HSC History Extension cheat sheet

Historiography is the study of how history is written: it examines historians' methods, sources, assumptions and purposes, not just the past events themselves.

A case study compares how different historians construct the same past; the comparison of interpretations is the object of study, not a search for the single 'correct' account.

Primary sources are produced within the period studied; secondary sources interpret evidence after the fact. Neither is automatically more reliable - reliability depends on the question asked.

E.H. Carr: history is 'a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts', and the historian selects facts according to present concerns.

Geoffrey Elton's empiricist position: rigorous archival method can establish what happened; interpretation should be disciplined by documentary evidence rather than present-day politics.

Keith Jenkins' postmodern challenge: the past and history are distinct; history is a literary construction shaped by ideology, and no interpretation is uniquely privileged.

Hayden White: historians emplot the past using literary modes (romance, tragedy, comedy, satire); narrative form itself carries meaning independent of evidence.

Ranke's ideal of reconstructing the past 'as it actually was' (wie es eigentlich gewesen) is the classic statement of objectivist historiography that later theorists contest.

Analytical vocabulary for essays: selection, perspective, bias, context, audience, purpose, methodology, periodisation, causation, agency, continuity and change.

The project must pose a genuinely historical question that can be investigated with evidence; a question answerable by opinion or description alone is too weak.

A working question should be arguable, narrow enough for the word limit, and answerable from accessible sources; refine it after a preliminary source survey.

Historiographical context is required: identify the major existing interpretations or debates on the topic and state how the project engages with them.

Source evaluation for each key source: origin (who made it, when, where), purpose, audience, value for the specific question, and limitations.

Source types differ in evidential value: official records, private correspondence, oral testimony, newspapers, memoirs, photographs and material artefacts each answer different questions.

Oral history requires attention to memory, interviewer effect and retrospective reconstruction; it offers perspective and experience rather than verified fact alone.

Footnoting must be consistent and complete (author, title, publisher, date, page); unacknowledged borrowing is plagiarism and is penalised.

A project structure typically moves from question and context, through source analysis and argument, to a conclusion that directly answers the question posed.

Reflective statements should evaluate the research process: what changed in the inquiry, problems encountered, and how interpretations were revised.