B-29's. The
second, however, failed to arrive, having apparently been thrown off its course by storms during
the night. We waited 30 minutes and then proceeded without the second plane toward the target
area.
"During the approach to the target the special instruments installed in the plane told us
that the bomb was ready to function. We were prepared to drop the second atomic bomb on
Japan. But fate was against us, for the target was completely obscured by smoke and haze. Three
times we attempted bombing runs, but without success. Then with anti-aircraft fire bursting
around us and with a number of enemy fighters coming up after us, we headed for our secondary
target, Nagasaki.
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"The bomb burst with a blinding flash and a huge column of black smoke swirled up
toward us. Out of this column of smoke there boiled a great swirling mushroom of gray smoke,
luminous with red, flashing flame, that reached to 40,000 feet in less than 8 minutes. Below
through the clouds we could see the pall of black smoke ringed with fire that covered what had
been the industrial area of Nagasaki.
"By this time our fuel supply was dangerously low, so after one quick circle of Nagasaki,
we headed direct for Okinawa for an emergency landing and refueling".
61
Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (The Smyth Report)9
Chapter XIII: General Summary
Present Overall Status
13.1. As the result of the labors of the Manhattan District organization in Washington and
in Tennessee, of the scientific groups at Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Los Alamos, and elsewhere, of the industrial groups at Clinton, Hanford, and many other places, the end of June 1945
finds us expecting from day to day to hear of the explosion of the first atomic bomb devised by
man. All the problems are believed to have been solved at least well enough to make a bomb
practicable. A sustained neutron chain reaction resulting from nuclear fission has been
demonstrated; the conditions necessary to cause such a reaction to occur explosively have been
established and can be achieved; production plants of several different types are in operation,
building up a stock pile of the explosive material. Although we do not know when the first
explosion will occur nor how effective it will be, announcement of its occurrence will precede
the publication of this report. Even if the first attempt is relatively ineffective, there is little doubt
that later efforts will be highly effective; the devastation from a single bomb is expected to be
comparable to that of a major air raid by usual methods.
13.2. A weapon has been developed that is potentially destructive beyond the wildest
nightmares of the imagination; a weapon so ideally suited to sudden unannounced attack that a
country's major cities might be destroyed overnight by an ostensibly friendly power. This
weapon has been created not by the devilish inspiration of some warped genius but by the
arduous labor of thousands of normal men and women working for the safety of their country.
Many of the principles that have been used were well known to the international scientific world
in 1940. To develop the necessary industrial processes from these principles has been costly in
time, effort, and money, but the processes which we selected for serious effort have worked and
several that we have not chosen could probably be made to work. We have an initial advantage
in time because, so far as we know, other countries have not been able to carry out parallel
developments during the war period. We also have a general advantage in scientific and
particularly in industrial strength, but such an advantage can easily be thrown away.
13.3. Before the surrender of Germany there was always a chance that German scientists
and engineers might be developing atomic bombs which would be sufficiently effective to alter
the course of the war. There was therefore no choice but to work on them in this country.
Initially many scientists could and did hope that some principle would emerge which would
prove that atomic bombs were inherently impossible. This hope has faded gradually; fortunately
in the same period the magnitude of the necessary industrial effort has been demonstrated so that
the fear of German success weakened even before the end came. By the same token, most of us
are certain that the Japanese cannot develop and use this weapon effectively.
Prognostication
13.4. As to the future, one may guess that technical developments will take place along
two lines. From the military point of view it is reasonably certain that there will be
improvements both in the processes of producing fissionable material and in its use. It is
9
Henry De Wolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (Government of the United States, 1945).
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/smyth-report/index.html.
62
conceivable that totally different methods may be discovered for converting matter into energy
since it is to be remembered that the energy released in uranium fission corresponds to the
utilization of only about one-tenth of one per cent of its mass. Should a scheme be devised for
converting to energy even as much as a few percent of the matter of some common material,
civilization would have the means to commit suicide at will.
13.5. The possible uses of nuclear energy are not all destructive, and the second direction
in which technical development can be expected is along the paths of peace. In the fall of 1944
General Groves appointed a committee to look into these possibilities as well as those of military
significance. This committee (Dr. R. C. Tolman, chairman; Rear Admiral E. W. Mills (USN)
with Captain T. A. Solberg (USN) as deputy, Dr. W. K. Lewis, and Dr. H. D. Smyth) received a
multitude of suggestions from men on the various projects, principally along the lines of the use
of nuclear energy for power and the use of radioactive by-products for scientific, medical, and
industrial purposes. While there was general agreement that a great industry might eventually
arise, comparable, perhaps, with the electronics industry, there was disagreement as to how
rapidly such an industry would grow; the consensus was that the growth would be slow over a
period of many years. At least there is no immediate prospect of running cars with nuclear power
or lighting houses with radioactive lamps although there is a good probability that nuclear power
for special purposes could be developed within ten years and that plentiful supplies of
radioactive materials can have a profound effect on scientific research and perhaps on the
treatment of certain diseases in a similar period.
Planning for the Future
13.6. During the war the effort has been to achieve the maximum military results. It has
been apparent for some time that some sort of government control and support in the field of
nuclear energy must continue after the war. Many of the men associated with the project have
recognized this fact and have come forward with various proposals, some of which were
considered by the Tolman Committee, although it was only a temporary advisory committee
reporting to General Groves. An interim committee at a high level is now engaged in formulating
plans for a continuing organization. This committee is also discussing matters of general policy
about which many of the more thoughtful men on the project have been deeply concerned since
the work was begun and especially since success became more and more probable.
The Questions Before the People
13.7. We find ourselves with an explosive which is far from completely perfected. Yet
the future possibilities of such explosives are appalling, and their effects on future wars and
international affairs are of fundamental importance. Here is a new tool for mankind, a tool of
unimaginable destructive power. Its development raises many questions that must be answered in
the near future.
13.8. Because of the restrictions of military security there has been no chance for the
Congress or the people to debate such questions. They have been seriously considered by all
concerned and vigorously debated among the scientists, and the conclusions reached have been
passed along to the highest authorities. These questions are not technical questions; they are
political and social questions, and the answers given to them may affect all mankind for
generations. In thinking about them the men on the project have been thinking as citizens of the
United States vitally interested in the welfare of the human race. It has been their duty and that of
the responsible high government officials who were informed to look beyond the limits of the
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present war and its weapons to the ultimate implications of these discoveries. This was a heavy
responsibility. In a free country like ours, such questions should be debated by the people and
decisions must be made by the people through their representatives. This is one reason for the
release of this report. It is a semi-technical report which it is hoped men of science in this
country can use to help their fellow citizens in reaching wise decisions. The people of the
country must be informed if they are to discharge their responsibilities wisely.
64
Petition to President Truman10
10
Petition to the President of the United States, July 17, 1945 in The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb,
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/petition-president-united-states
65
66
Telegram to Truman on the Atomic Bomb11
11
Telegram, Richard Russell to Harry S. Truman, August 7, 1945 in The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb,
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/telegram-richard-russell-harry-struman?documentid=NA&pagenumber=4
67
68
Unit 5 Discussion Questions:
Directions: Using the materials below, be able to answer the following questions before the last
day of the unit. Questions will be discussed the same day the unit’s Source Analysis is due.
Please make sure you are prepared.
Questions:
1. Why did “history” turn away from “progress” ideas and unifying narratives in the postWWII era?
2. Why is punk useful in an examination of post-WWII European history?
3. Why is Kristiansen, Blaney, Chidester, and Simonds’s synthesis of the punk timeline
dubious?
4. How does punk capture the disaffection of decolonization in European society after
WWII?
5. Why is the rejection of commodification dangerous to the punk idea in the post-WWII
culture of Europe?
6. Why must post-modernism and punk be self-consciously aware?
7. How did punk “mature” in Britain?
8. Given the shifts in historical methods and ethics, how is history “punk?”
69
Materials:
History and Two Visions of Postmodernity12
After 1945, the long-standing criticisms of specific features of modernity were joined by
criticisms that represented an outright rejection of modernity, including the progressive view of
history. The nearly incomprehensible catastrophes of the twentieth century provided a clear
rationale for the new attitude. Talk increased of a postmodern age with appropriately postmodern
ways of life and thought that could avoid the vicissitudes of modernity, if not of all of history.
The opposition to modernity manifested itself in two chronologically and substantially different
critical currents. From 1945 to the mid-1960s, a group of scholars did not reject modernity's key
historical concept-progress-but reinterpreted it in a pessimistic manner. In the 1980s, they were
succeeded by a much more influential group, whose members saw the human catastrophes of the
past decades not as deviations from but as revelations of the true nature of modernity. Both
groups of postmodernists suggested radically different versions of the human condition, each of
them with severe implications for historiography.
The early postmodernists and their static postmodernity.
The group of postmodernists active in the first two decades after World War II
abandoned notions of the end of progress in the Marquis de Condorcet's terms of progress: an
ultimate era of peace, happiness, freedom, and virtue. In doing so they paralleled the thought of a
mid-nineteenth-century French polymath, A. A. Cournot, who had spotted the supreme irony at
work in progress: reason guided history toward a perfectly rational world which, when
established, would due to its perfection know only the continuity of an ever same routine. The
irony of history made progress, dominated by relentless change, into the march vers fixitd.
Cournot spelled out the price of that end stage. Human life would resemble life in a beehiveperfectly organized but lacking any freedom. In the 1930s, Alexandre Kojeve had projected a
Hegelian development toward a postmodernity that he, too, viewed as no longer deserving of
being called human.
In the works of the post-1945 postmodernists, that end stage-postmodernity with a human
life radically restricted in scope-remained the main theme in a number of variations. For
Hendryk de Man, mass-production, mass-consumption mass media and the transformation of all
creativity into mere technique will lead to a monotonous life. According to Bertrand de Jouvenel,
the lure of the promise of complete material security will bring about the Great Protectorate (the
state that takes care of everything at the price of freedom). Arthur Gehlen foresaw a petrified
society in which the natural instincts have been replaced by minute organization. Roderick
Seidenberg envisioned postmodernity's society of organization as the triumph of the perfect
social machine. In each case, the dynamics of progress had ended in a sort of entropy.
In a popular and optimistic version of the same theme, Francis Fukuyama's The End of
History and the Last Man (1992) projected a more optimistic postmodem life in triumphant
liberal democracy. In this postmodernity, life would be kept within safe but not oppressive
boundaries. The two decisive and conflicting desires for recognition-one for superiority, the
other for equality-have been transformed into a creative tension by liberal-democratic
institutions. Change had been limited but not suppressed.
12
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 420-423.
70
The message was clear. The ultimate goal of progress had been misunderstood because
the irony of history had not been grasped. If human development were to end in a state of
perfection, then the human condition would be by definition a static one. Modem developments
must therefore not automatically be understood as harbingers of all that is good, but ironically as
deceptive builders of a life strictly limited in dimensions for the sake of the perennial continuity
of routine.
Progress's claim to universal validity for its view on the course of history rested partially
on empirically verifiable improvements in human life, but primarily on the extreme
simplification of the historical dynamic: all changes wrought by reason over time would result in
the moral and material perfection of human life. Change energized by increasing rationality was
perceived to have only temporary and not intrinsically bad consequences. Human development
will end in a totally static, and by definition infinite, state of perfection. Postmodernists accepted
such a turn in the human condition, except that their end stage did not conform to the usual
joyous expectations of the advocates of progress. In the ultimate irony, however different their
projected end stages were, these postmodernists accepted the radical reductionism inherent in
traditional progress views: the perfection of the end stage is made possible by reducing the two
basic temporal experiences (change and continuity) arbitrarily into one. This early group of
postmodernists saw the ultimate stage marked by the triumph of continuity. In it, change, if any,
would be negligible.
Historians were not disturbed by what in theory posed a grave threat to their endeavor,
but to them appeared to be speculative philosophy. On the positive side, these postmodernists
used methods and approaches to scholarly inquiry that were empirical in the manner of the social
sciences, some of which had proved useful in reconstructing the past's reality. But historians
could not have been pleased by the role assigned to them in postmodernity (except for
Fukuyama), one reduced to writing annals that recorded an unchanging narrow routine.
Historians could have pointed out that millennia of human existence have shown the two
temporal experiences (change and continuity) to comprise the unalterable full time dimension of
the human condition. Theories could not change that reality.
The later postmodernists and their postmodernity of total flux.
Beginning in the 1970s, another radical criticism of modernity gained increasing
currency, primarily through the work of French scholars, among them Michel Foucault, Jacques
Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard. The new group of postmodernists, also disillusioned and
shocked by the great human catastrophes of the twentieth century, again foresaw an age in which
a new outlook on and way of life would exclude the crucial causes for the vicissitudes of history.
Its basic proposition maintained that all assertions of universality and permanence present in
theory and life were dangerous illusions. They too easily led to claims of absolute truth or
knowledge which, when wedded to sufficient power, have caused immense human catastrophes.
Such a tie-in could be avoided if the world were seen as being in a state of complete,
directionless, and endless flux. In terms of historical theory, the dual human experience of time
had to be redefined. This group of postmodernists resolved the perennial and crucial tension
between continuity and change by declaring change to be the sole temporal reality. Continuity
acquired the nature of a temporary human construct. In such a world of flux, truth could no
longer be declared to be absolute. All notions and features of efficacious continuity-such as
thinking in terms of the "natural," "essential," or "inherent"-had to be abandoned. Interpretations
of individuals, texts, and truth with such qualities had to be "decentered," that is, to be deprived
71
of such anchors of stability. Only then could diversity, multiplicity, heterogeneity, and utter
flexibility be made to prevail over artificial homogeneity.
The "linguistic turn" and historical practice.
While the earlier postmodernists had affirmed objective and permanent forces and
patterns to be at work in human life and history, the new postmodernists did not. They were best
characterized as poststructuralist. French structuralists in the vein of Claude LevyStrauss had still
acknowledged the presence of permanent codes or even a universal code behind the myriad
phenomena of the world. For their rejection of such elements of fixity, these postmodernists had
recourse to a broad intellectual current that since the early 1900s has swept language into the
center of thought-the so-called linguistic turn. In the early 1900s, the pioneering Ferdinand de
Saussure had reinterpreted language from being the passive image of reality to an active selfregulating network of signifiers (words) and signifieds (their objects or ideas). Meanings resulted
strictly from relationships within the language system. Decades later, Roland Barthes translated
that into a more radical view, in which all meaning and truth were freely created constructs
(poststructuralism). Historical accounts had no more claim to truth than any other texts. The
whole scholarly apparatus that intended to assure accuracy in the relation between historical
accounts and past reality produced not an image of that reality at all but only a "reality effect."
Poststructuralist influence on history, most importantly through Michel Foucault and Jacques
Derrida, aimed at ending a period of thought in Western culture in which the consciousness of
the rational and world-shaping subject had been at the center. That subject was now itself seen as
being shaped and defined by the linguistic network in which it was embedded. As a linguistic
construct, its identity lacked all permanent features. Hence derived the talk of the death of the
subject and its correlate, the end of history (Foucault).
By the 1980s, poststructuralist concepts had gained a strong presence in historical theory.
With the past as it had been lived (actual reality) declared to be veiled completely and available
only in what had been traditionally called secondary sources (stories of the past), truth, research,
objectivity, facts, and meaning were redefined. All historical accounts were seen as constructs
written in reference to earlier texts (other constructs). Texts referred to texts, never to anything
outside of them. Beset by internal tensions and contradictions between their textual elements,
texts were fragile and incapable of making more than tentative truth claims. Research, no longer
an attempt to reconstruct the actual past, became the self-reflexive reading of other texts. In the
analysis of historical accounts authors and readers would be equals. No text could lay claim to
superiority over other texts based on a special kinship to or profound insights into past
reality. As for historical accounts, objectivity now was replaced by stringent selfreflexivity
(critical self-examination on the part of the authors).
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Why a Revision of Punk13
The year 2007 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the “subcultural” movement commonly
referred to as punk (punk rock is the movement’s musical expression), at least if the Sex Pistols’
seminal record “Never Mind the Bollocks” is used as a definitive starting point. Researchers
from various fields of academia have investigated the phenomenon,14 and punk is arguably the
most studied “subculture” to ever launch itself onto the larger social agenda as a possible
counterbalance to the mainstream cultural hegemony.
During the late 1970s, punk scenes sprouted up in large numbers all over the globe, and it
appears that deep feelings of discontent toward the inherent alienation present in the capitalist
system were the motivational seed that facilitated their growth. Postwar England saw
unemployment lines spread wildly, and ranks of people gathered in dole queues on street corners
everywhere sincerely hoping to find employment. People were angry, young, and poor, and the
prosperous narrative offered by the British government stood in stark contrast to the lived
experience of the country’s workers: England was trapped in a contemporary state of affairs that
demanded imminent reaction (Hebdige, 1979; Savage, 2001; Simonelli, 2002). It was, however,
surprising that this reaction would present itself in the form of musically charged social protest
orchestrated by four disenfranchised adolescents hanging around Vivienne Westwood and
Malcolm McLaren’s fashion boutique on King’s Road.
A Brief Introduction to the Problem—A Theoretical Rationale
Unconvinced that historical accounts—many of which are referenced above—have been
successful in adequately describing and proficiently capturing the essence of punk, this study
examines the phenomenon in slightly different terms. Where historical accounts largely have
been launched down one of three distinctly separate trajectories—(1) punk is a subculture, (2)
punk is a musical genre, or (3) punk is an authentic cultural expression—this study proposes that
punk should be understood as a way of seeing the world, as a way of reasoning, or, essentially, as
a philosophy on its own terms. Rather than being grounded in musical properties, a certain style
of dress, or even a way of life, it will be argued that punk deals mainly with concepts and ideas,
and it should, therefore, be treated accordingly. Hence, it is argued that all the observable
attributes that academics have previously examined are mere visual and audible manifestations
of an underlying punk philosophy.
…
Punk History
13
Lars J Kristiansen, Joseph R. Blaney, Philip J. Chidester, and Brent K. Simonds, Scream for Change: Articulating a
Unifying Philosophy of Punk Rock (New York: Lexington Books, 2010), 8-27.
14
(e.g., Bennet, 2006; Davies, 1996; Garnett, 1999; Goshert, 2000; Graffin, 2007; Grossberg, 1986; Hebdige, 1979;
Herman & Sloop, 1998; Huxley; 1999, Lydon, Zimmerman & Zimmerman, 1994; Matula, 2007; McKay, 1998, 1999;
McLoone, 2004; Moore, 2004; Muggleton, 2000; O’Hara, 1999; Phillipov, 2006; Redhead, 1990; Sabin, 1999a,
1999b; Savage, 2001; Simonelli, 2002; Sinker, 1999; Spicer, 2006; Taylor, 2003; Wood, 2006)
73
Punks have been archenemies of good taste and public decency for the better part of three
decades, and they have shown resilience and stark determination in their fight against the social,
political, economic, and cultural practices of the status quo. In fact, punk was a fresh start, and it
functioned as a new way of creating, consuming, and experiencing art. Proving itself worthy of
life in a modern world, it rapidly caught on. During the late 1970s, punk gained widespread
media attention for its deviant call to arms—using sacred mainstream symbols as ammunition in
its self-proclaimed class war—and the punk movement rapidly gained momentum. To this day,
punks can be found almost everywhere. Inhabitants of metropolitan areas and small towns all
over the world have come to recognize the punk expression by its characteristic visual and
musical features. Mohawks, tattoos, tight jeans, and leather jackets are still flown by punks
marching their mission toward freedom, emancipation, and justice for all, as symbolic flags of
individuality.
Even though punk in many ways has become an easily identifiable cultural expression, its
underlying motivations and its overarching cultural undertakings are still somewhat diffuse.
Scholars from different academic specializations have offered insight into punk’s properties, but
the generalizability, or even correctness, of these accounts are questionable. There are several
reasons why this uncertainty exists, and they are all ultimately tied to definitional concerns.
Sabin (1999a) suggests that “until we decide what punk was, it is impossible to say what its
consequences were” (p. 5). For now, it will suffice to say that this study removes focus from
punk’s visual and musical attributes and refocuses it on punk’s intellectual properties. Thus,
punk will, in the following, be seen as an oppositional philosophical framework with its own
idiosyncratic ideology that is geared toward social change. In order to achieve such ends, some
background is needed; the following paragraphs therefore devote attention to punk’s history from
its early stages of development until the present day.
The Beginnings
Pinpointing punk’s historical and geographical birthplace is a dubious task, and even in
academic circles, discussion regarding its place of origin is still debated (Savage, 2001).
Controversy also exists regarding punk’s importance, influence, and continued survival (Davies,
1996; Hebdige, 1979; Goshert, 2000; Grossberg, 1986; Phillipov, 2006; Sabin, 1999a; Simonelli,
2002; Wood, 2006). On the topic of origin, however, some consensus does exist, and scholars
typically have ascribed to one of two different approaches: (1) punk originated in the United
States, or (2) punk is a British phenomenon. As should be expected, there are exceptions to this
rule. Not satisfied with the constricting nature of these approaches, historian Jon Savage (2001)
entertained the idea of punk as a global oppositional phenomenon that emerged as a response to
specific social, political, and economic conditions that were present in most western capitalist
societies during the mid-to-late 1970s. To back up his claim, Savage explains that bands with
similar musical expressions and political ideas emerged at the same time in England, USA, and
Australia. Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden also harbored bands
that would fit the emerging punk category.
Thus, in taking a more dynamic approach, this study collapses the three historical
approaches into one continuous timeline, and it is argued that the punk sound was created in
America, perfected (or corrupted) in Britain, and subsequently disseminated to the world. That
is, the punk sound sprung out of the American garage rock scene, its oppositional politics were
attached to the musical expression as a reaction to the contradictions inherent in the British class
system, and the global presence of punk is a direct result of its ability to resonate with deeply felt
74
emotions of discontent existent worldwide. Differing accounts, therefore, should not present too
many problems, as the different scenes are conceptually interconnected, and they all offer similar
ideological content.
Still, the brand of punk that exists today will, in the following, be treated largely as a
British invention because before the introduction of oppositional politics, punk did not exercise a
great deal of social influence. Simonelli (2002) sheds light on this debate when arguing that the
original American punk scenes sprung out of boredom and that they served only as a means to
escape the increasingly monotonous submissiveness of lives structured and erected on a
foundation of consumerist ideals. American punk, or proto-punk, therefore functioned as a
musical means to a specific end, namely, having fun by breaking up the externally imposed
passivity of suburban life. Punk was an attack on the increasing dullness of the daily grind.
However, the British punk explosion was a joint effort of art-school sensibilities mixed
with genuine class struggle in an attempt to bring about social change. In summation, the
American pre/proto-punk “movement” was anchored in fun whereas the British punk movement
rested upon ideals of social change.
Historical Definitions of Punk
Spicer (2006) explains that several meanings have been attributed to the term punk over
the course of history and that its shifting definitional content has referred to an assortment of
different material and immaterial entities, objects, behaviors, and groups. An overall common
characteristic, however, is that the word “punk” has consistently carried unappealing negative
connotations; the Merriam-Webster dictionary displays various meanings that range from sexual
deviancy to prostitution and severe inexperience. Although the Merriam-Webster dictionary is
unable to provide an etymologic origin for the word “punk,” it is likely that the term originated
in Britain sometime during the late 1500s or the early 1600s, where it denoted whore or
prostitute. In fact, Shakespeare used the term in his play Measure for Measure to illustrate how
an unmarried woman was perceived to be a prostitute based on her failure to conform to the
expected gender roles and conventions of her time: “[My Lord,] she may be a punk; for many of
them are neither maid, widow, nor wife” (quoted in Spicer, 2006, p. 3).
However, punk took a definitional turn when it entered the shores of America. During the
1700s, it was used as a description for slow-burning rotten wood or fungus, which, when dry,
could be used as tinder (Spicer, 2006). Punk, in this context, was a measure of an object’s
general lack of worth and quality, in the sense that punk objects were believed to be cheap,
worthless, or even rubbishy. More recently, punk has frequented the United States prison system,
where it has been used as a label for passive homosexuals and victims of male-onmale sex
crimes. In elaborating this claim, Spicer explains that in the correctional system, punks are on the
receiving end of involuntary homosexual intercourse and are, in essence, prison rape victims.
This definition further led to understandings of punks as petty criminals, deviants, ruffians,
gangsters, or hoodlums; consequently, these understandings made their way into popular
television programming and Hollywood films as demeaning and derogatory characterizations of
people on the wrong side of the law. Indeed, the term was notably used in the well-known Clint
Eastwood movie Dirty Harry…
…As seems evident, punk is far from a compliment paid to law-abiding citizens, but
rather a derogatory label reserved for social outcasts threatening the “natural” order of things. In
fact, punk’s definitional content took a drastic turn when scores of young people everywhere
embraced it as an empowering semantic talisman in their quest for total self debasement. The
75
intriguing aspect, however, is that punks did not try to re-appropriate the term—their mission
was to scare the establishment by becoming the deviants that respectable members of society
feared and despised—and the derogatory nature of the term remained intact.
