A little bit of irony there in the title of today's post. Our essay question about how much "unity" there was amongst the colonists at the start of the revolution is a nice example of several aspects of historical study. One, it asks an open ended sort of question with a multi-faceted response being easily acceptable. (By multi-faceted I am saying that more than just a political or economic analysis is required, something that looks at many aspects of society to arrive at a thesis is required.) These multi-faceted appraisals of society are much more common in the last 50 to 100 years of historical study. Two, it is, or could be, inclusive of social history. Third, it is asking you to discuss change over time....ie from when colonists were less unified to a time when they are supposedly more unified (the Revolutionary period). Finally, our Gary Nash article about how the colonists had begun to develop a uniquely 'American' culture by the 1700's is a nice compliment to this question.....if Nash is correct that there was a unique American culture then how/when/why does it become a unified one as well?
Finally our two words of the day:
FRQ .... Free Response Question
DBQ ... Document Based Question
These are the styles of essay questions you will be seeing all year long, lets make sure we know the acronyms and the requirements of each since we will be talking about them for the next 8 months!
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