Historical skills: sources, maps, graphs, images and historical argumentation
What the exam tests
Method, not memory. Every option contains a document - text, map, graph, image - and the marks reward a repeatable analytical procedure plus a structured argument. A description of the source with no historical interpretation is the classic low-mark answer.
A procedure that works for any source
- Classify: type (written, material, graphic, audiovisual), nature (primary/secondary), date, author, recipient, purpose.
- Contextualise: one or two sentences on the moment the source belongs to.
- Extract: literal content first, then the underlying ideas or data.
- Interpret: link to processes and concepts (sovereignty, caciquismo, autarky, repoblación).
- Conclude: significance and limits of the source.
Maps
- Identify type: evolutionary (successive stages of the Reconquista or of repoblación), chorochromatic, isoline, point-symbol or flow map.
- Always read title, legend, scale and orientation before writing. Explain the process the map shows and its chronology; never list place names.
Graphs
- Line graphs show evolution, bars compare, pie charts show structure, population pyramids show age and sex.
- State the variable and its unit, identify the trend and the turning points, and only then attribute causes. A turning point should be named with a date (1855, 1959, 1973).
Images
- Separate denotation (what is visible) from connotation (what it claims). Civil War posters, caricatures and photographs work through iconography, slogan, colour and composition; ask who produced it, for whom, and against whom.
Worked example
A line graph of railway kilometres in Spain, 1850–1900. Step 1: variable is track length in km, unit and axes read. Step 2: the curve is flat until 1855, then climbs sharply and slows after 1865. Step 3: explanation - the Railway Law of 1855, foreign capital, the desamortización of Madoz freeing land, the wide gauge decision of 1844 and its later consequences. Step 4: conclusion - the network shaped the national market but was built around Madrid and dependent on foreign finance.
Mark-losing traps
- Paraphrasing the source without interpreting it.
- Anachronism: judging a 19th-century electoral system by 21st-century standards.
- Confusing correlation with causation in graphs.
- Ignoring legend or scale on a map, then misdating a frontier.
- Never naming the historical process the source documents.