Thinking Like a Historian
Key tools of historical thinking: sources, chronology, causation, and point of view.
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Questions Covered in This Set
10 cards to master
What is a primary source?
Something created by someone who directly experienced or observed the event — a letter, diary, treaty, photograph, tax record, or artifact.
What is a secondary source?
A work created later by someone analyzing primary sources, such as a textbook, documentary, or scholarly article.
What quick test tells you if a source is primary?
Ask: Did the creator experience or observe the event directly? Also remember the category depends on your research question.
What does SOAPS stand for?
Speaker/Source, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject — a checklist for analyzing a primary source.
What is periodization?
The historian's choice of where to draw time boundaries (e.g., calling 1400–1600 'the Renaissance') — it is an argument, not a fact.
Why is the 1700s called the 18th century?
Because the first century covered years 1–100, so each century is numbered one ahead of its '00s label.
What is the difference between sequence and simultaneity?
Sequence is the order events happened; simultaneity is recognizing that things like the Aztec Empire, Ming China, and Renaissance Italy all flourished at the same time (the 1400s).
Explain change vs. continuity with an example.
Between 1500–1800 in Europe governments became far more centralized (change) while most people still farmed with hand tools (continuity). Strong answers name both.
Name the three layers of causation historians use.
Long-term causes (conditions building for decades), short-term causes (recent developments), and triggers (the immediate spark).
Apply layered causation to the French Revolution.
Long-term: Enlightenment ideas and a rigid estate system; short-term: state bankruptcy from war debt and the 1788 harvest failure; trigger: calling the Estates-General and storming the Bastille.
