For this assignment you need to read the following primary source, “Bontier, Pierre. Extract. In The Canarian, or, Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canarians in the Year 1402, 12236. London: Routledge, 2016.
“(ATTACHED BELOW!!!) and provide a historical analysis of its content (750 words):
How to do this assessment:
This document analysis assumes no prior knowledge, that is, you do not have to do any other background or contextual reading. In fact, you shouldn’t, because this assessment tests your ability to analyse the primary source itself, and to present that analysis in the form of a historical argument.
Suggestions:
Pretend to yourself that this document as though it is the sole artefact to survive from the culture that you are examining. That is, imagine that this is the only surviving evidence of this clearly imperial culture.
Assuming this, what does the document teach you?
In the absence of other evidence, what generalisations do you feel confident in making?
What things preoccupy the author?
What things seem to matter to the people he describes?
What kind of society does this document seem to evoke?
IMPORTANT: There is one rule which holds for everything you will ever write as an academic historian: you are always writing an argument. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a document test, a review of an article, an essay, exam, article, chapter, thesis or book: you should be advancing an argument. In other words, you should be using evidence to convince your reader that something is or is not the case, that things were a certain way.
IN HISTORY THERE IS NO EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE: YOU ARE ALWAYS ADVANCING AN ARGUMENT!*
