Lower Sixth,
We have watched part one of the Starkey series in History Society. Below is a You-tube Channel allowing you to watch all four programmes in 10 minute blocks. They go chronologically through the reign.
You may like to look at part 23. This shows the point I was making today when I gave you your essay feedback. Whilst Robert Cecil failed to manage parliament, Elizabeth, via the Golden Speech, succeeded.
Remember always ask yourself why is the question worded in that way…
Mr Kydd.
Upper Sixth,
Following on from today’s lesson, you should have your colour-coded interpretations paragraphs complete for the 2014 paper. Click here for my effort.
Remember the warp is your command of the historical debate, and the weft is the interpretations in the passages.
I look forward to your completed papers next week.
Mr Kydd.
Something a bit cross curricular today. If you click here you will get to a website that claims to explain the English language in twenty five maps.
Obviously this is great for you English language students, but as historians we could perhaps reflect on the link to our subject. What do these maps tell us about British (or perhaps English) history ?
Failing that, you may like to look at this map which attempts to show the changing borders of Europe in three minutes. How much of it do you understand ?
Mr Kydd.
Edward Campion meets his fate
If you click here you will get to Jessie Childs’ article in History Extra.
In it, she asks explains that given that “England’s Elizabethan Catholics were public enemy number one. Their Masses were banned and their priests were executed”. She continues to ask “what was life like for ‘recusants’ and ‘church papists’ in a hostile Protestant state” ?
Other useful sites to support your work;
Here you can find the more simple S-cool revision site. Useful if you want to secure basic concepts.
Here J.P.Sommerville explores the three phases of Elizabethan Catholicism
All,
With our interpretations and evidence posters now complete, next week is going to be very important for us. We are going to plan and write a past paper on the causes of the First World War debate.
As you know, there is another controversy question later in the course. This focuses upon the nature of Nazi government. In particular, the key question asked is was Hitler a weak dictator ? A key figure in this debate was Hans Momsen (who died this month).
As his Daily Telegraph obituary argues, “one of Mommsen’s key themes was that moral responsibility for the evils of the Third Reich could not be laid solely at the door of the Nazi leadership but had to be shared more widely. Starting with Civil Servants in the Third Reich (1966), Mommsen maintained that the crimes of the Nazi period had required the active involvement of many different groups in German society, including business leaders, the aristocracy, the judiciary the civil service and the military, rejecting the traditional view in Germany that they had been the work of a few criminals entirely unrepresentative of German society as a whole“.
Have a read and see what you think.
Mr Kydd.
If you click here you will get to an excellent History Today interactive map that attempts to pick out some of the key milestones in the history of that conflict. Like my earlier post on Syria, perhaps its real lesson is to highlight how complex it was.
Have a look an see what you think. If you want to know more, then each map is linked to past History Today articles. I have the school password which will allow access.
Mr Kydd.
All,
As promised the map we were using last lesson. This is more useful than the text book ones because it reflect the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – thus showing how Morocco and the Balkans are two sides of the same problem.
You may like to note also,
STOP PRESS
Callum’s excellent find to “beef up” the defensive war argument can be found here.
You should also really watch the great man in action. Below AJP Taylor convinces the world (for a few weeks) that the First World War started because of the Russian railway timetable. This obviously fits into the war plans argument.
The war is Syria is of course extremely complicated, and is increasingly impacting on us. The following 5 minute video is perhaps a useful summary. We should however of course be aware that different groups will see these events and actions in different ways. Even so, this focuses on the what and the who, and as such is a useful starting point.
Mr Kydd.
Click here to explore the British Museum with Google, it’s claim to have “2 million years of history at your fingertips” is no idle boast. You can find everything from the Rosetta Stone, to the Sutton Hoo helmet to Egyptian mummies.
Hopefully an online journey would encourage you to spend an afternoon there. It is free, and has many special exhibitions.
The main British Museum webpage can be found here
Mr Kydd.
Please click here for an excellent article from the This Week website. It outlines the historical debate well, and then considers which country should take most of the blame.
“The question of which country or countries caused the war is sometimes flipped on its head by scholars who have asked which countries – had they conducted themselves differently – could have prevented it.
On the BBC website, military historian Sir Max Hastings says that while no one nation deserves the blame alone, Germany is more guilty than most, as “it alone had power to halt the descent to disaster at any time in July 1914 by withdrawing its ‘blank cheque’ which offered support to Austria for its invasion of Serbia.”
Sir Richard J Evans, Regius professor of history at the University of Cambridge disagrees, arguing that Serbian nationalism and expansionism were the root cause of the conflict. “Serbia bore the greatest responsibility for the outbreak of WW1,” Evans says, “and Serbian backing for the Black Hand terrorists was extraordinarily irresponsible,”
Other leading scholars believe the blame should be shared equally between all the main players: Austria-Hungary, Germany, Serbia, Russia, France, the Ottoman empire and Britain. The “fatal mixture of political misjudgement, fear of loss of prestige and stubborn commitments on all sides of a very complicated system of military and political alliances of European states” led to the descent into all-out war.”
Please read and note with care.
Mr Kydd.
