Historical Thinking Skills for AP World

AP World History addresses four major skills that represent the ways historians think about the past. These skills have been described as "habits of mind." This useful phrase should remind you that a skill needs to be practiced repeatedly until it becomes second nature.

Skill 1: Crafting Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence

The first historical thinking skill focuses our attention on using evidence to make historical arguments. The word "argument" reminds us that any attempt to explain the past requires interpretation, since our understanding of the past is limited. Arguing means making a logical--rather than emotional--case for your interpretation of a particular historical question or controversy. To be convincing, your interpretation has to present supporting evidence. This evidence consists of both historical facts and information from primary sources.

Historical Argumentation

Historians make arguments about what life was like in the past, how or why thinks changed, and why those changes matter. Their arguments are informed by their deep knowledge about the subject and careful reading of primary sources. But because evidence from the past is often incomplete or difficult to understand, historians inevitably make inferences to fill the gaps in their knowledge. Not all historians make the same inferences, so there are often a variety of interpretations about most historical events.

For example, most scholars agree that the decision of some people to adopt agriculture about 11,000 years ago marked the beginning of a major world historical development. But because this development preceded writing, the only evidence scholars have comes from archaeology and anthropology. Consequently, historians disagree about whether agriculture led to permanent settlement in a particular location--or vice versa. Many scholars also believe that the development of agricultural surpluses introduced disparities in status. Critics disagree, however, pointing to tomb evidence from gathering and hunting (that is, non-farming) peoples that suggests that significant differences in status already existed among some pre-agricultural peoples.

To develop this historical thinking skill, ask yourself how do historians think they know what they know about a particular event. What evidence do they provide? Does their language suggest hesitancy or uncertainty about their interpretation? Do they offer alternative explanations?

Appropriate Use of Relevant Historical Evidence

Historians make arguments about the past based on primary-source evidence. A primary source is something produced in the era under investigation. In contrast, a secondary source is something about the era under investigation, long after the fact. It is usually the result of scholarly research of primary sources, or a distillation of such research. The narrative sections of a textbook, for example, are secondary sources. Traditionally primary sources have consisted overwhelmingly of written sources.

In the last few decades, historians have increasingly moved beyond relying exclusively on written primary sources by turning to visual sources--paintings, photographs, architecture, artifacts, etc--and evidence from other fields of knowledge. For example, using scientific and medical information, historians have come to see the role that disease has played in history--destroying native populations in the Americas after Europeans arrived, for instance. Since no historian can be an expert in every field, historians also make use of the secondary-source scholarship of others who have studied primary sources such as ancient DNA or pottery shards in their own specialized studies.

Skill 2: Chronological Reasoning

"Chronological reasoning" means thinking logically about how and why the world changes--or, sometimes, stays the same--over time. While all fields of knowledge offer arguments based on evidence or make comparisons, historians are uniquely concerned about the past and its relationship to the present. How is the world different now from how it was 50 years ago, 500 years ago, or 5,000 years ago? Why did the world change? How have some aspects of the world remain relatively the same over long periods of time? On what basis do historians simplify the long and complicated past by breaking it into smaller eras?

Historical Causation

Causation has to do with explanations about how or why changes take place in world history. Sometimes there is an obvious connection between an event and its consequences, like a cue ball striking the eight ball and making it move. And some events are fairly straightforward: the attack on Pearl Harbor prompted President Roosevelt to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. But even this seemingly simple example is more complex. Why did Japan attack the United States? What role did the American embargo on the sale of oil have on Japan's decision? Why did the United States enact this embargo? All of these other events took place just a few years before the Pearl Harbor attack. If we go even further back, we'll gain additional insight about the larger context of the Japanese government's decision. A longer-term analysis might lead, for example, to an understanding of Japanese imperial aggression as an outgrowth of their rapid industrialization during the Meiji Restoration of the late nineteenth century and a continuing fear of domination by Western powers.

Just as there were many factors behind the Japanese decision to bomb Pearl Harbor, most examples of historical causation involve multiple causes. Historical causation also involves large processes, unintended consequences, and contingencies.

You can begin to develop the skill of determining causation by asking yourself, whenever some significant change in world history is described, what reasons explain the development. If the answer seems simple, keep digging, because there's bound to be a more complicated (and longer-term) explanation.