Punk continues to exist as a synonym for social, cultural, and political deviancy.
However, the punks’ underlying motivations for embracing the term stems from a deep desire to
state their discontent with society’s power structures, particularly the lower-status social groups’
lack of power to partake in the process of defining and labeling social entities, which
consequently, resulted in punks becoming the prophesized “monster” society itself had created.
Punk, then, is a celebratory expression of lower-class belongingness—or belongingness to a
marginalized group—rather than a derogatory term reflecting its subcultural participants’ degree
of lawfulness or sexual preferences. At least, this seems true during punk’s initial stages.
…
Punk Rock—A Definitional Nightmare
…[S]cholars have offered very different ideas when arguing about what really counts as
punk rock. Moreover, the separation between punk and punk rock has been largely disregarded,
and the whole debate has developed into a jumble of different ideas relating to all of punk’s
conceptual elements. That is, punk and punk rock have come to carry similar, possibly even
synonymous, meanings, and they both relate to subcultural practices, musical orchestration, and
oppositional ideas. It is, therefore, necessary to develop an agreed upon conceptual vocabulary
that addresses punk’s specific components. Sabin (1999a) has expressed similar concerns and,
after explaining that the act of defining is the grim duty of any writer of introductions, goes on to
suggest that
At a very basic level, we can say that punk was/is a subculture best characterized as part youth
rebellion, part artistic statement. It had its high point from 1976 to 1979, and was most visible in
Britain and America. It had its primary manifestation in music—and specifically in the
disaffected rock and roll bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Philosophically, it had no “set
agenda” like the hippy movement that preceded it, but nevertheless stood for identifiable
attitudes, among them: an emphasis on negationism (rather than nihilism); a consciousness of
class-based politics (with a stress on “working-class credibility”); and a belief in spontaneity
and “doing it yourself’ (pp. 2-3).
…
Others have defined punk in slightly different terms. For example, Goshert (2000) and
O’Connor (2002) have argued for a local approach to punk, expressing concerns that grand
allencompassing definitions are truly un-punk. Further, Graffin (2007), a scholar from the field
of evolutionary biology, has approached punk from a socio-biological perspective. Graffin
provides a dynamic overview of punk thought and practice, and he presents five characteristics
that, taken together, merge into an overarching punk definition. First, punk is the “personal
expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our
human ability to reason and ask questions” (§ 9). Second, punk is “a movement that serves to
refute social attitudes that have been perpetuated through willful ignorance of human nature”
(§16). Third, punk is “a process of questioning and commitment to understanding that results in
self-progress, and by extrapolation, could lead to social progress” (§ 24). Fourth, punk is “a
76
belief that this world is what we make of it, truth comes from our understanding of the way
things are, not from the blind adherence to prescriptions about the way things should be” (§ 30).
Finally, punk is “the constant struggle against fear of social repercussions” (§ 42). Graffin opens
up punk to be viewed as an intellectual entity based on individuality and personal perception.
Punk, in this view, is a way of seeing and experiencing the world…
Commodified Punk Rock vs. Underground Punk Rock
A further problem with many historical accounts is the lack of sample diversity and the
problem of analyzing bands and texts that have already been labeled as punk by the mainstream
media (Goshert, 2000). Well-known “punk bands” are likely to be nothing more than rock bands,
as co-optation almost certainly looms in the background. Spicer (2006) remarks that “over the
years ‘punk rock’ as a term has become diffused and devalued through being applied to every
little gang of snot-nosed rockers to be hailed as the next new thing” and that it “has been
overused by journalists, while fans looking for the real deal have been ripped off by the record
companies who flood the market with a dozen discs awash with rubbish, but wearing the ‘punk
tag’ ” (p. iv).
…
Further problems are encountered when punk branches off into smaller subgenres. There
are numerous types of punk rock, and the umbrella term “punk” is mainly used to express
conceptual linkage between the different forms. However, the similarities shared by these punk
rock offshoots are greater than their dissimilarities. Therefore, they can be seen as connected at
the deep structural level, since they are closer to each other than they are to musical genres
accepted, marketed, and sold by the mainstream within the hegemonic cultural apparatus. They
serve as subtle color differences to an overall sinister shade of deviance.
Attempting a New Definition, or Rather, a Description
…[T]he presented approaches have failed to satisfactorily define and describe punk in its
totality and… these accounts have been ineffectual in capturing the essence of punk. In fact, the
tendency seems to suggest that scholars have chosen a fragment of the punk expression and
focused exclusively on only one of the three different conceptual attributes. Punk, as will be
argued, is comprised of three major conceptual building blocks that when taken together,
converge into a complete and coherent social and intellectual phenomenon; punk is an
amalgamated fusion of forms synthesized into a distinguishable social and intellectual
experience.
First, punk is a way of observing the world. It is a distinctive political mindset geared
toward social change, communal progress, and betterment of the human condition. Second, punk
is an intentionally loud and abrasive musical expression that is unappealing to the masses of
society. Finally, punk is a subcultural experience lived out close to the margins of society… The
important distinction here, as opposed to other punk studies, is that the first category is necessary
whereas the other two are preferable or desirable…This is not to deny that punk subcultures exist
or that there is such a thing as punk rock, rather, it is to suggest that these expressions are the
observable manifestations of an oppositional philosophical system.
…
Punk’s Garage Rock Roots
77
…[P]unk’s initial musical expression was highly influenced by the new and primitive
distortion drenched rock sound that emanated from garages all over America during the mid-tolate sixties. Drawing heavily on surf rock and rockabilly, garage bands offered a new musical
template for followers to enjoy and bands to experiment with…
The American garage bands created an unfiltered, unprofessional, and oftentimes
abrasive sound that was marked by amateurish and disruptive arrangements. It was new, it was
fresh, and it captured the younger generation’s desire for musical innovation. The goal was not
fame and fortune; it was fun, and upon starting out, most garage bands had no vision of
eminence. Barthes (1985) explains “the enormous benefit of an amateur’s situation is that it
involves no image repertoire, no narcissism” (pp. 216-217). The unexpected popularity that some
garage bands experienced can be attributed, therefore, to adolescents’ search for a musical style
that resonated with their everyday lives and was capable of mirroring their surroundings. Garage
rock’s stripped down image and simplistic sound signified a break with the reproductive circle of
pompous grandeur that was disseminated by many contemporaries, and this honest type of rockand-roll resonated well with the music consuming public. Rock was brought back to the basics,
and new amplification technologies, such as better amplifiers, fuzz pedals, and overdrive,
enabled massive rock to be played by bands with only four members.
However, the garage rock label is somewhat problematic. Garage bands were not part of
a cohesive movement, and garage rock was generally used to describe bands that did rehearse
and play in their parents’ garages. No generic boundaries had been established, and garage bands
from California sounded very different than garage bands from New York. For further
introduction to garage rock, and the diversity present within the now established genre, the
legendary Nuggets compilation, put together in a four CD box set by Lenny Kaye, comes highly
recommended (Spicer, 2006). Here one is able to find the sacred ur-texts of the garage rock
genre.
Proto-Punk
Founded in New York City in 1965, Velvet Underground can, in many ways, be seen as
the founders of proto-punk and subsequently, punk rock. The band was influential not in terms of
musical influence and instrumentation but as a beacon of oppositional attitude and style. Velvet
Underground captured the non-caring expression that later came to signify many punk bands,
and according to Spicer (2006), they were “the masters of decadent, uncaring, blank expression
rock’n’roll” (p. 10). Velvet Underground was instrumental in opening up the musical landscape
for bands with untraditional attitudes, and their importance should not be underestimated.
Although Velvet Underground served as an important influence, proto-punk is largely a
term used to describe bands that followed in the wake of the first wave of garage rock. More
specifically, it is a label normally reserved for bands such as MC5 and the Stooges that sprung
out of Detroit, Michigan, and its surrounding areas. These bands, and most certainly the Stooges,
broke down the widely shared illusion that musicians had to be talented. The Stooges’
amateurish compositions and inability to correctly play their instruments rendered it fairly
irrelevant whether it was the band or the audience who figured up on stage.
Like the garage rock genre that preceded it, proto-punk was not a cohesive movement.
Rather, it was a label used to identify bands that could not be sorted comfortably into already
existing categories. The main reason was the simplistic instrumentation and lack of skill, but the
lyrical content was also noteworthy and deserves mention. Common themes in proto-punk lyrics
were alienation and boredom, and bands sought to unmask the grim alienation present in
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contemporary society through verbal attacks on the dullness of everyday life. In fact, MC5 also
had deep ties to the White Panthers Party.
Although largely an American phenomenon, proto-punk can also be found in Britain. In
Britain, however, it went under different names, and it is commonly referred to as either glam
rock or pub rock. Notable pub rock bands would include Eddie and the Hot Rods, the Stranglers,
Dr. Feelgood, the 101er’s (Joe Strummer’s first band), as well as Kilburn and the High Roads. In
fact, Elvis Costello was also seen frequenting the pub rock circuit (Savage, 2001; Spicer, 2006).
As for glam rock bands, Roxy Music, T. Rex, Sweet, Gary Glitter, and David Bowie are
honorable mentions. Glam rock did take a different path musically, but some members of the Sex
Pistols were reportedly big fans of Bowie and Roxy Music (Savage, 2001).
In addition to the Michigan bands MC5, the Prime Movers, and the Stooges, other
pre/proto-punk bands from the American Midwest have also earned their place in the chronicles
of history. The vibrant pre-punk scene in Cleveland, Ohio, produced such bands as Pere Ubu and
the Electric Eels, which have been highly influential to other bands of the era. On the east coast,
and more specifically in New York, bands like Television, the New York Dolls, and the
Ramones wreaked musical havoc in their respective neighborhoods. In fact, the Ramones carried
the punk torch as CBGB audience favorites and rock club mainstays. Their sound was raw,
uncomplicated, anchored in simplicity, and based mostly on three chord song progressions.
Charles Shaar Murray explains that the Ramones “used to play twenty-minute sets because they
only had eight songs, but now they’re up to forty-five minutes. Joey spits out the title of the
song, Dee Dee shouts ‘one-two-three-four’ and they’re off again” (quoted in Savage, 2001, p.
130). This combination of raw, energetic music and foul attitudes is what Malcolm McLaren
brought back with him to England.
Here’s Johnny!—The Antichrist Appears
Punk found its way to England by means of Malcolm McLaren’s travels to America,
where he spent time in New York unofficially managing the severely dysfunctional, drug-crazed
New York Dolls. His job, however, proved difficult as the drugged-out New York Dolls had
stopped caring about anything and were only a few steps away from self-implosion (they
disbanded in 1977). This resulted in McLaren eventually returning England, which, in hindsight,
proved a profitable solution. Upon arrival in London, McLaren started looking into the
possibilities of putting together a band of his own, which could cause some trouble and stir up
some controversy, while also serving as an efficient and effective marketing instrument for
advertising his clothing store SEX. As Savage (2001) and Spicer (2006) explain, McLaren really
wanted to sell some overpriced trousers. McLaren was successful in his task, and he did manage
to recruit four teenagers hanging around his shop on King’s Road. The band made up of John
Lydon, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, and Paul Cook is what legions of punks, and more
immediately, scores of outraged Britons, have come to know as the Sex Pistols. The English
brand of punk rock is a continuation of American proto-punk sensibilities now taken to its
logical conclusion (or possibly even its extreme) and finally conceived of as a unified movement.
British punk was not just an attack on external social factors but also an attack on rock-and-roll
itself. Grossberg (1986) explains “punks attacked rock and roll for having grown old and fat, for
having lost that which puts it in touch with the audience and outside the hegemonic reality” (p.
61). The sacredness of rock-and-roll was questioned, crushed, and subsequently discarded, and in
the ensuing chaos the media found the Sex Pistols smack in the middle of the storm’s eye…
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Up until the late 1970s, performers typically had been perceived as professionals. That is,
performers were thought to be trained in the art of entertainment, and people were convinced that
these artists knew exactly what they were doing. The fame and fortune they experienced were,
therefore, seen as both warranted and deserved. Music was conceived of as high art, and the acts
put on by renowned performers such as Bowie, the Stones, and the Beatles were perceived to be
well thought through and, consequently, well worth spending money on. However, such views
place music in the category of simple entertainment, as something trivial. Although uplifting and
cheerful entertainment was dearly sought after in a British society plagued by post-war recession,
music in this view is reduced to nothing more than simple acts of escapism. Escapism might be a
valuable end in itself, but punks wanted more. Punk served as means to break down this artificial
boundary between performer and audience, and it served as a violent call to arms on the
pompousness of their contemporaries; punks ultimately sought to demolish historically handed
down conventions and to reestablish equality through egalitarian politics. Where Bowie would
entertain an audience, the Sex Pistols invited people to take part in the musical experience and
facilitated the questioning of status quo cultural practices; they claimed no past and envisioned
no future. There was, in essence, no reason why they should be up on stage; they had no more
talent than the average audience member. Hardcore bands of the early 1980s took it even a step
further, as many of them decided to get rid of the stage altogether and just played shows on the
floor. Photographic evidence from hardcore shows reveal that the only way one can distinguish
the band from the audience is by looking closely for persons holding guitars and microphones, or
wielding drumsticks.
The Sex Pistols, then, put opposition and rebellion back in rock-and-roll, and they did so
with grandeur. They were despised by every respectable member of society for their attitudes,
their musical tastes, and their fashion style, which is reflected by the early punks’ use of
swastikas as fashion symbols in order to aggravate the establishment. Punks did not wear these
symbols because of deeply felt sympathies for the German war machine, or because they
necessarily found Nazi conceptions of the Übermensch appealing (Nietzsche, 1883), but rather as
ammunition in their war on meaning. These symbols were offensive and wearing them had the
added bonus of inducing the desired and sought after disbelief, paranoia, and outrage that was
needed to state their dissatisfaction with contemporary society; it forced people to think outside
the proverbial box. It backfired with splendor and puritan English commoners were horrified and
outraged by the punks’ inability to seriously and respectfully honor England’s war effort during
the 1940s. This, in turn, resulted in the moral elite doing every thing in their power to stop the
Sex Pistols from spreading their foul message and deviant politics.
Savage (2001) explains how the Sex Pistols’ shows were systematically shut down by
town officials, how church groups would routinely gather outside concert venues denouncing
their ungodly behavior and damning them to the eternal fires of hell, how British broadcasters
would ban the airing of their songs, and how the band members themselves were beaten in the
streets by outraged citizens. Despite all of this, punk caught on and other young Londoners
started forming bands of their own. The Clash exploded onto the scene with their infectious
fusion of reggae and punk, the Damned contributed with their special brand of gothic punk, and
even the Manchester band Buzzcocks played its part in constructing a loosely organized punk
movement.
It is widely recognized that early punk was tied to avant-garde art movements and the
Situationists International in particular. This connection, however, has in many ways been
overestimated and glorified in different historical accounts. The connection with Situationism,
80
Pop Art, Dadaism, and other far left anti-authoritarian ideologies were mainly amusing parts of
Malcolm McLaren’s exquisitely orchestrated social experiment. McLaren wanted reactions and,
therefore, found great pleasure in trying out these radical concepts in real life. However, punks
themselves were not necessarily aware of the finer philosophical implications of his strategies
and played along with his schemes because it was fun.
It is important to note that punk was not necessarily an exclusively class-based social
phenomenon. Although class was an integral and important part of the overall social agenda,
punk also had intimate ties to London’s art schools. Many punk bands were formed within the
walls of these institutions; they also served as rudimentary concert venues for early punk gigs,
and art school sensibilities helped in creating and shaping the characteristic punk expression.
Punk goes 80s
When the frantic media circus known as the Sex Pistols collapsed in 1978, the first wave
of punk had in many ways reached its full potential (the death of Sid Vicious in 1979 can further
be said to be the final concluding event). Corporate forces had successfully co-opted punk’s
initial rebellion, and punk clothing, outfits, hair dye and records could now be found in stores
everywhere. The personal commitment and desire for change that once characterized punk had
been substituted with an obscene fixation on fashion and style. In this sense, Hebdige (1979) was
correct when arguing that punk was nothing more than surface level rebellion. The mainstream
had successfully constructed a fitting, and most certainly constricting, category for social
deviancy and effectively imposed hegemonic ideals of uniformity on a movement erected on
principles of individuality. Spicer (2006) explains that punk had lost its bite and that “any Arnold
could punk themselves up for the weekend and be back in harness on Monday, dressed down and
dowdy for work” (p. 37). However, the core of the punk movement, the people who had invested
blood, sweat, and tears and who felt their expression had been unjustly taken from them,
retracted from the stage lights and took the movement underground…
Following the demise of the Sex Pistols, the British punk movement fell apart and the
punk musical expression branched off into new wave—a synth-soaked post-punk musical
expression flirting with numerous other musical styles and genres. The few remaining punk
bands went underground, and artists such as Citizen Fish, Cockney Rejects, Crass, GBH
(Grievous Bodily Harm), the Subhumans, and the U.K Subs, among others, were left carrying
the punk torch.
Though, in America, the punk spirit was still alive and the embers left glowing
unsupervised erupted into a California wildfire. Southern California was now the new hotspot for
bands playing hardcore music, which was, an even more abrasive and inaccessible brand of punk
rock. This movement was marked by underground ideals, and the massive media attention that
had been bestowed upon the British bands was now non-existent. Still, as it was suggested by
Rolling Stone in 1985, “punk...in all its obnoxious, rebellious, snotty glory— lives” (quoted in
Spicer, 2006, p. 50). Hardcore scenes popped up all over the country, and important U.S. bands
of this period include Black Flag, Bad Religion, T.S.O.L (True Sounds of Liberty), R.K.L (Rich
Kids on LSD), Circle Jerks, the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Dead Kennedys, 7 Seconds, the
Meatmen, Meat Puppets, Bad Brains, the Avengers, and Minor Threat.
Blush (2001) explains that hardcore was highly influenced by the British punk
movement, as well as earlier domestic proto-punk bands, and that hardcore was a reaction
against the Reagan-era politics, specifically the moronic Zeitgeist catchphrase “greed is good”
(Spicer, 2006, p. 43). Reaganomics were perceived to be the newest incarnation of corporate
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avarice, and kids playing in bands did not pull their punches (NOFX recorded a song titled
“Reagan Sucks”). Hardcore was violent, dirty, and uncompromising, and it relied heavily on the
same basic formula that had been utilized by earlier bands: “similar to punk rock music, hardcore
has a raw edge, characterized by driving, staccato, machine-gun drumbeats, fast, heavy guitar
riffs, and simple repetitive bass lines. The vocalists typically shout or scream, and group chants
and anthems frequently punctuate the lyrics” (Wood, 2006, p. 3). Hardcore music sounded angry
and militant, and the lyrics were always “moralistic, sociocritical, and preachy” (Wood, 2006, p.
3). Hardcore dealt with social injustices, government policies, cultural practices, as well as
economic concerns. A major difference, however, between English and American punk, aside
from the brutality of the instrumentation, is that American punk was never rooted in an
oppressive class system; American hardcore was mainly a middle-class phenomenon anchored in
frustration with the status quo (Blush, 2001; Davies, 1996; Goshert, 2000; Phillipov, 2006;
Wood, 2006).
Hardcore later branched off into other musical genres such as straight edge (see Atkinson,
2003; Haenfler, 2004, 2006; Irwin, 1999; Lahickey, 1997; Williams, 2003; Williams & Copes,
2005; Wilson & Atkinson, 2005; Wood, 1999, 2003, 2006), post-hardcore, grunge, screamo,
grindcore, crust punk, and numerous other musical styles. Hardcore is still very much alive
today, both in its original form, as well as in consecutive incarnations, and its continued path
takes us into the 1990s.
Punk in Public—Punk Rock Resurfaces
The 1990s experienced a re-emergence of punk bands into the mainstream; this is mainly
due to the massive success experienced by grunge bands from Seattle, WA—Nirvana in
particular. The grunge expression resembled punk, not necessarily in terms of tempo, but in
sound, and major labels once again went band hunting in the underground looking for new artists
that could potentially make them substantial amounts of money. Several punk bands were
enticed by the economic freedom offered by these companies, and some of them subsequently
inked deals with “the enemy.” This led to punk rockers everywhere expressing concerns that
their beloved music was once again subject to co-optation, and they argued that by signing to
major labels and appearing on MTV, bands like Green Day and the Offspring were in fact
buying into a system that punk was created to oppose.
True punks, therefore, wrote them off as sellouts and never listened to them again. The
reason is, as Haenfler (2006) suggests, that many punk fans “despise corporate punk rock,
typified by bands such as Sum 41 and Blink-182” (p. 12) and that bands that break “the holy
rules” of punk will be punished by fans turning their backs on them. Punk is not supposed to be
about money; it is about social criticism, heartfelt sincerity, and integrity. Arguments suggesting
that these bands are attacking the system from within by disseminating their dissenting politics to
a greater audience are difficult to accept when those bands are making millions of dollars doing
so. The message also contradicts itself, as the bands in question are backed by the very
corporations they are supposedly speaking out against. Neither can such bands be seen as moral
whistle blowers exposing the grim realities of corporate rock; they were painstakingly aware of
the corporate nature of their services even before signing on.
Goshert (2000) elaborates this point when questioning how any band signed to a major
label can conceivably be labeled punk; a major label contract makes the band employees of the
label and that effectively kills creative freedom. Fat Mike of NOFX further nailed the punk ethos
on the head when he argued in the song “Dinosaurs Will Die” that “music should be written from
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devotion, not ambition.” The problem of co-optation, or selling out as it is referred to in punk
circles, has been a widely debated subject ever since 1977 when the Clash signed with CBS
Records. According to purists, it is widely agreed that punk should stick to its non-corporate
roots and remain an underground phenomenon that exercises resistance from the margins of
society. It should be sustained by self-contained financing, information, and standards. To a large
extent, punks have been able to do so; many local punk scenes are run by volunteers (for
example 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, and Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco), and the DIY
(do it yourself) social and monetary economy, championed by punks, has been very successful in
establishing record labels, fanzines, and a cohesive social movement.
Even though they were signed to smaller independent labels at the time, Green Day, The
Offspring, and Rancid were all courted by the majors, following the release of records that were
highly popular even outside punk circles. The Offspring holds, to this day, the record for the
best-selling independent-label album of all time. Their 1994 Epitaph Records chartbuster
“Smash” sold over eleven million copies worldwide. For two out of the three above bands, the
official step into the mainstream was eventually made: the Offspring signed to Columbia
Records and Green Day inked a deal with Reprise. Rancid, however, managed to stay true to the
band’s roots, and even though the band was once seen dining with Madonna—her record
company Maverick wanted to sign them after the success of their 1994 record “Let’s Go”— they
eventually decided to stay with Epitaph. The title of their 1995 record “. . . And Out Come the
Wolves” was a reflection of their experience with the brutal business tactics of the major record
companies: once success hits, the wolves come out to prey on the unsuspecting subject.
During the 1990s NOFX also started releasing records that people actually cared about,
and 1994’s “Punk in Drublic” is, according to singer/bassist Fat Mike, one of only two records
ever to be awarded a half-gold (it later made it to gold). Having never flirted with the
mainstream, their achievement is substantial. The mainstream, nevertheless, did show its interest
eventually, and MTV had set its sights on a piece of the NOFX cake; the TV networks’
executives had seen the band’s potential and offered them a lucrative deal to show the band’s
music videos. MTV was discourteously turned down, and the band stated that they were not
willing to sell their souls for exposure and further elaborated their claim that the band was
already bigger than they ever wanted to be. In fact, rumors have later circulated suggesting that
NOFX threatened lawsuits if MTV were ever to air their videos.
The political state of 1990s punk rock is a sad chapter. Punk had in many ways gone into
political hibernation mainly because legions of wannabe punk bands made good use of the
“forbidden beat”—even when having no affiliation with or dedication to any one punk scene or
the punk community in general—and flooded the market with music that was not at all punk
(Goshert, 2000; Spicer, 2006). This was not of great concern to the bands in question, as the
punk sound was just another available marketing tool, as an edgy sound that could potentially
sell their records. Kids from all strata of society found pleasure in it and consumed it in large
numbers. Everyone praised the capitalist mechanism of supply and demand for its ability to sell
records. Pop-punk, as this commodified form of punk rock has come to be known, is punk rock
stripped of its oppositional edge and added with more pleasant and melodic instrumentation; the
whole spectacle is usually accompanied by fairly irrelevant and rather moronic lyrics. Pop-punk
has established itself as a fairly consistent genre that is easily recognizable by means of its
sound. Pop-punk is usually what non-punks think of when confronted with the term punk.
