Who are the producers of history in different eras? Credibility, legitimacy, context and purpose (New key question in the 2024 History Extension syllabus)
“Who are the producers of history in different eras? The credibility and legitimacy of producers; the identity of particular producers; the context in which they worked; their aims and purposes and the works they produced”
From the 2027 HSC, key question two asks "Who are the producers of history in different eras?" instead of "Who are historians?". Cover credibility and legitimacy, identity, context, and aims and works for named producers, and compare their authority across eras.
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What this dot point is asking
The second key question of the 2024 syllabus is "Who are the producers of history in different eras?" It reworks the 2017 question "Who are historians?". NESA lists the credibility and legitimacy of producers, the identity of particular producers, the context in which they worked, and their aims, purposes and works. The case study component asks you to examine producers and their perspectives for the one case study you choose.
Not everyone who tells the past is a university historian, and the people we trust to tell it have changed from age to age. This question asks you to look at who was making history in an era, why people accepted them, what pressures shaped them and what they were trying to do.
The answer
Argue about who counted as a credible, legitimate producer in each era, using named producers, their context, their aims and what they produced.
Credibility and legitimacy
Credibility is whether an audience believes a producer, and legitimacy is whether they are accepted as having the right to speak. These can come from eyewitness experience, religious or state authority, scholarly training and method, community membership or public reach. Compare the basis of authority across eras, for example a participant-observer in the ancient world with an archive-trained academic in the nineteenth century and an online creator today.
Identity
Name specific producers and say who they were: their background, role and place. Identity includes gender, class, nationality, faith, community and profession, and it shows whose voices were included or excluded from history.
Context
Link each producer to the circumstances of their work: political events, patronage, the available sources and technology, and the audience they expected. Context explains choices without excusing weak evidence.
Aims, purposes and works
State what the producer was trying to do and name the work. Then connect aim to form: a state chronicle, a monograph, an oral history project, a museum display or a documentary.
Using it for your case study
For Question 2, choose two or three producers connected to your case study and place each on this frame. The syllabus pairs producers with their perspectives, so a comparison of why two producers disagree is usually stronger than a description of each.
- Listing historians without analysis
- Compare their authority and context.
- Assuming only academics are producers
- The syllabus wording is wider.
- Ignoring era
- Each point should be tied to a period.
Use a four-part check for each producer: who, when and where, why believed, and what they aimed to do. Then end by comparing two producers on credibility.
Practice questions
Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.
foundation3 marksExplain why the 2024 syllabus speaks of producers of history rather than historians.Show worked solution →
The wider term. "Producers" takes in anyone who makes history for an audience, including professional academics, but also chroniclers, memoirists, journalists, film makers, curators and online creators.
Why it matters. It lets you ask who is accepted as a credible producer in a given era and who is not, instead of assuming the professional historian is the only kind.
Marker's note: one mark for the wider range, one for an example outside academia, one for linking to credibility or legitimacy.
exam10 marksEvaluate how the context in which producers worked shaped the history they produced. Refer to producers from at least two eras.Show worked solution →
- Thesis
- Context shaped both the questions producers asked and the evidence they could use, but strong producers also worked against their context.
- Era 1
- Ancient historians such as Thucydides wrote from personal involvement in events and for an audience of political actors, which shaped his focus on war and politics. Link the producer, the situation and the work.
- Era 2
- A twentieth-century social historian such as E.P. Thompson wrote in a period of expanding access to higher education and political interest in working-class life. That context supported his turn to the lives of ordinary people and the use of non-elite sources.
- Evaluation
- Context explains a great deal, yet producers in the same era wrote very different histories, so context is a condition, not a cause that decides everything. Credibility rests on how well the producer used evidence within their context.
Marker's note: reward a sustained judgement, two named producers with specific works, and a limit placed on the claim.