A documentary/editing exercise on a primary document

    This assignment is an exercise in choosing, editing, and introducing a historical document.  The assignment requires you first to find a suitable primary document, that is, a first-hand historical source, such as a letter, an eyewitness account, an autobiography, a diplomatic document, a contemporary pamphlet, etc. The document must pertain to the era of the French Revolution and Napoleon.  You must okay the document with me before you try to do the assignment.
            Next, you will want to study the document to make sure you know what it means, to what events or matters it refers, what knowledge it assumes, to whom or for whom it was written, and any other elements which would assist you in drawing on the document for historical knowledge. 
            You will then annotate the document, that is, choose a number of spots in the paper which require elucidation to make sense to the average educated reader.  This might be a really archaic word (but look it up to make sure it is archaic. The Oxford English Dictionary will tell you that). It could be a first name (e.g.--"Freddie told me yesterday that the French were massing troops in Alsace"--find out who Freddie was an add the note: Freddie was Home Office official Archibald Frederick Portswaddle). It could be a foreign word or sentence--translate it clearly however you can. It could be an unusual or technical phrase: "We are all working hard here at the stope-face"--explain this.  Etc. Etc.

         Choose a section with 15 or more such points. You must annotate consecutively; that is, in the section of your document you choose to annotate, don't skip anything that needs annotating.  If you can’t find what something refers to, give that a number and say, “I  tried to find this and couldn’t.” 

         On the copy, mark those spots with a superscript, and write an endnote or footnote which supplies the information necessary to make it intelligible. Don't just restate or explain. Add information, enough to help the average reader make sense of the document.

         Each annotation should include the source or sources which you used to write the footnote.  These sources must be solid sources, not of the anonymous internet type. You may of course use Wikipedia to help you figure it out, but you must find solid sources which confirm your Wikipedia info.
            Finally, write a short (at least 600-word) introduction which will serve to introduce the document to the general reader, put it into its historical context, and perhaps point out interesting or useful points about the document.  You should use at least three solid sources as a basis for this Intro.  No anonymous internet sources may be among your three. Also, keep these notes separate from your annotations/editing of the document.
            Put the whole package together:  title page (no page number--and the first page of text is page 1), introduction, the annotated document (with numbered superscripts marked in the text), and the corresponding explanatory notes or annotations, typed consecutively.
           You should put all this in one document so as to turn it in via Turnitin.com.

           
            You should either choose a document which will require at least 15 notes or simply use an excerpt of some longer document.  In other words, don't just pick and choose the spots for annotation:  annotate everything that you think needs it--up to 15. If the document contains more than fifteen, just annotate a section or excerpt which contains fifteen notes. Also, please give, with each note, the source of your information. 
            You should create footnotes for the citations you used for the Intro, then list the endnotes for the annotation separately.
                  In your introduction, DO NOT USE INTERNAL CITATION SUCH AS MLA STYLE.  All references should be in the footnote/endnote style.  Please see the following site for a complete description of footnote style:
 
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

Please Note:  bibliography style and footnote/endnote style take slightly different forms. Please make your notes correspond exactly to the patterns given by the Chicago Manual of Style.

 General

Your Intro must be double-spaced--not space-and-a-half or single-spaced. 

You may not use Wikipedia or any other internet source whose author and date we don't know. I would certainly use Wikipedia as a launching point, but your sources must be published sources, either hard copy or firm, vouched-for journal articles (such as those you find on JSTOR), or clearly solid academic sites which publish material whose authors and dates are given.

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Annotated Bibliography

First, if you do not already use a digital bibliographic program on your computer, look at the page for a bibliography program called Zotero.
        https://www.zotero.org/
Download it for free. It can be used for any discipline, but it was written by and for historians at George Mason University.  I recommend it highly. It is very flexible, and it will make your life easier.

              *  *  *  *  *  *

This will be a full-fledged Annotated Bibliography. It should look like this in outline:

Cover page
Introduction to the topic (two solid paragraphs)
Bibliography
        Primary Documents
        Secondary Documents
    (divided by these headings)
Conclusion (short paragraph summing up the topic as shaped by the sources you list)

Each entry in either category must include full bibliographical information in The Chicago Manual of Style format for "Notes and Bibliography." The Chicago Manual of Style is reflected and explained in many sites on the internet, but the simplest reference page is the one maintained by The Chicago Manual of Style itself:
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

Annotations:  After each bibliographical entry, you must write a short annotation of 3 or 4 lines in length, explaining how this source supports the understanding of the topic you have chosen. There is no set format for these annotations, but after perusing (not necessarily reading thoroughly) all your documents, you should be able to form some idea of how each might help in telling the story and doing the analysis you intend to do.

In your Annotated Bibliography, you must tell me how your primary sources make the study possible in the conclusion or in the annotations themselves.

How many sources?  There is no one answer. For some topics you might have a list of a dozen primary and a dozen secondary sources. For some, you could write a paper based on many fewer. But one way or another, your bibliography must contain some solid primary sources and several secondary sources.  This does not count encyclopedia entries (unless you are using one of the specialized historical encyclopedias in the reference section of Abell Library--those are good historical secondary sources, usually).  Internet sources MUST be taken from legitimate, clearly acceptable sites.  You MUST give full information for internet sources, including author, organization, URL, date, etc.  If any of these items is unavailable, then you may not use it as a source for your paper.