History IA Question help?

[Philomena]

Hi there! I've been struggling quite a lot in finding a specific topic to write about for my history IA. I've narrowed it down to these topics:

•Aztec empire (specifically focusing on what caused it's collapse, such as the Spaniard's military tactics for example)

• Fidel Castro's involvement in women's rights 

• Cesar chavez tactics to gain recognition of the importance of farm workers

• CIA's involvement in the Chilean coup d'etat (I've seen another person on the forum do the same topic. So I don't know how to change it up if I were to pick this topic)

Essentially what I'm asking is which topic has the most potential to work for the IA? And how should I formulate the question?

 

 

[AndresLopez]

The best option is to pick a topic you've studied recently, so you have more background knowledge. You should also choose the one that interests you the most, as you will have to read lots of pages about the same topic over and over again. You should create a very specific question for your IA. If you try to cover too much, you will not be able to explore your topic in depth and will not do well. The easiest way to narrow down topics to a specific question is to choose a time period (don't try to cover decades or a century, focus on a few years), a "protagonist" (a specific person/association/country) an action the protagonist did and an effect/consequence you'd like to analyse.

[Philomena]

21 hours ago, AndresLopez said:

The easiest way to narrow down topics to a specific question is to choose a time period (don't try to cover decades or a century, focus on a few years), a "protagonist" (a specific person/association/country) an action the protagonist did and an effect/consequence you'd like to analyse.

Thank you for replying. Although, how would you go about creating a question that doesn't have a clear cut answer to it? That can have multiple possible answers to it. Or does that depend on the topic chosen?

Edited August 4, 2018 by Philomena
grammar

[AndresLopez]

Most questions will not have a clear cut answer; for example, if you are looking at Fidel's Castro involvement with women's rights its you might want to think about differing degrees of involvement/ in what form (indirect/direct) /what was the biggest outcome (these are all subjective judgements!).

If you are really struggling I would suggest looking at topics from different historical perspectives and make the questions based around degree of influence/causes etc. 

Hope this helps!