Dbq Analysis
* ————————————————- Madison Markey * ————————————————- AP US History, P. 2 * ————————————————- 30 September 2012 * ————————————————- DBQ Homework #1 * ————————————————- * ————————————————- Question Analysis: The question is asking to explain how the French and Indian War affected the three main principles that were important during the time frame of 1740-1766.
The writer could include both positive and negative sides of the war through each of the three categories. They could also list the causes and effects of the war. The question is also asking to highlight/paraphrase the provided documents as well as outside facts to support the well developed thesis. The question is telling the writer to describe the outcome of the relationship between Britain and it’s American colonies through the political, economic, and ideological relations. A potential problem could be forgetting to include the outcome of the war while strictly focusing on the issues and battles during the war.
Another problem could be discluding the events preceding the war which is extremely vital, not only for support of thesis, but also to lay down an array of background information in the intro paragraph, in order to create the funnel affect. * ————————————————- * ————————————————- Intro: Before the French and Indian War, four other colonial wars were fought between French and British forces during the time period of 1689 and 1763.
However, the French and Indian War, later known as the Seven Year’s War was the most pivotal because it ultimately destroyed the relationship between Britain and the American colonies. The main conflict aroused during the 1600’s and early 1700’s when the British began their pursuit of Salutary Neglect which provided each of Britain’s American colonies with an overabundance of freedom. Later, Britain tried to regulate the colonists lifestyle and trade routine with the Navigation Law yet, they never truly administered any of the correlating rules.
The colonists enjoyed the lack of limitation midst the Salutary Neglect and when Britain began imposing laws and taxes, it infuriated them. From 1740-1766, amid the French & Indian War, Britain’s greed for land, control, and restriction against the American colonies eventually caused major debt in England, harsh treatment toward their own British soldiers, and a negative aftermath of political, economic, and ideological crisis involving the American colonists * ————————————————- * ————————————————-
Essay #1: The first sample essay completely deserves their score. The introduction paragraph supplies a nice background and setting. The thesis is very strong and clear. It provides a specific example of each of the three categories from the prompt. There is nothing that I would not include in this essay because everything is relevant to the topic. For the intro, they organized it by utilizing the funnel method. In the first sentence of each body paragraph, she refers back to a piece of her thesis. The anonymous states the opinion of both sides: Britain and the American colonies.
She provides each of their perspectives while including her own opinion. She includes the documents by lightly referencing them and not incorporating too much of the source or not enough. While effectively utilizing the documents, anonymous fully supports the detail with her own information. Other information involving the church and state relationship could have been included because as the war progressed, the Great Awakening occurred and because of political and religious leaders, the separation of church and state was desired in many of the colonies.
The anonymous restated the reference that they already used and they made the simple mistake of writing document C when it was actually a different document. Besides that, there is not much more I would have included because the essay was close to perfect and the anon completely nailed the prompt right down to a nice conclusion. Hence, the writer deserves the score of a 9. * ————————————————- * ————————————————-
Essay#2: In the opening sentence, anonymous wrote that there were exactly three wars fought between the British and their rival French forces yet, there were actually a total of four wars fought. The introduction paragraph does not provide a well-developed thesis. It is very vague and unclear however, it does address the prompt. The parenthesis that they use within the first body paragraph do not fit well and they appear awkward but they do not interfere with comprehension of the essay. They provide a decent setting but not enough detail about specific events that precede the war in order to spark the war.
Next, anonymous squeezes three different documents into one small paragraph with about five sentences. They should have spaced out the sources and actually explained the documents to show their understanding of the point of view and the significance. They did attempt to organize it by specifically talking about the economic aspect and how it affected the political and ideological aspects together. They begin a sentence by using a reference which I would not have included because it sounded like the paragraph was being written around the document.
I would have started with a topic sentence to build up to the reference. They include a lot of minor and superficial events which are irrelevant therefore, unnecessary to include. However they do attempt to mention that of the three categories, ideological relations were the least important which is a nice way to include the category. Overall, I believe the essay deserves a little under a seven. * ————————————————- * ————————————————- Essay#3 The intro in the third essay does not include much background preceding the thesis.
It strictly states that “the war had great effects” on each of the three categories it does not say whether they were positive or negative effects. The thesis is limited and poorly written and only restates the question without any other specific facts or examples. I would not have included so many [sic] symbols in my prompt because they interrupt the flow of the essay. The essay resembles a standard english essay because it is organized with an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Each body paragraph is about one of the three categories from the thesis.
In the political paragraph anonymous states very broad information and fails to cite the information about Braddock or any information at all. She contains little understanding of the documents and merely tells what events happened in each of the paragraphs but does not describe them with appropriate outside information. She also fails to include a time frame and dates for the events. In the economy paragraph she talked about unity yet failed to mention the severe debt that britain faced which was a huge economic crisis. Anonymous should have thought of the questions such as why and how while she was writing.
They could have arranged their essay a little differently instead of organizing it so that with each new category comes a different time period they should have just put the events in chronological order and wrote about how it affected each of the three categories during and after the was. Anonymous also had a few conventional errors such as commas. They also use first person point of view in the third to last sentence of the third paragraph. The third paragraph is confusing and presents a lack of understanding of history because it just lists vague facts.
It does not include a lead-in or transition to the conclusion. The anonymous nearly ignored the documents and failed to include 50/50 ratio. The conclusion simply restates the thesis and ends with an unspecific sentence of how the war caused change but they never argued whether it was for the worse or the better. Nor did they summarize their essay or show the reader they know that there is additional significance. In my opinion, the errors in the third essay seriously detract from the quality of the prompt ergo, the essay does deserves less than a five. ————————————————- * ————————————————- By reading the essays, I learned that mistakes are easily made when writing in a constricted time period so it is important to utilize the given time wisely. I found that some of the documents are probably tough to use but it is important to have a 50%-50% ratio of information because that is what truly proves your knowledge of history and sometimes the documents will help you recall information. Also, one should always cite the document because it looks and sounds horrible if otherwise.
I learned that all information must go toward improving the case or it should not be included. Lastly, I found that developing a thesis is not that hard especially if you take a moment to analyze the question but it could ruin your entire essay if you get on the wrong track and it is extremely vital in determining the score that you end up with. I now understand that by following the strategies in the book and practicing more often, writing a DBQ will begin to come natural. * ————————————————- * ————————————————- * ————————————————-
