A Level Courses
The Marxist interpretation of history: A brief introduction
A quick look at a school of history that sees past events in a particular way. This may be useful for those wanting to study history at university.
A study day at The National Army Museum: Great War technology Part One
On Tuesday our school visited The National Army Museum for a study day. After looking around the excellent galleries (our students particularly liked the exhibition looking at the experience of 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand Province. We had two lectures from the education staff. Below is the first part of a write up of the notes that I made.
read more...»Taxpayers’ money well spent for a change
There have been plenty of people in the public eye recently who seem to have misused our hard earned money. Similarly, the BBC has had a rough time of late over fake phone-ins, dodgy editing and the rest. However, it maybe worth highlighting, though of not much consolation to non-historians, that the Corporation’s website has some quite excellent content that will help history students of whatever level. For once I think that our money has been wisely invested. Take a look for yourself:
Cold War links
For anyone studying or teaching the Cold War the links below should help.
Useful timelines and quizzes
http://www.coldwar.org/articles/40s/index.asp
A good general history site and links
http://www.coldwar.net/
The BBC’s minisite
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/
CNN’s contribution made to accompany a TV series
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/
A typically excellent offering from the National Archives
http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/coldwar/
The conflict broken down into topics
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/coldwar.htm
Think the 2008 Presidential race is interesting? Check out the controversy over the 1876 election!
It looks like the Presidential election of 2008 is going to be a close run thing if the nomination process is anything to go by. Go back eight years to the controversy over GWB’s win and you get a taste of what might be coming. Take a look even further back, to 1877, and you find an ever stranger outcome to the election of 1876. The contest, between Samuel J Tilden (who won the popular vote) and Rutherford B Hayes stood at 184 electoral college votes to Tilden, with Hayes on 165. A further 20 electoral votes were in dispute, with each candidate claiming to have won in the states of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. Allegations of electoral fraud were rife with many issues focusing on the design of the voting paper itself (remind you of anything GWB?). In some states illiterate voters were helped to make choice by symbols depicting each party. However, some Democratic ballots were found to have the Republican symbol on them (a picture of Abraham Lincoln) thereby fooling those who couldn’t read into marking the wrong box.
The controversy was settled by an informal deal that was to have repercussions for the African-American population. Hayes was given the White House on the understanding that he would remove federal troops from the southern states – where they had been ever since the Civil War. Without these soldiers Democrats were free to seize back control of state governments and end the period of Reconstruction. Blacks were pushed from any position of political influence and barred from voting by Grandfather Clauses and Poll Taxes. It would take nearly ninety years for the damage to be undone.
Take a look at the campaign to have Tilden proclaimed as the ‘Real 19th President’.
See also:
http://elections.harpweek.com/09Ver2Controversy/Overview-1.htm
http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/president/display.asp?id=511&subj=president
Is Maggie history?
Tonight Baroness Thatcher was awarded with a lifetime achievement award (whatever that means) by David Cameron at the Morgan Stanley Great Briton Awards. Read the story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7220424.stm
But as more and more A Level History courses now include topics on Thatcher’s Britain it might be worth considering at what point currents affairs become history. Are we too close to events to be able to unravel Thatcher’s legacy both domestically and internationally?
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