The 1990s also saw some changes in the characteristic punk sound. Although most punk
bands were still operating in the underground, the movement had gathered a substantial
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following of dedicated fans; bands now had the monetary means to afford better recording and
production equipment. Many bands also started their own record labels and built their own
professional studios: Fat Mike of NOFX is the owner of Fat Wreck Chords, Brett Gurewitz of
Bad Religion owns Epitaph Records, and Tim Armstrong of Rancid owns the record label
Hellcat Records.
As for non-production related sound changes, a variety of bands started experimenting
with musical influences from other genres such as reggae, folk, jazz, blues, and metal. The ska
genre also experienced a complete overhaul. Bands following the lead of Boston’s Mighty
Mighty Bosstones, California’s Operation Ivy and Sublime, and Gainesville Florida’s Less Than
Jake brought out their horn sections and pumped out upbeat songs with a remarkable passion. In
Canada, the Real McKenzies introduced punk to folk music through their whisky soaked fusion
of Scottish traditional folk songs and high-energy punk chord progressions. The Real McKenzies
also were highly influential to other folk inspired punk bands such as Boston’s Dropkick
Murphys and Ireland/Califorina’s Flogging Molly.
Toward the end of the decade, the mainstream’s interest in punk once again died down,
and by 1998, it was almost completely vanquished. However, Blink-182’s chartbuster “Enema of
the State” reached number nine on the Billboard Top 200 list, and “punk” was once again on
everyone’s lips. This exposure kept steady over into the millennium with bands like Good
Charlotte, Blink-182, Sum 41, Yellowcard, which further crazy-glued the pop-punk genre into
the books of history.
Punk Revival—Political Punk in the New Millennium
Where the 1990s saw a trivialization of the punk expression, the turn of the millennium
sparked off a newfound interest in politics. President Bush’s election in 2000 reinvigorated
punks’ political engagement, and bands that had been singing comfortably about unobtrusive
issues once again turned to political commentary and even started preaching politics onstage at
shows. Democracy, as a political institution, was also drawn into question as the “tyranny of the
many” was now perceived to be ineffectual in bringing about worthwhile social solutions, and
NOFX expressed concerns that “majority rule don’t work in mental institutions” in their song
“The Idiots are Taking Over.” Specifically, punks were skeptical of the U.S. government’s War
on Terror and the implementation of the Patriot Act, as these political practices, when taken to
their ultimate conclusion, were, in the punks’ view, frighteningly resemblant of the totalitarian
regime depicted by George Orwell in his book 1984 (PunkVoter, 2008).
The shifts in the political climate led Fat Mike of NOFX to call in favors from bands all
over America and to put out the compilation “Rock against Bush” in two volumes. The website
and political recruiting campaign Punkvoter.com was also launched in order to bring together a
mass of people that could help other constituencies vote President Bush out of office. On board,
among others, was Jello Biafra, formerly of the Dead Kennedys, who possessed political
experience. Biafra, who was once challenged by his band mates to make actions of his words,
ended up running for mayor of San Francisco in 1979. According to Spicer (2006), Biafra “came
a very creditable fourth on a well-thought-out absurdist platform designed to appeal to the freethinking/snotty/awkward squad sectors of the electorate (his policies included requiring
businessmen to wear clown suits to work)” (p. 119). Looking back, it is
evident that the campaign did not reach its overarching goal, but punk did at least get practical
about its politics. Bands of today are further continuing their political endeavors, and the
millennium has seen a significant increase in politically inclined punk bands.
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Entering the millennium, the overall punk sound has not changed significantly from the
1990s. However, some bands have started experimenting with different instruments,
arrangements, and styles. Bands like Thrice, Mad Caddies, and Bedouin Soundclash have all
drastically changed their sound; some even have changed it completely and broken with the punk
tradition’s characteristic instrumentation, while continuing to release their records on traditional
punk labels. Many artists have also released acoustic albums; Hot Water Music’s Chuck Ragan,
Avail’s Tim Barry, Lagwagon’s Joey Cape, Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin, Thrice’s Dustin
Kensrue, the Lawrence Arms’ Chris McCaughan, Against Me!’s Tom Gabel, and No Use for a
Name’s Tony Sly are all examples of punk artists that have released standalone acoustic records
following the turn of the millennium. Most of these still capture the rawness of the punk genre,
and the lyrics are still in check with what has come to be expected from these artists’ respective
bands. Choosing to release acoustic albums are also in thread with the punk ethos as the stripped
down, minimalistic, and heartfelt music is, in essence, what punk is all about. This also shows
that creativity is still thriving and that punk is still very much alive today.
Two Waves of Punk
In discussing the history of punk, Jude Davies (1996) suggests that it can be separated
into two distinct categories or waves. The first wave consists mainly of the bands from the late
1970s such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, the Stiff Little Fingers etc. The second
wave consists of bands that emerged onto the scene after the initial chaos settled, after punk was
officially pronounced dead by Hebdige and his followers. Thus, the first wave punk bands
provided the needed historical context upon which the second wave could further the punk
expression, and Davies explains that the “best material of the second wave kept the emphasis on
performativity and related it to political issues on one hand and the position of the group in the
spectacle of consumption on the other” (p. 9). The former and the latter are deeply connected in
the sense that the first wave paved the way for the second wave, but they are separate in the
sense that, since punk had been officially “eradicated,” the second wave was freed from the
constraints of fitting the first wave’s constructed category. Duncan Snuff, from the British punk
band Snuff, explains that “we didn’t even think we were a punk band when we started...we
thought punk was dead” (quoted in Spicer, 2006, p. 299).
The Dissolution of the First Wave
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” were the famous last words uttered by Sex
Pistols singer Johnny Rotten (real name John Lydon) onstage at San Francisco’s Winterland in
January 1978. This question appropriately ended the band’s career on the same note as it all
began: as an offensive and shocking form of social commentary backed only by musically
simplistic instrumentation, a foul misanthropic attitude, and a different understanding of how the
world should work.
Punks claim, in broad terms, that people are, in increasingly disturbing ways, being
pacified by their consumerist lives and that their focus on consumption as an ultimate means of
satisfaction needs to be removed. The end result is the exact opposite of George Orwell’s 1984;
rather than being oppressed by a totalitarian state apparatus, people have fallen victim to the
pacifying effects of consumerism. Here one encounters the problem of putting words into
people’s mouths, and Johnny Rotten explains that commentators often misconstrue his
arguments and that he is oftentimes quoted having said things he never really said (quoted in
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Dougherty, 1994). However, a general distrust of the “system” seems to be an allowable
assumption.
“No Fun” was the last song the Sex Pistols played that night and was, in fact, the last
song of their hitherto short career (as the keen observer might have noticed, the Sex Pistols have
reformed on numerous occasions at later points in time). As “No Fun” slowly staggered to an
end, Johnny Rotten whined sarcastically into the microphone that “this is no fun, this is no fun at
all” and somehow managed to compact and compress the entirety of the punk rock outfit’s
musical career into the above rhetorical question. Black (1992) explains that a rhetorical question
is asked for the persuasive effect of its asking, and it is “either so profound that answering it is
obviously impossible, or so superficial that answering it is impossibly obvious” (p. 2). The
rhetorical question, then, “uses the auditor’s silence for its own confirmation” (p. 2). Indeed, the
question was never meant to be answered, as the answer is “impossibly obvious”; the Sex Pistols
had cheated everyone with which they had ever done business, and they wanted people to know
about it. As Savage (2001) explains, the Sex Pistols’, and in particular Malcolm McLaren’s,
mischievous business practices gave them loads of working class credibility as business was
done solely on their own terms. The Sex Pistols effectively relieved every record company that
courted them of substantial amounts of money. They took as much as they could without
providing that which they had promised in return.
By the time the Sex Pistols recorded their first material for Virgin in 1977, they had
already been signed to two other record labels and received large sums of money from both of
them: a £40,000 advance from EMI, and a £75,000 advance from A&M (Savage, 2001). Both the
business and creative strategies were planned and carried out, masterly some would argue, by the
band’s manager and creator Malcolm McLaren. The plan, according to McLaren, was to use the
record companies’ greed against them, and this is what he refers to as the Great Rock ’n’ Roll
Swindle. The Sex Pistols were making a name for themselves, and most of the major record
companies wanted to cash in on the potential money-making media frenzy that was the Sex
Pistols (Savage, 2001).
The real question, then, is why Johnny Rotten would want his audience to question their
own motives for paying to see the Sex Pistols? If one is able to put on a show that people
willingly pay money to see, should it not be enough to acknowledge that the market forces of
supply and demand are at work? In terms of punk, the answer has to be no, as punk is obviously
about more than just making money; Malcolm McLaren, in an interview with The Times,
explained that “if people bought records for the music, this thing would have died a death long
ago” (quoted in Spicer, 2006, p. 33).
Also, the Suicide Machines’ 2001 recording was titled “Steal this Record,” and NOFX
included on the back sleeve of their eighteen-minute punk opus, “The Decline,” a
recommendation that no one should pay more than eleven dollars for the recording. In fact,
Johnny Rotten felt cheated by McLaren, as he was constantly forced to engage in activities he
did not want to engage in; Rotten wanted to share his personal politics but was forced into the
calculated role of an entertainer, and the band ended up self-destructing in San Francisco in
1978.
Even though the Sex Pistols enjoyed the monetary benefits of being in a “successful”
rock band, one has to turn elsewhere to find good answers to the posed question. The answer is
not likely to be found in common understandings of rock-and-roll culture and neither is it to be
found in accounts on musical business strategies…
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The Sex Pistols did not share the values of the status quo hegemonic culture—this is also
true of many present-day punk bands that are influenced by the Sex Pistols—and their disgust
was openly voiced in all accessible forums. For example, Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols called
Bill Grundy a “dirty old bugger” and told him to “fuck off” on national television. The complete
lack of manner and an utter disregard for social pleasantry provided the sought after shock effect,
but what was the underlying motivation? Historically, punk has been seen as an extraordinarily
amateurish and immensely simplistic musical expression (Phillipov, 2006; Savage, 2001;
Simonelli, 2002). As explained in preceding paragraphs, no talent was initially necessary, or
even desired, in order to form a “successful” punk band…
The amateurish nature of punk also opened up the rock-and-roll scene to women because
“in punk, amateurism was a virtue, and since anybody could be incompetent on an instrument,
women found an opening into the rock world beyond simply singing in front of a bunch of men”
(Simonelli, 2002, p. 127). In fact, one of London’s first ever large scale punk concerts featured
Siouxsie & the Banshees playing alongside The Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, The
Subway Sect, Stinky Toys, The Vibrators, and The Buzzcocks, at the 100 Club on Oxford Street
on September 20 and 21, 1976, during the now legendary Punk Festival (Savage, 2001). This
first appearance was, however, marred by problems.
First, the band did not own their own equipment, and they had only practiced once using
the Clash’s instruments. Also, further problems materialized when Siouxsie and her drummer Sid
Vicious showed up at the club that night wearing t-shirts and armbands with swastikas and other
Nazi imagery embroidered onto them. This resulted in Clash manager Bernard Rhodes pulling
the plug on the previous agreement—that the Banshees would borrow the Clash’s equipment—
since he did not want the Clash’s PA to be tarnished by such association, so the Banshees had to
borrow the Sex Pistols’ equipment instead.
The point is that the amateurish nature of the band and the total lack of equipment still
allowed for the Banshees, with a female front figure, to play in front of a sold-out club. By
musical standards the performance was awful, but mastery was never the goal; according to Sid
Vicious one just has to “pick a chord, go twang and you’ve got music” (quoted in Savage, 2001,
p. 220). Siouxsie has also been quoted saying that the band also played “Smoke on the Water”
that night and that they wanted to “take the piss out of” every song that they really hated
(Savage, 2001). In effect, the Banshees captured the essence of the punk ethos, namely that
anyone who wants to, can play in a punk band and do so with “grandeur.”
This attests to the simplicity and amateurishness of early punk, and it can easily be
observed when listening to the Sex Pistols first and only record Never Mind the Bollocks.
Musical competency was never the goal, and, as Phillipov (2006) explains, punk rock was access
music that was aimed at breaking down the barrier between performer and audience. In fact, as
Marsh (1982) observes, one could even stand next to Johnny Rotten in the urinal.
The Construction of a Second Wave
Although many of the early punk bands were incompetent at playing their instruments,
there have been great improvements in punk musicianship over the past three decades. Groups
such as Rancid, Thrice, the Dillinger Escape Plan, A Wilhelm Scream, and the Bled are great
examples of how punk musicianship has evolved and that intricate rhythm shifts, fast solos,
inventive bass lines, and oftentimes extreme drumming have found their place within the musical
domain of contemporary punk.
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However, even though bands are getting technically proficient, it does not necessarily
mean that they have lost their “punk edge.” In fact, some of these bands play such an aggressive
and inaccessible brand of music that even most punks would avoid listening to it. Not all
contemporary punk bands have favored skillful instrumentation over working-class feeling when
writing new songs. In fact, many present-day punk bands still ascribe to and rely heavily upon
the simplistic formula that was laid out by the 1970s bands. Social Distortion, Voice of a
Generation, MxPx, the Casualties, and the Dwarves are all great examples of such practice.
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Research, Sources, and Citing
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Finding Sources and Other Resources for Projects:
The best and first place that any student should check when they are hunting for sources and
other resources for an assignment is the library. Visit the library and talk with a research librarian
or access the library website to begin investigating journal databases, such as JSTOR.
Furthermore, while tertiary sources, such as encyclopedias, should not be used as references for
formal research and academic writing, as they are too far removed from actual source materials,
tertiary sources are an excellent place to start researching. One should not necessarily read a
tertiary source for the information it contains on the topic. Rather, students should examine
tertiary sources to see which sources were used in their creation. Students should then seek out
these sources, as they are most likely the larger authority on the given topic. Thus, skimming an
encyclopedia or checking its citations is the goal.
Similarly, most secondary sources and even a few primary sources will contain references,
citations, and allusions to other works. These are good places to expand research: follow the
bread crumbs. One of the reasons academia is so ridged about citations is that it allows other
researchers to dive into the sources used by previous works.
Another prominent way to find sources search using Google Scholar, though this search can
often return unwanted result or articles that require you to pay to gain the information. Never pay
for research information. If there is an article that you have found that you need for your
research, contact the library to see if they can find you a copy of the article for free. While it may
take some time, most articles can be found without cost to students.
http://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en
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Research Questions
Explanation and Purpose: A research question forms the core distinction between a research
essay and a report. Reports are often about a specific topic, with little in the way of a driving
investigation. Curiosity exists within a report, but it lacks the focus and power of a proper
research essay. This is the main purpose of a research question. Developing a research question
for a given topic allows the researcher to narrow the focus of the topic and seek out information
that they deem important or necessary. A solid research question will also heighten curiosity and
create a sense of urgency when seeking sources; a need to answer the question that is driving the
research.
Furthermore, research questions also add relevance to any investigation. Many times
student seem frustrated with a writing assignment because they are not sure why such an
assignment is needed or even worth their effort and time. A well defined research question will
create a sense of relevance, since it is necessary for research questions to inherently demonstrate
worth. A research will usually not pursue a question that they do not find valuable, interesting,
and worth discussing. As such, research questions add a definitive level of depth by expanding
an essay topic beyond the mundane concept of reporting facts.
Creating a research Question: There are numerous methods for developing a research question;
however, there are also some good starting points. The first is one suggested by Kate Turabian in
her A Manual for Writers: of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. This work is generally
seen as the definitive guide for writing college level research paper within the discipline of
history. Turabian recommended the following schema for developing a research question:
I am working on the topic of (x)
Because I want to find out (y)
So that I can help others understand (z)
By plugging in answers into the above layout, a researcher preempts an audiences questions of
"why" and "so what?" In many cases, audiences often wonder why what they are reading is of
any importance to their own lives. This is where a solid research question can help add depth, by
making the topic relevant and intriguing in its own right. This can be done with simple topics or
used with more complex ideas.
Here is a simple example:
I am working on the topic of slavery in the American Civil War
Because I want to find out how the north viewed slaves
So that I can help others understand that the north held similar views as the south in
regards to the slaves themselves
In this example, a general topic is narrowed into a refined research idea. The actual
research question did not appear until the second line, which can often happen when starting with
just a topic idea. Still, the research went from needing to examine all of slavery during the civil
war to only northern slavery, and they to only how the northerners viewed slaves themselves.
This significantly reduces the amount of work needed to discover good sources and create a solid
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argument. Thus, a good research question is actually saving the writer an enormous about of
effort and time.
Still, it is often good to go back and look over a research question, perhaps with an effort
to further refine the ideas it contains. This may result in a more complex and deeper research
idea.
Here is an example of deeper ideas as a result of reevaluation of our previous research question
example.
I am working on the topic of how the north viewed slaves
Because I want to find out whether the north held different views than the south in
regards to slaves
So that I can help others understand the diversity or similarity of opinions between the
north and south about slavery during the American Civil War
Notice how the second part of the previous simple example becomes the first aspect of
our new outline. The topic is further narrowed by taking this approach, creating a research
question and set of guiding ideas that are both meaningful and interesting. It is important to also
understand the use of questioning words such as how and whether. These words can often help
create good research ideas. Other question words like why and what can also help produce
interesting ideas, though it is best to avoid questions involving when and where as they may lead
to a report styled topic instead of a true research question.
Furthermore, once a research question is selected, it is very important that this remains
flexible. Sometimes a question failed to result in interesting answers, sufficient sources, or
worse, any sources at all. In our example above, perhaps northerners' views on slaves is widely
known and seen as trivial by most sources. This may however bring about the idea of looking at
how the slaves viewed northerners rather than the other way around. While this changes the
initial question, it still remains within the scope of original inquiry. Finally, a researcher should
not attempt to take a position that does not agree with the evidence. If the concept within your
research question leads to a contradiction with the evidence, simply change the question, taking
into account the new evidence. This may force revisions in other areas, as mentioned above;
however, these will usually make a work stronger and better, increasing the depth of the research
and illuminating new ideas and possibilities for the research as well.
For additional information on creating research questions see:
George Mason University: http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/resources-template.php?id=59
Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers
Richard Marius, A Short Guide to Writing About History
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Research question example and thinking:
I wanted to give further help for those struggling with research questions.
I chose the topic of Xenophon, since it was an unclaimed topic. The following is my first attempt
at making a research question:
I am working on the topic of Xenophon the historian
Because I want find out how Xenophon viewed and interpreted history
So that I can help other understand history as an academic discipline
Notice that the question is actually in the second part of the statement. Meanwhile, the last line
(the help other understand line) is what will drive my investigation of the topic, giving it purpose
and meaning. However, the topic is still broad. I would have to do a great deal of research and
reading to get a grasp of how Xenophon viewed and interpreted history, so I want to narrow the
topic further. However, I do not want to change my focus; so, I repeat the previous exercise, but
change the first line to my new narrowed topic question:
I am working on the topic of how Xenophon viewed and interpreted history
From he I ask myself why I am working on this topic, this should look similar to line 3 from the
first attempt above, but it can now be more specific:
Because I want to find out how did Xenophon impact historical discourse and the writing
of history
Notice that this revised justification is much more detailed and specific, but now I need a larger
purpose and meaning for my research. I must ask myself why my chosen path of research
actually matters to the world at large. This is a difficult question and often requires some level of
though and trail and error.
So that I can help others understand that history is multifaceted discipline that can be
subtly different within different times and cultures
No my topic has a great deal of focus and I already have a justification for my research. I can
now use this question to start hunting for information. If I find a piece of information that
undermines or alters how I view the topic, I may need to change my question slightly. This is a
natural part of researching, and what makes the discovery so interesting!
Generally, when you right your paper you will be trying to answer the question in line 2, but at
some point in the paper, often in the conclusion, you will want to reference the larger purpose
embodied in line 3. You may also want to have some reference to the issue describe in line 3 in
your introduction, as it can be used to show the reader that what they are about to read is both
important and worth their time.
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How to use your research question:
The following is a brief outline that show how one can use a research question to develop a
paper.
Generally, after doing a bit of research, you will come up with a working answer or hypothesis,
that responds to your research question. Using the simpler research question that I outline
previously, I have developed the following response, after doing some initial research:
Research Question: How did Xenophon view and interpret history?
Working hypothesis: Xenophon viewed history as a tool for educating citizens about past
follies and how these missteps may be avoided in the future.
Take note that my answer is not a definitive, but only a working hypothesis. It may change as a
do a bit more research. After some more research I refine my answer to the following, providing
additional support for my answer that I will later use in my paper:
Hypothesis: Xenophon viewed history as a correctional tool, which would allow citizens
to act in a more informed manner about the world in which they lived
Supporting reasons:
 In his histories, Xenophon emphasized the result of poor decisions on citizen
bodies
 Xenophon often attempted to provide worldly justification for the events in
his histories, refusing to blame cosmic power
 Xenophon focused his work on obvious issues of importance to citizens: War
While my supporting reasons need further explanation, they provide a groundwork for additional
research or investigation, leading me back to my sources to answer smaller, but important,
questions. Indeed, I probably need a few additional supporting ideas, or maybe I can narrow
these down and provide a really strong focus on a few important points. The scope of the paper
will determine how many supporting ideas I can add and how much detail I can provide to each
of these. However, it is often best to focus on fewer points, but provide more details.
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Academic Sources and Citations
Purpose: The following section is designed to familiarize students with source citation styles
acceptable for this course and the nature of academic sources within history.
Sources help guide and give support to a written work. Historical evidence cannot simply
stem from one’s own perceptions, these concepts need outside references. Citation systems
provide a basic guideline for writers so that a large group can quickly and easily assimilate and
understand the source material used by a researcher or writer. Without such systems, it would be
near impossible for coherent research to be practiced - as earlier historical sources demonstrate.
Sources could be easily mistaken, misrepresented, or faked. By using a set system, such as the
MLA parenthetical citations or Chicago style's Notes-Bibliography, a work establishes itself as
comprehensible, at least in regards to citing sources. Thus, it is crucial that when using outside
source material that these ideas are accurately and correctly formatted and used according to a
citation standard. This makes corroboration of source material easier and aids other researchers
who may want to use similar sources. In this class, either MLA parenthetical citations or Chicago
style's Notes-Bibliography system may be used.
In regards to sources, there is another crucial concept. The ideas that come from outside
one’s own perspective and writing needs to be of sufficient quality and veracity. This is why the
criteria of “academic” is added to most sources needed within college level assignments.
Academic source are sources governed by a set of strict rules and ideas that help prevent errors
in argumentation, facts, and relevance. This is not to say that these sources are perfect, far from
it. Rather, academic source represent a higher degree of quality, sources in which a researcher
can readily place some trust, though not total faith. By assuring that sources are academic a
researcher is reducing the chance that their work will be plagued by an error that occurred within
a source instead of their own reasoning. As the writer of a work is responsible for both its
sources and its ideas, poor sources often reflect a poor researcher and writer. Using academic
sources helps to somewhat avoid this issue.
Citing sources and avoiding plagiarism:
One of the most fundamental reasons for citing a source of information is to avoid the
intellectual theft of another’s ideas of words (i.e. to avoid plagiarism). However, this does not
mean that a citation absolves a writer from any accusation of plagiarism. Citations should be
used to demonstrate where an idea or fact came from, allowing other researchers or an instructor
to trace the progress of a work’s thoughts and arguments. If a writer cites a work, but also takes
on the exact arguments, styles, and ideas of the cited author there is still a change that the writer
is plagiarizing, since the writer is not creating an original work but stealing someone else
concepts and simply saying where it came from with the citation. To avoid plagiarism in this
course, every sentence that uses source materials, no matter what the material may be, needs a
full and proper citation.
That being said, if a writer is confident that they are using their own ideas and
perspective, then citations will often work to support these ideas, or provide counter example
which the writer can refute. This is particularly true in historical writing. Citing sources,
particularly original source material (i.e. primary sources) from the time being studied allows a
writer to support their argument and stance with outside concepts. If done correctly and
carefully, a good source and citation can add greater depth and strength to an essay and its
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arguments. Though it is important to remember that merely pushing a list of cited or source
derived evidence into the reader's face does not constitute a good or clear argument.
With this in mind, writers should seek to also follow the format of their chosen citation
style. There are numerous styles for citing sources, with MLA, APA, and Chicago being some of
the more prominent in academia. This course allows for some options and choice. Students are
allowed to use either MLA parenthetical style or Chicago Notes-Bibliography style. MLA style
is a styled frequently used in English course and other writing intensive disciplines. Sciences
tend to use APA style. DO NOT use APA style for this course.
Chicago style is the style most frequently associated with academic historians, though
style, citations, and methodologies can vary widely from publication to publication and academic
journal to academic journal. As this is not a course specifically designed for an History Major, no
guidance will be given here or in class on the use of Chicago style, as it is specialized to
historical study. Students wishing to use Chicago style may do so, but will be held responsible
for using it correctly. The instructor will provide feedback and guidance on the use of Chicago
style if a student elects to use it. Students wishing to understand and learn Chicago style are
highly encouraged to seek out Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers,
Thesis, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students & Researchers. Use the most recent
edition.
