You will write a critical review of a source in this case a history book – Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age
The review should summarise and evaluate the source in order to decide whether it is trustworthy or not, and whether it should be used by historians to inform their research.
Your review should include reference to at least one primary source and 8 scholarly articles
Structure:
Your review should have a title page. The title of the review should be connected to the book/article you have read and include a proper Harvard citation.
You may want to divide your review into sections that explain parts of your analysis.
A suggested structure for a critical review is the following:
Introduction: briefly explain the purpose of your review, the topic of the text and include a brief statement of your evaluation of the text
Summary: summarise the text, e.g. present the main ideas, discuss its important points, including the evidence the text uses to support its main argument
Evaluation: organise each point you select into a paragraph, including your negative and positive points, checking authors’ ideas and biases, and making sure that your judgments or opinions are well supported by evidence from the original text and other sources.
Conclusion: restate your overall opinions of the text (avoiding repetition).
All key points should be clearly presented by evidence; quotations and references to other works should be accurately cited and different historians’ viewpoints represented.
All words or ideas from other sources must be fully cited. Use footnotes in the appropriate format.
The review should include a ‘works cited’ page with full citations of any sources used at the end of the review.
I’ve uploaded a structure sample below, no plaigarism please and feel free to ask questions.