The last post on the Annual Theme

I let a few posts get in between, but now it’s time to conclude my trio of blog posts on the annual theme, Debate and Diplomacy in History: Successes, Failures, Consequences.

We’ve already defined debate and diplomacy in broad sweeping terms, which will enable you to explore many different events and people in history for your topics. Yay!

Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. You know, the part AFTER the colon: Successes, Failures, Consequences. I am tempted to say that these words are some of the most important in this annual theme. Why? Because they will help you explore the historical SIGNIFICANCE of your topic, which is a critical part of any History Day project.

Say you have a topic idea, and you’ve figured out how it incorporates a debate and/or diplomacy (Remember what I said about trying to incorporate both debate and diplomacy? Good!). Your first step is done. The next step is crafting questions that help you learn more about the impact of your topic. This is where the second part of the theme comes in. If debate and diplomacy are the cause, then successes, failures, and consequences are the effect. Were the debate and/or diplomacy a SUCCESS or a FAILURE? What were the short and long term CONSEQUENCES of the debate and/or diplomacy?

These should be the three key questions that guide your research. They will also undoubtedly help you craft your thesis statement when the time comes. I am going to get more into analysis and writing thesis statements later, so I am going to leave this train of thought here for the time being.

But before I go, I need to stress the last prepositional phrase from the annual theme: “in History.” I can’t overestimate how important this is. Your topic MUST be historical and CAN NOT be a current event. How can you tell the difference? Well, we generally say that a topic should be at least one generation – or 30 years – old before it is considered historical. Why? In order to understand the impact of an event, we need to have some historical perspective, and perspective comes only after time. It’s only been nine years since the attacks on September 11, 2001, and historians and political scientists already have many different views on its significance. If you ask me, it is still too early to tell, which is WHY there are so many different ideas floating around.

So, remember to pick a HISTORICAL topic. If you are interested in, say, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that’s going on today, why not look back in time at another oil spill? It will help give you some perspective on the issue we face today.