Most students will more than likely be familiar with MLA parenthetical style and it is
considered the default citation style for the course. If you do not plan to study history beyond
lower division courses, use MLA style. The following section will give a brief outline of how to
use MLA style along with some sites that can help with style mechanics.
The following is a brief video that gives a broad, but quite helpful, overview of what is required
when using MLA parenthetical citations and how to format basic sources. Remember, when you
use a source, every sentence that used a source will need a citation and each source used will
need one entry in the Works Cited section at the end of the essay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf_hSUeQ088
The next two sites are largely reference sites for citing specific sources. Each source presents its
own complications and needs to follow as close as possible the citation style. These sites provide
details on most every source a student will encounter. A word of warning, websites and
"googled" sources are incredibly difficult to cite. Published books and academic journals are far
easier to cite. Therefore, it is better to stick to traditional sources like books and journal articles,
which are not only easier to cite but also of higher academic quality (more on academic sources
in the next section).
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/
http://www.mla.org/style
Finally, books such as MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers and MLA Style Manual
and Guide to Scholarly Publishing are excellent resources for determining how to properly cite a
variety of sources. If you have questions regarding these resources and their use, please contact
your instructor.
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Correcting citation errors:
An accusation of plagiarism or severe citation format errors are some of the few ways to receive
a 0 or a score below 60% on an assignment in my course. I allow students to correct “plagiarism”
and citation errors because I see them as citation format mistakes.
Face-to-face corrections: The idea here is similar to the online version of corrections,
but uses the paper the instructor graded and commented upon. Make sure the original
rubric is still attached! To correct the citation issues you will need to add in the missing
citations or works cited (or Chicago Bibliography) entries to the essay. DO NOT
REWRITE THE PAPER OR MAKE ANY OTHER CORRECTIONS. Using a BLACK
or BLUE pen, look over the essay and add citations to the sections marked “CITE” or
“FIX.” These comments will often be in a box. For example: Cite or Fix . Be sure to fix
the specific item requested in the comment if there is one (sometime all that is needed is a
page number or some other small change). Some of the sentences that need corrections
may have a comment from the instructor, some do not. Make sure to correct all missing
citations or citation format errors (most will be labeled with “CITE” or “FIX” in the
comments). If the source used is not in your works cited (or Bibliography), be sure to add
it. Hand the corrected paper back to the instructor with the rubric still attached.
The following is a full video explaining the corrections process for ONLINE students and
explaining why some claims need citations when students might think they do not (e.g. common
knowledge). The information is helpful for face-to-face classes, with the only difference being
face-to-face students can make their corrections on the original version and hand it back in. If
you just want to see what the corrections look like, watch the shorter video (though it might lack
some context)
Corrections Video (full): https://youtu.be/eVs7NAS8o4E
Corrections Video (short): https://youtu.be/Mz2b5ctFS94
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Determining if a source is academic:
For many students, it is somewhat tricky to determine if a source is credible and
academic. The first clue is how the source was found, or who provided it. If a major educational
institution or journal (e.g. Oxford, American Historical Association, University of Missouri, etc)
published a source then it is more than likely academic, though it is not guaranteed to be such.
Always approach sources with a clear level of scrutiny even when found in reputable locations.
These types of source providers should be sought out whenever possible. Use the library and
other institutional resources to your advantage to find primary and secondary sources.
If a publisher is unknown, it should be investigated, making sure it is not a “vanity press”
or a business that will print any work if they are paid to print it. Students should also investigate
an author of a work, looking at background, credentials, and other publications. If a professor or
other educational professional writes a work, then there is a strong chance it is an academic
work, especially if the work's publisher follows the above standards. Such works are common
and often form the backbone of academic research. If no information can be found about the
author or the publisher, the source should be treated as highly suspect and non-academic. This is
particularly true in regards to internet sources. If a site is found on a major educational website,
say Arizona State University’s website, there is a good chance it is academic. However, if the
author was a student working on a presentation project, this source may not be of the highest
quality. Educational sites often act as storehouses for student work. Do not assume that a site
ending in ".edu" is automatically giving credible and academic information. Always perform
your due diligence - check author and background information.
Furthermore, non-academic websites should be avoided in most situations. One should
not trust that the South won the American Civil War, just because James Smith’s yahoo webpage
claim it to be true. Finally, internet sources that are anonymously authored or can be freely
altered by the public (i.e. wikipedia or about.com) are not academic and should not be cited as a
source, though they may link to academic source that a researcher can investigate separately. Do
not use anonymous secondary sources, as they are not academic. Anonymous primary sources
should be approached with the utmost caution and further investigation should be done on its
origins and corroborating evidence.
Additionally, most all tertiary sources can be categorized as non-academic, at least in the
framework of this course. Tertiary sources, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, are not
generally considered academic because they are far more divorced from the topic than is
reasonable within an academic context. This is not to say that the information in a dictionary or
encyclopedia is untrustworthy, not true, or misleading, though such issues may arise. Instead,
tertiary sources provide information that can be found in other, more credible and detailed areas,
such as secondary and primary sources. In the case of history, one should seek out the best
possible sources. Settling for a tertiary source is not acceptable in most college level work,
including this course, as with most students selecting such sources do so out of last minute
desperation, ignorance, or worse, laziness. Primary and secondary sources should be used at all
times, with more emphasis on primary sources whenever possible.
Finally, some sources may be deemed academic because of how they are used by the
author. In other words, a source can be defined as completely non-academic because of the
above criteria and then still be used in an academic fashion. Such sources are often primary
sources, as historians cannot always choose the sources they have in this regard. One could run
across an anonymous, mysteriously published or found primary source and still use it well, if the
writer applies full caution, context, and historical analysis. An historian may have to work with a
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primary source that is clearly forged and inauthentic for example; however, such a source can
still be used to gain information about the time period it was written or the motives of the author.
Such sources will be quite rare for this course and students are encouraged to seek out stronger
or better sources to avoid misusing poor sources or not supporting such dangerous sources well
enough to counteract the risk of using such sources.
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Writing Seminar Articles
A Better, Terrible Metaphor For The Five-Paragraph Essay15
At NCTE I was part of presentation about preparing high school students for the demands
of college writing. My presentation was about annotation and organization strategies that
students can use to move beyond the five-paragraph essay model when writing timed responses
to literature. The five-paragraph essay (5PE) is a commonly (over)used essay format in
American public schools. The structure is simple: Introduction, Body Paragraph, Body
Paragraph, Body Paragraph, Conclusion. The introduction contains a thesis that is often of the
three-pronged variety: “Edgar Allan Poe creates a suspenseful tone by the use of diction, word
choice, and vocabulary.” The three body paragraphs are each about one of those prongs, then the
conclusion restates the thesis, and you’re done! In a discussion after my presentation, a teacher
remarked that the 5PE is sometimes necessary as a form of scaffolding. I responded with a
neutral, wishy-washy comment along the lines of “Yes, but remember, scaffolding eventually
comes down, and that’s the tricky part with the 5PE.” But what I should have said is that
scaffolding is a dead metaphor; we need something better.
Scaffolding, in education, is the process of structuring learning in a way that supports a
student’s development and progress. It’s a good thing. An understandable metaphor that’s more
mature than, say, training wheels or pull-ups. (Although pull-ups might be the perfect metaphor
for the 5PE, as the 5PE is what you use until you learn to stop pissing all over yourself.) But
scaffolding, for all its benefits to both teachers and students, has become a buzzword. It’s
become an excuse. Teachers can say they’re scaffolding instruction, make an administrator
salivate at the sound of an overused and inaccurate buzzword, but never actually complete the
process of scaffolding, which is to take the scaffolding down. That’s why we need to do away
with the metaphor of scaffolding and replace it with a metaphor that truly describes what the 5PE
is. The five-paragraph essay is the writing equivalent of keeping your Christmas lights up the
whole year.
Putting up Christmas lights, like writing, is hard. Everything gets tangled up and you’ve
got to climb up a ladder and use a staple gun without falling and/or stapling parts of yourself to
your house. And when you get everything up, some lights won’t work, so you’ve got to go back
up and down the ladder again to get everything working. And when you do finally get everything
up and running, you know that neighbor down the street is going to do a better job. Lights on the
trees. Animatronic reindeer. Santa’s elves riding around on hoverboards. It makes your lights
look like trash. But you’re done, so who cares. You’ve put up your lights, so you’re now an
accepted member of generic suburbia. You belong.
15
Shawn. A Better, Terrible Metaphor For The Five-Paragraph Essay. November, 2015. <
https://iamthemanwho.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/a-better-terrible-metaphor-for-the-fiveparagraph-essay/>. The following is a highly debatable and opinionated piece on the nature and
character of the often-used "high school" styled five-paragraph essay by an anonymous, claim
Education M.A., who writes a blog filled with cultural criticism. The opinions shared in this piece
are not those of the college (university), instructor, or even those of the general public.
However, the article is presented to give students some insight on how the Five Paragraph
Essay is generally perceived by those within some academic circles.
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And for those two weeks your Christmas lights are up and running, everything is great.
When Boxing Day rolls around, you figure why bother taking the lights down? They can stay up.
It’s a lot of work to take them down and put them up every year. You don’t have time for that.
So for the other fifty weeks of the year, people are going to look at your house and say, “Why do
they still have their lights up? What’s wrong with those lazy morons? I’m going to report this to
the HOA!”
There it is, my new metaphor for the five-paragraph essay. On rare occasions (mostly
standardized tests where only a passing score matters), the 5PE is useful. You write a mediocre
thesis, a few mediocre paragraphs, and you pass. You don’t have to take the test again. You have
succeeded. But what about every other writing opportunity? What about college essays?
Scholarships? Proposals? Statements of purpose? Articles? Lab reports? Research papers? Is the
5PE going to help you, or will it mark you as the type… that keeps their Christmas lights up
year-round?
Writing is the single most important thing in education. Language is what creates
humanity and, for good or ill, is the most powerful force in the world. To hobble language, to
limit it to the ready-made template of the five-paragraph, is to hobble and limit students as well.
Just as keeping Christmas lights up all year ruins the experience of putting up lights and
eliminates the joy and rewards of hard work, relying on the five-paragraph essay as the
predominate mode of writing ruins the experience and joy of exploring language in all its
limitless power. I don’t want to live in a world where everyone keeps their Christmas lights up
all year, and I sure don’t want to live in a world where, for many students, writing is
synonymous with five-paragraph essay.
A Brief Guide to writing the History Paper16
At first glance, writing about history can seem like an overwhelming task… no scholar
can experience the past firsthand or recreate its conditions in a laboratory setting. Historians
must rely on the fragmentary records that survive from the time period under study, which
necessarily reveal just part of the story. For these reasons, the guiding principles behind all
historical writing must be selection and interpretation: the thoughtful selection of topics and
questions that seem most interesting, and the responsible interpretation of sources in order to
construct meaningful arguments.
Subjective decisions about what to include, what to exclude, and how to understand it
make history writing manageable in the first place. No less importantly, they also make it
controversial, because scholars are bound to disagree with the judgments of other scholars. You
can think of history writing, then, as an ongoing argument or debate over this unavoidable
process of selection and interpretation. Your first challenge as a writer is to find a way to enter
this conversation…
History papers come in all shapes and sizes…. Despite this variety, historical arguments
often assume a common form… Once you decide on a workable argument, declare it to your
reader in clear, succinct prose in your thesis statement. This initial statement of your thesis will
almost always appear in the opening paragraph(s) of a shorter essay or the opening section of a
longer paper.
16
Dan Wewers, "A Brief Guide to Writing the History Paper," Harvard Writing Center Brief
Guide Series (2007): 1-4, accessed January 2, 2016,
http://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/bg_writing_history.pdf.
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If the prospect of making your own selections and defending your own interpretations
sounds daunting, how do you position yourself to enter the conversation? Here are some triedand-true strategies that historians often employ:
Start small. Read a few documents closely with an eye for patterns or common themes.
Do you see a way to reconcile these initial perspectives? As you read additional
documents, does your original hypothesis (or simple hunch) hold up?
Treat the conventional wisdom on your topic with a dose of skepticism. Question your
own basic assumptions. For instance, were the “Dark Ages” really a period of intellectual
stagnation in Europe?
Sources for Historical Analysis
Whatever the assignment, all historical writing depends on sources. Once scholars have
located a topic and formulated a set of historical questions, they turn to sources to begin
answering them. Sources essentially come in two varieties:
Primary sources are materials produced in the time period under study; they reflect the
immediate concerns and perspectives of participants in the historical drama. Common
examples include diaries, correspondence, dispatches, newspaper editorials, speeches,
economic data, literature, art, and film.
Secondary sources are materials produced after the time period under study; they
consider the historical subject with a degree of hindsight and generally select, analyze,
and incorporate evidence (derived from primary sources) to make an argument. Works of
scholarship are the most common secondary sources.17
Note that many sources can serve as either primary or secondary sources, depending on
your topic and particular frame of reference. Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, for instance, can represent a secondary source (if your topic is imperial
Rome in the first millennium) or a primary source (if your subject is imperial Britain in the
eighteenth century, when Gibbon wrote his masterpiece). Regardless of such categorization, you
should treat any source with a critical eye. Sources do not answer historical questions on their
own; they yield evidence only after a process of interrogation and analysis.
A Historian’s Use of Evidence
Students unfamiliar with historical analysis often confuse sources with evidence. Sources,
at best, provide raw materials (metaphorical straw and clay) that scholars fashion into evidence
17
Tertiary sources include references works, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, which are
often derived from secondary source materials.
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(bricks) to assemble a historical argument (structure). In order to collect this evidence, historians
interrogate sources by reading closely and asking critical questions18…
Although your teachers will expect a persuasive thesis statement, they will ultimately
judge your argument’s success on the collection, organization, and presentation of its evidence.
Once again, selection is essential. Because of space and time constraints, you will not be able to
marshal an exhaustive body of evidence. (Don’t worry! Even if you had a lifetime to devote to
this project, you could never be exhaustive.) Instead, think carefully and critically about what
evidence to include, what to exclude, and how to frame your analysis. Because issues of
selection and interpretation are at the heart of most historical disagreements, make sure to
consider reasonable counterarguments to your thesis. Effective essays anticipate the reader’s
likely responses and address (if not reconcile) contradictory pieces of evidence, rather than
simply ignoring them.
Conventions of History Writing19
Historians not only disagree about interpretations of the past; they also disagree about
proper ways of writing about the past. Each historian writes (and, for your more immediate
purposes, evaluates) essays according to his or her own preferred criteria. Before you embark on
your project, consult the assignment prompt once again, and make sure that you understand its
directions. If you are unclear about the expectations for your essay, ask your instructor for
clarification. Above all else, listen to your instructor’s guidance, even if it means disregarding
the advice offered in this guide. Nonetheless, professional historians have generally agreed on a
number of conventions, or practices, that distinguish history writing from writing in other
academic disciplines. As you compose or revise your history paper, consider these guidelines:
Avoid vague generalizations. Historians value specificity, not equivocal phrases like “once
upon a time” or “people always say that….”
Avoid presentism or anachronisms. Resist the temptation to relate all historical arguments or
concerns back to the present. Rather, investigate the past on itsown terms. Take care not to
jumble the chronological order of events…
Paraphrase if you can, quote if you must. Many students rely on quotations as a crutch,
missing an opportunity to develop their skills of historical analysis. Instead, quote
sparingly.20 When you do quote, introduce the source and context of every remark for the
benefit of an unfamiliar reader.
Provide necessary context. Good historical writing involves active commentary and rigorous
engagement with the material. As a historian, you are responsible for interrogating sources,
interpreting evidence, and reporting your findings about the interplay of text and context.
18
These are similar to, though far more extensive than, the questions seen in the Source
Analysis assignment.
19
Please also review the paper guidelines for a more detailed list of writing conventions for this
course.
20
Or do not use quotations at all. Most students severely misuse quotations. Generally, avoid
quoting secondary sources unless you intend to attack the author's claim.
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Making it Relevant: How to use information given in this course21
Usage: Generally, information in this class is presented in a number of different ways, with each
assignment building on others, culminating with exams. Every assignment, and especially
exams, aims to evaluate how well students can use the information they have gained to reach
deep and meaningful conclusions. This means that it is a student's responsibility to seek the
connections between the content provided in lectures, readings, and other assignments, and the
questions that appear on the exams. The instructor cannot and will not fully draw the connections
between a set of historical evidence and a possible conclusion that could be reached to answer an
exam or other assignment, as this would be merely "feeding" students one answer to a set of
problems that often lack a single answer, style, or approach. In this course students are given the
freedom to interpret information and draw their own conclusions. Like most freedoms though,
this comes with a heavy cost, namely that students must work hard inside and outside of class to
make connections and interpret the historical content in a rational and meaningful manner. When
starting to search for information to write for this course, students should use the following
process to ensure they are acting in a thorough manner.
1. Check any notes or lecture materials for information that may be connected to the topic
2. Using the index or Unit Reading Chapters, find information in the text that may be
connected to the topic
3. Check the corresponding unit in the sourcebook for any source that may be connected
to the topic.
4. Proceed to outside research if more information is needed.
5. Begin an outline that uses critical analysis to link discovered evidence to a thesis that
answers the prompt or question
Lectures: Lectures provide a core framework of basic information that students can use as a
starting or "jump-off" point to larger historical understanding and conclusions. Once covered,
this information is considered "common knowledge" for the course. As such, everything
discussed in lecture is free to use on quizzes, exams, and other assignments without the need for
a citation. This does not mean that all the lecture material or material given in the "student notes"
will be clearly connected to these assignments. It is up to students to make these critical and
relevant connections using analysis and interpretation.
Text Readings: Similar to lectures, the text(s) provide additional historical evidence and source
material, elaborating further on lecture material or covering items not discussed in lectures.
Again, it is up to students to make connections between this material and assignments using
critical analysis. Furthermore, student must always cite information taken from the text.
Sourcebook: While providing the necessary readings for the source analyses assignment, the
source book also acts as a compendium of useful primary and secondary works for students to
access without having to turn to databases and internet searches. Thus, after the text(s), the
sourcebook should be the next place to check when looking for supporting information. These
sources, however, provide a more complicated and dynamic set of evidence than may be found
21
Provided by instructor.
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in the lectures or the text(s). Like the text(s), information taken from the sourcebook must always
be cited, using the original source linked in the footnotes provided.
Research: As this is a college level course, outside research and investigate is expected. While
students can attain a passing score on assignments by using the lectures and text(s), further
sources and research can often add new information and fill in gaps. It is important, however,
that students do not think research is a way to "find the whole answer" to an essay prompt.
Taking such an approach, or using another's solution to the prompt, will often generate an essay
that lacks depth and fails to show true student understanding. Instead, students should develop
their own answer and historical interpretation then use research to support this conclusion or
widen their understanding enough to further develop a conclusion. Evidence may also require
changing an argument or conclusion. Outside research is a way to add more resources and
perspectives, and thus more source connections, to student arguments.
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Grading and Rubrics
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How to read and interpret instructor feedback:
Grading is a difficult and long process. As such, instructors tend to use shorthand and symbols to
quickly address common errors and other features. Furthermore, an instructor may read hundreds
of pages in a grading session, meaning that marks and comments are written quickly with the
goal of communicating issues and other feedback on work that can be used for later
improvement. This document is designed to help students learn and interpret the feedback
correctly. If all else fails, please remember to contact the instructor with questions or if more
feedback is desired.
To get feedback:
If you are working in a face-to-face class where assignments are turned in via hard-copy, you
will see feedback written directly on papers handed back (only the grade will appear in Canvas).
If you are in an online class or a class that has written assignments submitted via Canvas, you
can access assignment feedback through your grade book. Check out this video link for how to
look at feedback in Canvas (only useful if you submitted the assignment in Canvas):
https://youtu.be/ONh6dyNpang
Tone & comments:
Comments are designed to provide clear and direct feedback in an expedient fashion. As such,
they may appear “mean” or unpleasant; however, students are advised to not interpret comments
in this fashion. When writing comments, time is more important than “flowery” language. As
such, comments are written honestly, directly, and without any malice.
Writer's responsibility: Writers are accountable for the claims made in their writing. Making
broad or grand claims means these claims need to be proven. Not proving such claims will
seriously affect the credibility of the writer and argument. Claims such as "It has always been…"
or "Everyone knows…" should be proven or avoided - often just avoided. Using such claims
frequently or making claims without support can lead to accusations of plagiarism, as academia
assumes writers are using sources to support claims. Furthermore, while instructors will often
use hypotheticals, made up examples or common references, to help students understand a point
in a course, this does not mean students should take the same approach in writing. Students
should use clear content and evidence to prove their claims.
Word processing: There are numerous word processing programs, each with different aspects
and features. Please be sure to take advantage of spell checking and grammar checking. Also,
make sure to submit work as either a PDF or Word DOC/DOCX. The online system does not get
along well with Pages and some Apple programs, so keep this in mind.
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Grading Symbols, Phrases, & Short hand:
(What they mean)
The instructor uses various shorthand phrases and symbols while grading. They are defined and
described here.
Circled items (with no comment): often violations of the paper guidelines, directions, or
merely a confusing or grammatically incorrect issue or spelling error.
Vague: this may be a frequent note on a paper, as many students learn towards overly broad
and grand claims when first starting to write history. If this appears as a comment, it
means that the claims being made have no concrete detail or clear meaning behind
them. Often vague claims are so broad that they could describe numerous instances in
a situation, not just the one being defended in an argument. In a history course,
references to hypothetical examples are often just "vague" because real events and
actions could be easily substituted to make a point.
Reword: sentence or item has a grammatical error, mechanical issue, or is phrased in such a
way that it could be stated in a clearer or better way. The instructor will generally not
suggest alternatives, as this is something students should consider using their own style
and approach. When you see this comment, ask yourself how the sentence might be
phrase or said better, or ask yourself if there are errors that could be fixed in the
sentence to increase clarity.
Unclear: sentence or item is confusing and instructor moved on without fully understanding
the claim. This is usually the result of severe mechanical or grammatical errors;
however, in some cases sentences or items are phrased in such a way that they cannot
be easily parsed. This can also happen when students misuse words, frequently use
pronouns, or other such issues.
Analyze/explain/so?: when this comments is seen, it means the instructor expected to see a
clear connection from a piece of evidence to the thesis, but none appeared.
CITE/Cite?/FIX: When you see the word “CITE” in all capital letters, it is not the instructor
yelling. Instead, the use of “CITE” indicates a sentence that needs to be cited (owing to
its use of evidence, it particular wording, or its reference to source information). It is
capitalized so students can quickly see where to add missing citations when correcting
a paper for plagiarism. Similarly, the use of the word “FIX” in all capital letters means
something about a citation needs to be fixed (usually a citation needs to be modified).
The use of “Cite?” or “cite?” indicates the sentence is in a grey area and is getting
close to plagiarism. If a paper is marked for plagiarism, students should review
sentences marked “cite?” to check if these sentences used source ideas in addition to
correcting sentences marked “CITE” and “FIX”
If you are unsure of what a comment means, please contact your instructor.
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Grade Reactions FAQ:
The follow is a short frequently asked questions (FAQ) sheet to quickly address issues often seen
after the first written assignment or exam is handed back to students.
Question 1: Am I going to fail this class?
First, DON’T PANIC! You will most likely be fine. Early grades and scores often
worry students. While this may be warranted in some courses, the first assignments in this course
are balanced so that students can learn, recover, and still do well in the class. If you didn't do as
well as you wanted or expected, don't worry, don't panic, and remember we are all here to learn.
Read the feedback and work on improving on future assignments.
Question 2: Why didn't I do well, I tried very hard?
It is important to remember that effort and results are not always aligned. Your instructor
tried several times to ride a skateboard as a teenage, tried very hard indeed, but a fractured wrist
was the reward. Trying is an important step, but it is only the first of many. Look carefully at the
rubric and feedback for the assignment. Take notice of what scored well.
As a secondary feature, look for any section marked with a 0%. Make those 0s your focus
on the next assignment as well. Pick one or two areas. For example, if it was the thesis that
scored poorly, start there. Don't try to improve everything all at once, that is overwhelming. If
you had no +0% scores, awesome, select another area that did not score as highly as you wanted,
and focus on improving that area in the next essay.
Question 3: But you said I plagiarized, and now I have a 0! How can I pass?
Remember, don't panic. Plagiarism is often accidental or owing to a lack of knowledge
about citation requirements. This is the assumption made by the professor. A 0 from plagiarism
is one of the only times the professor allows for corrections on an assignment, so DON'T
PANIC. This is an opportunity to learn, and that is why we are here.
To correct a paper that received a 0 for plagiarism, please review the directions and
videos found in the "Academic Sources and Citation Styles" section of the Master Document
List. Full directions for correcting plagiarism are in this section, under the subsection
"Correcting a zero for plagiarism." There is a written and video description.
Question 4: But I didn't plagiarize, you are mistaken. What do I do now?
