· Historiographical essay examples. Below please find several examples of historiographical essays. What they share in common is an effort to chart changes in the questions asked by historians of a particular topic or field, or the sort of sources they consult; they also usually seek to explain why new questions have emerged (causation) and to assess the implication of these A Historiography of Roger Sherman Loomis a Medieval Scholar ( words, 7 pages) A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS The tales of the Arthurian legend are some of the most popular from medieval times, and the reason for this is primarily due to their fabulous nature A historiography paper is an essay that analyses the different ways in which various historians have approached a historical topic. Unlike a research paper, a historiography paper is not a study of a historical subject; instead, it is an examination of how scholars’ interpretations of history and historical events have changed over time. A
Historiographic Essays
Types of Writing Assignments. Basic Considerations When Writing on History. Types of Sources. Critical Reading. Preparation and Writing. Basic Quoting Skills. Style and Editing. In a nutshell, historiography is the history of history. Rather than subjecting actual events - say, the Rape of Nanking - to historiography paper example analysis, the subject of historiography is the history of the history of the event: the way it has been written, the sometimes conflicting objectives pursued by those writing on it over time, and the way in which such factors shape our understanding of the actual event at stake, and of the nature of history itself.
A historiographic essay thus asks historiography paper example to explore several sometimes contradictory sources on one event, historiography paper example.
An annotated bibliography might come in handy as you attempt to locate such sources; you should also consult the footnotes and bibliographies of any text you read on a certain event, as they will lead you to other texts on the same event; if your research is web-based, follow links - always bearing in mind the pitfalls of the Internet - and if you are researching in the library, historiography paper example, check out the books on nearby shelves: you'll be surprised by how often this yields sources you may otherwise never have found.
For an example of an essay on multiple perspectives on the same event for our purposes, the Rape of Nanking, an event also examined in the context of Book Reviewsclick here.
The purpose of an historiographic essay is threefold: 1. to allow you to view an historical event or issue from multiple perspectives by engaging multiple historiography paper example 2. to display your mastery over those sources and over the event or issue itself; and 3. to develop your critical reading skills as you seek to answer why your sources disagree, and what their disagreement tells you about the event or issue and the very nature of history itself.
Specific skills honed by such an exercise include your ability to discern bias or prejudice and to evaluate contradictory data and claims. As you will have to quote from your sources in order to make your point, historiography paper example, you will also have to display basic historiography paper example skills. The very nature of an essay on multiple sources also requires a Works Cited page, of course, on which, see Bibliography.
You will begin a historiographic essay with a thesis that presents the issue or event at stake, then introduces your sources and articulates, in brief, their authors' perspectives and their main points of dis agreement. As you do so, ask and answer why you think the authors of your various sources disagree.
Is their disagreement a product of personal or professional rivalry, ideological incompatibility, national affiliation? These questions go to the heart of historiography.
In your conclusionfinally, you will briefly summarize your findings and, more importantly, assess the credibility of your various sources, and specify which one s you find to be most compelling, and why. In final conclusion you might articulate in brief the insights you have gained into the event or issue at stake, the sources you have used, and the nature of history itself.
Let us assume that the subject of your historiographic essay is the Rape of Nanking, historiography paper example, an event discussed in some detail in the Book Reviews section. There, we examine the event as it is described and analyzed by Iris Chang in her bestselling book The Rape of Nanking.
To this we now add several other sources, historiography paper example, all of which are listed in the Works Cited section at the end of this pageand cited in the text immediately following, which exemplifies, in brief, some of the basic strategies of a historiographic essay, historiography paper example. The interested reader will find another brief exercise in historiographical inquiry - this one on the disputed relationship between the Catholic Church and fascism during the s - in the Research Paper section of this site, under "Conducting Research for 'The Austrian Catholic Church and the Anschluss': Catholicism and fascism.
Home Types of Writing Assignments Overview Narrative History Response Papers Creative Approaches Annotated Bibliographies Book Reviews Historiographic Essays Research Papers. Overview Cause and Effect Chronology Establishing a Broader Context Don't s Common Fallacies.
Overview Time Management Note-Taking Tips Developing a Thesis Organization Formulating a Conclusion. Overview Drafts and Revisions Common Stylistic Errors Resources. Historiographic Essays. THESIS: The so-called Rape of Nanking ofa six-week massacre of Chinese civilians in the city of Nanking perpetrated by the invading Japanese army, historiography paper example, was presented to a largely uninitiated American mass audience by Iris Chang in her best-selling book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II Chang's vivid book historiography paper example international interest and a number of responses from fellow historians worldwide.
