To compare accounts, find where they agree, where they differ, and what in their provenance might explain the difference. Keep each claim attached to the person who made it.
This lesson follows locating a topic by theatre and dates and uses the method from evidence and source interpretation.
Why does provenance matter in a comparison?
Two accounts can describe one event and still differ, because their authors stood in different places and wrote for different readers. If you merge them into one story, you lose the evidence for why they differ. If you only describe them one after another, you have not compared at all.
A good comparison sentence contains both sources and a link word: “Source A says…, whereas Source B says…, which may be because…”.
The method in four steps
- Provenance for each source: author, date, audience, form.
- Agreement: one point where both support the same claim.
- Difference: one point where they disagree or one is silent.
- Explanation: link the difference to provenance or purpose, and say what you cannot tell.
Worked example
Both extracts are invented for practice and concern an invented harbour town.
Source A (invented practice extract). Diary of a shop assistant in Port Merrin, written the morning after an air raid in 1941. “The siren went at ten. I ran to the cellar with the neighbours’ children. The fires by the quay lit the whole street red. I have never been so frightened, and I do not know how the fire crews managed.”
Source B (invented practice extract). Report by the town’s civil defence officer to the district authority, 1941. “Raid began at 22.05. Fires on the quay were under control by 01.30. Shelters were used in an orderly way. Two warehouses were lost. No panic was observed.”
Question: Compare the two sources on how the town coped with the raid.
Provenance: A is a private diary by a civilian who was sheltering. B is an official report by an officer to a superior body.
Agreement: both say there were fires on the quay and that people used shelters.
Difference: A stresses fear and uncertainty (“never been so frightened”). B stresses order and control (“no panic was observed”, “under control”).
Explanation: the diarist wrote privately about her own feelings, so fear is natural to include. The officer wrote to be accountable for his work, so he may stress order. Neither is invented by the other. Each is a true record of what its author chose to say.
Conclusion: the sources do not contradict each other as much as they answer different questions. A tells us how it felt in one cellar. B tells us how the response was reported officially. To judge “how the town coped” we would want more sources.
The mistake to watch for
Mistaken answer: “Source B is more reliable because it is an official report, so the town coped well.”
Two errors sit here. Being official does not make a source automatically reliable, because the report also has a purpose.
The second error is that the conclusion goes beyond what one report can show. The correction is to say what B reliably shows (times, what was damaged, what the officer reported) and what it may leave out (how individuals felt).
Check yourself
1. Give one point on which Sources A and B agree.
Show answer
Both mention fires on the quay, and both indicate that people sheltered during the raid.
2. Which words in Source B suggest a possible purpose, and what might that purpose be?
Show answer
“Under control”, “orderly” and “No panic was observed”. They may show that the officer wanted to report that the response had worked, since he was writing to a superior body.
3. Rewrite this comparison so it keeps provenance: “A and B say different things about the raid.”
Show answer
“Source A, a private diary by a civilian, stresses fear, whereas Source B, an official report, stresses order. This may be because the diarist wrote about her own feelings and the officer wrote to account for his work.”
Where this leads next
Next, explain a documented development using several sources, where comparison becomes a single supported explanation. For wider practice, use the integrated set.
Comparison is easier to improve when someone asks you “so what?” after each point. Our online one-to-one History tuition can do that with source sets that match your syllabus.