AP Syllabus focus:
‘Use diverse evidence to corroborate and qualify arguments, explaining connections and nuance when comparing major developments from 1890 to 1945.’
Comparing major developments in Period 7 requires assessing evidence from political, economic, social, and diplomatic contexts, determining how different events and processes aligned, diverged, and interacted across 1890–1945.
Understanding Comparison in Period 7
Comparing developments from 1890 to 1945 involves examining how reform, conflict, migration, and economic transformation shaped the United States. Students must evaluate multiple historical processes with awareness of continuity, change, causation, and context. Effective comparison requires tracing patterns across Progressive reform, World War I and II mobilization, the Great Depression, New Deal policymaking, and shifting U.S. global roles.
Using Diverse Evidence
Historians compare developments by drawing on political speeches, legislative acts, demographic data, newspapers, diaries, organizational records, and other primary and secondary sources. Evidence must be used to show both similarities and differences, not simply to describe events.
Corroboration refers to evaluating whether multiple sources support the same interpretation.
Corroboration: The process of comparing evidence from different sources to determine whether they reinforce a shared historical claim.
After evaluating corroboration, students must consider how specific forms of evidence qualify or complicate broad claims.
Identifying Connections Across Themes
Period 7 includes interconnected developments shaped by industrialization, global conflict, and ideological debates. When comparing developments, focus on how economic transformation, reform movements, and foreign policy interacted.
Economic and Social Change
The transition from a predominantly rural society to an urban, industrial economy created new dynamics requiring comparison, such as:
How mass production and technological innovation altered labor systems.
How migration and demographic shifts reshaped cultural identity and political coalitions.
How economic instability affected federal policymaking.
Students should link causes and effects, showing how economic change contributed to reform movements and shaped government responses in the 1930s.
Reform and Government Expansion
Comparing developments in reform requires analyzing the motivations, goals, and outcomes of movements such as Progressivism and New Deal liberalism. Focus on:
The extent to which reforms expanded federal power.
Differences in strategies—such as regulatory approaches, moral reform, or welfare-state creation.
How social groups, including women, immigrants, African Americans, and labor activists, influenced reform agendas.
These comparisons reveal how government action evolved from limited regulation in the early twentieth century to broader intervention during the Great Depression.
Qualifying Arguments in Comparative Analysis
To qualify an argument means acknowledging complexity, exceptions, or differing interpretations.
Qualification: The refinement of a historical argument through recognition of limitations, counterevidence, or nuanced distinctions.
Students should avoid absolute claims, instead showing how regional differences, race and gender dynamics, or shifting political coalitions altered the character of developments.
Comparative Themes to Consider
When developing comparative arguments for Period 7, key thematic lenses include:
1. Reform Ideologies and Outcomes
Consider how different reform movements responded to instability, corruption, or inequality. Useful comparison points include:
Motivations (moral, economic, political).
Methods (grassroots activism, legislative lobbying, federal intervention).
Scope of impact, especially regarding long-term institutional changes.
These elements help illustrate why some reforms succeeded while others were limited by political resistance or structural constraints.
2. Migration, Culture, and Identity
Comparing internal and international migration patterns shows how demographic change shaped national debates over identity.
For migration and culture, you might compare the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South with 1920s immigration restriction and World War II–era population shifts.
Map showing African American urban population growth during the Great Migration, highlighting northern and western urban shifts. The 1940–1970 panel extends beyond Period 7 but provides context for long-term migration trends. Source.
The Great Migration altered political dynamics in northern cities.
Immigration from southern and eastern Europe prompted nativist resistance and new quota laws.
Migration contributed to cultural movements like the Harlem Renaissance, which reshaped American artistic expression.
These developments provide opportunities to compare cultural responses to demographic transformation.
3. America’s Changing Global Role
Foreign policy in Period 7 evolved from imperial expansion to wartime leadership. Students can compare:
The motivation behind imperialism versus the rationale for entering World War I and World War II.
