Historical method and sources: commentary, maps, graphs, images and chronology
This domain tests the practical skills of the historian: classifying sources, analysing their content, contextualising them and writing a structured commentary. The exam may present a text, map, graph, image or statistical table and ask you to interpret it with historical vocabulary and correct chronology.
Core procedure
- Classify the source: nature (text, map, graph, image, statistic), authorship, date, place, destination and purpose. For a text, distinguish primary from secondary and public from private.
- Analyse: identify the main ideas or data, explain the historical context and connect the source to a process such as the Germanies, the 1812 Constitution or the transition.
- Comment: assess significance, reliability, bias and consequences. A conclusion should answer the question posed, not summarise every detail.
Maps, graphs and images
- Maps: read the title, legend, scale and chronology; distinguish political, economic and demographic maps. Do not project modern borders onto past periods.
- Graphs: identify axes, units and trend; distinguish absolute values from percentages and correlation from causation.
- Images: identify author, date, genre and intended audience; analyse composition, symbols and omissions.
- Statistics: check whether figures are absolute or relative, and whether the source is official or partisan.
Worked example
A royal decree of 1609 orders the expulsion of the Moriscos from Valencia. Classify it as a primary official legal text. Analyse its content: the order, the exceptions and the penalties. Contextualise it within Philip III’s policy and the Valencian seigneurial economy. Comment on its consequences: demographic loss, abandoned lands and the reshaping of rural society. The commentary must explain the decree’s intention and impact, not merely paraphrase it.
Chronology and vocabulary
- Use BC/AD correctly and order reigns and constitutions accurately.
- Deploy terms precisely: absolutism, liberalism, caciquismo, foral system, autarky, desarrollismo, autonomy statute. A definition should fit the period, not a generic dictionary meaning.
Traps that cost marks
- Describing a source without classifying it or explaining its context.
- Ignoring the author, date or intended audience.
- Reading graphs without checking units or axes.
- Using present-day concepts anachronistically.
- Writing a narrative summary instead of a commentary that answers the question.