You have learned about how historians make arguments; now you’ll practice evaluating those arguments and making your own. Since history requires making inferences about the past, it’s inevitable that scholars will come to different conclusions. It can be very helpful, then, to study different historical interpretations of a particular event or movement over time, as interpretations often change. The final skill component, synthesis, is also related to argumentation. It is the culminating skill because it requires you to integrate all the other skills in creating your own argument.

Interpretation

Historians interpret both primary and secondary sources, evaluating points of view and considering context to create their own interpretations. Through analyzing different historical interpretations, you will see how historical interpretations change over time. We have already established that formulating a historical argument requires making inferences from evidence. The background of a particular historian (age, gender, nationality, political philosophy, time of writing, and so on) often shapes the way he or she understands or interprets the past. In many cases, knowing something about the context of a historian can help you understand his or her argument better — in the same way that understanding the context of the author of a primary source helps you understand the primary source. Sometimes this information can help you identify the prejudices or limitations of a particular interpretation.

For example, in the early 1960s the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper claimed that Africa had no history until Europeans took over the continent, an argument that built on the ideas of many earlier European thinkers, especially those of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Georg Hegel. Subsequent scholarship has shown this conclusion to be faulty, and we can assume that several aspects of Trevor-Roper’s situation influenced his point of view. For one, he was a historian of early modern and modern Europe who thought, as did many historians of his generation, that history could only be based on written documents. Because there were fewer of these for Africa before colonization than for Europe at the same time, he jumped to the conclusion that Africa had no history. Historians since Trevor-Roper have broadened the source base that they use in their research to incorporate many other types of sources and have also demonstrated that there are, in fact, many written documents relating to Africa that Trevor-Roper did not know about or chose to ignore with his comment. His choice to ignore these may have arisen in part because he was a citizen of an imperial nation writing during decolonization, which may have influenced his outlook.

The writings of Hegel and Trevor-Roper on the backwardness of Africa served as evidence for another interpretive argument, that of the influential literary critic Edward Said. As the authors describe in more detail on page 811 in Chapter 24, in the late 1970s Said coined the term Orientalism to describe the way Westerners misunderstood and stereotyped colonial subjects and cultures. Said’s own position as a Palestinian American trained at Ivy League universities certainly shaped his perspective, as he himself explained on a number of occasions.

Be careful when analyzing historical interpretations. You can’t simply assume that because a scholar has x background he or she will make y argument. There are far too many exceptions for such a rule. Instead, begin by finding out what you can about a scholar’s background and then make a hunch about how his or her background might shape his or her views. Then, as you read their arguments carefully, look for evidence that the author actually makes the kinds of arguments you anticipated. If you don’t find such evidence, discard your hunch.

Synthesis

Synthesis is a culminating skill that reflects your ability to make persuasive arguments of your own from evidence. It draws on all the other historical thinking skills — historical argumentation, appropriate use of relevant historical evidence, causation, continuity and change, periodization, comparison, contextualization, and interpretation — and involves two other elements. The first element is the ability to draw on evidence outside the field of history. This might come from the social sciences, such as archaeology, anthropology, economics, or sociology, or it might come from the humanities, such as art history or literary studies, or it might even come from the natural sciences, such as biology or chemistry. The second element is the ability to apply insights from historical evidence to a new setting. This is a creative form of comparison. You might link some moment in the past to a contemporary issue, such as connecting the growing ethnic diversity in Europe discussed in Chapter 30 to the long history of European colonialism and imperialism described in Chapters 14, 17, 24, and 28. In so doing, you would be using the past to shed light on the present. You will have taken a major step in historical thinking, as making connections is a key part of what historians do.