Evaluation is the move that separates description from analysis in AO3 work. Most students can summarise a historian’s argument reasonably well. Fewer can evaluate it — assess its strengths, identify its limits, explain what it accounts for and what it cannot, and reach a view about its overall persuasiveness. This page explains the analytical moves that constitute evaluation and how to deploy them in an answer.
The five evaluative moves
1. Assess the evidence base
What evidence does the historian rely on? Is it strong? Is it representative? Is it the only possible reading of that evidence? Conquest’s estimates of Stalinist death tolls, written before Soviet archives opened, were based on incomplete evidence — a genuine limitation that later archival work exposed, though it also confirmed much of what he had argued. Assessing the evidence base is often the most powerful evaluative move because it goes to the foundations of the argument.
2. Test the argument against counter-evidence
What evidence does the interpretation struggle to explain? Intentionalist accounts of the Holocaust, which emphasise Hitler’s consistent long-term programme, are tested by the absence of a written order from Hitler authorising the Final Solution. This does not disprove intentionalism, but it requires intentionalists to explain why no such document exists — and that explanation introduces complexity the simple intentionalist model does not handle well.
3. Consider the historian’s context
When and why was the interpretation produced? Cold War American historians writing in the 1950s were unlikely to produce sympathetic accounts of Soviet foreign policy; revisionist historians writing in the 1960s amid Vietnam disillusionment were unlikely to produce sympathetic accounts of American foreign policy. Understanding the context in which an interpretation was produced helps you assess whether the argument is being shaped by evidence or by the historian’s own assumptions and circumstances. This is not a reason to dismiss the argument — all historians work from within a context — but it is a reason to read it critically.
4. Compare with competing interpretations
How does the interpretation stand up against the best alternative? An evaluation that only engages with one view is weaker than one that considers how two or more interpretations handle the same evidence differently. The point is not to declare a winner mechanically but to show that you understand what is actually at stake in the debate — what evidence or question drives the disagreement, and what would be needed to resolve it.
5. Reach a qualified conclusion
Evaluation without a conclusion is incomplete. After weighing the strengths and weaknesses, you need to deliver a judgement: is the interpretation convincing? In what respects? What does it capture that other interpretations miss? What are its blind spots? The conclusion should be qualified — ‘Conquest’s totalitarian model is persuasive in its account of Stalin’s personal agency but overstates the degree of central direction’ is better than either ‘Conquest is right’ or ‘Conquest is wrong’.
Useful evaluative phrases
These are not templates to copy mechanically — they are sentence-openers that can prompt the evaluative move if you are stuck:
- This interpretation is persuasive in its account of… but struggles to explain…
- The strength of this argument lies in… its limitation is that…
- [Historian]’s reliance on [type of evidence] means that…
- Writing in [period/context], [historian] was shaped by… which may account for…
- This view is challenged by [counter-evidence or rival interpretation], which suggests…
- The most convincing element of this interpretation is… because…
- Taken together, the evidence suggests that [historian]’s argument captures… but overstates…
What evaluation is not
- Not dismissal. ‘This interpretation is biased because the historian was a Marxist’ is not evaluation. All historians have a perspective; that does not invalidate their work. The question is whether the argument is supported by evidence and logic.
- Not balance for its own sake. ‘On the one hand… on the other hand…’ without a conclusion is not evaluation. You must weigh and decide, not just list opposing views.
- Not a summary with the word ‘however’. Summary + however + another summary = description. The evaluative move comes after the summary, not instead of it.
