The 5 C’s of Historical Thinking.
Change Context Causality Contingency Complexity
Presenter:
Eric Gondree
Overview
Introduction: What is History?
The 5 C’s:
Putting it all together:
My Social Studies Background:
What is History?
What is History?
*Interdisciplinary: Archaeology, paleolinguistics, the sciences, etc…
The 5 C’s of Historical Thinking
The 5 C’s “…stand at the heart of the questions historians seek to answer, the arguments we make, and the debates in which we engage.”
The 5 C’s of Historical Thinking
1. Change
Example Activities: Change
Old newspapers or photographs?
How has language changed over time?
Helpful for Chinese vocabulary:
Approx. 1100 BCE
Woman kneeling
by an ancestral
tablet (or a phonetic
mark)
(Sears, n.d.; Mickel, 1997)
Helpful for vocabulary:
(Choose examples carefully!)
“Hand with mud
sealing up the side
of a shoe with
cotton thread”
(Sears, n.d.; Mickel, 1997)
Helpful for vocabulary:
(Choose examples carefully!)
“Hand with mud
sealing up the side
of a shoe with
cotton thread”
(Sears, n.d.; Mickel, 1997)
How has language changed over time?
(Gerasimov, 1965)
(Repin, 1897)
(Late 1500s)
How has language changed over time? “Ivan the Terrible”
How has language changed over time? “Ivan the Terrible”
Why would the English call an ally “Terrible”?
Old English Yard Seal of Muscovy Company
(Moscow) Joint-stock corporation
for fur trade (1555)
“Ivan the Terrible” Mistranslation
(Psalms chapter 68, n.d.)
🡨 (Compiled by
conservative scholars,
from 1604-1611)
“Ivan the Awesome”?
(Bible gateway, n.d.)
wording)
2. Context
Stories need context to be understandable
2. Context
Stories need context to be understandable
(Repin, 1885)
Context: Sons of Ivan IV…
Ivan V (d. 1573) Fedor I Dmitry I
Regent Boris Godunov
Death of Dmitry I (1591):
Town seal
Of Uglich
?
?
Official investigation:
Dmitry’s mother
After the Death of Dmitry I:
Prince Dmitry
Ivanovich
(died age 9)
Uglich
On display in the church:
After the Death of Dmitry I:
1892: Pardoned,
Returned
Now you have the context
Stories need context to be understandable
Example Activities: Context
Context Activity: Mixtec book
Details: �Mixtec book
Activity answers:
(Jiménez et al., n.d.)
Stories and Pictures
Context Activity: Art vs. Propaganda
(The British Museum, n.d.)
Art vs. Propaganda?
Did it really happen
like that?
Art vs. Propaganda
Did it really happen
like that?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
(The British Museum, n.d.)
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
bones of their ancestors into flour
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
1: Elamite soldiers being forced off a hill
2: A surrendering Elamite being hit by arrows
3: Collection & piling of Elamite heads
4: Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the
bones of their ancestors into flour
5: Which side is better-armed?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
1: Elamite soldiers being forced off a hill
2: A surrendering Elamite being hit by arrows
3: Collection & piling of Elamite heads
4: Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the
bones of their ancestors into flour
5: Which side is better-armed?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
1: Elamite soldiers being forced off a hill
2: A surrendering Elamite being hit by arrows
3: Collection & piling of Elamite heads
4: Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the
bones of their ancestors into flour
5: Which side is better-armed?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
1: Elamite soldiers being forced off a hill
2: A surrendering Elamite being hit by arrows
3: Collection & piling of Elamite heads
4: Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the
bones of their ancestors into flour
5: Which side is better-armed?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
1: Elamite soldiers being forced off a hill
2: A surrendering Elamite being hit by arrows
3: Collection & piling of Elamite heads
4: Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the
bones of their ancestors into flour
5: Which side is better-armed?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
1: Elamite soldiers being forced off a hill
2: A surrendering Elamite being hit by arrows
3: Collection & piling of Elamite heads
4: Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the
bones of their ancestors into flour
5: Which side is better-armed?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
Who’s going to win?
1: Elamite soldiers being forced off a hill
2: A surrendering Elamite being hit by arrows
3: Collection & piling of Elamite heads
4: Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the
bones of their ancestors into flour
5: Which side is better-armed?
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
“…I [Ashurbanipal], great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria…
…dammed up the Ulai River with the bodies of the warriors and people of Elam.
For three days I made that stream flow full of bodies instead of water…”
(Russell, 1999)
Context Activity: Battle of Ulai (653 BCE)
Possible discussions:
Art or propaganda?
Who was the audience?
How should they feel?
3. Causality
3. Causality
Franz Ferdinand?
