Avoiding common mistakes in historical essays발음듣기
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Avoiding common mistakes in historical essays
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[Voiceover] I want to talk about how to avoid some common mistakes when you're writing a historical paper.발음듣기
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This could apply to a term paper, to a blue book essay, even really to your Master's thesis if you wanted to.발음듣기
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I want to talk about three phrases that you might be tempted to use in a historical essay that actually muddy what you're trying to say and undercut your point more than it helps.발음듣기
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So, these three phrases that I want to talk about are: "Throughout history, it was inevitable," and "And that's why [insert country here] is so great today."발음듣기
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So, this is something that you frequently see in writing, from historical essays to pieces of journalism and it often has the ring of making something seem really strong and adding the weight of eons of history behind a single sentence.발음듣기
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And think about the many different cultures and types of people and ideas that existed throughout that time period.발음듣기
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If you're sitting down to write an essay about, let's say, The Cold War, and you start: "Throughout history people have feared nuclear attack," well, the first thing your reader is going to think is: "Wait! The nuclear bomb was only developed in 1945.발음듣기
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Your reader might think: "Well, what about when people didn't live close enough to each other to go to war about different beliefs?"발음듣기
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And do we really want to send the message that having different religions mean that you necessarily have to go to war?발음듣기
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One thing that "Throughout history" does is it makes an assumption about human nature, right?, that the way that people think now is the way that people have always thought throughout history, or the way that people behave now is the way that people have always behaved throughout history.발음듣기
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And if there's anything that is one of the core beliefs of the study of history is that people are different over time.발음듣기
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And so, if you want to be really strong about how you start a historical essay, always start it in a really specific part of time that you're talking about.발음듣기
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So, if you're talking about the period from 1945 to 1965, say "In the post-war era" or "In the late 19th century."발음듣기
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Right? This shows that you have a strong grasp of both the time and the place that you're writing about.발음듣기
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There is going to eventually be an earthquake in California is inevitable because there's a fault line.발음듣기
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That's something that humans can't control, But for almost everything else in history, humans can control it.발음듣기
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This is the event that leads to the United States going to war with Spain over Cuba in 1898.발음듣기
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Now, we know and the Spanish suggested at the time that the reason that the USS Maine exploded was due to a spontaneous combustion on-board.발음듣기
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The United States chose to believe that this ship sinking was the result of a Spanish bomb and declared war.발음듣기
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There were many ways that the United States could have chosen differently in that moment, to say: "Maybe we will believe the Spanish and just leave it alone" or "Maybe we'll send some financial aid to Cuba but we don't have to go to war."발음듣기
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When you get rid of inevitability in history, you open up new choices, new ways that things could have gone.발음듣기
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And that is really the heart of history, it's the possibility for things to be different than they were and different than they are.발음듣기
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And I think writers are very tempted to finish a historical essay with some expression of patriotism.발음듣기
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You could say: "The United States is a better place today than it was in the 1950s thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964."발음듣기
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But it's something you want to use very sparingly, because usually the scope of a historical paper - and think about our "Throughout history" here - isn't so huge as to merit the reaction to it being "This is the heart of what makes America great today."발음듣기
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I've read historical papers about the Spanish Flu in 1919 that end with "And that's why America is great today."발음듣기
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For a historical essay you want to keep your conclusions very specific, the same way that you want to keep your period of time specific.발음듣기
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So, if you're talking about the post-war era, conclude with something that you can actually substantiate, that you have substantiated in your essay, about the post-war era, say, "The wealth generated by industrialization after World War II was the reason that the Baby Boom happened."발음듣기
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It's a little too vague, and vagueness can really undermine your argument as opposed to supporting it.발음듣기
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In a way these are all kind of appeals for human nature, appeals for the natural progress of history, and appeals to patriotism that are less rooted in the fact of what you want to say than they are rooted in ways of trying to get your reader sympathy.발음듣기
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And end with a conclusion that is very related to the things that you specifically addressed.발음듣기
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Remember, you never want to introduce new information in your conclusion, and saying "And that's why America is great today" is new information, because it might not necessarily be related.발음듣기
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