Contextualization

The historical skill of contextualization is explicitly mentioned as a required writing element and reasoning skill in AP World History. The College Board rubric states that the essay should:

  • “Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.”
  • “To earn this point, the response must relate the topic of the prompt to broader historical events, developments, or processes that occur before, during, or continue after the time frame of the question. This point is not awarded for merely a phrase or reference.”

Most basically, contextualization is a thought process that involves connecting historical developments of specific time/place circumstances to broader regional, national, or global processes. Historical context is much like literary setting. In the setting of a novel or literary work, the place, time, and peripheral events impact the central characters and story. In fact, the story probably doesn’t make much sense without understanding the setting. Historical context works similarly. In order to truly understand a specific development, one must consider the larger time period, geographic region, and global trends.

So, in order to demonstrate contextualization in an essay, you must be able to:

  • Show understanding of the time period.
  • Situate the argument by explaining the broader historical developments relevant to the prompt.
  • Explain the connection between the broader global developments and the specific development of the prompt.

As a result, contextualization in an essay will:

  • Usually be located in the introduction.
  • Be at least 3 sentences with one describing relevantoverarching and global themes of the time period, a second describing an example and regions affected by the global development, and then a third explaining how the specific topic of the prompt is connected to the broader developments.

A few common errors arise when students attempt to integrate historical context into writing. First, one common mistake is to make comparisons between place or time periods instead of connections. In a comparison, a student might write “___ also happened in East Asia.” In a comparison, two separate, distinct ‘entities’ exist, which may share some overlapping similarities. Rather than discussing two distinct but similar circumstances, contextualization relays how one circumstance is part of a larger development or event. A second misstep that is often made by students is to provide background historical details for the specific and narrow essay topic, but this does not situate the argument into broader, global trends of world history. A third error often made is when students fail to explain the connection between the broader developments and how they are immediately relevant to the argument being made in the thesis.

Contextualization is a prized historical thinking skill, because it requires students to show knowledge of big ideas, a specific topic, and their connection. Because contextualization is intellectually demanding, it likely necessitates writing an example. As seen in the graphic below, an essay about the Constitution of the United States likely could be contextualized by explaining that this founding document was part of broader trend of political activists using Social Contract Theory from the Enlightenment to change the relationship between the governed and their governments. This trend was also seen in the American Revolution, Declaration of Independence, and during the French Revolution.

So, in summary, accurate world historical context mustspecifically explain how outside factors impacted the topic in question or how factors within the topic impacted broader developments within the period. The analogy of a jigsaw puzzle is instructive. How does an individual piece relate to the surrounding pieces and relate to the larger picture as a whole?