Western historians generally agreed with Chang's insistence that the event - long a mere footnote in the popular historiography of World War II - deserved larger notice, but some criticized her for displaying personal bias as well as historical inaccuracies and methodological weaknesses of various sorts.
The response from a number of Japanese scholars was overwhelmingly negative. They denied her account of a post-war Japanese "cover up," yet at the same time also, to varying degrees, denied that the event had even occurred. EXAMPLE 1 : Tanaka Masaaki, for example, author of the website "What Really Happened at Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth," refers to Chang's work as one of "lies, hyperbole, propaganda.
by the United States, Great Britian, or France. ANALYSIS: Much of Masaaki's criticism smacks of precisely the kind of revisionism Chang critiques in her book, and is easily exposed as such, historiography paper example. The fact that Chinese communist party records make no mention of the event, for example, is hardly surprising, as the Chinese communists were at this time in disarray, operating largely underground in the Nanking area, historiography paper example.
Not until did the communists begin their rule over China and begin keeping official records: why then should we expect there to exist records dating back to ?
Nor should the silence of the League of Nations, the United States, Great Britain and France come as any surprise, historiography paper example. In the same year that France and Britain stood by as Nazi Germany re-militarized the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles; and that the United States and the League of Nation stood by as Franco and Mussolini continued in their campaigns against the rightful governments of Spain and Ethiopia, why would we expect the United States or the League of Nations to have registered any protest over events halfway around the world?
EXAMPLE 2 : Other arguments by Masaaki are more compelling. For example, he notes of one of the many disturbing photographs in Chang's book - a famous one, apparently showing a Chinese prisoner of war about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer brandishing a sword - that its "fakery is easy to detect if you look at the shadow cast by the man at the center [the officer] and that cast by [a lower-ranking] soldier to his right.
The photograph does indeed seem to be a composite, historiography paper example, and while stopping short of historiography paper example Masaaki's claim that "not a single one of [Chang's photographs] bears witness to a 'Nanking Massacre'," even American historian Robert Entenmann concedes that several of the photos in Chang's book are indeed "fakes, historiography paper example, forgeries and composites," including one also singled out by Masaaki "of a row of severed heads," which, according to Entenmann, in fact depicts "bandits executed by Chinese police in rather than victims of the Nanking Massacre" Masaaki, Entenmann.
COUNTER-ARGUMENT: Faked though some of Chang's twelve pages of photos might be - perhaps even all of them, as Masaaki suggests - the fact that there exist literally hundreds of photographs of the Nanking Massacre, many of them "souvenir photos" taken by Japanese soldiers themselves, strains the credibility of his larger point and even more so the point made by his stridently anti-Chang colleagues Takemoto Tadao and Ohara Yasuo.
In their The Alleged 'Nanking Massacre': Japan's Rebuttal to China's Forged Claimsthese writers state that "none of these photos are dated, and the names of places and photographers are not stated. In other words, historiography paper example exist [no] photos that are rigidly authentic, and definitely, these photos can not be used as evidence of [the] 'Nanking Massacre'" Tadao and Yasuo In fact, historiography paper example, several hundred photographs have been published in one volume - The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographsby Shi Young and James Yin, many of historiography paper example showing female rape victims with legs spread and genitalia exposed - graphic photographs it is hard to conceive of as staged.
Such pictures, while not settling the matter beyond dispute, offer powerful testimony that speaks for itself. EXAMPLE 3 : Notwithstanding the many graphic photographs that exist, it is precisely the accusation of widespread rape historiography paper example most likely because of its abhorrent nature - that Chang's Japanese critics wish to deny. daily [during the six week period of the Massacre]. This number is absolutely not trustworthy," they conclude, citing instead the number of only official complaints of rape actually registered during this period Of course, they are parsing numbers here.
The fact is, whether there were three hundred rapes, thirty thousand, more, or less, rape perpetrated by an occupying force against a civilian population and that such was the case is amply documented in Chang and virtually all extant sources on Nanking, historiography paper example, including the Japanese sources, although they, of course, acknowledge only is a crime of war.
But that it is an individual crime of war, rather than a collective, government-sponsored crime against humanity such as the Holocaust is precisely the point for the Japanese historians: "[Holocaust] killings were indeed Those acts of crimes [were] the responsibility of each individual soldier" Following this line of reasoning, the Japanese government is absolved of any blame for the rapes that did occur in Nanking, the exact number of which remains unknown.