It is possible that your paper was marked for plagiarism by mistake, but ask yourself if
any of your sentences came from a source of any kind or look like they do. Summaries and
paraphrasing need citations too: every single sentence that used source information needs a
citation in this class. Every source cited must be in the Works Cited page. Also, if you used the
words of another but did not put them in quotation marks, that is also plagiarism. If you are still
convincing the paper was marked for plagiarism incorrectly, speak with the instructor, as he will
be able to explain further or will sort out any errors.
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Question 5: I didn't use a source and you said I needed to cite it, but that was information I
just knew, so why is it plagiarism?
How is the instructor to know what you "know" and what you do not know? The
instructor assumes you have done your due diligence and that you verified the claims you made
with supporting evidence. Comments that say "cite?" are generally not included in this, as these
are references to the potential need to cite a source, where a source would be helpful in
improving the claims or argument. In other cases, making a claim that appears to have evidence
behind it when none is offered is not a strong argument and hints at potential plagiarism. Your
instructor assumes specific claims come from sources or need sources and expects citations in
such cases. Claiming that one has memorized detailed historical information is not a defense.
Historians use sources as the core of their arguments, so evidence should flow from sources and
be correctly cited.
Question 6: But the ideas I used are common knowledge, so why do I have to cite them?
Common knowledge is a very slim argument for not citing a source. If it is not something
that could be correctly answered by a random passer by on a busy street, then it is not common
knowledge. This would mean that even the most basic facts of the Constitution or rudimentary
historical fact, which most do not actually know, are not deemed common knowledge for this
course. The reason the requirements are so stringent is that too many people assume they know
something to be true without actual verification. In the internet age, such ideas can become
popular and what becomes popular becomes "assumed fact." Valid history cannot rely on such
assumptions. Historical figures are frequently misquoted or manipulated. Follow the advice of
the pioneer of "scientific" historical research, Leopold von Ranke, and go to the source materials
to verify and re-verify.22 Do not trust assumptions.
Remember, the instructor expects that you are using sources to verify the claims made.
Making a claim that would need a source and not actually having one is just as bad or worse than
plagiarism, as it is an attempt to put unsupported, possibly wrong, information into the historical
record. In this course, you are an historian, and you will be held accountable as such.
Question 7: There is no point in fixing my paper, won’t it still have a low score?
Remember, I am not here to ruin your life or grade, I am here to help you learn. As long
as the essay assignment has its citations corrected properly it will regain the +60% portion of the
rubric. Thus, correcting an essay that has been marked as plagiarized will most likely increase
the score by at least 60%, often more if other aspects of the essay were well structured. While
this may not sound like a good score, these points can be further augmented with extra credit.
Leaving the assignment as a 0 is far worse, since it is throwing away points for no clear reason.
22
rd
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient Medieval, and Modern, 3 ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 232-3.
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Question 8: So I can correct other parts of my essay?
No. The instructor only accepts corrections on an essay (or assignment) marked as
plagiarism, as that is a serious issue that needs to be address immediately. If you wish to improve
your score for other reasons than plagiarism, attempt the extra credit assignment(s). Generally, a
good score on an extra credit assignment will gain a student more points than fixing a nonplagiarized essay. Please do not try to hand in other corrections, they will NOT be accepted. Do
not re-write work or attempt to redo the assignment from scratch. Fix the specific citation issues
the instructor requested to be fixed and labeled with the notes “CITE” or “FIX” in the comments.
If you wish to improve your work, visit or contact the writing center or see or contact the
instructor BEFORE the assigned is turned in and graded. Foresight in this manner is appreciated
by most all professors. It is better to ask for help than ask for forgiveness in academia.
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General Writing Rubric:
(Rubric follows explanation)
Purpose: The General Writing Rubric will be used to grade all essay assignments. The goal of
this rubric is to communicate a basic level of expectations and to demonstrate how students can
exceed these expectations on essay assignments. The rubric is divided into 6 major sections: core
features, extra credit, thesis, historical evidence, overall argument, and analysis & explanation.
Each major section may have further divisions, denoted by dotted lines. These divisions show
that these sections evaluate the same general criteria, like historical evidence, but do so in a
different manner than the previous subdivision. Each section has two check box columns, which
allows the rubric to evaluate two essays on one sheet of paper. The total score is determined by
adding up all "percentages" that are checked, whether positive or negative, and multiplying this
total with the point total for the assignment. An example is provided below on the workings of
this rubric.
Explanation: Each section of the rubric attempts to assess a crucial aspect of historical writing.
Remember, historical writing is NOT like writing in English, so the grading will likewise be
different than one might find in an English course.
Section 1 (Core Features): Certain features of an academic piece of writing do not have
a sliding scale that can be easily graded. These features are more binary: a paper has them or it
does not. The core features section allows for the grading of these features quickly and clearly.
Meeting You Halfway: My philosophy for the course and grading is that success should
be a bell-curve that is slightly weighted towards passing grades. As such, it should
be difficult to fail; however, that also means that getting an A grade should
require hard work, dedication, and a high level of skill and learning. An A grade,
after all, represents a grade for exceeding the expectations for the course, not just
showing up. As I have high expectations, I also am willing to meet my students
halfway, or more than halfway in this case. Thus, any essay turned in will receive
60% as a starting grade. Furthermore, excepting in cases of citation errors,
plagiarism, non-completion of an assignment, or extra credit, an essay's score
cannot drop below 60% regardless of the grade adjustments made to it.
Directions & Guidelines: Every assignment in the course will have a set of directions,
such as length, source requirements, due dates, and the paper guidelines. Not
meeting these will immediately result in a 5% deduction or more severe penalty
depending on the circumstance (see citation errors). The paper guidelines outline
the formatting required for writing in the class. Not following this is the same as
not following directions. Furthermore, correct and full MLA citations (or Chicago
Notes-Bibliography style if you know it) are an expectation of this course. Not
citing properly can lead to claims of plagiarism. Sources should have in-text
citations with the author's last name and page number (or Chicago styled
footnotes) and corresponding works cited entries (or Chicago styled
bibliography). Dates are not to be included in MLA in-text citations. Clear and
major errors or mistakes in formatting or using these citations will be treated as
not following directions and will result in the loss of 5% of the student's grade.
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Mechanics: Similar to following directions, good mechanics - spelling, grammar, clear
sentences - are expected in college level work. As such, if the mechanics of a
work hinder the ability to read and understand the writing, 5% will be deducted.
Historical Inaccuracies: Accuracy is a primary concern in the historical field, which
means that students need to strive towards using accurate evidence whenever
possible. Using evidence that is clearly inaccurate or making claims that are
clearly inaccurate will result in the loss of 10% of the paper's score.
Citation errors: Any paper with clear and serious citations errors will receive -60% until
corrected (in the case of clear and malicious plagiarism, the paper will be scored
as a 0 and further sanctions may apply). Plagiarism is the use of any work without
full and proper citation. Issues of citation format can also lead to claims of
plagiarism or results that appear to be plagiarism. Cite EVERY SENTENCE that
used source information: quotation, summary, paraphrasing, an idea, etc.
Remember, making broad, unsupported claims makes it look like you have a
source to back up the ideas. Many student will speak vaguely trying "slide" ideas
past without actually having evidence or support. The instructor assumes students
are using sources to make claims. Thus, making claims that appear to based on
authority but give no citation or are not derived from previously cited ideas will
look very close to plagiarism and may result in this section being marked (they
are citation errors). Claims of common knowledge or prior knowledge will NOT
excuse the requirement to find and cite sources. It is best to learn to avoid making
broad and unsupported claims or claims that rest on vague assumptions of what is
"commonly known." Correcting these issues following the correction directions in
the Master Document List or on the rubric will restore the score by 60% (minus
point losses for directions, since any citation error will always result in permanent
point losses for direction violations).
Section 2 (Extra Credit): Gains made in this section will be added to the core score of
the paper, unless the paper's score exceed 100%, in which case they will be added to the student's
extra credit grade.
Sophisticated Source Usage: History is built on sources, primary sources in
particular. Using these sources in a meaningful, correct, and deep manner is
something all historians strive to achieve. This, however, often requires much
more research and effort - usually more than the given timeframe for course
assignments. Thus, this section is in place to reward not only strong and deep
research (as judged by the instructor) but also correct and purposeful usage of
such sources well beyond the requirements or expectations of the assignment.
It will take far more than mere "Googling" to achieve this. Meeting this will
result in 5% added to the score.
Innovative argument approach: In some cases, students take risks and develop
arguments that are not always what is expected. Risk is often a core aspect of
good historical writing: the essay that challenges an old authority, the thesis
that redefines an age, and the question that asks what no one else will. Such
innovation may fall flat, but clever, creative, and brilliant ideas, often
regardless of execution, should be rewarded, which is why it may result in 5%
added to the score.
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Section 3 (Thesis): A thesis is the core of any strong argument. It is the conclusion that
the writer is attempting to establish within the paper (though it should appear near the start of the
work). It should be as clear as possible. Furthermore, a good thesis will invariably address a
question. For the sake of this class, this includes addressing a exam or research question. As
such, a thesis should fully address the question while being sure to address the primary concept
behind the question (if a question asks "how" or "why", be sure to answer "how" or "why"
something is the case in the thesis). Why answers should give justifications, and how answers
should give methods. Be mindful of circular or vague theses. Also avoid the formulaic "threepronged thesis" that lists 3 features. This type of thesis is weak and will create a very poor
argument.
Section 4 (Historical Evident): This section has two parts: detail and evidence range. In
the case of the writing for this class it is necessary that students seek accurate and well-supported
evidence for their writing. Evidence should be supported by sources whenever possible preferably primary sources. Students should also seek to display these facts in a detailed and
relevant manner. For example, discussing the American Civil War in a paper on modern Russian
politics should only be done if the connection between the two ideas is meaningful and
completely explained (see section 6). The evidence used should also be highly diverse, meaning
that students should seek to use more than one example, particularly to support a large or broad
thesis. Generally, when a student uses only one piece of historical evidence (e.g. one event or
one entity) this is not enough to demonstrate a thesis and is thus "not diverse" evidence. Finally,
the instructor assumes students are using evidence when making claims. Thus, broad claims,
grand assumptions, or assertions that seem to hint at sources should cite sources. Not doing so
will lead to accusations of plagiarism or citation errors. Claims of common knowledge or prior
knowledge will NOT excuse the requirement to find and cite sources.
Section 5 (Overall Argument): This section has two parts: structure and persuasiveness.
All essays in this course will be arguments. Students need to demonstrate their ability to create a
clear, concise, and convincing argument about a given topic. A written work can have the best
content in the world, but still fail to be convincing due to poor argumentation, fallacious
reasoning, or inconsistency. At the very least, a piece of writing should seek to clearly support its
thesis in a valid manner (i.e. the thesis logically follows from the supporting premises).
Convincing arguments will also use multiple pieces of varied evidence, address counterpoints
fully, and flow smoothly throughout. One of the main reasons students lose points in this
category is because of weakness in the argument, poor reasoning, or major issues in other rubric
categories that affect persuasiveness (e.g. analysis or evidence). In other words, the argument
simply did not provide enough depth, demonstration of knowledge, or clarity to convince the
reader. In other cases, the argument is confusing or simply too unclear to follow. Listing is
another reason this score could be low: large lists of evidence without any analysis or clear
purpose are neither convincing nor a good argument structure. Outlining, good paragraphing, and
deep analysis will often improve argument quality greatly.
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Section 6 (Argument Analysis): This section has two parts: analytical interpretation of
evidence and the level to which evidence was clearly connected to the thesis. Analysis, which
could also be described as the links between one's thesis and one's supporting historical evidence
(it could also be called the historical interpretation of one's evidence), is crucial to any strong
argument. Indeed, without analysis, an argument effectively does not exist, as the paper is merely
presenting a list of facts and expecting the reader to fill in the gaps. DO NOT DO THIS. One
cannot expect a reader to connect the dots of the author's argument; it is also presumptuous and
dangerous to simply list evidence, as the reader may come to a completely different conclusion.
Analysis clearly links historical evidence to the thesis, explaining how and why the evidence is
relevant to the argument. Good analysis also seeks to elaborate and add the logical interpretation
of the author to the evidence marshaled in the argument. This usually requires giving further
examples (expanding the evidence of the essay). Without analysis, evidence is left open to any
interpretation, including that which may contradict the thesis of the argument. A quotation, for
example, should always have some form of analysis and explanation attached to it. One cannot
expect, for example, a biblical quotation to be interpreted by every reader in the same fashion.
Providing the interpretation, and linking it to the thesis or wider argument with analysis, is the
best way to build a convincing argument.
Feedback shorthand key and corrections directions: Each essay will receive some
feedback within the essay itself, but the instructor often uses a variety of shorthand in the
comments that may not always be clear to students. Thus, the rubric contains a short key of the
frequently used feedback terms. This key will helps you understand the feedback and focus on
improvements. An additional section of corrections directions will also make students aware of
how to correct any citations errors (if the paper was marked as needing corrections) and what the
score will be after correcting the citations. If a paper is not in need of corrections, then the
“scores after corrections” section will be left blank.
A final note: Generally speaking, writing cannot be easily broken into parts even when
analyzing and grading it. Even with the clearest categories, each category will overlap onto
another. This means that each section in the rubric does have a relation to the others that can
affect grades. An unclear or nonexistent thesis, for example, makes it hard to connect ideas to
that thesis, hurting scores in other rubric sections (e.g. analysis). Similarly improvement in one
area can help others. The feedback section will often point to the areas that need the most
attention on the next assignment. Try to focus on correcting one or two issues at a time.
Remember, we are all here to learn. While essay feedback can be frustrating, it is also the key to
becoming a better writer.
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Reference only: DO NOT PRINT THIS! You will NEVER
need to print this for class.
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Extra Credit Assignments and Rubrics
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Extra Credit Opportunities
Purpose: Extra credit is an often-overlooked pedagogical (teaching) tool. Extra credit is usually
not included in courses because of the difficulty in tracking and maintaining an extra credit
system. This is not the case for this course. There will be numerous prospects throughout the
semester for students to gain extra credit. Most of these involve going beyond the basic
expectations laid out for each assignment. Details on specific extra credit opportunities can be
found within assignment directions and in the "extra credit" section of the Master Document
List. Extra credit may also be awarded at the instructor’s discretion, though this will be rarer than
the extra credit provided by assignments. All extra credit will be tracked on an individual basis
and added to your final exam grade (Please note, you must show up for the final exam to receive
your extra credit, or all extra points will be forfeit). Prior to being added to the final exam score,
extra credit will appear in the assignment total in canvas, so it is “counted.” This means when
extra credit is added to the grade book, students should see an immediate impact (positive
impact) on their total grade.
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Paper Presentation
(10pts Extra Credit)
Purpose: Research papers and project are often assigned on the college level to help demonstrate
a students writing and researching skills; however, this overlooks the most crucial aspect of
researching: sharing one’s findings with an interested or relevant audience. As such, the paper
presentation represents an opportunity for students to demonstrate their new understanding,
including the answer to their research question, to their peers. This should be an exciting
experience as it allows a student to convey the importance of their research and its conclusions,
thus supporting the whole purpose of the work they undertook. However, as forced oral
presentations are often looked upon with dread and loathing, this assignment is purely optional
and only worth extra credit, though it is still highly encouraged.
Explanation: The paper presentation is an oral report of the student’s research paper findings.
The report should be short and to the point, roughly 1 to 3 minutes, plus time for questions. The
presenting student will stand in front of the class, provide the necessary information (listed
below), and field general questions about the topic from the class and instructor. In order to
achieve maximum credit, students will need to cover all of the necessary information and answer
reasonable questions effectively, all while maintaining good public speaking decorum (i.e. good
eye contact, clear and audible speaking voice). This is not an all-or-nothing assignment; partial
credit will be awarded, based on the rubric below. The presentation must include the following
items:
1. Research Question: Presenting student must state their research question. Students
should also explain why they decided upon this research question.
2. Research Method: Presenting student must explain how they discovered and found the
sources for their paper: how were sources found (i.e. library, internet, journal database),
did these sources lead to others, did the sources change the research question, did the
sources have obvious biases and how were these handled.
3. Research Result: Presenting student must describe the results of their research. What
was the answer to the research question, how was this answer supported (brief argument
outline), and why is this answer important.
4. Research Connection: Presenting student must explain whether researching their topic
illuminated a deeper connection between their topic and western culture/society.
5. Questions: Presenting student must accept (reasonable) questions from the class and
instructor and answer to the best of their ability. Instructor questions will mostly seek out
basic knowledge (e.g. dates, locations, important events, etc)
6. Rubric: Presenting student MUST bring a printed copy of the presentation rubric in
order for assignment to receive credit.
Rubric on next page
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Presentation Rubric
Student Name:_________________________________________________________________
Class:________________________ Class Meeting Time:________
CATEGORY
Content (6 Points)
Covers all
necessary
presentation
requirements
excellently.
Answers all
questions clearly
and accurately.
(6 Points)
Covers most
necessary
presentation
requirements.
Answers most
questions
accurately.
(4 Points)
Covers some
necessary
presentation
requirements.
Answers some
questions, but with
some inaccuracies.
(2 Points)
Covers few
necessary
presentation
requirements.
Answers few
questions, with
inaccuracies and
lacking clarity.
(0 Points)
Presentation
Decorum (2 Points)
Stands up straight,
looks relaxed and
confident.
Establishes eye
contact with
everyone in the
room during the
presentation.
Presentation time
limit observed.
(2 Points)
Stands up straight
and establishes
eye contact with
everyone in the
room during the
presentation.
Presentation time
limits observed.
(1.5 Points)
Sometimes stands
up straight and
establishes eye
contact.
Presentation time
limits not observed.
(1 Point)
Slouches and/or
does not look at
people during the
presentation.
Presentation time
limits thoroughly
not observed.
(0 Points)
Preparedness (2
Points
Student is
completely
prepared and has
obviously
rehearsed.
(2 Points)
Student seems
pretty prepared but
might have needed
a couple more
rehearsals.
(1.5 Points)
The student is
somewhat
prepared, but it is
clear that rehearsal
was lacking.
(1 Points)
Student does not
seem at all
prepared to
present. (0 Points)
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Formal Paper Extra Credit: Annotated Bibliography
Purpose: In the course of researching, historians rely upon a number of critical thinking skills to
evaluate and understand complex source materials. Sources cannot be taken at face value.
Students need to recognize the potential weaknesses and strengths of any particular source.
These features, along with others, can often be gleamed through a governing set of source
questions: who is the author, what is his perspective, why did he make this source, how does the
context of the source and its author affect the material provided in the source, and many other
similar questions. Employing these types of questions is crucial to the proper use of source
materials, and will dramatically increase the quality of any work using these sources.
Directions: For this extra credit assignment you will create an annotated bibliography. This is
best defined as a standard bibliography (i.e. works cited page) that also includes a brief analysis
after each source entry. This brief analysis is NOT a summary; rather, it is a description of the
source as it relates to the paper in terms of relevance, accuracy, and quality. In other words, an
annotation provides the reader with an interpretation of the source, particularly the interpretation
used by the person writing the annotation. The format of the citation should follow the governing
citation style (MLA for this course). The following setup should be used, citation followed by
annotation:
Source 1 citation in proper MLA style
Brief annotation 1 (not less than 150 words and not more than 250 words)
Source 2 citation in proper MLA style
Brief annotation 2 (not less than 150 words and not more than 250 words)
The following link provides an excellent guide for creating an annotated bibliography, including
a few examples:
https://guides.library.cornell.edu/annotatedbibliography
If you have further questions regarding this assignment please ask your instructor
Possible points: This extra credit assignment is worth up to 5 points for each correctly
annotated source (e.g. if you had 3 sources in your works cited and correctly annotated these
sources, you could earn up to 15 points of extra credit). A student CANNOT pick and choose
which sources to annotate, the student must annotate all sources used in their "works cited." If
ALL sources are not annotated, the student will receive NO extra credit for any annotations
provided. Annotated Bibliographies are due with the final draft of the paper.
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Study Guides
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Quiz Study Guides:
Study Guide: Quiz 1
Unit 1 readings: Spielvogel Chpt 19, 20, 21
1. After the Seven Years War, what nation had become the world's greatest colonial power?
2. What British law led to riots in America in 1765?
3. According to the British in the late 1700s, who could make laws for all the people in the
British Empire, including American colonists?
4. What did the Second Continental Congress release on July 4, 1776?
5. Who supplied Arms and later soldiers to the Americans during the American Revolution?
6. The Constitution did what to government authority?
7. Many of the rights in the Bill of Rights were based on what?
8. Pre-revolutionary French society was grounded in what ideas?
9. What is the bourgeoisie (middle class)?
10. According to Spielvogel, what was the immediate cause of the French Revolution?
11. What was Louis XVI forced to do in 1789 as the government was on the verge of financial
collapse?
12. What divided the Estates-General when they opened in 1789?
13. What was the Tennis Court Oath?
14. The fall of the Bastille was a symbol of what?
15. What was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen?
16. What was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy?
17. Who were the sansculottes?
18. What happened to Louis XVI at the start of 1793?
19. Who was Maximilien Robespierre?
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20. What happened when dynastic wars became people's wars?
21. How was the use of Terror viewed by the Committee of Public Safety?
22. What was the General Maximum?
23. What happened after the month of Thermidor (Thermidorean Reaction)?
24. What did the Directory increasingly rely upon as the source of its power?
25. As first consul, what did Napoleon control?
26. As a result of the Concordat with the Church, the Catholic church was no longer an enemy of
what?
27. The Civic Code recognized Revolutionary gains by propagating what?
28. What did Napoleon do in regards to nobility?
29. What were the major parts of the Grand Empire?
30. What was important for the liberal traditions of the dependent states of France's Grand
Empire?
31. What forced Napoleon's Grand Empire to collapse?
32. What did the Continental System attempt to do?
33. According to Spielvogel, what does nationalism involve?
34. What happened at the Battle of Waterloo?
35. Historians generally agree that the Industrial Revolution began where?
36. What sped the process of weaving on a loom and enabled weavers to double their output?
37. What pushed the cotton industry to even greater heights of productivity, which
revolutionized the production of cotton goods and allowed the factory system to spread to
other areas of production?
38. Who invented the steam engine?
39. What was the "domino effects" of faster transportation?
40. What became the chief means of organizing labor?
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41. How were regulations enforced upon children?
42. Who were the first nations to be industrialized on the continent?
43. What was an initial and major obstacle to industrialization on the continent?
44. How did governments on the continent interact with their growing industrial sectors?
45. When compared to Britain, industrialization on the continent, and cotton mills in particular,
were organized and located how?
46. How did the continent initially apply machinery to production?
47. What was the American system of production?
48. What was the United States' early and gradual remedy to its transportation problems?
49. What was the most important development in the American transportation system?
50. In the 1830s and 1840s what groups replace American women and children in factories?
51. Despite some limited improvements, Russia's economy largely remained what?
52. What happened in the summer of 1845 that irrevocably change Ireland's agricultural base and
livelihood?
53. What effect did the dramatic growth of cities have on living conditions within such cities?
54. In the first half of the nineteenth century, what kept urban populations from declining due to
the high urban death rates?
55. The growing middle class was attempting to reduce barriers between itself and the landed
elite while at the same time trying to distance itself from what other group?
56. Why did cotton factory owners appreciate child labor?
57. The laws that limited the work hours of children and women also began to break up what
important pattern of life?
58. According to economic liberalism, government should limit itself to what functions?
59. Politically, liberals came to hold what beliefs and demands?
60. While liberals believed that people should have equal civil rights, this did not entitled them to
what?
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61. After the French Revolution, what did nationalists believe about government?
62. Early socialism was largely the product of whom?
63. What was John Stuart Mill's view of women?
64. According to Karl Marx, the government and state defended what entity?
65. Who were the proletariat?
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Study Guide: Quiz 2
Unit 2 readings: Spielvogel Chpt 21, 22, 23, & 24
1. After the defeat of Napoleon, what did European rulers tried to restore?
2. At the Congress of Vienna, European officials believed they would keep one country from
dominating Europe by forming what?
3. Who helped principally shape the conservative revival at the Congress of Vienna?
4. What ideal(s) was/were at the heart of the conservative movement after the fall of Napoleon?
5. Why did the British refuse to continue adhering to the Congress system and the Concert of
Europe?
6. What ensured the ongoing domination of the Latin American Economy by foreigners,
especially Great Britain?
7. Why did the principle of intervention proved to be a "double-edged sword?"
8. Who governed Great Britain in 1815?
9. How did the first two monarch of the Bourbon Restoration, Louis XVIII and Charles X, view
Napoleon's reforms and liberalism?
