Enrichment – Russia’s most unruly ruler ?

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Mr Kydd

282e200000000000Year Thirteen,

Great to all of you at History Society today. We will finish off Ivan the Terrible next week. Perhaps Empress Anna Ioannovna was not so brutal, but this article suggests that she was certainly more of a party girl; as well as another true autocratic ruler.

“On March 8, a coup d’état headed by Anna’s most trusted retainers rounded up members of the Supreme Privy Council. Anna shredded the contracts before their eyes, and sentenced them all to death or exile. With the power of the Russian throne consolidated, Anna was officially crowned Empress of Russia on April 28, 1730. Empress Anna was protective of her newfound position to the point of paranoia. This led to the dreaded revival of the Secret Search Chancellery. A secret police force beholden only to Anna herself, they bore full authority to kill or torture any political opponents to the throne.”

How does all this relate to our A Level course ? Well, think about our timeline today. Perhaps repression was the only way to effectively rule this “prison of peoples”.

Mr Kydd.

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Obituary – Ernst Nolte

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Mr Kydd

41a5a2bf-9f33-464b-b8c1-896a93cd535fIf you click here you will get to Tony Barber’s obituary for Ernst Nolte. I have included an extract below. Read the article and see if you agree with him.

“On Friday June 6 1986 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a West German newspaper, devoted three columns of its prestigious feuilleton , or culture section, to a provocative essay under the headline: “The past that will not pass away.” Written by Ernst Nolte, a conservative professor at the Free University of Berlin with a taste for breaking taboos, the article contended that Nazism and the mass murder of European Jews should be understood not as historical episodes with uniquely German roots but as a reaction to the 1917 Russian Revolution and the murderous excesses of Soviet communism.

The article by Nolte, who has died aged 93, sparked arguably the most blistering intellectual controversy in West Germany’s 1949-1990 existence. Known as the Historikerstreit (historians’ dispute), this debate addressed supremely sensitive questions such as the degree to which Germans bore collective guilt or responsibility for the Nazis’ atrocities, and whether the Nazi legacy was to burden the national identity for ever.”

Mr Kydd.

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Today’s presentation – Year Thirteen

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Mr Kydd

josef-stalin-009All,

A warm welcome back – it was lovely to see you all again today. If you click here then you will get to today’s presentation. It should be very useful in showing the skills and weightings of the papers at A2 standard.

Mr Kydd.

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Enrichment – DNA testing has for the first time confirmed the identity of the bacteria behind London’s Great Plague.

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Mr Kydd

paul_furst_der_doctor_schnabel_von_rom_hollander_versionIf you click here you will get to a BBC report on the causes of the 1665 plague outbreak. It states that;

“DNA testing has for the first time confirmed the identity of the bacteria behind London’s Great Plague.  The plague of 1665-1666 was the last major outbreak of bubonic plague in Britain, killing nearly a quarter of London’s population. It’s taken a year to confirm initial findings from a suspected Great Plague burial pit during excavation work on the Crossrail site at Liverpool Street. About 3,500 burials have been uncovered during excavation of the site. Testing in Germany confirmed the presence of DNA from the Yersinia pestisbacterium – the agent that causes bubonic plague – rather than another pathogen. Some authors have previously questioned the identity of pathogens behind historical outbreaks attributed to plague.”

This might not be as conclusive as it first seems however. Some diseases then were not as deadly as today. Smallpox, which Queen Elizabeth contracted in 1562,  for example was not the killer it later became. Thus, some historians accept that the dead had come into contact with the bubonic plague, but still argue that there was another killer.

If you  want to know more, then you might like to read Susan Scott’s “The return of the Black Death as a good starter.

Mr Kydd.

 

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Enrichment – something to watch – Understanding Stonehenge

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Mr Kydd

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Obituary – John Bossy

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Mr Kydd

f39ab74b-3176-4782-a28f-100f58736be3-1360x2040Year Twelve,

Apologies – this news passed me by at the time. You will come across John Bossy when you write on Elizabethan religion. He was very much an original thinker, and wrote beautifully. He died in December, and ‘s obituary in The Guardian can be found here.

An extract follows.

“Deftly bypassing traditional disputes between historians of the Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Bossy dug deeper to discern a profound shift from Christianity being conceived as a community of believers to its being understood in terms of rival confessions of belief. This he considered, controversially, to be a wholly negative development, leading to a diminished religious universe, in which Christianity no longer performed the social miracle of ritualised reconciliation, symbolised by the role of the kiss of peace at the Mass. Instead, there was a new stress on the distinction between the godly – represented by seminary-trained priests and dynamic missionaries spouting hell-fire sermons – and the majority, for whom printed catechisms reduced Christianity to what could be taught and learned.”

Mr Kydd.

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Enrichment – places to go

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Mr Kydd

If the video above interests you then you can visit the exhibition at The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford until the 25th September. Just £5 to you. I thought it was excellent, and please find a review from The Oxford Times here.

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Enrichment – Brexit and historians

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Mr Kydd

brexitSomething for your summer holidays.

If You click here then you will get to a History News network article which summarizes the reaction of different historians to the June vote. The strength of the article is that you can immediately contrast the views and approaches of fundamentally different thinkers.

These include;

  • Niall Ferguson
  • Andrews Roberts
  • Antony Beevor
  • Simon Shama
  • Mary Beard
  • Richard Overy

Have a read and see what you think.

Mr Kydd.

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“All the past repeats itself and acts only behind new masks”

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Mr Kydd

1870-map-full-forweb_0So said Birdiev – you will find out about him next year.

There is so much happening at the moment that lots of comparisons with events in the past can be drawn. However, Adam Green (in The Economist) seems particularly sharp. Click here to read his article on the 1870 French map which has Britain pictured as an old woman, “isolated and fuming with rage”, turning away decidedly from events on the mainland.

Mr Kydd

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Ten History Books I’d Love to See on Your UCAS Form

Posted on May 29, 2016 by Mr Kydd

martin-guerreIt is approaching personal statement time. If you click on the link at the bottom of the page you will get to an article by Jonathan Healey on what you might like to be reading in preparation.

A small extract follows…

“In schools up and down the country, budding young historians are just about to go on a quest: a quest for that perfect UCAS text. The history book you read and analyse in a couple of sentences that you hope will dazzle the admissions people at the university of your choice.

Unfortunately, most will choose terribly.

They will bore readers with the same old references to EH Carr, Richard Evans, David Starkey, and Niall Ferguson. Honestly, having read literally hundreds of these, I cry with joy whenever an applicant has read something a bit different.

Here, then, are some suggestions, for parents, teachers and students alike, to spice up those personal statements. Ten massively cool History books that are that little bit different, that little bit exciting, and that little bit radical and controversial. In interesting ways, and without the need to be a plonker on Newsnight.”

Ten History Books I’d Love to See on Your UCAS Form

Mr Kydd.

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