Thinking Historically

What Does it Mean to Think Historically?

Rather than focusing on dates or facts, thinking historically means recognizing the ways humans shape history through their words, thoughts, and actions. People do not experience events in the same way. As a result, history is often told from multiple points of view. Identifying these perspectives deepens understandings of the past and the ways in which history is created.

A Process for Thinking Historically

The first step of thinking historically is to learn more about the historical context.

Some important aspects to research include:

• Who were the key people involved?
• What happened?
• When did it happen?
• Where did it happen?

After studying the historical context, the next step is to consider how the Who, What, When, and Where work together to create a narrative and why.

Other questions to ask when examining a historical narrative may be:

• How does the Who involved influence What happened?
• How does the What change depending on Who is describing it?
• Why did the Who describe the What that way?
• How does the When impact the way it happened?
• How does the Where affect the way it happened?

Example of Historical Thinking

Event: The Boston Tea Party

Historical Context

• Who: Parties involved included the Sons of Liberty, Loyalists, colonial merchants, and British Empire.
• What: The Sons of Liberty dumped imported British tea into the Boston Harbor to protest a tax and business monopoly on tea.
• When: The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, prior to the American Revolution.
• Where: This event occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, a city in the American colonies.
• Narrative details
  • Backed by colonial merchants, the Sons of Liberty disrupted the tea trade from Britain, describing their actions as a patriotic means to protect the economic interests of the American colonies.
  • Loyalists, American colonists loyal to the British Empire, described the actions of the Sons of Liberty as unlawful, reasserting their allegiance to Britain.
  • The British Empire suffered an economic loss and political humiliation from the Boston Tea Party, so the empire described the event as reprehensible, closing the port of Boston.

By examining the Who involved in the Boston Tea Party, one can see how each group experienced and perceived the event influenced the ways it was described. The Sons of Liberty benefitted from the event and therefore described it positively. The British Empire and Loyalists, on the other hand, experienced a loss; hence, they described it in negative terms. Thus, thinking historically allows scholars to understand how and why multiple accounts are created for historical events.

Work Consulted

Massachusetts Historical Society. 2020. “The Boston Tea Party.” The Coming of the American Revolution:

1764 to 1776. https://www.masshist.org/revolution/teaparty.php.