Evidence is not decoration. Dropping facts into an essay — dates, statistics, names, events — does not constitute historical analysis. Evidence earns marks when it is used to support a specific claim: when the connection between the fact and the argument is made explicit. The difference between a mediocre essay and a strong one is often not the volume of evidence but how it is deployed.
Evidence that describes vs evidence that argues
Here is the same piece of evidence used in two ways:
Descriptive use: During the Great Terror, between 1936 and 1938, approximately 750,000 people were executed and over a million sent to the GulagGulag Full Description:The government agency that administered the vast network of forced labor camps. Far more than just a prison system, it was a central component of the Soviet economy, using slave labor to extract resources from the most inhospitable regions of the country. The Gulag system institutionalized political repression. Millions of “enemies of the people”—ranging from political dissidents and intellectuals to petty criminals—were arrested and transported to camps to work in mining, timber, and construction.
Critical Perspective:Critically, the Gulag was an economic necessity for the Stalinist system. The “Economic Miracle” of the Soviet Union relied heavily on this reservoir of unpaid, coerced labor to complete dangerous infrastructure projects that free labor would not undertake. It signifies the ultimate reduction of the human being to a unit of production, to be worked until exhaustion and then replaced.
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That sentence is accurate and specific. But it is just a fact sitting on the page. It does not make any claim about what the terror was, why it happened, or what it demonstrates about the question being answered.
Analytical use: The scale of the Great Terror — approximately 750,000 executions and over a million Gulag sentences between 1936 and 1938 — undermines any purely functional account of the purges. A campaign that consumed much of the Red Army officer corps, the industrial management cadre, and the party leadership itself was not efficiently eliminating genuine threats; it was generating chaos. This supports Getty’s argument that the terror spiralled beyond any rational intention into something that served StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More’s political needs rather than the Soviet state’s security ones.
The second version uses the same statistics but does something with them: connects them to a historiographical debate, deploys them against a specific interpretation, and advances an argument about the nature of the terror.
The three-part move
A reliable way to structure the use of evidence within a paragraph is the three-part move: claim — evidence — analysis.
- Claim. Open with the analytical point you are making — the argument you are advancing in this paragraph.
- Evidence. Provide the specific detail that supports the claim — a date, a statistic, an event, a historian’s argument.
- Analysis. Explain what the evidence shows — why it supports your claim, what it implies, how it relates to the question.
This is not a formula to follow mechanically. But it captures the logical shape of analytical writing: you are not just reporting evidence, you are using it to build a case.
Specificity matters
Vague evidence is weak evidence. Compare:
The Depression caused mass unemployment in Germany.
With:
Unemployment in Germany rose from 1.3 million in 1929 to over 6 million by early 1932, with unofficial estimates suggesting closer to 8 million when part-time and informal workers are included.
The second version is more persuasive not because it has more numbers but because the specificity signals genuine knowledge and makes the scale of the crisis concrete. Specific evidence is also harder to argue with, which is why it supports claims more convincingly than vague assertions.
How much evidence do you need?
You do not need to include every fact you know. One well-deployed, specific piece of evidence that is properly integrated into an argument earns more than five facts that sit unanalysed on the page. Resist the temptation to list everything you know about a topic. Select the evidence that most directly supports the specific claim you are making in that paragraph, and use it carefully.
Using historians as evidence
Historians’ arguments can be used as evidence, but the same principle applies: naming a historian is not analysis. Saying “Intentionalists like Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Hitler planned the Holocaust from the beginning” is description. Analysis requires you to engage with the argument: to assess its strengths, identify its weaknesses, consider what evidence supports or undermines it, and use it to advance your own position. See How to Use Interpretations in Your Answer for how to do this with historiographical material.
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