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El Liberator Podcast

Getting the Contextualization Point

What is Contextualization?

Contextualization is an AP Historical Reasoning Skill that involves the ability to connect events and processes to specific circumstances of time and place as well as broader regional, national, or global processes. It’s a skill that is important beyond just “earning the point” in AP. ☺ The best essays, books, and papers will all provide background information to “set the stage” for their main arguments.

The College Board says the skill of contextualization involves:

Describe an accurate historical context for a specific historical development or process.

Explain how a relevant context influenced a specific historical development or process.

Use context to explain the relative historical significance of a specific historical development or process.

So how is it done?

You goal is to “situate” (position or place) your answer to the question (DBQ or LEQ) among historical events, developments, or processes within the broader regional, national, or global context in which they occurred. That means that contextualization is a “lead in.” Think about what the reader needs to know to understand the historical significance of this topic.

This should be in your introduction prior to your thesis. So what will you do?

Write 3-4 content or fact rich, analytical sentences. (It must include specific details!)

Describe events or processes that happened before the time period of the question or in another region that’s relevant.

Example Different Period – if the question is about Period 3, use information from the end of Period 2 as a lead in (Dynasties and Empires fell, so…).

Example for AP World – if the question is about Post-Classical East Asia, discussing Post-Classical Europe and Africa could be relevant, if you’re discussing what’s going on globally.

Make a connection to the question that is asked! Information cannot be random. You may not simply spew out unrelated facts. Why does this matter to the question at hand? How does this lead into your thesis?

Let’s Look at a Sample Prompt:

Identify and explain the political and economic causes and effects of the decline of the one of the Classical Empires.

The Han Dynasty was one of the greatest classical empires of the 600 BCE-600 CE period. It was created after a period of unrest in China known as the Warring States period. There were a series of powerful emperors who ruled from the capital centered in Chang’an. The empire expanded as far as Central Asia and Korea, and was a hub of economic activity. However it could not maintain itself and ultimately fell in the third century CE.

Courtesy of Mrs. Hudson (AP World) and Mrs. Broderick (AP Europe)