Significance is the analytical question of whether and why a historical event, development, or individual mattered. It is not the same as asking whether something happened or what it caused — it is asking about its importance, which requires a comparative and evaluative judgement. Most A-level questions are ultimately significance questions, even when they do not use the word.
Criteria for assessing significance
Historians use several criteria to assess significance. The most useful for A-level analysis:
- Consequences. How significant were the effects? Did the event change the direction of history, or would things have unfolded similarly without it?
- Scale. How many people were affected? Over what geographic area? Over what time period?
- Change vs continuity. Did the event mark a genuine turning point, or did it leave existing structures largely intact?
- Contemporaries’ perception. Did people at the time regard it as significant? How did their perception of significance shape what came next?
- Subsequent reputation. How has the event been remembered and used — in politics, in culture, in historical argument? Significance can be constructed retrospectively as well as inherent in the event itself.
How to use it in an answer
When assessing the significance of a factor, event, or individual, use one or more of these criteria explicitly rather than simply asserting that something was ‘very significant’ or ‘crucial’. ‘The Suez Crisis was significant not primarily because of its immediate military outcome but because it demonstrated conclusively the limits of British independent great-power action and accelerated the domestic political context in which decolonisation became viable’ is a significance claim with specific criteria. ‘Suez was a very important event’ is not.
Further reading: Causation · Continuity and Change
← Back to Key Concepts
