Interpretations (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes

Interpretations

Understanding what an interpretation is

An interpretation represents a historian's viewpoint or argument about past events. It differs from a simple description of what happened—instead, it offers a particular perspective supported by evidence. In History, your work involves more than recalling facts; you must express reasoned opinions backed by factual support. When writing essays, you create your own interpretations grounded in evidence.

For the NEA, Assessment Objective 3 (AO3) requires you to assess and critique the interpretations put forward by historians. You need to analyse how convincing their arguments are and examine the evidence they use to support their views.

What the NEA requires you to do with interpretations

Your NEA must analyse and evaluate two contrasting interpretations. These should present genuinely different viewpoints, though they need not be completely opposed to each other. The core task involves comparing these two perspectives, examining their arguments about evidence and provenance in detail.

The most effective approach involves selecting one interpretation that supports your answer to the overall question, then comparing it with a view that proves slightly less convincing, which you can argue against. This creates the necessary comparison whilst allowing you to develop your own argument.

Key elements you must address

Show understanding of historians' limitations

Historians face various challenges when conducting their research. A typical limitation concerns the difficulty historians encounter when accessing primary sources and evidence to support their arguments.

You might also need to research the historian and the date when their interpretation was published, even if this date comes considerably after the period you are studying. For example, evaluating an interpretation written in the 1980s but about the 1200s requires you to research the 1980s context and consider what type of audience the historian might be addressing and how this might have affected the interpretation itself.

Show understanding of the significance of time and context

This represents a particularly demanding element of the NEA. You need to research not only the historian but also the date when the interpretation was published. Understanding the context in which a historian writes can significantly affect how we assess their interpretation.

Consider factors such as:

• The historian's background and academic specialism
• The type of audience they were writing for
• How this audience might have affected the content
• The political or cultural climate at the time of writing
• What sources were available to them at that time

Understand and analyse provenance

You must integrate the provenance of each extract into your analysis, thinking about time, context and limitations, and how these factors have affected how convincing the individual interpretation appears. Remember that you need to compare, making it likely that your two interpretations will be considered next to each other in your NEA.

Make clear judgements about how convincing interpretations are

Ensure you have compared the two interpretations and that you reach a clear judgement about how convincing they are. This judgement should emerge from your detailed analysis of their arguments, evidence, and the contextual factors affecting each historian.

Identifying and summarising interpretations effectively

Distinguishing interpretations from descriptions

Your task involves looking for opinions and views, not simply facts. An interpretation that states "William fought at the Battle of Hastings in 1066" presents a fact rather than an argument. However, if an extract argued "William was lucky in his eventual victory at Hastings in 1066", this represents an opinion or interpretation of the past, which you need to evaluate using your knowledge.

Looking at the complete picture

Exercise caution when identifying arguments in secondary sources. Avoid "cherry-picking" a single word, such as "powerful" or "important", or even a short phrase, such as "Bismarck was a master-planner", and treating it as an interpretation. After all, the writer might have said "However, Bismarck was not a master planner" and you have simply chosen to focus on the other part of the sentence that offers a completely different view. Make sure you consider the whole passage or section so that you develop a clear and accurate understanding of the writer's view.

Summarising in your own words

After identifying the view, summarise it in your own words. This challenging skill requires you to demonstrate that you understand what points the historian is attempting to make. Before you can assess whether an interpretation is convincing or not, you need to prove that you understand what it is.

Choosing which interpretations to use

Ensuring interpretations differ sufficiently

AO3 requires that the two interpretations are differing, although they need not be entirely different. The most straightforward approach involves finding an interpretation that supports your own view. This interpretation does not need to be an entire book, but can be as short as a paragraph from any academic article that expresses a clear opinion on your topic.

It might prove helpful if your selected interpretation also argues some things that you do not agree with as strongly—this will help you balance your views. Summarise this interpretation in as short a sentence as you can. This can then become the basis for finding an alternative interpretation that says something that differs.

Considering multiple interpretations

You may discover numerous interpretations, all with slightly different views. The greater the difference in these views, the better, as it makes your NEA much easier to argue. You might think that the two obvious interpretations to use will be the ones with the most pronounced differences.

However, you also need to consider what might be said about time, context and limitations. Your next task is to ensure sufficient material exists that you can use in relation to provenance. If both of your interpretations come from roughly the same period and the historians have the same background, then it may prove quite difficult to produce a convincing argument.

Understanding limitations

Limitations might include difficulty in accessing source material but might also include limits placed on the historian by the audience to whom the work has been addressed. A book aimed at the mass market, for example, is much less likely to offer the type of detailed factual support that might be offered by a historian writing for a solely academic readership.

Applying knowledge and using argument to support or challenge interpretations

Evaluating content effectively

The key involves evaluating each interpretation and advancing much beyond a simple description of content. Use specific phrases and words that keep you focused on evaluation rather than simply description.

Published interpretations from academic historians are unlikely to be factually inaccurate. However, you may find that the information used to support an interpretation is weak, misdirected or is just too general to persuade you that the interpretation is convincing. You should use your own specific knowledge to challenge or corroborate the interpretation, examining the quality and depth of the supporting information provided by the historian.

Lead with a clear argument and use knowledge to support these views. The marks come from offering an evaluation, not from simply telling the moderator what is in the extract.

Providing convincing arguments

You may find an interpretation convincing simply because it agrees with your own view; however, it is not enough to simply say this. You need to provide a convincing argument stating why this interpretation is convincing. It might be that the argument can be much better supported than any other, or that a large amount of statistical evidence seems to provide good, objective material.

Often, although not always, it will be how effectively the historian has supported their view that will lead you to decide whether an interpretation is convincing or not.

Using evaluative language

Incorporate evaluative words and phrases into your answer to ensure you remain focused on evaluation:

Evaluating the time, context and limitations of the interpretation

Moving beyond basic observations

It is important that you spend time evaluating the context, timing, and limitations of the two interpretations you have chosen. Failing to consider these factors will restrict your AO3 mark to the lowest level.

Any interpretation is a product of many factors. Most obviously, the historians are trying to convince you, the reader, that their view is the convincing one. But in our assessment of this we can also consider the background of the historian and determine if there is a particular reason that they may see the past in a certain way.

We might consider the type of audience that they are writing for and how this may have affected the content. At times, historians are also limited by factors outside of their control, for example the ability to access original sources. This becomes something that further affects how convincing we find an extract to be.

Integrating findings into your argument

Remember to integrate your findings about time, context and limitations into a broader argument about how convincing you find the extract to be in helping you arrive at your answer to your NEA question. It is unlikely that you will be suggesting that an interpretation is entirely without merit; otherwise why would you include it in your NEA?

Remember!