So far you have based your writing on source fragments as opposed to complete sources of a more extensive (and therefore more complex and interesting) nature.  In this third paper your task is to choose one of the topics listed below and use Mafeking Diary or Daughter of the River to approach one of the historical questions/problems I have outlined below.  You have now had the chance to use primary sources to describe a particular context, so it should come as no surprise that in this paper some additional skills will be coming into play.  In addition to using the source or sources you choose to describe a particular historical context, each of the questions below asks you to analyze the biases of your chosen source and incorporate that information into your analysis.  You are also going to be asked not just to talk generally about how a force or forces caused change but rather to recreate or reconstruct how a particular facet of the society you are examining functioned based on source analysis.

Your essay should be three to four pages in length, typed and double-spaced.  You should also use standard margins, and 12 pt. Courier or Times New Roman font.  In addition, you must document what you write with footnotes.  For more on footnoting and some tips on writing historical essays, see as before the general guidelines for writing section of the course syllabus. And now....on to the topics for Daughter of the River and Mafeking Diary:

First, Mafeking Diary:

1. In both Mafeking Diary people from very different ethnic backgrounds interact with one another and, more often than not, come into conflict with one another.  Write an essay in which you analyze the judgments that different groups had of one another, how the individuals and groups involved expressed these judgments and what impact they had.  Again, be sure to incorporate an analysis of the biases of your source(s) in your paper.

2. In Mafeking Diary Sol Plaatje spends a lot of time describing and analyzing the strategy and tactics employed by the military forces at the siege of Mafeking.  As you can tell, in many ways the Boer War was a guerilla war and as such civilians were often involved as much as the military units proper.  In a battle like that for Mafeking the involvement of the civilians was obviously inevitable, though perhaps not to the extent that Sol Plaatje's diary suggests.  Based on the source fragments included by Plaatje and on Plaatje's own observations of what took place, was the Boer War as it unfolded in and around Mafeking within or outside of acceptable norms for that time for wartime conduct?  In your answer be sure to account of the inherent biases of your source.

3. In a cogent essay of three to four pages, respond to the following assertion on the part of the Magistrate of Mafeking that the Boer War, "was a white man's war, and .... His Majesty's white troops would do all the fighting and protect the territories of the chief."  Remember, you must provide evidence from Sol Plaatje's Mafeking Diary for the position you choose and you must provide a detailed analysis of the assertions veracity based on that evidence.  Again, remember that your source is written by a particular individual with a particular pespective.

4. Analyze the role of news and propaganda in the siege of Mafeking using Sol Plaatje's Mafeking Diary.  Remember, as with the other topics, to account for the biases inherent to your source.
 

. . . . .Now to Daughter of the River:

Unlike any of the previous sources on which you have been basing your essays, Daughter of the River is an autobiography.  As such it affords you a unique opportunity to see how one individual lived through a particular period in history, in this case post-World War II China, 1962-1989.  Given that this autobiography only presents one person's perspective, however, it also naturally has certain biases.  Using the information you find in Worlds of History and what you read in Daughter of the River, compare and contrast Hong Ying's experiences of one of the following with what was happening outside of China at the same time: 1) women's social position and freedoms or 2) the ending of unchallenged western dominance in the post-World War II era.  In your essay be sure to note the biases of Hong Ying's biography and of the other sources on which you choose to draw.