Write As Historian: WRITE AS A HISTORIAN: GATHER AND ORGANIZE EvIDENCE
After analyzing the task and developing questions you need to answer to complete it (see page 183), the next step in writing a long essay is to gather and organize your evidence. Gathering evidence relies on recall—how much you remember from your reading and other studies. Organizing evidence requires the skills of seeing patterns and connections and using historical reasoning.
Suppose you are answering this long essay question: “Develop an argument that evaluates the extent to which continuity or change over time characterized the participation of China in the expanding global trade networks from 1450 to 1750.” Gather the evidence by writing down everything you know about China’s role in global trade networks between 1450 and 1750. (Answer the questions you developed in the application activity on page 183.) Your essay might include the following:
• Emperor Kangxi relaxed the limits on foreigners, opening Chinese ports to European merchants and missionaries.
• China exported silk, porcelain, spice, and tea and imported little.
• Confucian philosophy preferred farmers who produced food over merchants who transferred food from one person to another.
• Confucian philosophers respected the Jesuits.
• China regarded its culture as superior to those of other countries.
• With the Silk Roads and Indian Ocean trade networks pouring gold and silver into China for their goods, the Chinese felt wealthy and in no need of foreign commodities.
After writing everything you can remember, organize your evidence. Review your notes, looking for patterns related to the task. Which pieces of evidence represent a continuity? Which represent a change? Make a simple chart to place the evidence in the correct category. Then evaluate the extent to which change outweighed continuity or vice versa.
Application: On a separate sheet of paper, expand on the evidence you recall about China’s participation in global trade networks between 1450 and 1750 by adding notes to the above list. Then make a chart like the one below. Place each piece of evidence in the appropriate column.
Continuities
Changes
For current free response question samples, visit: https://apcentral. collegeboard.org/courses/ap-world-history/exam