Patterns of Continuity and Change

Historians are interested in both historical changes and persisting patterns or "continuities." Change is easier to see: when one empire overthrows another one, that event often becomes part of the historical record. But some things stay relatively the same for long periods of time. Because continuity (such as a network of trade that remains in existence for hundreds of years) is less dramatic than change, it can be harder to spot.

What counts as continuity depends on the scale of time you're working with. The Soviet Union was continuous throughout most of the twentieth century. However, in the time frame of Russia's history since the formation of Kievan Rus in the ninth century, the Soviet era looks more like a short-lived exception.

When historians talk about continuity, they're not implying that a particular pattern applied to everyone in the world or even in a particular region. Nor are they claiming that absolutely nothing changed in the pattern they're describing. For example, agricultural production has been continuous for thousands of years. But there are exceptions to this broad statement. On the one hand, some people have continued to be gatherer-hunters; on the other hand, methods of farming have changed substantially with technology. So the continuity of agriculture is a generalization but not a completely unchanging pattern; nor is it a pattern that applies to everyone on the planet.

To work on developing this skill, look for places in your textbook where an author directly indicates that a historical pattern persisted over time and explains why that pattern persisted. But even when an author focuses on change in world history, you can still find continuity by inference, since few things ever change completely. When the text describes a new development, ask yourself what didn't change. For example, while Buddhism became popular after its introduction into China, Confucianism remained an important force in Chinese culture.

Periodization

Periodization refers to the ways that historians break the past into separate periods of time. Historians look for major turning points in history--places where the world looked very different before some event than it did after--to describe how to break the past into chunks. They then give a label to each period to convey they key characteristics and developments of that era.

Because the past is complex, particularly when talking about a subject as vast as world history, any attempt to create areas and give those eras labels can provoke disagreement. Some world historians, for example, argue for a major division at 1000 C.E., which would highlight the important role of nomadic peoples in the period between 1000 and 1450. Others prefer to maintain a single period from about 600 to 1450, since they don'[t think nomadic empires significantly interrupted a larger period of Afro-Eurasian contact. These disagreements often carry over into the classroom.

As you develop this skill, pay regular attention to the chapter you are reading, noting what major era it is described as being a part of, and thinking about what the different labels for that era say about the main "story" of that era, at least according to your textbook or College Board.

Skill 3: Comparison and Contextualization

People don't learn things in isolation, but in relationship to other things. Historians are no different. The third category of historical thinking skills reflects the ways historians make sense of the past by placing particulars in some larger framework. For example, they understand historical events and processes by comparing them to related events and processes to see how they're similar and different. Second, historians recognize that historical evidence, including artifacts, photographs, and speeches, can only be adequately understood by knowing something about their context--that is, the time and place where they came into existence.

Comparison

Comparisons help world historians understand how a development in the past was similar to or different from another development and in this way determine what was distinctive about it. For example, through comparative study, scholars have concluded that empires that developed over the last two thousand years share key features. First, rulers have to legitimize their rule through religious or ideological traditions. Second, they have to maintain political unity by dealing with people on the peripheries of the empire. Finally, since empires develop by conquering other people groups, empires have to deal with ethnic diversity.

But while these patterns hold true for all empires, each one addresses these challenges in its own way. The Ottoman Empire justified its rule through Turkish tradition as well as Islamic belief. It rewarded loyal elites on the margins of the empire through tax breaks. And it dealt with minorities by creating the millet system (whereby Ottoman subjects were divided into religious communities ruled by their religious leaders). Through the tool of comparison we understand how Ottoman rulers handled common problems in unique ways.

As you develop this skill, practice comparing two nations that existed at the same time--like the Ottoman and Mughal Empires--and also compare the same government at two different points in time. For example, how was the government in Song China similar to--and different from--government in Tang China? Be sure that the two things you're comparing are relatively similar, or else the comparison doesn't make much sense. For example, historians of China have pointed out that when looking at economic development in early modern China, it is better to compare that large country to developments in all of Europe rather than to tiny England only.

Contextualization

Just as historical events make more sense when they're studied alongside similar events, historians know that any event can only be understood in "context." Context refers to the historical circumstances surrounding a particular event. World historians look for major global developments in any era to help determine context. They typical think in terms of two levels of context: an immediate (or short-term) context and a board (or long-term) context.

The easiest way to begin thinking about context is to figure out when a particular event (or document) took place. Then brainstorm the major developments of the era. Ask yourself, "How might these larger events have shaped this even (or document)?"