[elainann]

Hi

I am a matured student, and its a long time since I have done anything like this,

I am just about to do my test papers for this course.

What the test paper asks me to do is;
What evidence is there in one of the sources to suggest that agricutural change was occuring in the late eighteenth century

what can it tell us about that pace of that change.
the source is regarding the introduction of clover in farming of some farmers and also between 1750-1815 thousands of acres of farmland where enclosed and I have to describe the procedures that took place during the process of enclosure.

can you give me some help on this, as i am no good putting pen to paper.

regards
Mrs Elaine Van-Tull
UK

[MrJohnDClare]

Elaine
Hi - and welcome to the forum.

This question sounds like an 'extraction' question - it is simply askingyou to look at the source's content and to pull out information relevant to a specific question.

Your answer should include two kinds of relevant information you have found in the source:
1. Surface information - words which say things like: 'then the guy next door brought in a seed-drill'.
2. Inferred information - things that do not directy STATE that change occurred, but from which you can infer that it was occurring (I suspect you will find that much of your information about the pace of change wll come from inferences - words such as: 'I was totally confused, as fast as I made one change, they were telling me to do something different'.

Come back to us if this doesn't help enough, and use us as much as you like over the rest of your course.


By the way, Elaine, one of the teacher moderators has just emailed me to point out tha your's was the 20,000th post on the History Help forum.
Unlike those pop-ups that one sometimes gets, there is no prize for posting the 20,000th post - but, as the moderator pointed out, that's an AWFUL lot of help we have given people since we started!!
(Let's hope that our 20,000th poster wasn't disappointed! )

[elainann]

Hi

I have just sent you a message asking you to give me some help on answering a question on describing the procedures that took place during the process of enclosure. Sorry to say that I have asked the wrong question, so please can you scrub this question and instead try to give me pointers on this question instead?

Quote

Source B

The little village.... of Marygreen... was an old fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap of an undulating upland adjoining the North Wessex downs. Old as it was, however, the well-shaft was probably the only relic of the local history that remained absolutely unchanged. Many of the thatched....dwelling houses had been pulled down of late years, and many trees felled on the green. Above all, the original church....had been taken down and cracked up into heaps of road metal

Extract from "Jude the Obscure" the novel by Thomas Hardy.

Source B is from a novel. Does that mean it is of no value as evidence for an historian studying the effects of the agricultural; depression on England after 1870.

What sort of answer are they looking for on this?

Regards
Elaineann

[MrJohnDClare]

This question is a complicated variation of a 'utility' question - asking you how USEFUL a source is.

It will probably be worth you while spending some time swotting up how to answer a normal utility question- one which simply asks: 'How useful is Source B?'
For that, look at this brief summary of how to answer a utility question:

Quote

Utility (utility = 'usefulness' to historians)
eg ‘How useful is Source A to…?’

REMEMBER – nothing is ever useless; even the most one-sided source full of lies reveals what that author thought. Talk most about the ways in which the source is useful.

REMEMBER – this is a question about Quantity and Quality - how much information is it telling you, and how trustworthy is the information it is telling you? A USEFUL source is a source that TELLS YOU A LOT and WHICH YOU CAN TRUST.

REMEMBER – NEVER use the word 'reliable' in a utility question; the examiner will assume you are muddling the concepts up and divide your mark by two. If the accuracy of the source is an issue, use the word 'trustworthy' instead, but make it clear that you are saying this as part of assessing the source's utility.

1st Look at what the source is telling you and compare it to what you need/would like to know – remember both surface and inferred information.

2nd Measure the sufficiency of the source – how much info/ are there gaps?

3rd Useful for what? Can you trust the author's statements? Look at accuracy, context, origin and purpose: a source which is inaccurate may be useful for revealing the author's opinions and prejudices, but it is not useful for telling us the facts. Is the author’s view objective/typical?

4th Compare the source's STRENGTHS against its LIMITATIONS and come to a CONCLUSION.

but then also read this webpage for a very detailed analysis of how to do it and how it will be marked.

Basically, you look at the CONTENT, the PROVENANCE (who wrote it), the DATE (when he wrote it) and the PURPOSE (why he wrote it) to assess how useful a source is.


NOW you can turn this to assess the usefulness of Source B.

• Look at the content; does it equate with your own knowledge from other sources of the effects of the depression?
  
• Look at the author; from what you know about him was he qualified/knowledgeable to write on such matters?
  
• Look at the date (1895); does this make it more or less useful for an historian of the post-1870 agricultural recession?
  
• Look at the purpose (why Hardy wrote it); does this detract from its utility any?

One final thing. Given the question, I would finish with a paragraph dcussing whether a novel can EVER be useful for an historian (of course it can! Provided the background and setting is well-researched, not only can that bakground and setting be useful, but the feelings and motivations of the fictional characters can illuminate issues for an historian -particularly if, as in this case, the novel is contemporaneous with the event s/he is studying.)