Primary Sources and Historians for AQA A Level History Coursework

Hi everyone!

I've put off my coursework for Year 1 but I've got lots of free time and I'm excited to start my coursework seriously. My topic is on the First Three Crusades and my title will be 'Crusading Motivations: Religion, Politics or Personal Gain (1095-1193)'. I've currently got my first Source (Pope Urban II's speech calling for the First Crusade) but I'm kind of stumped regarding finding my historians. Can anyone give me some helpful info regarding finding historians and/or point me in the right direction? Thanks so much!

Reply 1

J.W.O

For both Primary and secondary I would advise books and scholarly articles. For books, usually you should go to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade) at the bottom of the page is the Bibliography section these books are good places to get started. Definitely, do not read them all. check online resources like https://openlibrary.org/ and https://www.pdfdrive.com/crusades-books.html to see if the books are available for free. Try to find relevant sections and excerpts instead of reading an entire book. For scholarly articles, use https://www.jstor.org/ (if you have access to it, if you dont find somewhere online that'll give you acsess). These will all be secondary sources, however they should all cite primary sources that you can also use when doing your coursework.

Good luck!

Reply 2

ithinkimacontra

Hi, I know this is a little late but if you're still looking for sources I highly recommend Fordham College's sourcebooks, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/sbook1k.asp They usually contain both Primary sources and historian's interpretations