For questions that focus on change over time, you have to identify major changes and explain the significance of those changes — that is, why the changes matter — for the topic described in the prompt. You also have to analyze why something changed. If the question prompt asks about both change and continuity, your thesis statement and the essay itself must clearly address both elements. A strong argument must do more than simply identify some continuities and changes. It has to analyze why both the continuities and changes existed and why they mattered. (The “Make Connections” questions that appear at the end of each chapter in this textbook often ask you to analyze continuity and change over time, so these questions are good practice for this type of essay.) It’s a good idea to weigh the relative value of continuities and changes. In other words, do you perceive continuities to have been more powerful than changes on the topic addressed in the prompt, or vice versa? Why do you think so?

In terms of structure, avoid the temptation to organize your essay into two large paragraphs, one for continuities and one for changes. Instead, identify important topics or categories of comparison — governmental structure, trade patterns, or gender relations — and use those topics as the body paragraphs. Then, in each body paragraph, address both continuities and changes, being clear to signal your transition from one to the other.

In the same way that identifying change is an easier historical thinking skill than identifying continuity, change is also easier to write about than continuity. Historical narratives devote a lot of time to, say, how Western Christianity changed as a result of the Protestant Reformation. So if you’re writing an essay about the Reformation, that information will come to mind more quickly. After brief reflection, however, you’ll realize that certain aspects of Western Christianity did not change with the Reformation. Therefore, in an essay about the impact of the Protestant Reformation you will want to identify several major continuities, such as the close relationship between church and state or the influence of educated clergy, along with changes. Then you will need to discuss why these were significant, and suggest some reasons why they did not change.

Question prompts about change and continuity may not always be phrased in exactly those words. Often they might ask you to assess the impact of something (or someone) on something else, or analyze the influence of something on something else, or analyze the extent to which something shaped something else. Thinking a bit about such questions, you can recognize that they are actually about change and continuity. To assess the impact or influence of A on B, you will need to decide what changed in B as a result of A. To write a good essay about this, you will also need to discuss what did not change, and why — in other words, continuities. For example, a question might ask you to assess the impact of World War I on European culture and society in the 1920s and 1930s. You can see that this question is about change and continuity: what changed as a result of the war and what did not change. As in the example of the Protestant Reformation, it is often easier to remember what changed than it is to recall what stayed the same, but a strong essay will consider both. A strong essay might also go beyond the direct impact of World War I to include broader cultural changes that relate more indirectly to the war. If you do this, however, be sure to relate everything you include to the prompt, and do not use the question as an opportunity for a “data dump” of everything you can think of about the 1920s and 1930s. Throwing in a lot of extraneous information to pad your answer will not improve it.