Historical lens for Applied History class PDF

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Summary

An assignment for Applied History class regarding historical lenses and how to tell the difference....

Description

Political Lens: The political lens looks at the relationship of those who have power and those who do not.

My source was “The Constitution: How Did It Happen?”, and I believe this was written using primarily a political lens. While the article does briefly speak about some economic topics such as taxation, commerce, and printing money, it is primarily concerned with which part of the government will have this power. “America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, gave the Confederation Congress the power to make rules and request funds from the states, but it had no enforcement powers, couldn’t regulate commerce, or print money. The states’ disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the young country apart” (The Constitution: How Did It Happen?, 2019).The remainder of the article fails to mention any economic topic again but chooses to focus on strictly political topics. It goes on to say even though the Constitutional Convention originally gather specifically to revise the Articles of Confederation, eventually they decided to completely redesign the government. Many political topics are covered in this article such as representation in the House and Senate, slavery, and the act of ratification. “One of the fiercest arguments was over congressional representation— should it be based on population or divided equally among the states? The framers compromised by giving each state one representative for every 30,000 people in the House of Representatives and two representatives in the Senate” (The Constitution: How Did It Happen?, 2019). In my opinion this source is writing through a political lens because the entire article is speaking about who will have power over what and how the representation will work.

I chose to research the Drafting of the U.S. Constitution which can be difficult to find good sources because there is so much written about this topic. Most sources written about the U.S. Constitution can be debatable under which lens that certain source was written through because the U.S. Constitution can be seen through multiple lenses. To be more specific, I would say this source was written through a political lens because the U.S. Constitution is about how the government influences the lives of individuals resulting in the creation of the Bill of Rights. Knowing the effect the government has on individuals, it was important to have a powerful government. “Wary about centralized power and loyal to their states, they created a powerful central government” (The Constitution: How Did It Happen?, 2019). In order to do so it was important to realize what the weaknesses were. “The states’ disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the young country apart” (The Constitution: How Did It Happen?, 2019).

The Constitution: How Did it Happen? (2019, September 23). National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution/how-did-it-happen...