Analyzing Sources of History

Types of Sources and Their Importance

In answering these questions, you should feel free to consult materials other than the course materials, but you must CITE any source you use in order to avoid plagiarism. 

1. List the source you are analyzing.
 
2. What types of Sources of this (e.g., law code, letter, poem, grocery list, archaeological remains, sculpture, etc.)? Why is the answer to this question important for how we analyze and interpret this source? 

3.Who was the source audiance? Was it created for public or private use? Why is the answer to this question important for how we analyze and interpret this source? 

4. Who created this source? Why? What point is the creator trying to make? When did s/he live? Where? Who was the creator is his/her society (philosopher, king, nun, peasant)? Why is the answer to this question important for how we analyze and interpret this source?

 5. What are the historical values from this source? What biases can you detect in the source? What values does the source reflect or advocate? What are some basic assumptions that the creator makes in this source? Can I believe this source? Why is the answer to this question important for how we analyze and interpret this source?

 6. What general information can you learn from this source? (Note: keep it simple in looking for facts, which are statements that are beyond doubt.) 

7. What Major Inference you can Draw ? What does this source tell us about the society that produced it? (Note: an inference is a conclusion based on the application of reason to evidence, or essentially an educated guess.) 8. Why is source of history importance?

What the partial occupation of his soil by the white man has failed to do; what the mapping out of European political 'spheres of influence' has failed to do; what the Maxim and the rifle, the slave gang, labour in the bowels of the earth and the lash, have failed to do; what imported measles, smallpox and syphilis have failed to do; whatever the overseas slave trade failed to do, the power of modern capitalistic exploitation, assisted by modern engines of destruction, may yet succeed in accomplishing.

For from the evils of the latter, scientifically applied and enforced, there is no escape for the African. Its destructive effects are not spasmodic: they are permanent. In its permanence resides its fatal consequences. It kills not the body merely, but the soul. It breaks the spirit. It attacks the African at every turn, from every point of vantage. It wrecks his polity, uproots him from the land, invades his family life, destroys his natural pursuits and occupations, claims his whole time, enslaves him in his own home

In Africa, especially in tropical Africa, which a capitalistic imperialism threatens and has, in part, already devastated, man is incapable of reacting against unnatural conditions. In those regions man is engaged in a perpetual struggle against disease and an exhausting climate, which tells heavily upon childbearing; and there is no scientific machinery for salving the weaker members of the community. The African of the tropics is capable of tremendous physical labours. But he cannot accommodate himself to the European system of monotonous, uninterrupted labour, with its long and regular hours, involving, moreover, as it frequently does, severance from natural surroundings and nostalgia, the condition of melancholy resulting from separation from home, a malady to which the African is specially prone. Climatic conditions forbid it. When the system is forced upon him, the tropical African droops and dies. Nor is violent physical opposition to abuse and injustice henceforth possible for the African in any part of Africa. His chances of effective resistance have been steadily dwindling with the increasing perfectibility in the killing power of modern armament.