Instructions:
The “Thinking Like a Historian” sections of your textbook provide us with an opportunity to understand how (and why) historians have interpreted the past in different ways. By highlighting the works of two historians from different time periods, these sections give us a glimpse into the field of historiography — the history of doing history. These brief excerpts are “secondary sources” — sources produced by scholars after the fact. In addition, your textbook author (David Emory Shi) has included primary documents to be read alongside of the secondary source excerpts. Primary documents are historical artifacts that comes from the time period under examination and can take a variety of forms (ie letters, diaries, political documents, movies, advertisements, etc.). In this first “Thinking Like a Historian” section, Shi provides excerpts from two renowned historians of the Revolutionary era — Bernard Bailyn and Gary Nash — who have different interpretations for how and why the Revolution occurred. Shi also provides us with two primary documents from the Revolutionary era that give us insight into what people were thinking at the time. Your task is to determine what, exactly, Bailyn and Nash had to say about the origins of the Revolution and to begin to think about how the primary documents support or weaken their respective interpretations.
- “Thinking Like a Historian” — Debating the Origins of the American Revolution, pages 148-151 (the documents are also provided below)
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