3. Causality
No partial mobilization plans
Nationalism
Balkan ‘tinderbox’
Austro-Hungarian ambitions…
3. Causality
No partial mobilization plans
Nationalism
Balkan ‘tinderbox’
Austro-Hungarian ambitions
Causality Activity: Ötzi the Iceman
1991: Frozen Copper Age man found in Austrian Alps
Causality Activity: Ötzi the Iceman
1991: Frozen Copper Age man found in Austrian Alps
Died approx. 3350-3105 BCE
With clothes, tools & arrows
Incl. copper axe,
medicine bag, etc.
Other analysis from Ötzi …
Mosses & pollen: Indicator of past altitudes
Axe, tools & arrows: varied wear & repair 🡪
Medium-skilled toolmaker, right handed
Sources of stone suggest trade network
Wounds and injuries: varied healing
Including oldest known tattoos: 🡪
DNA: Blood of other 3 people found
Own blood suggests nearby copper smelting
Position of body:
Turned onto stomach after rigor mortis
Fatal arrowhead missing
(Deter-Wolf et al., 2016; Dickson, 2008; Gostner et al., 2011; Groenman-van Waateringe, 2011; Maderspacher, 2008;
Vanzetti et al., 2010; Wierer et al., 2018; Zink et al., 2011)
Ötzi the Iceman: Activity
Group reading assignment: Examining evidence
In groups:
Read & explain your answers:
Reconstructing Ötzi’s final hours…
(Wierer et al., 2018)
Example Activities: Causality
4. Contingency
Example: Contingency
Adm. Zheng He
(1371-1433?)
Example: Contingency
China’s 15th
century voyages
of exploration
had continued?
(African giraffe
gifted to Ming
Emperor Yongle,
1415)
Example: Contingency
Norse continued to explore North America?
(995-1000?)
??
Example Activities: Contingency
Why didn’t something
happen?
5. Complexity
The danger of teaching complexity:
Making it brief & easy…
Erases a lot of details…
Oversimplification Example: “The Fall of Rome”
Oversimplification Example: “The Fall of Rome”
What perspective: Which Rome?
Carolus Magnus (Charlemagne),
1st Holy Roman Emperor,
800-814
Collapse of Western Roman Empire: External factors
(Gibbons, 2018;
Toohey et al., 2016)
Collapse of Western Roman Empire: Internal factors
Ultimate cause? Social complexity 🡪 Vulnerability
(The costs of
complexity
outweigh the
benefits)
(Tainter, 1988)
“The Fall of Rome” “The Dissolution of Western Rome”?
Putting it all Together:
Putting it all together: News or Propaganda?
Illustration of “Boston
Massacre” on night of
March 5, 1770
Side note: Plagiarism
(Made after seeing a
version by Henry Pelham,
taken w/o permission)
Began selling it
March 26, 1770
“The Fruits of
Arbitrary Power”
Side note: Plagiarism
“…as if you had
plundered me on
the highway…”
"...coppied [sic] it
from mine..."
Began selling it
April, 1770
“…the most dishonorable
action you could well
be guilty of…”
(Rodwin, 2021)
Was it a “Massacre”?
“Macellum,” Latin for
“butcher shop”
(Massacre: Online etymology dictionary, n.d.)
Was it a “Massacre”?
Was it a “Massacre”?
Boston “Massacre”…
Examining the image…
Nuances and details:
Orderly, faces in sharp profile
Arm raised
Reacting crowd, rounder faces
Distressed woman
Loyal dog?
It’s not snowing?
Peaceful crowd?
Peaceful & unarmed?
Peaceful crowd?
Peaceful & unarmed?
John Adams: Defense attorney
Peaceful crowd?
Peaceful & unarmed?
Crowd
“tumultuous,” “riotous”
“…a club was thrown
at Captain Preston…”
Stones vs. snowballs?
John Adams: Defense attorney
Fabrications, editorializing
Musket?
Smiling?
“Butcher’s Hall"
Fabrications, editorializing
Musket?
Pelham Original
Fabrications, editorializing
Musket?
Smiling?
“Butcher’s Hall"
Victims’ social class?
Middle-class,
not workingmen?
Rope-makers,
dockworkers,
sailors
apprentice
“ivory turner”
Crispus Attucks:
Crispus Attucks:
“mullattoe”
Crispus Attucks:
“mullattoe”
All-white
crowd?
Crispus Attucks: Racial politics
1856
(Image commissioned
during anti-slavery
movement)
Center vs
Edge?
Complexity: News or Propaganda?
(Cohen, 2023; Schuman, 2022;
The Gilder Lehrman Institute advanced
placement history study guide, 2012)
How can we read history?
Five Questions to Ask
Five Questions to Ask
Five Questions to Ask
Five Questions to Ask
Five Questions to Ask
Five Questions to Ask
To summarize the 5 C’s…
Thank you for joining!
Questions? Comments?
This PPT available for download at: http://eric.gondree.com
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