AP Exam: Sourcing a Document

The final type of essay you will have to write on the exam is the Document-Based Question. This question presents you with 7 primary sources and requires you to write an essay based on the information in those sources. Unit 5 (document analysis) introduced you to this skill. To master the DBQ, many students use the acronym HIPP or HAP-P. This stands for Historical Situation, Intended Audience, Purpose, and Point of View. You don't need to do all four for every document, but for at least three of your sources, you must explain why one of these elements is relevant to your argument.

The Document-Based Question (DBQ)

When you deal with the documents on the Document-Based Question, you will have to bring to bear the documents’ source into your analysis. That means considering how the author’s purpose, historical situation, or point of view affects your understanding of a document. The best ways to accomplish this are to:

Bring in a little additional information you know about the essay topic to support or enhance the content of the document.
Describe what the author’s purpose might have been in context of the time period or the essay prompt.

To see examples of this, let’s look at some of the documents you analyzed in the previous module.

Example Document: Tsurumi Shunsuke

Where do the cheap workers come from? They all come from farming communities. People from

families that are working their own land or are engaged in tenant farming but have surplus workers, come to the cities and the industrial centers to become factory workers. Income from the farms provides for the family needs and subsistence of the parents and siblings. The person who takes employment in the factory is an unattached component of the family. All he or she has to do is earn enough to maintain his or her own living. That is why the workers’ wages are low. This shows how important a force agriculture continues to be for the development of our nation’s commerce and industry.

Source: Tsurumi Shunsuke, Japanese industrialist, circa 1900.

Sourcing Example

Here is one example of how “sourcing” might look for this document:

The author describes how surplus workers on farms allow laborers to migrate to cities to work in factories. As an industrialist, he benefits from the labor of these workers. His purpose is to encourage strong agricultural practices that enable rural people to continue to fill factory jobs and to achieve high levels of production in industrial centers.

Note that this directly engages with the source to describe what the author’s purpose might have been in writing this the way he did. By highlighting that workers only need enough to 'maintain' themselves, Shunsuke justifies low wages as a natural economic byproduct of the Japanese family structure, which aligns with his Point of View as an industrialist seeking to minimize costs for national growth.

A good template to use when thinking about this could be:

(The author) probably wrote (something you find in the text of the document) because he/she intended to (something relevant to the historical context of the document).

Example Document: Friedrich Engels

In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green, slime pools are left standing on this riverbank, from the depths of which bubbles of gas constantly arise and give forth a stench. . . . Above the bridge are tanneries, bone mills, and gasworks, from which all drains and waste find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neighboring sewers.

Passing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing- lines, one enters this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living and sleeping- room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely five feet long by six wide, I found two beds — and such bedsteads and beds! — which, with a staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the room. . .

In almost every court one or even several such pens [of pigs] may be found, into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal, whence the swine grow fat; and the atmosphere, confined on all four sides, is utterly corrupted by putrefying animal and vegetable substances. . . .

Such is the Old Town of Manchester. . . . Everything which here arouses horror and indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the industrial epoch.

Source: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, published in 1892. Along with Karl Marx, Engels developed the ideology of modern communism.

Sourcing Example

Here are ways you could source this document:

This document was written by a communist, who had as his goal the communist revolution in which the working class takes over the capitalists. He focused on the worst examples of working-class living conditions because he intended to get them to rise up in a communist revolution.

This example explains what the author’s intention might have been in writing this the way he did. His point of view was that of a communist.

If you wanted to focus on the historical situation of this document, you might write:

Engels describes the horrible condition of workers in the city of Manchester. Migrations to the cities were very rapid at this time, and many cities did not have the resources to keep up with the needs of urbanization. Politicians at the time were not responsive to workers’ needs because the working class could not yet vote.

The sourcing above considers the historical situation in England when this was written. It brings in additional historical context to help us understand the document better.

Think of sourcing as an analysis of an author’s Cognitive Schema. Friedrich Engels sees 'chaos' and 'horror' because his schema is built on class struggle and empathy for the poor. Tsurumi Shunsuke sees 'surplus' and 'commerce' because his schema is built on industrial efficiency. They are observing the same event—urbanization—but their Point of View creates two entirely different 'realities' in their writing.

Reflection: Sourcing a Document

It is impossible to source a document without sufficient knowledge of history. Paying close attention to the content of the lesson modules in this course is essential to the skill of sourcing.

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