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How to do bad history...!
Your task is to write an unreliable
account about the Spanish Armada. You will be in pairs:
one of you will write from a Spanish perspective, one from
an English. Remember there are two things to think about when considering the reliability of an historical source:
provenance and content.
Provenance is concerned with the
three 'W' questions: Who? When? and Where? For this
activity you will be assigned a role. You will either be
Spanish or English. This will give you a nationalistic
bias. You will be writing in the late summer of 1588 so
that you will be 'caught up' in the excitement of events.
You will not have had time to calmly reflect on all the
evidence about the event because much of the sources are
not yet available to you. Content is
concerned with how the story is told. The type of source
is important, a newspaper is written in a lively style and
is designed to capture your interest. Accuracy is not your
number one concern. The story should be carefully edited;
information will be selected or left out in order to
present a very one-sided view of events. Most important is
the language you use in your account. Adjectives and superlatives
should be used in order to create the right tone. Remember
though, you are not allowed to lie or make things up. |
