MATSEC AM History cheat sheet

Source classification: primary = produced contemporaneously by a participant or eyewitness (charters, letters, registers, artefacts); secondary = later interpretation; tertiary = compilations, encyclopaedias, textbooks.

Internal criticism tests consistency, motive, audience and date of a source; external criticism tests authenticity, provenance, handwriting, seal, ink and archival chain.

Corroboration rule: a claim is strengthened only by independent witnesses; two documents copying one lost source (common archetype) count as one witness, not two.

Bias is not disqualifying: a partisan source still yields reliable data about the author's assumptions, vocabulary and the events they had no reason to invent.

Periodisation is a construct: 'Middle Ages', 'Renaissance' and 'early modern' are conventions with contested boundaries; exam answers should state the periodisation used and its justification.

Schools of interpretation to name precisely: Ranke (empiricist, archive-based, 'wie es eigentlich gewesen'), Annales (Braudel, longue durée, structures), Marxist (mode of production, class), social history 'from below', linguistic/cultural turn (text as construct).

Quantitative sources need explicit caveats: manorial extents, hearth taxes and parish registers record assessable units, not total populations; under-registration of the poor, infants and dissenters is normal.

Chronology anchors for Malta: 870 Arab conquest, 1091 Norman takeover, 1283 death of the last Frederick-era count, 1530 Knights of St John arrive, 1565 Great Siege, 1798 French occupation, 1800 British rule, 1964 independence.

Feudalism as a bundle of obligations: fief, homage, military service, relief, wardship and escheat; the fief was jurisdiction and revenue, not merely land.

Manorial economy: demesne versus peasant holdings, week-work and boon-work, commutation of labour services into money rents, enclosure of commons - each shifts risk between lord and peasant.

The Black Death (1347–1351) killed a large share of Europe's population; consequences cited are labour scarcity, wage rises, statute attempts to freeze wages (England 1351), and peasant unrest (1381).

Commercial revolution: Italian maritime republics (Venice, Genoa) control Levantine trade; double-entry bookkeeping, bills of exchange, marine insurance and the commenda reduce risk and enable credit.

The Knights of St John ruled Malta 1530–1798: a sovereign military order with langues (national divisions), Grand Master, treasury (Comun Tesoro) and a corsair economy licensed by the Order's galleys.

1565 Great Siege: Ottoman force under Mustafa Pasha and Piali Pasha besieged Fort St Elmo, St Angelo and Senglea; relief by Don García de Toledo ended the siege in September 1565.

Valletta was founded 1566 on Mount Sciberras, planned by Francesco Laparelli for the Order; it embodied Renaissance fortification and grid planning.

The French occupation (1798–1800) abolished the Order and feudal privileges but provoked revolt (1798) over taxation and church property; the British took Malta by capitulation in 1800, confirmed by the Treaty of Amiens 1802 and Paris 1814.

Industrialisation markers: coal, steam, factory discipline, railway and telegraph; demographic transition and urbanisation; comparative question often asks why some regions industrialised early (Britain: coal, capital, colonies, agriculture productivity) and others late.

Answer structure: thesis in the introduction, one idea per paragraph, explicit signposting, and a conclusion that resolves the question rather than summarising the narrative.

Command words: 'assess/evaluate' requires a judgement with criteria; 'to what extent' requires a quantified position plus counter-case; 'compare' requires explicit points of similarity and difference, not two separate descriptions.

Historiographical marks come from naming historians and their arguments, then testing them against evidence - not from dropping names unprompted.

Chronological precision: give dates or ranges for every substantive claim; approximate dates should be flagged as approximate (c. 1300) rather than disguised as exact.

Counter-argument rule: state the strongest opposing case fairly before rebutting it; a straw-man counter-case loses evaluation marks.

Cause typology for essays: long-term structural causes, medium-term conjunctural causes, short-term triggers; distinguish necessary from sufficient conditions.

Continuity versus change: identify what persisted (institutions, land tenure, religious authority) alongside what changed, and specify the pace and geography of change.

Source-based questions: quote or cite the document, identify its genre and date, state what it can and cannot prove, and link to wider context in one sentence.