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AP ® SKILLS WORKSHOP

Contextualization

n this workshop, you will learn about contextualization, a historical reasoning skill that you
Ican also apply to your everyday life. You may have heard people complain that their words
were taken out of context, or that context is important to understand a current event. In this
workshop, we’ll look specifically at the role that context plays in the study of history.

UNDERSTANDING CONTEXTUALIZATION
®
So what is context, and how will you use the skill of contextualization in the AP course as
you build your skills as a historian? First, let’s think about what “contextualization” means.
Contextualization: Considering the historical situation surrounding an
event or process
That means that a historian looks at an event in terms of the cultural norms, political
structures, religious beliefs, geographic and environmental factors, and other contexts
that might have affected how the event occurred or how people responded to it. Context
helps a historian see an event through the eyes of those who experienced it and take into
account all of the surrounding factors. While something might seem unusual from our
perspective or context, a good historian understands the historical context and moves
beyond making judgments.
Contextualization is an important part of understanding why something happened. But
be careful: contextualization is not causation! When we contextualize, we are not looking
for the thing that started an event, but rather the situation or setting in which the event
occurred. Often, contextualization is used to lay the groundwork for a claim or thesis. Let’s
see how the authors of this book do it. In the following paragraph excerpt, the authors use
contextualization to set the stage for their claim:

For many centuries, the Chinese had interacted with the nomadic peoples who inhabited
the dry and lightly populated regions now known as Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Trade,

tribute, and warfare ensured that these ecologically and culturally different worlds were
Contextualization
well known to the Chinese, quite unlike the New World “discoveries” of the Europeans.
Chinese authority in these regions had been intermittent and actively resisted. Then,
in the early modern era, the Qing dynasty undertook an eighty-year military effort

(1680–1760) that brought these huge areas solidly under its control. It was largely secu-
rity concerns, rather than economic need, that motivated this aggressive posture. During Claim
the late seventeenth century, the creation of a substantial state among the western
Evidence
Mongols, known as Zunghars, revived Chinese memories of an earlier Mongol conquest.
242 Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

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