10. Who mostly controlled Italy and helped prevent the spread of nationalism and liberalism?
11. Who were the two major powers in the German Confederations?
12. What defined Russia's economy and society at the start of the 19th century?
13. What happened to Tsar Alexander after the defeat of Napoleon?
14. What helped pushed reformers into the July Revolution in France?
15. How did European powers react to the revolts in Belgium, Poland, and Italy?
16. What helped make Britain "immune" to the revolutions of the mid-1800s?
17. What helped provide the spark for the revolutions of 1848?
18. Who became the new president of the Second French Republic?
19. What goal did the Frankfurt Assembly fail to achieve?
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20. What was the goal of Young Italy and Giuseppe Mazzini?
21. What was one of the main reasons for the failures of the revolutions of 1848?
22. At the start of Constitutional government in the United States, what challenged national
unity?
23. What emerged to challenge the Enlightenment's preoccupation with reason in discovering
truth?
24. What new genre was created when Romantics mixed their penchant for history with their
interest in the bizarre and unusual?
25. What gave full expression to one of the most characteristic of Romanticism, the love of
nature, and was also seen as the highest form of literature?
26. How did Romantic artists view beauty?
27. Why was music seen as one of the most Romantic of arts by Romantics?
28. After he reinstated universal male suffrage, what did Napoleon III ask the French people to
approve?
29. As chief of the state, what did Napoleon III control?
30. When Napoleon III faced opposition in the 1860s, how did he respond?
31. What eventually turned out to be the deathblow for Napoleon III's regime?
32. The Crimean War was an attempt to deal with what languishing problem?
33. Why did Britain and France declare war on Russia during the Crimean War?
34. How did Florence Nightingale aid the wounded in the Crimean War?
35. What helped make the Unification of Italy and Germany possible?
36. During the unification of Italy and Germany, what officials in each government helped unify
their respective states?
37. What event(s) helped indirectly complete the unification of Italy, adding Venetia and Rome
to unified Italy?
38. What state(s) did Germans look to in their hopes for unification?
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39. Otto von Bismarck was a pragmatic and realist when it came to politics, making him one of
the foremost practitioners of what principle?
40. What excluded Austria from involving themselves in German affairs?
41. After the Franco-Prussia War, what province(s) did France lose?
42. King William I of Prussia gains what new title in January 1871?
43. Prussia leadership of German unification created a state that emphasized what ideal(s)?
44. What did the Ausgleich of 1867 create in Austria?
45. Tsar Alexander II's emancipation edict allowed for what?
46. What did Tsar Alexander II's zemstvos system create?
47. How did Britain continue to avoid social revolution during the Victorian Age?
48. What happened to the motives of the American Civil War as the war progressed?
49. What eventually provided Canada with its independence?
50. The invention of the steam engine helped lead scientists to what scientific study?
51. Materials proved important in the development of what 19th century scientific theory?
52. What is the basic concept behind organic evolution and Charles Darwin's On the Origins of
the Species?
53. What did Charles Darwin's Descent of Man argue?
54. Materialism also affected art and literature, replacing Romanticism with what new
movement?
55. How did Britain's Reform Act of 1884 affect the franchise?
56. What led to the creation of the Third French Republic instead of the restoration of the French
monarchy?
57. Despite its unification, what characterized Italy and Italians in the later 1800s?
58. Despite pretenses of reform, what dominated the government of Eastern Europe, Russia,
Austria, and Germany in the later 1800s?
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59. Why did Otto von Bismarck enact social reforms like social security and workers benefits in
the later 1800s?
60. What held the Austro-Hungarian Empire together?
61. How did physicist Max Planck contribute to the growing uncertainty of the late 1800s and
early 1900s?
62. How did Albert Einstein's theory of relativity change previously held notions about space and
time.
63. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, how could Western Civilization could be renewed?
64. According to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, human behavior was influenced by what?
65. What is Social Darwinism?
66. How did literature progress after realism?
67. How did modern art progress?
68. Suffragists, or Suffragettes, worked towards what basic aim?
69. Apart from the right to vote, what other cause was taken up by women?
70. Who was principally targets by new right-wing racist political groups?
71. What was Zionism?
72. Why was Britain forced to abandon laissez-faire liberal principles under the leadership of
David Lloyd George?
73. What developed alongside Russian industrialization in the later 1800s?
74. What happened to the United States between 1860s and World War I?
75. By 1914, what had become of most of Africa?
76. What forced Japan to end its avoidance of Western European intruders?
77. How did Japan response to its encounter with Western Civilization at the end of the 1800s?
78. How did many of the "conquered" areas respond to European imperialism?
79. What was the goal of the Boxer Rebellion?
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80. What was the affect of the two Balkan wars on European relations?
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Study Guide: Quiz 3
Unit 3 readings: Spielvogel Chpt 23 & 25
1. What products led the way during the Second Industrial Revolution?
2. What were the major benefits of the new form of energy, electricity?
3. What made possible the widespread use of internal combustion engines as a source of power
in transportation?
4. Who revolutionized the auto industry by creating affordable cars for the masses?
5. What eventually stimulated the aircraft industry?
6. What forced Europeans to reexamined their domestic markets after 1870?
7. What helped industrialists guarantee the growth and protection of domestic markets
8. What precursors were necessary for the development of the assembly line system of
manufacturing (also known as the American System)?
9. What characterized Europe's economy from 1895 to the start of WWI?
10. Who replaced Britain as the industrial leader of Europe?
11. What entity took the lead in promoting industry in Japan?
12. What helped foster a "true" world economy by 1900s?
13. What organizations tended to reinforce the underlying ideal of domesticity, that women
should remain at home to bear and nurture children?
14. What opportunities did new white collar jobs offer to women?
15. What ideology did the German Social Democratic Party principally espouse?
16. What issue(s) proved to be particularly divisive within the Second International?
17. What is Marxist "revisionism" or evolutionary socialism?
18. Apart from the Second Industrial Revolution, what characterized the new mass society?
19. What helped decrease urban fatalities?
20. What led to emigration from southern and eastern European to the United States after 1898?
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21. Why did urban populations grow faster than rural populations?
22. What two groups melded into the upper classes of European societies?
23. What "new" group occupied the social space between the lower middle class and the working
class?
24. What contributed to the real betterment in material conditions of urban workers?
25. How was marriage viewed throughout most of the 19th century?
26. What demonstrated a changing attitude toward childbearing and family planning during the
later 1800s?
27. What was the central institution of middle-class life?
28. How did the government role in education shift after 1870?
29. What drove state commitment to mass education?
30. What was the most immediate result of mass education?
31. What determined mass leisure's contours and pursuits?
32. What did the system of nation-states that had emerged in Europe in the second half of the
nineteenth century lead to?
33. What were the two opposing sides that formed in Europe?
34. What is militarism?
35. What precipitated the outbreak of World War I?
36. What event sparked the start of the First World War?
37. What was the Schlieffen Plan?
38. What was the official reason for Britain’s entrance into the First World War?
39. What halted the German advance in France?
40. What was the popular view of the war’s possible duration at the start of the First World War?
41. What defined the war on the western front?
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42. What defined the war on the eastern front?
43. What led to the failure of numerous infantry charges over the “no man’s land” between
opposing French and German line on the western front?
44. What new devilish weapon was introduced in 1915, adding more death and chaos to the
trench lines in Europe?
45. What factors led to the war in Europe increase in scope to a global war?
46. Why did Japan join the Allies?
47. What was the position of the United States early in the war?
48. How did Germany respond to Britain’s blockade of Germany?
49. After the sinking of the Lusitania, how did Germany change its naval policy?
50. What helped push the United Stated into the First World War?
51. Why did Russia withdraw from the First World War?
52. Why did Europeans move toward planned economies directed by government agencies?
53. How did wartime government handle popular dissent and the decline of national morale
during the war?
54. On what did Tsar Nicholas II rely for power?
55. What occurred during the March revolution, from March 12 to the 15th?
56. What other authority did the Provisional Government of Russia also face, apart from the
Tsarist regime?
57. What was the result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovk?
58. What new problem did Russia face after it withdrew from World War I?
59. How did Lenin and the Bolsheviks triumph over the seemingly overwhelming forces of the
White Army and its allies?
60. Who were the Cheka?
61. What occurred on November 11, 1918, two days after William II abdicated the German
Imperial throne?
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62. In 1915, the Ottoman Empire "responded" to an Armenian uprising, resulting in what event?
63. Unlike the United States, how did Britain and France approach the Paris Peace Conference?
64. Which of the following countries were NOT invited to the peace conference in Paris?
65. What was President Woodrow Wilson determined to create to prevent future wars?
66. The treaty ending the war with Germany, the Treat of Versailles, imposed what punishments
on Germany?
67. What empire(s) were ended as a result of the First World War
68. What new nations were created at the end of the First World War?
69. Why did the United States reject an alliance with Britain and France after World War I?
70. What were the purpose of the mandates formed after the conclusion of World War I?
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Study Guide: Quiz 4
Unit 4 readings: Spielvogel Chpt 26 & 27
1. How did Germany and France react to Germany's inability to pay its massive reparations?
2. What was the Dawes Plan?
3. What factor(s) played a major role in the onset of the Great Depression?
4. What made the Great Depression unique from Europe's previous depressions and recessions?
5. What were some of the political repercussions of the Great Depression?
6. Despite being largely ignored by politicians at the time, what did economist John Maynard
Keynes suggest as a solution for economic depressions?
7. How did Franklin Delano Roosevelt address the Great Depression in the United States?
8. What ultimately helped revive the ailing American economy in the wake of the Great
Depression?
9. How did WWI affect the Middle East?
10. How was the Indian independence movement expanding by the end of WWI?
11. How did WWI affect colonialism in Africa?
12. How were postwar societies losing social cohesions?
13. How did totalitarian regimes like Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany extend the functions
and power of central government?
14. How did the modern totalitarian state view individual freedom?
15. Who led the first fascist movement in Europe?
16. How did Benito Mussolini's fascist movement gain power?
17. How did fascist governments mold society, particularly children and women?
18. How did the Lateran Accords affect the Catholic Church?
19. What was the Weimar Republic?
20. What increasing pushed the German middle class toward rightist parties?
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21. What was at the core of Hitler's political ideas?
22. What was the Nazi party's SA?
23. How did the Nazi party gain power and influence in Germany?
24. What were the titles adopted by Mussolini and Hitler, respectively?
25. How did the Nazis pursue the creation of their totalitarian state?
26. What was the function of the Schutzstaffel or SS?
27. What role did Nazi hope to foster for women?
28. What was the goal of the Nuremberg laws?
29. What was Kristallnacht?
30. What was Lenin's New Economic Policy designed to accomplish?
31. What provoked a struggle for power within Communist Russia in 1924?
32. What was the goal of Stalin's five-year-plans?
33. How did Stalin hope to create agricultural surpluses?
34. How did Stalin handle resistance to his massive changes and programs?
35. In the 1920s, what happened to the political democracies that seemed well established in
Eastern Europe?
36. What toppled the democratic government of Spain?
37. What new ideas or technologies helped expand mass culture and mass leisure?
38. What did WWI seem to confirm within the pre-war avant-garde belief system?
39. How did artistic movements like German Expressionism, Dadaism, and Surrealism react to
WWI?
40. What was the architectural goal of funcationalism?
41. What new literary techniques or style developed during the interwar years?
42. How did Werner Heisenberg "shatter" traditional views of physics?
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43. How did Germany view its relationship with the Soviet Union?
44. How did the Treat of Versailles limit the military power of Germany after WWI?
45. How did Europe respond to the early aggressive move of Hitler in 1935 and 1936?
46. What was the Anti-Comintern Pact?
47. How did Nazi Germany handle its relationship with Austria?
48. What chiefly occurred at the Munich Conference?
49. How did European powers react to Germany's nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union?
50. What precipitated the start of World War II
51. What occurred when the Japanese seized the Chinese capital of Nanjing?
52. What drove Japanese expansion during the 1930s?
53. How did Hitler's blitzkrieg use Germany's military forces?
54. What was Vichy France?
55. How did Hitler plan to handle Britain?
56. How did Britain maintain its defense against the Luftwaffe, the German air force?
57. What eventually halted Germany's successes along the Russian front?
58. What was the intention of Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?
59. What occurred on December 7th, 1941?
60. What was the turning point on the Eastern Front in 1943?
61. What was the U.S. strategy in the Pacific against the Japanese?
62. What gave the U.S. naval supremacy in the Pacific?
63. Where did the Allies open a western front in Europe in June 1944?
64. What was occurring along the Eastern Front from 1943 to 1945?
65. What happened to Mussolini and Hitler near the end of World War II?
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66. What force Japan to surrender?
67. How did the Nazis administer the Slavic populations under their control?
68. How did Germany address their labor shortages?
69. What was the Nazi Final Solution?
70. What were the einsatzgruppen?
71. Why were the death camp gas chambers designed to look like shower rooms?
72. What happened after victims of the death camps were killed in the gas chambers?
73. Who else became a target of the Nazi's policy of mass annihilation?
74. What did Stalin do to preserved Russia's industry in the western part of the Soviet Union, so
as to prevent its destruction by the Nazis?
75. How did Russian women aid the Soviet war effort?
76. Why was the American home front different from the home front in Europe?
77. How did the United States handle the large numbers of Japanese Americans on the west
coast?
78. Why did Hitler refused to suspend consumer production and replace it with full military
production?
79. What helped the Japanese maintain a loyal and orderly home front?
80. The bombing of London and the fire bomb of cities like Dresden were examples of what
tactic?
81. What were the costs of WWII?
82. What was established at the Tehran Conference?
83. What was established at the Yalta Conference?
84. Why was Stalin against the use of free elections in Eastern Europe?
85. In March 1946, how did Winston Churchill describe the expansion of the Soviet Union's
influence in Eastern Europe?
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Study Guide: Quiz 5
Unit 5 readings: Spielvogel Chpt 28, 29, & 30
1. What two major allied powers began to disagree before the end of WWII?
2. Why was the Soviet Union not prepared to give up its gains in Eastern Europe after WWII?
3. What was the Truman Doctrine?
4. What was the Marshal plan?
5. What fear required the United States to abandon any hope of returning to isolation after
WWII?
6. What policy was advocated to stop the spread of communism and later became official U.S.
foreign policy in 1948?
7. How did the Soviet Union attempt economic recovery after WWII?
8. How did the Soviet Union react to the formation of the West German federal government,
and how do the western powers respond to this reaction?
9. What event kicked off the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States,
ultimately resulting in the concept of mutual deterrence?
10. What does the acronym M.A.D. stand for (hint: it is similar to mutual deterrence)?
11. What two alliance systems formed in the wake of WWII, in 1949 and 1955 respectively?
12. Who won the Chinese civil war?
13. Why did America send troops to fight in Korea?
14. What two new alliance systems formed in the wake of the Korean experience?
15. What two major scientific and military events occurred in the fall of 1957, which sparked fast
and alarmed reaction by the United States and western powers?
16. How did the East German government attempt to stop the flow of its citizens to western
Berlin in 1961?
17. In 1961, how did America respond to Castro’s victory and establishment of a communist
government in Cuba?
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18. How did President Kennedy respond when he learned that nuclear weapons were going to be
placed on Cuba?
19. After WWII how did Britain and France respond to the growing realization that the days of
empire were over?
20. What was the goal of the African National Congress?
21. What was apartheid?
22. The Truman administrations support for an independent Jewish state led to what action in
1948?
23. What was the Palestine Liberation Organization and who took the lead in forming this group?
24. What occurred during the Six-Day War?
25. How did Britain attempt to resolve the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India?
26. Vietnam’s division into North and South Vietnam was a temporary situation in the lead up to
what event?
27. What was Mao Tse Tung’s Great Leap Forward program?
28. How were the Russian people “shortchanged” domestically?
29. What accompanied the anti-intellectual campaign in the Soviet Union?
30. How did Stalin’s “successor” Nikita Khrushchev undo some of the features of Stalin’s
government?
31. What ultimately ended Khrushchev’s power in the Soviet Union?
32. What policy did the Eastern European Soviet satellite states follow from 1948 to 1953?
33. What inspired Communists in Hungary to seek reforms and independence in 1956?
34. Who dominated French government for nearly 25 years after WWII?
35. In order to gain status as a world power, what did Charles de Gaulle invest in?
36. Why was Western Germany allowed to rearm in 1955?
37. What new structures did the Labour Party introduce to help create the modern welfare state
in Britain?
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38. Despite the support of self-determination, what ultimately led to the end of the British
Empire?
39. What created the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the modern European
Union?
40. What largely determined the patterns of American domestic politics in the two decades after
1945?
41. Apart from prosperity in the U.S., what also characterized the early 1950s?
42. After winning in a landslide in 1964, how did Lyndon B Johnson used the influence of his
electoral mandate?
43. How did the middle class change in the post-war era?
44. How did the traditional lower class change during the post-war era?
45. What was the main argument in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex?
46. What was one of the major results of the Vatican II ecumenical council?
47. What medium(s) allowed for the spread of U.S. culture and consumerism throughout the
world?
48. What noticeable chances in manners and morals appeared after World War II?
49. What led to many of the students outbursts and radicalism of the late 1960s?
50. What was the main argument put forth by Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique?
51. What was the Brezhnev Doctrine?
52. What characterized political power in communist Germany and Romania?
53. Who was the first woman to serve as Britain's prime minister?
54. How did the European Economic Community change in 1973?
55. What forced President Richard Nixon to resign from office in August 1974?
56. What is stagflation?
57. What new policies made up the Reagan Revolution?
58. What was the domino theory?
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59. Why were the Vietcong or the Vietnamese guerilla forces to effective at countering U.S.
military power?
60. What turned the American public against the Vietnam War?
61. What president resumed relations with communist China?
62. What is détente?
63. What occurred during Mao Tse Tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution?
64. What produced a revolutionary new approach to computer creation and design?
65. By the 1970s what serious ecological problem(s) had become all too apparent?
66. What, simply, is postmodernism?
67. How did the introduction of video music channels like MTV radically change the music
scene?
68. What helped sports and the Olympics become a global phenomenon?
69. What was perestroika?
70. What was glasnost?
71. What occurred on August 19th, 1991 in Russia?
72. When did the Soviet Union "cease to exist?"
73. What did Vladimir Putin vow in his bid to gain power in Russia?
74. What happened to Eastern European Communist Regimes after the fall of the Soviet Unions?
75. On November 9th, what occurred after the German Communist Government capitulated to
popular pressure about its borders?
76. What Serbian policy in Bosnia revived memories of Nazi atrocities?
77. Why did the United States and NATO intervene in Kosovo?
78. Who was the first female chancellor in German history?
79. What Treaty represented an attempt to create a real economic and monetary union in Europe?
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80. What ultimately decided the controversial 2000 U.S. presidential election?
81. What new threat has seemingly replaced communism as the West's number one enemy?
82. What were the target(s) of the September 11th terrorists attacks on the United States?
83. What does the academic field of Women's Studies stress?
84. What is fundamentalism?
85. What is globalization?
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Exam Study Guides:
Study Guide: Exam 1
Section 1 (Analysis and Evaluation):
1.
The French Revolution was a logical step in social and political progress.
2.
Karl Marx's socialist outlook was an entirely new way of interpreting the relationship of
bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
3.
Businesses and factory owners forced children and women into harsh working conditions.
4.
Liberalism and nationalism made great gains in the revolutions of the later 1700s, the
1830s, and 1848.
5.
Romanticism reinvigorated literature, art, and music.
6.
German & Italian unification was only possible through authoritarian measures.
Section 2 (Synthesis):
1.
Why did the French Revolution lead to the downfall of the Ancien Regime?
2.
Why did the Industrial Revolution start in Britain?
3.
How did Napoleon I exhibit French Revolutionary tendencies?
4.
Why did American and French revolutionaries both create documents excreting the force
of natural rights and the protection of civil liberties?
5.
How did liberals and nationalists want to change the "old order" established by the
Congress of Vienna?
6.
How did the Romantic Movement reinterpreted Enlightenment values and ideals?
7.
Why did Victorian Britain maintain its political and social cohesion while the European
continent faced revolutions, upheavals, and the political reorganization of nations like
Germany and Italy?
8.
How did Charles Darwin's theories on evolution and adaptation motivate European
imperialism?
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Study Guide: Exam 2
Section 1 (Analysis and Evaluation):
1. Liberalism was a movement and philosophy of social progress
2. Both World Wars significantly altered European society, but only in a temporary manner.
3. The fall of communism resolved many of the issue in Eastern Europe and removed the
West's last ideological enemy.
4. The culture of the post-WWII era appeared fluid and dynamic, but underwent relatively
little change at its core.
5. The competition between the United State and the USSR wholly defined the 20th century
for western civilization.
6. Terrorism and fundamentalism have replaced communism as the West's main "enemy."
Section 2 (Synthesis):
1. How did industrialization destabilize city life?
2. Why did Europeans pursue Imperialism in the 19th century?
3. Why was Europe forced to examine the "woman question" (what role women should hold
in society) during the 1800s?
4. Why did the Cold War start?
5. How did women's role change in post-WWII western societies?
6. How did the Cold War escalate during the 1950s and 1960s?
7. Why did Europe struggle with decolonization of its former empires?
8. How did the shifts in Western society, technology, and philosophical outlook injure
western culture during the mid to late 20th century?
146
Example Papers
147
Purpose: The following is a selection of student papers that demonstrate some of the specific
writing criteria of the course, and in some cases demonstrating what not to do in a paper. These
papers are NOT meant to be perfect representations, templates, or even the perfect example of
what the class requires of a paper. However, each paper possesses some quality or many qualities
that make it strong, be it the argument, technical skill, style, content, or formatting. These papers
are a way to inspire good writing, as better writing often comes from both practice and reading
good writing. Finally, the papers below represent some of the assignments in the course;
however, test essays examples are not given, for obvious reasons.
Directions: Read the example papers below, paying particular attention to the content,
argument, depth, and mechanics used in each. Remember to reference the course rubric found in
the Master Document List for more specifics on these features as it regards paper grading.
Students should use these papers to gain a better idea of the standards of the course, what makes
a good college level paper, and what improves the overall quality of a paper. Throughout each
paper I have added footnotes that comment on the content of the paper, including good and bad
features. I used footnotes to avoid breaking the flow of the paper. One should read the entire
paper first then reread the paper with the notes. The footnotes have been increased in size and
colored red for better reading. After each paper, I have added a final comment within [red
brackets]. These notes represent instructor feedback or comments, as these papers are not perfect.
Take particular note of what is done well in each paper and what is not, learning from the
mistakes of past students. Furthermore, it should be noted that some of these essays represent
assignments form other courses, assignments that are no longer given, or assignments that use an
older rubric; this does not mean that these examples are useless, rather, it means students should
focus on the core concepts demonstrated by these examples rather than the assignments they
represent.
***Special Note*** Remember these are example papers. DO NOT USE THEM AS
TEMPLATES. Copying information from these papers will be considered plagiarism, resulting
in a 0 for any assignment where the information was used.
148
Standards Essay Examples
The following section gives examples of standards essays from previous classes or courses. The
directions may not match the current version of the standards essay (formally called discussion
essays). Please be sure to follow the current directions for your course. All examples are for
reference only.
149
Student Name23
History 100
Standards Essay
Tu/Th 5:45
It is tough to say how history should handle myth and legend.24 On the one hand, myth
and legend are an essential part of the history of a culture. Such as Egyptian myth which is
virtually inseparable from their daily lives.25 So, it would be very tough to reach an
understanding of who these people were without examining what mythology or legends that they
believe in. Myth and legends help to show an understanding of what these people believed in.26
Furthermore, these myths and legends were used as stories to impart to members of a society the
way they should act, their social values and the norms of that period.27 It cannot be argued that
myth and legend are essential parts of studying a society. However, there is an issue with
including the myths and legends without being able to distinguish whether a scholar or a student
23
This paper has a few glaring issues, most notably in mechanics, source credibility, and
argumentation. Furthermore, as the essay seems to lack a clear thesis, some of the content
appears to drift off topic, hurting the overall relevance of the details used. However, the
innovative solution offered by the student later in the essay makes some of these issues seem
less relevant, as it shows true student learning and comprehension of the problem’s scope.
Largely because of the author’s creative approach and demonstration of understanding, this
paper would earn a high "C" or a low “B,” which would probably be higher if the mechanical
and thesis issues were cleared up.
24
Notice how the student introduced the topic or “prompt” of the essay in an elegant and
efficient manner. The reader immediately knows the topic the writer is trying to address, while
the actual flow of the paper is not highly disrupted.
25
Note the use of a specific, historical example to demonstrate the point being made. While it
could flow better with the previous sentence, detailed examples are always good to see in
history.
26
This should be reworded, as the sentence is a bit too “floaty.” Some of this comes from
ending the sentence with a preposition; however, much of it is the repeated use of the pronoun
“these” in reference to people. At this point, the only people the author has mentioned was
Egyptians, but it seems that the author’s use of the terms “these people” has broader meaning.
27
Again, while what this sentence is trying to say seems clear, it should probably be worded to
reinforce this clarity. This, however, seems to be a minor issue in the grander scheme of the
paper.
