5 Steps to a 5TM AP European History

(^20) › STEP 2. Understand the Skills That Will Be Tested
the preponderance of evidence that shows that the contents of such newsbooks served as
Parliamentary propaganda casts too much doubt on the reliability of those accounts.
But rather than give up on those sources, Purkiss asked herself what the historian could
reliably learn from Parliamentary propaganda. Purkiss knew that the purpose of propa-
ganda was to cultivate outrage at, and hatred of, the enemy. She knew, in other words, that
propaganda aimed to play on the worst fears of its readers. So in order to learn something
from those sources, Purkiss changed her question. Rather than asking, “What happened
at Barthomley?” she asked, “What do the sources tell us about the fears of Parliamentary
readers?” Because all of the newsbook accounts of the incident at Barthomley stressed set-
ting fire to the church, stripping and abusing the people taken prisoner, and the murdering
of those people, she concluded that it might be reasonable to assume that the greatest fears
of people in that region during the conflict were the desecration of their holy places and
the suffering and death of their loved ones at the hands of marauding soldiers. Finally, she
went on to show that those fears did, in fact, mirror the major themes of atrocity stories in
a large number of Parliamentary newsbooks.
Arguing from Evidence in an Essay
Let’s look at an example of how one argues from evidence. Suppose you were faced with
the following question:
Explain ONE lasting effect of the Revolutions of 1848 on European political culture.
You might choose to answer with the following assertion:
The ultimate failure of the attempt, in the Revolutions of 1848, to bring about liberal, demo-
cratic reform in continental Europe caused a large portion of the European population to put
their faith in conservative, rather than liberal, leaders.
Next, you would need to argue from evidence; that is, you would need to support
and illustrate the assertion you have made by presenting and explaining events that serve
as specific examples of what you have asserted. The result would look something like this:
In February 1848, the decision by King Louis Philippe to ban liberal reformers from holding
public meetings led to massive street demonstrations in Paris. Demonstrations soon escalated
into revolution, forcing Louis Philippe to abdicate and a new French republic (known as the
Second Republic) to be established. The Assembly of the new republic attempted to establish
a liberal, democratic constitution for the French Republic. However, in June of the same
year, the French Army reestablished conservative control of Paris. An election in December
swept the conservative Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon, to power. Three
years later, he staged his own coup d’état, putting an end to the Second Republic.
Similarly, violence broke out in the major cities of the German kingdoms in the first half
of 1848. In Berlin, Frederick William IV was forced to order the army out of the city and
to agree to the formation of a parliament. In the wake of that victory, liberal leaders from all
over Germany formed the Frankfurt Assembly and proclaimed that they would write a liberal,
democratic constitution for a united Germany. But in the second half of 1848, Frederick
William IV refused the Frankfurt Assembly’s offer to be the constitutional monarch of a
united, democratic Germany, and instead used military troops to disperse the Assembly and to
reassert conservative control in the cities. When, in November, troops moved back into Berlin,
they faced little resistance. In the subsequent decades, popular support for German unification
was given to Frederick William IV and his conservative chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, rather
than to the liberals.
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