On this issue, see Evaluating Contradictory Data and Claims. EXAMPLE 4 : More trenchant criticism of Chang than that offered historiography paper example Japanese historians comes from the American academy. Robert Entenmann, for example, a China expert and senior faculty member in the History department at St. Olaf College, faults Chang on the very premise of her book. On this last count, it is worth noting that the specific wording of the question does not appear to address Nanking explicitly, and that the opinion poll's finding thus bears little relevance to the question at hand.
We might also be skeptical of Entenmann's generous appraisal of Japanese textbooks: on its role in World War II, historiography paper example, Japan's high school textbooks in particular are subject to constant revision, much of it aimed at mitigating the government's role in wartime atrocities, as a New York Times article reminds us Onishi EXAMPLE 5 : Entenmann's more fundamental criticism of Chang's work and perspective, however, goes deeper.
As the granddaughter of former Nanking residents who barely escaped the city, she is guilty, historiography paper example, he writes, of having fallen historiography paper example to "her own ethnic prejudice. Her explanations are, to a large extent, based on unexamined [anti-Japanese] ethnic stereotypes.
In fact, Entenmann points out, Hirohito's response is unknown, and Chang may be guilty here of "confus[ing] Japanese leaders' delight in the fall of the Chinese capital with exulting in the massacre that occurred afterward" Entenmann.
ANALYSIS: Such sleights of hand which Entenmann himself indulges in, as his opinion poll example above shows are perhaps conscious on Chang's part, or perhaps a function of her not being a professional historian and therefore applying a less-than-rigorous methodology in her efforts to tell a good story.
She is after all, a popular rather than an academic historian, whom another bestselling historian, Stephen Ambrose, whose scholarship has also been faulted on several counts, once called "the best young historian we've got because she understands that to communicate history, you've got to tell the story in an interesting way" Ambrose qtd. in Sullivan B6. In an effort to place the Rape of Nanking into historical context, for example, she states that "[u]sing numbers killed alone" it "surpasses much of the worst barbarism of the ages.
and even the combined death toll of the two atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki" Chang 6. In The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiographyan anthology generally sympathetic to Chang's project if not to her methodologyGeorge Washington University history and international affairs professor Daqing Yang, himself a native of Nanking, notes that "such a comparison [as Chang's] is methodologically sterile" and "morally misguided" Yang Indeed, it is historiography paper example the sort of parsing of numbers for historiography paper example Chang herself would most likely challenge the above-mentioned Japanese historians in their effort to deny the extent historiography paper example which rape occurred at Nanking.
Despite these failings, Chang's book ultimately emerges as a more persuasive argument of what did in fact happen at Nanking than those offered by her Historiography paper example detractors. The enduring controversy surrounding the event, however, and the specific criticism against Chang from even those who support her premise, point both to the endlessly debatable nature of history, and to the need for a more rigorous, analytical approach in its telling.
As Joshua Fogel notes in his introduction to The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography"The Massacre and related events must be lifted beyond the popular level to be studied with greater nuance and with a wider range of sources" Fogel 1. In such a project, the contradictory data and claims of Chang and her critics need not necessarily be mutually exclusive but, instead, might help establish a broader context within which the event can be understood more fully, from all sides, historiography paper example.
Works cited Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II New York: BasicBooks, Entenmann, Robert, historiography paper example.
H-Net List for Asian History and Culture Accessed July 1, Yang, Daqin. Joshua Fogel. Berkeley: University of California Press,- Masaaki, Tanaka. Onishi, historiography paper example, Norimitsu. Sullivan, Patricia. Washington Posthistoriography paper example, November 12,B6. Takemoto, Tadao and Ohara Yasuo. The Alleged 'Nanking Massacre': Japan's Rebuttal to China's Forged Claims. Tokyo: Meisei-sha, Inc.
What is Historiography? - Historian Essentials - Casual Historian
, time: 3:19Home - Handbook for Historians - Noreen Reale Falcone Library at Le Moyne College
A historiography paper is an essay that analyses the different ways in which various historians have approached a historical topic. Unlike a research paper, a historiography paper is not a study of a historical subject; instead, it is an examination of how scholars’ interpretations of history and historical events have changed over time. A A Historiography of Roger Sherman Loomis a Medieval Scholar ( words, 7 pages) A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS The tales of the Arthurian legend are some of the most popular from medieval times, and the reason for this is primarily due to their fabulous nature · Historiographical essay examples. Below please find several examples of historiographical essays. What they share in common is an effort to chart changes in the questions asked by historians of a particular topic or field, or the sort of sources they consult; they also usually seek to explain why new questions have emerged (causation) and to assess the implication of these
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