150
is studying the myth, legend, or history aspect of a book or article.28 Darlene Vaillancourt makes
a great point about having the history, myth, and legend not separated when she stated that, “I
realized that as you travel farther and farther back into history, the accuracy of records can get
suspect. Myth and folktale begins to blend with true historical fact.(Vaillancourt, paragraph 2)”29
The point that Vaillancourt is trying to make is that the older the history is, the more difficult it
becomes to distinguish between what history, myth and legend are in a given time. So the
question then becomes, how do we include the myth and legend into the history while finding a
way to distinguish all of the different parts?30 The best way to do this would be to include all
three things, history, myth and legend, but to distinguish and segment them.31 With a history text
book the publisher can write out the differences with different colored inks such as having the
green, red and blue. If it is not known whether a historical event or person is actual history, myth
or legend then that event will be given another color such as orange until some proof can be
28
Again, clarity seems to be an issue here. Furthermore, the clarity of the entire essay is hurt by
the fact that a clear thesis has not been stated. If the topic is “how historians should handle
myths and legends in history” then the author does not seem to have settled on a clear
solution. Up to this point, the Author is merely attempting to define the problem. While this
can be helpful in many essays, the standards essays are often too short to allow for a lengthy
contextualization of the problem. These essays should spend much of their space on providing
a solution to the problem after defining it as quickly as possible.
29
Remember to put all ending punctuation at the end of the citation. A period goes after the
parentheses, NOT before.
30
First, the sentence uses first person, violating the paper guidelines and incurring a 5% loss of
points. Remember to follow ALL paper guidelines. Second, this sentence has completely
reworked the original prompt and problem. While this is entirely acceptable, indeed it is a
commendable risk in an academic paper, the amount of space taken to accomplish this is
extreme. There seems to be no space left to adequately answer the new question. This hurts
the overall argument.
31
This is the thesis, but it seems far too late to start supporting it. With the thesis here, it seems
that everything previously stated was merely introduction, which was far too lengthy. A thesis
should be nearer the start of a work, not in the middle or near its end.
151
found to support which of the previously mentioned the subject may be.32 Even if the publisher
boxed off certain sections in the textbook to show the differences between history, myth and
legend this would be a great method for separating out the three but still keeping them together.
These three things are essential to history and should be included. For the sake of simplicity and
distinguishing between what these three subjects are they should be segmented.33
Works Cited
Vaillancourt, Darlene “Myth vs History.” Suite 101.com NP, January 10 2007. Web.
9/21/11 http://www.suite101.com/content/myth-vs-history-a1156734
[In the end, the structure of the argument hurt this paper quite a bit, though this is not to say that
the argument was poor. Rather, the approach taken seemed to be geared to a longer styled paper,
making this shorter form of argument far less convincing. It was space and planning that were a
major downfall here more than anything else. This hurts the argument, analysis score, and thesis
score, but only slightly. The historical evidence score is also hurt by this, as it feels as though
some ideas are off topic, since the author did not have the space to connect such ideas back to the
thesis clearly.]
32
This is a creative, intuitive, and wonderfully student driven idea. Note that this is not simply
pulled from a source. This idea was derived by the student as a solution to the problem. It may
sound silly or even childish, but that does not matter. By offering an innovative pedagogical
solution, the author is fully addressing the prompt with a clear piece of support. The risk
involved in offering this solution seems to make it all the more interesting from the reader’s
point of view. This is a clear method that seeks to fully solve the problem. Whether the solution
offered would actually work is somewhat of a separate issue. This section helped save this
paper from some of its earlier issues, as the clarity of this solution, its simple implementation,
and its creative approach show that the author, while perhaps missing out on some of the
technical aspects required by the essay format, clearly understood the problem and a
methodological solution.
33
The wrap up of the essay is a bit too short. The reader is left wanting to know more about the
offered solutions, including a clear example of how it might work with an historical event, such
as the Egyptian example used earlier. That the author offered no further information is largely a
symptom of the essays lengthy and misapplied introduction sequence.
34
While the “source” used appears academic, the location from which it was pulled presents
problems. It is almost always better to get journal articles from known and reputable sources,
such as library databases, rather than non-secured internet locations. Do NOT use
suite101.com.
152
Student Name35
History 100
Standards Essay
Tu/Th 5:45
Historians throughout recorded history have attempted to define exactly how to interpret
historical sources and ascertain if they are “true”.36 Defining the “truth” of historical fact is more
subjective. Carl L. Becker’s essay “What Are Historical Facts?” explains that historical fact is
“So illusive and intangible a thing” it cannot be defined (Becker 47). The argument follows that
the historian researching known event37 cannot investigate the event itself, since the event is past.
Becker asserts that the historian can only deal with a “statement which affirms the fact the event
occurred” (47); that affirmation is the historical fact.38 Through a process of critical examination,
an historian can determine the authenticity and accuracy of sources.39
35
This is considered a “B” or even a possible “B+” level standards essay. The reason for this high
grade is largely owing to the high technical level of the writing, the clear depth of the
information in the assignment confines, and the relevant, albeit sometimes perplexing, use of
sources and supporting information. The major weakness is the larger argument structure,
which impacts all previous categories in a negative fashion. Individual argumentative aspects
appear in order; however, the larger support of the thesis falls very flat. Still, this paper serves
to show students that innovative content and ideas can help bolster weaker arguments.
36
This standards essay example provides interesting insight into how to construct such essays;
however, as the topic of the essay is not completely clear from the introduction – there is not
clearly defined research question given by the author – the essay can also feel a bit
disorienting. While a thesis can be found, the reader may feel uncertain that this is the thesis
the author intended to advance. This demonstrates the complexity of needing to introduce
standard essay topics while at the same time not having much space to do so properly. The
introduction here provides a cautionary example. Learning to fit large ideas into a "small" scale
essay is an essential to for historians, who must often summarizes complex events in narrow or
short applications.
37
Watch for typos as they can often change sentence meanings.
38
At this point, it is somewhat clear that quotations are being overly used, as two have
appeared when summary would clearly have done the job just as well. The quotations did not
necessarily add anything new that a summary would not; however, it is important to note that
each quotation used is followed with a brief analysis of the quotation itself. Without this, the
amount of quotations would be even more egregious. Remember, quotations should be used
sparingly, as they require large amounts of rhetorical work to support. Quotations need to be
153
There are some generally agreed upon research methods that can help guide an historian
in the search for facts about the research subject. Louis Gottschalk in “Understanding History: a
Primer of Historical Method” outlines necessary steps to achieve the best possible research
outcome. Beginning with “The Interrogative Hypothesis” or research question, the historian
defines the scope of research; next, extensive examination of available documents to find any
relevant information; last, a thorough analysis must be made to determine the credibility of
information and the authenticity of the documents found (141).40 Gottschalk also explains that as
a result of variables in historical data in available sources, “truth” cannot be the only condition
for determining the value of the source (10). Becker agrees with this basic framework of
investigation, but adds that the historian should aim “to know what ideas, true or false, were at
anytime accepted and what pressure they exerted upon those who entertained them” (75). This
gives the historian a way to understand what frame of reference the source author was using
when creating the source document.41 Becker exemplifies this: an historian knows a myth may
introduced, analyzed, explained, and then further linked to the claims and arguments. One
should not just add quotations when a summary or paraphrasing would do as well, as the latter
is often easier, less intensive, and requires fewer words. This is important in such a brief essay:
every word counts.
39
This seems to be the thesis; however, it is important to note that this thesis seems somewhat
disconnected from the previous ideas of the introduction, partly owing to vagueness. One is left
with a disconnected feeling, as though the thesis was merely inserted. This is evidence that a
connection known to the author was not clearly included. On the other hand, it could also be
that the author did not fully outline or determine this connection and merely hoped that the
previous information would fit the larger ideas present in the unknown research question or
essay prompt.
40
It is often good to see complex sentence structures such as this in college level essays.
Remember that it is rhetorically pleasing to vary the sentence structure of an essay, which helps
keep your reader’s attention. Furthermore, this complex sentence allows the author to
combine ideas and only use one citation, saving some stylistic work in the process.
41
While this sentence does good work in helping explain the previous quotation, the previous
list of “facts” in the last several sentences has received almost no larger analysis that links the
ideas to the thesis presented by the author. This leaves a feeling that the essay is drifting off
154
not be true, that the myth exists is true, and that it was believed by some people to be true, and
that belief “may be of the highest importance” for understanding the relevance of the source
(76).42 In other words, an historian knows that Zeus and the other Greek gods were not actual,
physical beings on Earth at the time that Greek civilization was at its peak. The Greeks believed
they existed, and based some of their greatest ideas and works of art on that belief. When
examining ancient Greek civilization the most important point not if these gods existed, it is to
take into account the fact that the Greeks believed they existed.43
With consistent use of the historical method and understanding of the frame of reference
expressed in sources, the historian can correctly interpret sources and come as close to the
“truth” of history as is possible.44
Works Cited45
Becker, Carl L. Detachment and the Writing of History: Essays and Letters of Carl L. Becker.
topic or simply listing ideas instead of argument. Presenting numerous facts is often necessary;
however, it is important to remember that these “lists” need some preface and then fully and
elaborate explanation and analysis. Without this, the reader is often left wondering why the
facts were relevant or how they supported the argument and thesis.
42
This is a confusing and cumbersome sentence in need of revising. Still, the next sentence
solves some of this, though not the grammatical issues.
43
Again, mechanical issues here hurt the point being made, confusing a perhaps already
confused reader. Still, it is important to see that the author is attempting to make a point with
these ideas; nevertheless, how that point relates to the thesis has yet to be seen.
44
This conclusion is somewhat odd. It seems unrelated to the original thesis, leading to a
feeling of contradiction or loss. Still, the point being made about “truth” and the validity of
sources may be linked in the reader’s mind. That this is not clear weakens the argument as a
whole, as the structure is somewhat incoherent.
45
Another good works cited page, which also uses an additional sources above what is required
by the directions. As such, this essay may earn extra credit for this extra source.
155
Ed. Phil L. Snyder. Ithaca, NY. Cornell University Press, 1958. Cornell Paperbacks,1967.
Print.
Gottschalk, Louis. Understanding History: a Primer of Historical Method. New York, NY.
Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. Print.
[The above paper does a good job presenting relevant ideas and complex facts within the
framework of MLA citation. At the same time, any reader can clearly see the depth involved in
this paper as well, though how much depth is actually given in relation to the original prompt is
hard to detect. In the end, however, the paper’s major weakness is one of argument and structure.
This shows any student how "good facts” are not enough to make a good paper make alone.
Without a clearer structure and argument, which would require more analysis and elaboration,
the ideas being presented fall flat, confusing the reader. Much of this would be easily fixed by
adding some clarifying points in sentences or adding a few analysis sentences. This may even
provide a better link between what seems to be an entirely different thesis provided in the
conclusion. Still, enough of an argument clearly exist that a clever reader could fill in the blanks
enough to gain a full picture, but this process places far too much of the burden of proof on
readers. It is not the job of the reader to prove or support the author’s argument. Instead, it is the
job of the writer to provide a clear, pithy argument to support the claims in the thesis.]
156
Student Name46
History 100
Standards Essay
Tu/Th 5:45
How should historians handle large and complex events that cannot be contained in a single book
or volumes, such as World War 1 or World War 2?47
The handling of large and complex events should not be in a single book or series of
volumes. Large complex events need to stay separated from each other so the voice of the
individuals involved does not get lost.48 Most of humanity only likes and remembers things that
they can connect to and be attached emotionally. To deal with this kind of an audience,
historians must not forget the individual emotion and voice of the event. If historians were to
combine, for example World War I and World War II in one chapter of a large volume of world
46
This is considered an “A” paper, though there are some issues in mechanics, rhetoric, and
argument style. Still, this paper represents an excellent use of sources, which are clearly and
cleverly used, and a solid argument presentation in many sections. Furthermore, the depth of
the work is quite good considering the limited space required by the assignment. Lastly, the
well laid out argument makes the content clearly relevant and source driven. The following
comments are clearly picking at nits; however, the suggestions made can still improve this work
further.
47
Titles can be important for many paper; however, if the title is just repeating the prompt of
an academic paper, then it does little to add to the paper itself. Titles should be evocative,
creative, or at least informative. This title, while it informs the reader to an extent, does not
inform the reader of the paper’s results. Some classes require titles for papers, my class has NO
such requirement. Do not just put your research question or the prompt in the title, make it
better or just do not add a title at all. In my class, no title is always better than a bad or boring
title
48
These first two sentences do a solid job addressing the prompt in a complex way. This clear
thesis allows the reader to fully understand the point of view of the author and the argument
they will attempt to support.
157
wars, it would become a large paper weight full of number and dates.49 Who can get excited and
remember all those numbers and dates.50 If society does not have the connecting stories the
events will be forgotten and have the risk of being repeated.51
The battle of the Somme was a horrendous battle that resulted in mass casualties and minimal
gains.52 The British suffered 57,000 casualties, including 21,000 dead, on the first day of the
battle, the heaviest one-day loss in World War I (Spielvogel 538). That last sentence is all the
information given in this history book on the battle of the Somme. However, the mass
devastation of the battle is not mentioned. By the end of the battle, the British Army had
suffered 420,000 casualties including nearly 60,000 on the first day alone. The French lost
200,000 men and the Germans nearly 500,000 (Trueman). Any historian can see the lack of
information leads to the lack of emotion, making the events at the Somme unmemorable and
easily forgettable.53
49
While this example is detailed and clearly relevant, some mechanical errors subtract from its
clarity.
50
Avoid rhetorical questions as if they were plague. This question is not answered by the
author and seems to only serve to fill in a point rather than actually provide support for the
claims being made. It is always better to cite evidence than use rhetorical questions.
51
This sentence is making some rather large assumptions, again without clear evidence. Be
wary of such grand claims when evidence is sparse.
52
This sentence may do well in introducing this paragraph, but it leaves the reader confused, as
it is not a smooth transition from the last set of ideas.
53
The approach here is quite interesting, as it is a bit of a bait and switch on the author’s part,
at least rhetorically speaking. As a support piece for his argument it is clever and somewhat
well made. First, the author used the source in a fashion that most students do not consider.
Instead of just pulling information from the source, the author used the way the source
presented the information to make the larger point. An additional source’s information is then
used to elaborate on this point, adding yet further support. Where this falls flat is in its
convincingness. The second fact stated by the author seems just as unemotional and
forgettable as the fact from Spielvogel, adding a certain level of irony to the claims made by the
student's essay and weakening an otherwise well constructed point.
158
History and historians in part need to be aware of what it is they deem important, careful not
to lose the emotion of the event rendering it forgettable. It is greatly important to remember that
every one of the numbers stated are and will always be an individual who died trying to protect
what they believe to be true, right or wrong. Let society not forget each individual had a voice
and that voice needs to be heard.54
54
The conclusion, which almost serves as a sort of historical eulogy, has a few interesting
functions, not all of them well used. First, the attempt to summarize the argument in the
conclusion seems lost in the author’s larger purpose in reinforcing a perspective on history that
requires remembering emotions, individuals, and stopping repetition. There is clearly a bias,
though this is not necessarily bad. What is bad is that this larger point detracts from the paper’s
argument as a whole. Conclusions can and sometimes should seek to place the ideas of a work
in a larger context or framework; however, this practice should not stop the conclusion from
also fulfilling its main function, concluding the paper’s argument. Sadly, this conclusion makes
this mistake. The larger vision in excellent, but without at least one sentence devoted to the
paper’s thesis or prompt, the conclusion seems too lofty.
159
Works Cited
Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization A Brief History. Seventh ed. Boston: Suzanne Jeans,
2005. 538. Print.
Trueman, Chris. London: History Learning Site, 2000. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/>.55
[As is often the case, argumentation is one of the places that can be pulled apart and “nit picked”
the most. However, even with this in mind, much of the comments for this paper show that these
issues can be easily overcome with clever source use, clear presentation (the larger argument
framework), and solid content.]
55
Not to impugn on the reputation of Chris Trueman, the author of Historylearningsite.co.uk, it
is not fully academic. Mr. Trueman has some background in history, holding a BA, but the site is
also managed by “history graduates.” This makes some of what the site presented dubious. This
is not to say that the “facts” here are false. Instead, the ideas here could easily be gathered
from a far more reputable location, as the authors of this site are basically anonymous. There is
an excellent common sense criticism of a source that can quickly help a student check its
credibility: if one is not willing to place their name on a work, why should anyone be willing to
trust it. Not all anonymous sources are non-academic or bad; however, anonymous sources
should be viewed with suspicion and a high level of distrust until further scrutinized. In the end,
the information pulled from this source could easily be found in a more reputed location, such
as the numerous library databases, making the use of this source a poor choice at best.
160
Formal Paper Examples
The following section gives examples of Formal Paper Final Drafts from previous classes or
courses. The directions may not match the current version of the Formal Paper Project (also
called the Research Essay). Please be sure to follow the current directions for your course. All
examples are for reference only.
161
Student Name56
History 101
Formal Paper
Tu/Th 5:45
Jewish Benefits in a Time of Conflict57
In the complicated arena of the Thirty Year’s War, the common people of the Holy Roman
Empire suffered under the long and brutal conflict. Caught between the opposing Catholic and
Protestant sides were the Jews. Historically, the Jews were one of the most oppressed and
persecuted minorities in Europe.58 How did the Thirty Year’s War affect Central-European
Jews?59 Despite the massive devastation and insecurity caused by Thirty Year's War, Central
European Jews suffered little from the hostilities and in some situations, benefited from the
conflict.60
56
This is considered an “A” level research essay, despite some weaknesses in argumentation
and structure. This paper followed an earlier set of directions and may not reflect the current
requirements of the assignment. Indeed, some of my courses do not even require a formal
research assignment. If you class does not require such an assignment, this essay is still a useful
reader, as it shows writing in a longer form and could be helpful in understanding the structure
and expectations in exams.
57
Note the intriguing and yet still descriptive title
58
It is important to notice here that this statement still limits its universal claim with the phrase
“one of the most,” clearly pointing to the issue of Jewish persecution within European history,
but not diminishing the persecution faced by other groups
59
One of the issues exhibited by this otherwise excellent essay is that the research question is
just “plopped” into the introduction, with no attempt to make it flow. Research questions
should be woven into the introduction, and they do not necessarily have to remain in a
question format, though this is perhaps one of the easiest ways to insert them into a research
essay.
60
This is an amazingly clear and complex thesis that attempts to provide a broad overall picture
to answer the research question as directly as possible. Note too how the thesis first rejects
what might be a supposed answer to the question, that Jews suffered in the war, then directly
replaces this idea was a strong claim that Jews not only did not suffer but may have also
benefited. While not all topics and research questions can be answers in this way – remember
these examples are NOT templates – this thesis gives a clear answer to the question and even
provides a slight outline to the paper. It does all of this without falling prey to formula writing
or three-pronged nonsense.
162
Before specific effects of the Thirty Year’s War on Jews in Central Europe can be
discussed, information on the war’s effects on non-combatants in general must be given.61
Additionally, a brief summary of the war will allow for a sense of context. The origins of the war
were both religious and political. The fighting officially began in 1618 as Czech Protestants in
Prague attempted to elect a protestant German to the throne of Bohemia, jeopardizing Hapsburg
Catholic sway over Holy Roman Empire electors (Meier 255). A century of religious hostilities
finally boiled over, igniting the deadliest conflict between Protestants and Catholics in European
history.62 In a corresponding attempt to restore Catholic authority, Emperor Ferdinand II
reclaimed control over Protestant German states after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620
(Meier 255). This Hapsburg aggression threatened the balance of power in Europe and gave rise
to the political reasons that drove the war.63 In 1625, the Danish invaded in favor of the
Protestants, later followed by Swedish and French incursions that aimed to limit Hapsburg power
(Gutmann 749). The majority of the long and devastating war was fought in what is now
Germany and was not officially ended until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (Spielvogel 318).64
61
While such tangents as this can ruin a research paper, if they are well constructed and
outlined, they can provide much-needed context. The topic sentence makes it clear that this
information is somewhat tangential, but also necessary.
62
notice how this sentence clarifies the previous cited fact, adding analysis
63
again, the analysis here is excellent, clarifying the cited facts
64
Make sure to notice how EVERY fact that comes from sources is properly cited in each
sentence it is used. This may result in successively cited sentences, which is completely
acceptable, though if several cited sentences appear one after another it may be an indication
that the writer needs to add some analysis and interpretation. Here the analysis is clear and
varied enough that the evidence does not feel like a "list."
163
The Thirty Year’s War caused widespread destruction throughout Central Europe.65 The
conflict adversely affected the general populace of the Holy Roman Empire as Protestants,
Catholics, Jews, and other minority groups all suffered. The invasions and movements of
multiple foreign armies had horrible effects on the local non-combatants. In addition to battle
related deaths, the war brought about outbreaks of disease among the locals.66 Afflictions like
typhus, dysentery, and even bubonic plague were spread via the movement of thousands of
soldiers and refugees (Kamen 50). Henry Kamen infers that despite the high mortality rate
among German non-combatants, the losses of property and displacement of peasants were more
significant to the civilian plight of the war (49). Harsh commandeering of supplies and resources
needed by the invading armies heavily taxed the German populace. In certain areas used as
thoroughfares by foreign troops, displacement from of infrastructure destruction and property
loss led to estimated population losses of up to 90 percent (Kamen 49).67
In order to discuss the effects of the Thirty Year’s War on Jews in Central Europe, some
background must be given on the Jewish situation prior to the beginning of hostilities.68 There is
65
Technically, this paragraph is still elaborating on the main idea of the last; however, a new
paragraph is used to help “chunk” the information in a manageable format. While it is often
true that a writer should have paragraphs that address their topics, this does not mean that
multiple paragraphs cannot address the same topic in succession. This is a much better option
that attempting to force your reader to handle a paragraph that is cumbersome and flows over
many pages; remember, writing is heuristic and often lacks clear, “black and white” rules,
especially in regards to structural and stylistic conventions.
66
The above sentences provide excellent analysis and support for the paper’s thesis while also
flowing into supportive and cited facts
67
The argument falls a bit flat here, as these last three sentences need further explaining and
analysis, but the intent is still somewhat clear, though not as explicitly stated as it should be.
68
While is important to provide context and setting, especially in history, it is also necessary to
fit these to the length of a paper. This second tangent, while certainly important, stretches the
reader’s attention and weakens the argument structure in such a short paper. If the assignment
allowed for greater length, these additional contextual features would strength the overall
whole. As it stands, the second tangent feels as though the writer may be getting “lost in the
164
no question that Jews of the Holy Roman Empire suffered under Catholic power. Intense and
deadly persecution of Jews occurred during the Middle Ages as they were killed during the
crusades and blamed as a cause of the Black Death (Israel 4). Continued persecution occurred
during the reformation when German Jews failed to embrace Lutheran doctrine. Martin Luther
himself wrote several articles condemning Jews (Singer par. 10).69 He argued that traditional
Jewish services and professions such as moneylending70 were of no benefit and detrimental to
Christian society (Singer par. 13). The hostilities toward Jews in the mid-1500s can be attributed
to the outspokenness of Luther. Confiscation of property and wealth from the Jews living in
Protestant urban areas rose for a time in the middle of the century (Singer par. 12).71
Before the events of the Thirty Year’s War, Jewish oppression gradually began to
subside. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, two prominent Central European cities, Prague
and Frankfurt, expanded their Ghettos (Israel 6). By 1600, Jews were allowed to return to several
other major population centers. Jonathan I. Israel describes the causes of this reintegration to
stem from a rise in absolutist and mercantilist leanings, as well as a traditional patronage of
German Jews by the Hapsburg dynasty (5).72 By the start of the Thirty Year’s War, the once
displaced Jews were in the midst of migrating back into old positions in Central European
minutia” for such a short paper. This is one of the many reasons why short papers are often
harder than longer writing tasks.
69
While it is not technically MLA style to include a paragraph number in a non-numbered text,
this is greatly appreciated by reader and grader; keep this in mind.
70
While mostly free of technical errors, typos still appear; proofread carefully.
71
After all these cited ideas, the writer probably needed to add more analysis to clarify or
restate the point being made so as to not lose the reader in the depth of evidence. Remember,
as a write it is your job to communicate your ideas to the audience. You cannot fall into the trap
that your points are understood simply because you understood them. Other must be able to
follow the ideas as well.
72
Good use of in text author reference while still using proper end of text citation style
165
society. This reintegration facilitated the unique benefits experienced by Jews during the coming
conflict.73
Despite the Thirty Year’s War’s harsh impacts on the German civilian population, Jewish
groups and organizations did gain unique profits from the circumstances of the war.74 The
relationship between Jews and Emperor Ferdinand II is a notable example. Jewish merchants and
moneylenders required simple compensation in the form of social privileges that could be
exclusively granted by the Emperor (Israel 10). This unique relationship provided social benefits
to Jews while enabling the Emperor to procure food and supplies without payment or interest.
