Reading a Primary Source: the HIPP Habit

What sourcing is actually for

The document-based question does not ask you to summarise documents. It asks you to use them, and it awards a separate point for sourcing: for at least two documents you must explain how the historical situation, intended audience, purpose or point of view is relevant to the argument.

The last five words carry the point. Naming a bias earns nothing. Saying what that bias does to the evidence earns everything.

The four handles

• H — historical situation: what was happening around the author when this was written? A merchant's letter from 1348 sits inside a plague year.
• I — intended audience: who was meant to read it? A court chronicle written for the ruler will not record the ruler's defeats.
• P — purpose: what was the author trying to make happen? Persuade, justify, record, sell, recruit.
• P — point of view: what position does the author occupy — class, religion, office, gender, distance from events?

What Unit 1 sources look like

Expect travellers who are outsiders (Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo), officials writing upward (Song memorials, Byzantine chronicles), religious authorities defining correct practice (Zhu Xi on Neo-Confucian ethics), and legal or administrative texts (Magna Carta, tax registers). Each type has a predictable distortion, and the distortion is the material you write about.