52 Chapter 2 | Colonial north ameriCa | Period two 16 07–175 4The pursuit of economic gain and the spread of religious fervor drove the
early settlement in North America. To what extent did economics and
religion remain important between 1650 and 1750?Step 1 Understand the prompt, and identify the key words
As you remember from Chapter 1, you must first understand your question.
Draw a square around your topic (“early settlement in North America”), draw a
line underneath your task (“To what extent did economics and religion remain
important between 1650 and 1750?”), and draw a circle around the categories of
the question (“economic gain” and “religious fervor”).
For the prompt above, your annotations may look like this:The pursuit of economic gain and the spread of religious fervor drove the
early settlement in North America. To what extent did economics and
religion remain important between 1650 and 1750?
Step 2 Generate a working thesis
As you learned in Chapter 1, you can generate a working thesis statement to
a historical prompt by asking questions that use your historical thinking skills.
Remember that your thesis statement is both your answer to the prompt and also
a hypothesis that needs to be proven by your analysis of historical evidence and
documents in your essay itself.
To help you generate your thesis statement, consider the following questions:- How do two factors (or specified aspects of a particular context)—in this
case economic gain and religious fervor—compare in promoting early
colonization? - What turning points (key moments that mark a change in the course of
events) characterized a shift in these factors? What events or trends, both
proximate (short-term) and long-term, contributed to changes in economic
gain and religious fervor? (See Chapter 1 for a review of these terms.) - In what ways did the economic and religious reasons for colonization change
or remain the same (continuity)?
Examine when these points of comparison show similarities and differences.
As you learned in Chapter 1, taking time to brainstorm answers to these
questions will provide you with a working thesis, based on the documents above
and secondary sources (namely, the information you remember from your text or
from class). This brainstormed information also will function as some of the out-
side information that the prompt requires you to incorporate into your response.03_STA_2012_ch2_027-056.indd 52 26/03/15 10:27 AM