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sometimes long after, when people evaluate them, using the historical thinking skills you will
develop in this course. What we now call the Protestant Reformation, for example, was not called
that until the nineteenth century, when historians and scholars of religion decided that a group of
developments that began with Martin Luther challenging the Catholic Church in the early sixteenth
century all belonged together under one label. The worldwide economic downturn of the 1930s
only became the “Great Depression” after it was over and scholars measured its extent and impact
in comparison with other economic downturns. And sometimes events change their names because
of subsequent events. In the 1920s and 1930s, what we now call World War I was called the Great
War, and only after another horrific global war did it acquire the name by which we now know this
conflict.

Whatever you choose to investigate, or are expected to as part of your work in this course, you
will need to find out some basic information. This textbook will help you with that, providing
thorough coverage of European history from 1450 to the present, as well as a chapter on the
this sample.
period immediately preceding this to set the stage. Your teacher will be able to supply more
Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Worth Publishers.
information to deepen your understanding. Beyond that there is no limit, as today anyone with
access to the Internet has more information available on almost any topic than he or she can
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.
handle. Not all of this information is true, of course, and an essential skill to develop in today’s
world for any aspect of life is learning to evaluate the accuracy of what you read online, a key part
Uncorrected proofs have been used in
of achieving information literacy. That is not so different from learning to evaluate what you read
in print, a skill you will develop or sharpen in this course as you assess the evidence on which
various authors base their arguments and claims.
by Bedford, Freeman &

EXERCISE: The development with which this course begins is the Renaissance. As
Chapter 2 explains, the word Renaissance, which means “rebirth,” was first used
in the late sixteenth century by the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari to describe
artists such as his contemporary Michelangelo, whom Vasari regarded as
geniuses even greater than those of the ancient world. Like most terms that
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describe events or processes, it was given a label after the fact, and this naming
involved a value judgment. Over time, the word’s meaning was broadened to
Distributed
include many aspects of life, expanded geographically to include developments in
many countries, and extended chronologically to include several centuries. At its
heart, however, was the notion that there was something in this era that was
being reborn. Read the section “Humanism” in Chapter 2 on pages 51–53. What
was it that the thinkers of the Italian Renaissance thought was being reborn in
their own time period? Based on your reading of this section, how would you
explain what the Renaissance was all about to someone who had never heard
of it?

SKILL 2: SOURCING AND SITUATION

Historians analyze the past based on evidence, including primary and secondary sources. A pri-
mary source is something produced in the time period you are studying. In contrast, a secondary
source is a text written about that time period, usually something a historian writes long after the
fact. Secondary sources result from scholarly research of primary sources and other secondary
sources. Since no historian can be an expert in every field, he or she also relies on the work of
previous historians and often that produced by scholars in other fields as well, including archae-
ology, art history, biology, and chemistry. Sometimes a source can be both primary and secondary.

HTS-2

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