Public debates over isolationism, international engagement, and collective security.
How war mobilization reinforced domestic reforms and altered the federal-state relationship.
Comparisons should highlight how global events influenced domestic policy and vice versa.
Building Strong Comparative Arguments
Effective comparisons in Period 7 should:
Identify at least two developments clearly and explicitly.
Describe similarities, differences, and historical significance.
Explain why those similarities or differences existed, using contextual evidence.
Corroborate claims with multiple types of evidence while qualifying arguments to show nuance.
Strong arguments connect developments across decades, demonstrating how the United States responded to industrialization, migration, economic crisis, and global conflict in interrelated ways.
Economic crises like the Great Depression, and the federal response represented by the New Deal, are ideal cases for comparing how policymakers addressed instability, unemployment, and social distress over time.
Farm Security Administration photograph showing the human impact of Depression-era migration and poverty. The image illustrates the social pressures that helped shape demands for federal relief and reform. Source.
For foreign policy and war, you might compare U.S. entry into World War I with the far larger mobilization and global leadership role the United States assumed in World War II.
World map depicting Allied, Axis, and neutral participants in World War II, illustrating the conflict’s global scale. This visual context helps students compare America’s shifting international position between major wars. Source.
FAQ
Historians select developments for comparison by identifying shared themes, such as reform, migration, economic change, or war, and determining whether these developments responded to similar pressures or produced related outcomes.
They also consider whether the developments overlap in chronology or reflect broader national or international patterns.
Comparable developments must illuminate how or why historical change occurred, rather than simply coexisting in time.
Context that alters comparisons often includes:
• Regional variation, particularly between the urban North and rural South
• Shifting political coalitions and party priorities
• Differences in federal capacity at various moments
• Changing social attitudes regarding race, immigration, and gender
These contextual elements can significantly modify how similar developments operated or were experienced by different groups.
Reform movements often pursued overlapping goals but emerged from different constituencies and ideological assumptions.
Qualification helps avoid attributing uniform motivations or outcomes to diverse reformers, allowing distinctions between grassroots activism, expert-driven policymaking, and crisis-driven government intervention.
It also clarifies why some reforms succeeded nationally while others remained local or faced strong opposition.
Comparing developments across the full span of Period 7 helps reveal patterns that are not visible when examining events in isolation.
It allows historians to trace how earlier debates over industrialisation, federal power, and America’s role abroad influenced later responses to depression or global war.
Long-range comparison also highlights which changes were temporary responses to crises and which marked enduring structural shifts.
Evidence that captures lived experience is especially valuable, including letters, newspapers, oral histories, photography, and demographic data.
Such sources help clarify how economic policy, migration, or war affected different communities unevenly.
When used alongside legislative records or political speeches, they enable richer comparisons of how national developments were experienced at the local and personal level.
Practice Questions
Question 1 (1–3 marks)
Identify one reason why historians use corroboration when comparing major developments in Period 7 (1890–1945), and explain how this strengthens a comparative argument.
Mark scheme:
• 1 mark for identifying a valid reason (e.g., to verify claims, to reduce bias, to confirm patterns across sources).
• 1 mark for explaining how corroboration enhances accuracy or reliability in comparison.
• 1 mark for linking corroboration specifically to comparing developments in Period 7 (e.g., differing interpretations of Progressivism, migration, or US global involvement).
Question 2 (4–6 marks)
Compare how economic change and foreign policy developments shaped government decision-making in the United States during Period 7 (1890–1945). Use specific historical evidence to support your answer.
Mark scheme:
• 1–2 marks for identifying relevant examples of economic change (e.g., industrial growth, Great Depression, New Deal).
• 1–2 marks for identifying relevant examples of foreign policy developments (e.g., imperialism, World War I, World War II).
• 1 mark for making at least one clear comparative statement (similarities or differences) about their influence on government action.
• 1 mark for supporting the comparison with specific, accurate evidence drawn from the period.