These dealings between Ferdinand II led to the protection of many Jews from the wartime
conflicts. During the sack of Prague after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, the Catholic
soldiers were given specific orders not to enter the Jewish neighborhood (Israel 10).
Jewish benefits during the widespread conflict were not limited to Jews with connections
to the Hapsburgs or Catholic forces. During the Swedish phase of the war in the 1630s, Jewish
dealers willingly provided the invading Lutherans with provisions, including horses (Israel 17).75
As in the dealings between Jews and the Imperial forces, both sides benefitted76 from such trade.
73
These last two sentences serve as transitions and analytical clarifications for the reader,
helping fix some of the “time spent” on such long tangents in such a short paper.
74
At this point, it seems the paper is moving onto a defense of the actual thesis; however, by
not mentioning any specific negative impacts of the war on Jewish groups prior to this, there
seems to be a gap in the argument at this point. Remember the thesis claimed Jews suffered
little, not that they did not suffer at all. This seems to be left out thus far, weakening the
argument at this point.
75
It is important to notice that the author assumes the reader has some familiarity with the
events of the war itself. This is an important and NOT improper assumption. Remember, the
purpose of the research essay is the answer the question. Giving a full narrative of the war is
outside the scope of the question, leaving it to the reader to fill in these details if necessary.
Remember the research essay seeks a specific answer and can often avoid some, though not all,
of the contextual facts, as this paper clearly illustrates. Much of the war's narrative was not
needed. Do not fall into the "reporting" habit and sacrifice your arguments.
76
Watch for mechanical errors
166
The Swedish forces received necessary supplies and the Jews gained protection and social
concessions in areas under Swedish control. Israel indicates that such promises of protection
could be trusted, as no attacks against Jewish communities by Protestants under Swedish control
were ever recorded (17).77 Maritime trade profits were also accumulated by some Jewish
merchants.78 A specific example of Jews benefiting financially occurred as a result of several
naval blockades of the Netherlands (Israel 13). Although small, a group of Jews of Portuguese
origin accrued wealth as a result of trade operations being relocated to the port city of Hamburg
(Israel 13). Benefits for the Jews came often in the form of social freedoms and protection from
attack, yet some Jews benefitted monetarily as well.79
Central Europe during the Thirty Year’s War suffered heavily from the hostilities. Aside
from the civilian casualties of battle, many non-combatants were displaced and lost much of their
wealth and possessions. In the Jewish minority, however, many managed to do well as suppliers
77
It is a pity that the writer does not attempt to analyze Israel’s claim further, by pointing out
that no evidence of an attack does not preclude the fact that one may have happened. Again,
these subtle argument failings, all minor, do add up to issues with the argument as a whole,
though certainly not ones that have a large effect on the overall scoring of the paper’s
argument. Were the structure or analysis weaker, these errors would be more grievous.
78
This might normally need a citation; however, the specific example given afterwards shows
that this generalization is actually an analysis of the cited fact given in the next sentence.
79
As noted earlier, the long time spent on contextualize the war and Jewish groups in it left
little space for detailed argument support about how the war benefited Jewish groups directly.
Though evidence was given, it does not seem adequate to use only a few examples to support
such a grand claim that seemed quite contrary to the perceived and historical situation of
Jewish groups at the time. This does not mean the argument is incorrect or correct, as
arguments cannot often be judged in this fashion; rather, it means that once again the
argument suffers from some noticeable holes or weaknesses. Some of this is a feature of
assignment length, though the writer should have compensated for this. Thinning down the
tangents and strengthening the core argument may have helps. In the end, such balancing is
one of the more difficult stylistic and structural aspects of writing an argument.
167
for both Protestant and Catholic forces.80 Powerful figures like Ferdinand II recognized the
benefit of doing business with Jews. Their roles as merchants and moneylenders earned the
Jewish people a means of protection in hostile times. Jonathan I. Israel implies that an era of
Jewish prosperity came about as a result of the war, stating that “the terrible upheavals of the
Thirty Years' War mostly worked in favor of German and all Central European Jewry” (30).81 In
a people group so oppressed as the Jews, it is quite surprising to find a glimmer of prosperity
among their population in Central Europe during the turbulent conflict of the Thirty Year’s War.
80
Again we see a seeming problem of argument logic here. Though this conclusion does well in
restating the primary ideas of the paper’s claims, by adding the idea that Jewish groups
supported both sides, it seems to imply that such “double dealing” was common or at least
common enough to be commented on. If this is the case, then surely such an event would lead
to retribution by one side or the other, which seems to contradict the claim that the war
benefited Jewish groups entirely. Indeed, it may be wrong to assume that Jews functions as a
coherent independent group at all, which the paper assumes to be the case. Perhaps the
grouping method and assumptions of the author will not stand further historical scrutiny.
Notice how this critique is perhaps on the extreme end of what might be expected for an
introduction styled course; however, it is important that, as a writer, students consider these
issues and look to the logical consequences of their claims, even the small ones.
81
This quotation seems unnecessary, as it simply restates what was previously summarized in
the sentence, making it redundant. Furthermore, without more analysis, the quotation seems
to fulfill not argumentative purpose, making it suspiciously rhetorical.
168
Works Cited82
Israel, Jonathan I. “Central European Jewry during the Thirty Years' War.”
Central European History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp. 3-30. JSTOR. Web. 6 April.
2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4545974.
Gutmann, Myron P. “The Origins of the Thirty Years' War.”
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History , Vol. 18, No. 4, The Origin and Prevention of
Major Wars (Spring, 1988), pp. 749-770. JSTOR. Web.13 April, 2013.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/204823.
Kamen, Henry. “The Economic and Social Consequences of the Thirty Years' War.”
Past & Present , No. 39 (Apr., 1968), pp. 44-61. JSTOR. Web.12 April. 2013.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/649855.
Meier, David A. "An Appeal For A Historiographical Renaissance: Lost Lives And The Thirty
Years War." Historian 67.2 (2005): 254-274. History Reference Center. Web. 14 April.
2013. http://ehis.ebscohost.com.libproxy.gc.maricopa.edu/ehost/detail?sid=6c05a32193e740e7a1f04c39a521c7e1%40sessionmgr114&vid=1&hid=105&bdata=JnNpdGU9Z
Whvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=khh&AN=17065544.
82
The paper ends with a very well formatted Works Cited page, which includes URLs when
necessary, as required by the Paper Guidelines. Notice the use of spacing, hanging indentation,
and other formatting specifics. Good Works Cited pages often require far more than just
copying from a page that can auto format the information for you. The writer must learn the
citation style to correct mistakes, add good formatting, and provide a clear list of the sources
used. Do not just let another program or website do all the work, as this often results in small
errors that add up to larger point losses. Learn the style yourself. Learn to write it by hand
without "citation generators."
169
Singer, David G. "Baptism Or Expulsion: Martin Luther And The Jews Of Germany." Journal
Of Ecumenical Studies 44.3 (2009): 401-408. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 April.
2013. http://ehis.ebscohost.com.libproxy.gc.maricopa.edu/ehost/detail?sid=55163ca5dd55-45bc-a212fc0f18833c9d%40sessionmgr14&vid=7&hid=105&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZS
ZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=aph&AN=44638285.
Spielvogel, J. J. (2011). Western Civilization: A Brief History. Boston, MA: Wadsworth,
Cengage Learning.
[An excellent research essay that shows the power of a well made question and a thesis that
defies what would be an assumed conclusion. Many of the techniques seen here provide
excellent reference material and a solid technical example of writing. Mistakes and criticism
aside, the paper exceeds expectations]
170
Student Name83
History 104
Assignment
Tu/Th 11:30
Propaganda: A Crafty Weapon
At 7:48 a.m. on December 7, 1941, 353 bombers flew over Hawaii. These planes were
Japanese, and once they were over the American naval base, they started to drop bombs onto the
town and naval outpost of Pearl Harbor. One of the villagers describes the event: “Some of the
planes were flying so low…we could make out the Japanese pilots in the cockpit. Our car,
bedroom windows, and lawn furniture were shot up and our home was shaking so badly we
feared it would collapse” (Schneider, 218-19). The attack on Pearl Harbor was the first time that
another country had attacked an American state during World War II.84 Japan thought that the
attack on Pearl Harbor would destroy American morale, but they were wrong (Spielvogel, 590).
Surely this leads one to question why American morale was not as devastated as the Japanese
intended. More specifically one might ask how did the propaganda about the Japanese affect US
morale during World War II?85 United States propaganda boosted morale
dramaticallyincreasing86 war efforts during World War II.87
83
This is an example of a "high B" or even an “A” research essay. Make sure to pay close
attention to the structure, argument, research question, thesis, and supports used. Remember,
these papers are NOT templates, as every research essay has its own approach based on the
evidence found and argument being made; however, good techniques and ideas can be found
here, especially as it regards innovative source usage. This paper followed an earlier set of
directions and may not reflect the current requirements of the assignment.
84
This should be reworded for clarity.
85
This is clearly intending to introduce the research question, though it remains a bit
rhetorically “clunky.” Nevertheless, it is clear what question the student is seeking to answer.
86
The spacing of these words is not correct. This is an odd error that occurs throughout the
essay. What makes it even stranger is that it would easily be detected by spellchecking
software. I have not corrected these problems, as I want students to see how small errors such
as this can hurt an otherwise solid set of ideas. Remember, while mechanics should not be all
consuming, they are nonetheless important.
171
To understand propaganda, one has to know what propaganda is. Propaganda is popularly
viewed asthe use of certain art, news, movies, or stories to change someone’s personal and
emotional views.88 An example of propaganda would be in the field of advertising.
Advertisement representatives use ads, commercials, and trailers to make the community think a
certain way and buy or use a certain product. The point of the advertisement representatives is to
get the general public to believe what the ads are telling them, because if people start to believe
what the advertisements say, then it is more likely that they will buy their product. Propaganda
uses the same tactics. It tries to change the belief system of a group of people to help further the
popularity of a certain goal or action.This can be largely seen in the propaganda that was
released after Pearl Harbor, and near the end of World War II.89
Posters were main source for propaganda.90 Posters could be put up in key areas of cities
or buildings; therefore, making them extremely effective. An instanceof this was a poster that
was circulated near the end of World War II. The poster showed the heads of the Japanese
87
The thesis is clear and simple, which are not necessarily bad things in shorter essays. Indeed,
it seems the evidence allowed for such a clear-cut explanation, as the author will later hope to
prove. However, the mechanical errors here do slightly detract from the presentation and
strength provided by such a definitive thesis.
88
This is a clever trick. The author is not necessarily giving a formal definition, which would
require a formal citation; instead, the author is merely stating a popular definition. This is not a
trick that should be attempted lightly, as it can backfire and weaken an argument. Also, even
popular definitions sometimes need citations or further evidence to support the claim.
89
This whole paragraph is a brief, though seemingly necessary, tangent. As the whole paper
focuses on propaganda, its qualities are clearly important. Furthermore, it must be made clear
how the author is viewing propaganda if the reader is to fully grasp the argument being made.
The analogy to popular advertising provides an excellent and clear example. Finally, the last
sentence smoothly transitions the reader back into the argument with a new understanding on
the nature of propaganda.
90
This simple sentence provides a wealth of structural information to the reader. The reader
can expect a lengthy analysis of WWII propaganda posters. Simple transitions such as these can
turn a shaky and unclear argument into a well-structured and coherent piece of persuasion. Still
grammatical errors persist and hurt clarity.
172
Emperor Hirohito, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini all connected to the body of a snake with
the caption “Crush them!” on top of the poster (Hillstrom, 72). War posters were also used to
show the enemy as wicked and even animal-like creature. This was seen in a poster that showed
a Japanese soldier chasing a young woman with a knife (Miles, Figure 1). The young woman
was portrayed as American.The Japanese soldier is shown as an animalistic, cruel, murderous,
and hateful creature. The top of the poster reads, “This is the Enemy!”91 Artists for wartime
posters like this one would show the enemy as wicked and animal-like as possible, making the
audience develop fear and racial prejudice. This would make the enemy, in this case the
Japanese, appear less “human”, and make compassion for them to decrease and hatred for them
to increase. By making one’s enemy appear more animalistic, barbaric, and cruel this would
make it seem good and even humane to kill them.92
Additionally, feminized posters also started circling during World War II. Before World
War II, men were the primary part of the military, however, when the United States joined World
War II, the idea that women could fight as wellwas finally put into action. Even though there was
still a mass majority of men that fought in World War II, women volunteered and even fought in
World War II. The popular “We Can Do It” poster depicts women as strong, and able to handle
everything that a man can in hopes that women would join the military (Carlisle, 8). This in turn
91
Technically speaking, these last two sentences need citations. Furthermore, more advanced
research essays would probably reference an appendix for such detailed pictorial reference,
though this should not be a concern for this paper. Finally, the last few sentences were a series
of facts or source pieces. To make effective use of these, the paper should next present the
reader with analysis and meaning of these previously stated fact, which the author does.
92
These are deep accusations, historically speaking; however, they seem to follow the analysis
of the sources. Still, this analysis does not seem to explain how this might morally assist US
troops, which is the claim made by the thesis. It is good analysis of the source, but the link to
the thesis, or lack thereof, hurts the overall argument. Notices how one can analyze, but that
analysis on its own is not always helpful. Analysis also needs to tie ideas back to the thesis and
argument.
173
also served to aid American morale during World War II, because of the possibility of even more
volunteers. It also increased morale because both men and women from America fought
alongside one another during World War II. This helped the army and the United States as a
whole to feel more united and much stronger.93
Even cartoons were influential as a propaganda tool.94 One Merry Medleys cartoon
entitled “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips”; shows Bugs Bunny become stranded on an island with a
Japanese fleet. Bugs Bunny eventually meets up with a sumo wrestler, and proceeds to knock the
wrestler unconscious (Frelong, 5:26). While he is still on the island, Bugs spots Japanese carriers
making their way towards the island, and decides to go into the Japanese camp in an ice cream
truck, and dressed as an ice cream man. He then proceeds to destroy the Japanese army by
handing out ice cream sandwiches with grenades inside to the troops, all the while calling the
Japanese soldiers such names as: “monkey face”, “slant eyes”, and “bow legs” (Freleng, 6:12).
This cartoon was meant to show American that if Bugs Bunny could take down a whole regiment
of Japanese soldiers with ice cream sandwiches, than America could destroy Japan with the
technology that was available at that time. In other words, if a cartoon rabbit could destroy a
whole Japanese regiment with wits and ice cream sandwiches, then so could America.95
93
The analysis here has a much deeper connection to the thesis; however, the facts provided
do not seem to fully support the claim that women “fought.” While women did fight in WWII,
especially many Russian women, the sources provided here to not demonstrate this. This
makes it appear as though the author is leaving claims unsupported. Unsupported claims leave
avenues for counter-attack within your argument, weakening its other points.
94
Again, note the smooth flow and transition used throughout the paper. While the paper is
riddled with small mechanical flaws, the smooth transitions help the whole work flow in a way
that makes it harder to notice the small errors. Eliminating all mechanical errors is a difficult
task. Smooth writing can help hide some of the "crimes."
95
The point being made here is well taken, though the way it is worded makes it seem like
Americans thought fighting with ice cream sandwiches was a viable tactics. Thus, it needs to be
reworded a bit, as this tactical notion seems flaw, albeit delicious.
174
Another cartoon produced by Merry Melodies is entitled: “Tokio Jokio”.96 This cartoon
seeks to label the Japanese as idiots, and extremely stupid.97 “Tokio Jokio” makes fun of the
Japanese by going around a fake Japan and showing unreal lives of the Japanese; which consist
of the Japanese’s air raid sirens which are two men jabbing each other in the buttocks with
needles, the aircraft spotter who is painting spots on airplanes, and the fire prevention office
which has already burned down (McCabe, 50 sec, 1:18 min).Cartoons during the war sought to
instill strong racial dislike by jokes and gags. Animations like this wanted to make up an idea of
the enemy that was false. In this case, the purpose of the cartoon was to show that if Japan could
not even take care of its homeland, how could it possibly succeed in a war with the Allies.98 The
purpose was to raise United States moral by making fear of the Japanese to significantly decrease
through portraying them as idiots.99
96
Notice how the author uses multiple paragraphs to examine similar topics. The author does
not attempt to jam everything into one paragraph to meet some arbitrary paragraph number
for the paper. Paragraphs have clear, logical structures internally and fit together well
throughout the paper. This shows that the author fully thought out the structure and outline of
the paper prior to writing, which vastly improves the paper’s quality.
97
The comma before the “and” is not necessary and the phrases “idiots” and “extremely
stupid” are redundant.
98
In this paragraph and the previous one, the author does a good job making it clear how the
information presented in the sources relates to the thesis and demonstrates the claim. Note
that this is done with non-traditional sources, such as posters and cartoons. These sources may
not normally be considered “academic,” but this creative use of source material, mixed with
excellent structure and argument, allows for the use of more interesting source avenues. At the
end of the day, historians should often try to go back to the sources of a particular time,
whenever possible. Not all sources are stuffy journal articles. Primary sources, the bread and
butter for historians, are often far more interesting and compelling in an argument.
99
There is clearly a problem with this sentence; the sentences is entirely unclear. The word
“fear” should probably be “fun.” After that the sentence becomes a bit too convoluted to
understand the original intent. Remember to proof read for such sentence, which will often
show up if the paper is not given time to “sit” between drafts. If an author proofreads right
after writing, errors such as these will be more frequent, as the meaning of the sentence will
still be in the author’s mind, making the author’s eyes skip over it.
175
Art and video was not the only way that propaganda on the Japanese was spread
throughout the United States. Stories of victims, and of heroes on the Pearl Harbor attack were
also recorded for the general public.100 One sailor, in a letter to his family, recorded how the
Japanese had cut off the water supply to the anti-aircraft guns on land. Since the soldiers did not
have any water to cool down the guns, they had to be resourceful.101 The sailor describes how he
and the rest of his ran to the nearest Coke machine, and brought back as many Cokes as possible.
Instead of using water, the soldiers used Coke to cool down their anti-aircraft guns and return
fire on the Japanese (Schneider, 219). One can not get much more American than that! Getting
the idea to use Coke (an American based drink)102 to cool down their anti-aircraft guns and fire
back at the attacking Japanese was something that would instill strong national pride in the
readers of this story. The pride that resulted from stories such as these boosted morale greatly.103
Additional stories about the Pearl Harbor attack include how one soldier was blown
overboard, but was picked up by another battleship, and continued to fire at the Japanese
bombers (Ross, Paragraph 9). Moreover, survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack also described how
some soldiers would go into the sinking battleships in order to save crewmembers trapped inside
(White, 8).104 When Americans heard of heroic stories such as these, their pride would greatly
100
Again, these two sentences do a yeomen’s job in conveying solid structure. The reader is
given a brief summary of previous ideas and then told what to expect next.
101
Technically, the last two sentences require citation; however, the way the information is
introduced, with phrases like “in a letter” make it clear that all of this information comes from
one sources which is cited in the next sentence.
102
In MLA styled papers, only use parentheses for citations. Use commas or dashes to set aside
phrases such as this.
103
There seems to be little proof to support this claim, as it is largely inference. The strength of
the inference is largely down to the reader to determine.
104
Once again, the author is using a list of facts followed by analysis. This is mainly a stylistic
choice. A writer could follow each fact with analysis. What is important to note is that each
listed example appears to relate to the other. This is not a random list of facts that the reader
176
increase.Newspapers would publish stories such as these so that the general public could see and
be inspired by the heroes of the Pearl Harbor attack.105
The effect of propaganda alone on U.S. morale was incredible, and it served greatly in
giving the American populace the pride and ambition they needed to win the war. People from
all over the United States rushed to volunteer for the army, men and women included. Even
children helped the war effort, by salvaging scrap tin for use in the military. In fact, the attack on
Pearl Harbor, and the propaganda that surrounded it so stirred up the American people, that a
surplus of volunteers arrived into the army only days after the attack adopting the motto:
“Remember Pearl Harbor” as their own (Laurie, 72).106 A new sense of pride and nationalism
was realized through the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and the propaganda that surrounded it.
Standing on the fin of the battleship Honolulu, overlooking all the destruction, a sailor noted, “I
never doubted that the U.S. would wind up victorious, but I thought that I might spend the rest of
my life in the effort,” (Schneider, 219).Stories such as this one helped to show the view of
America after World War II, largely due to the affect of propaganda.107 The view that America
would give everything it could to right the wrong that the Japanese had done to them by
has to sort out; instead, the author is providing a clear continuity that will be analyzed as a
whole or picked for individual ideas.
105
The author again leaves out some evidence of how the propaganda was viewed by soldiers
themselves, which was one of the main claims of the thesis. This hurts the argument, as the
author is not providing evidence of this final aspect of the thesis. Much of the link between
higher troop or citizen moral is left to inference, which is shaky at best.
106
This is the kind of evidence that the previous note was hoping to see. This shows how the
actual event appeared in the minds of citizens and soldiers; however, more of this is needed to
fully support the thesis.
107
Notice how this quotation was preceded by an introductory sentence and then followed
with analysis. This is often necessary for all quotations; however, in this case, the quotation
seems to add more weight to the author’s point, though its topicality is somewhat debatable.
177
attacking their own land. The cartoons, posters, stories, and other propaganda all stimulated and
help the national pride and morale soar.108
Propaganda on the Japanese had a major influence on the morale of the American
populace. It changed the way that the American people thought. Through the Pearl Harbor
attack, and the propaganda afterwards, America became united. It became a symbol of pride and
love to be called American. Propaganda was a major contributing factor in this. Propaganda is
both a tool and a weapon, and should be handled carefully. If in the wrong hands, propaganda
can be used for mass destruction and devastation. One could even relate the uniting of America
through the attack on Pearl Harbor to the recentattack on 9/11 and the destruction of the “Twin
Towers” by Islamist terrorists. However during the attack on Pearl Harbor America had a clear
common enemy, but is that true now?109
108
This is an interesting rhetorical approach, as the paper seems to give its conclusion here;
however, another paragraph follows which further concludes the ideas and reaches towards
some grander ideas, giving legitimacy to the research and the thesis. The last paragraph helps
answer the reader’s inherent question of “why does all this matter?”
109
This is a bit melodramatic and may need to be reworded to avoid such a rhetorical question
at the end; however, the author’s larger point and hoped for intention seems clear. The reader
has seen the power and affect of propaganda on a clear enemy. How then does this work when
the enemy is vague and harder to define? Furthermore, what results could come from this? The
author is attempting to force the reader to reevaluate current issues in light of historical ideas
and evidence. This is not some trite attempt to claim that history is repeating itself; it is far
deeper than that. The author wants the reader to make their own assessment with the new
information the reader gained, which is quite powerful.
178
Works Cited110
Carlisle, Rodney. December 7, 1941. 1st ed. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 2006. X.
Print.
Freleng, Isadore. “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips.” Warner Bros. 1944, Web.
<http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon_video/3765-Bugs_Bunny_Nips_The_Nips.html>.
Hillstrom, Laurie. The Attack on Pearl Harbor. 1st ed. New York: Omnigraphics, Inc., 2009. 72.
Print.
McCabe, Norman. “Tokio Jokio.” Warner Bros. 1943, Web.
<http://archive.org/details/TokyoJokyo>.
Miles, Hannah. "WWII Propaganda: The Influence of Racism." Artifacts: A Journal of
Undergraduate Writing. University of Missouri, 4 Mar 2012. Web. 25 Sep
2013.Paragraph 3, Sentence 3.<http://artifactsjournal.missouri.edu/2012/03/wwiipropaganda-the-influence-of-racism/>.
Ross, Lee. "A Pearl Harbor Survivor's Incredible Story." Fox News 07 Dec 2012, weekend ed. n.
pag. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/07/pearl-harbor-survivorincredible-story/>.
110
A very well formatted Works Cited page. Note that even the films have clear and specific
bibliographic entries with as much detail as possible.
179
Schneider, Carl andSchneider, Dorothy. World War II. 1st ed. New York: Infobase Publishing,
2003. 219. Print.
Spielvogel, Jackson. Western Civilization: A Brief History. 7th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage
Learning, 2005. 590. Print.
White, Geoffrey. "September 11 and Pearl Harbor." American Anthropological Association.
Wiley, 5 Aug 2004. Web. 26 Sep 2013. Page 8. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3805359 >.
[While the actual impact of WWII propaganda on soldiers and citizens is somewhat lacking, with
the author instead relying too much on inference and supposition to reach some of these
conclusions, the information given seems to support these inferences. Perhaps the sources found
could not provide a direct answer and all that could be done was inference. If this was the case
the author should have stated this. Nevertheless, the innovative use of sources, solid essay flow,
and thought provoking approach mark this essay as one that exceeds expectations, which is the
definition of A level work. A grade of "B+" might be warranted though given the clear and often
detrimental mechanical errors, typos, and confusing sentences. Still, it was a solid essay.
Remember, meeting only minimum requirements often results in minimum passing grades; make
a work exceed expectations whenever possible.]
180