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Empires of Gold
Historian article
In 1660, the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa was established under the leadership of Charles II's brother James, the Duke of York. Founded as a slaving company, the Royal African Company, as it became known, also traded in gold. African gold was mined in the interior before being...
Empires of Gold
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How did changing conceptions of place lead to conflict in the American West? Reflecting on revision methods for GCSE
Teaching History article
Mary Woolley decided to make four revision sheets for her lower-band Year 11 set. Each was to help them view their American West study through a different lens. She was rather uncertain, however (and so were the pupils) about her fourth sheet on places. Her reflections on the revision sheet...
How did changing conceptions of place lead to conflict in the American West? Reflecting on revision methods for GCSE
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Time's arrows? Using a dartboard scaffold to understand historical action
Teaching History article
Arthur Chapman presents a task-specific scaffold - a ‘dart' board - designed to teach students how to interrogate sources of information so that these become sources of evidence for particular claims about past actions, beliefs and aims. Chapman also uses his ‘dart' board to foster students' reflection on the degrees of...
Time's arrows? Using a dartboard scaffold to understand historical action
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Cunning Plan 143: enquiries about the British empire
Teaching History journal feature
I wanted to give my Year 8 students ownership of their work on the British Empire by allowing them to suggest our ‘enquiry question'. In order to introduce the Empire, I brought in sugar, spices, bananas, chilli peppers and cotton. I then showed maps demonstrating the Empire at its height....
Cunning Plan 143: enquiries about the British empire
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Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
Teaching History feature
The dramatic, chaotic and violent events that took place in Northern India in 1857/8 have been interpreted in many ways, as, for example, the ‘Indian Mutiny', the ‘Sepoy War' and the ‘First Indian War of Independence'. The tales that have been told about these events have been profoundly shaped, however,...
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
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Cunning Plan 97: A-Level: International Relations 1890-1914
Teaching History feature
'No war is inevitable until it starts.' Good quote. Not mine, but A.J.P. Taylor's. The outbreak of the First World War is a good way to test it! Did the statesmen of the day know the First World War was coming? Put another way, why was there no general European...
Cunning Plan 97: A-Level: International Relations 1890-1914
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Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
Historian article
One hundred and twenty years ago the advent of the first red May Days caused major concern across Europe. To general surprise, in 1890 and the next few years some of the largest rallies occurred in London. In Britain the main demonstration on the nearest Sunday to May Day passed...
Gladstone and the London May Day Demonstrators, 1890
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How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Teaching History article
While history teachers (and examiners) regularly invite students to consider what cartoons or paintings reveal about contemporary attitudes to particular social or political developments, such sources are often difficult to interpret and to use appropriately. Drawing on a wealth of detailed research and a passion to support teachers and students with...
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
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Cunning Plan 190: Using art to make A-level history more accessible
Teaching History feature
Many pupils love the Horrible Histories books, television programmes and songs. Over the years a number of A-level pupils have proudly told me that it was Horrible Histories that sparked their love of the subject, and they are quick to recite the songs word for word! But it is also the...
Cunning Plan 190: Using art to make A-level history more accessible
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Towards Reform in 1809
Historian article
Two hundred years ago it must have seemed to some as if the time for political and economic reform in Britain had arrived. A number of the necessary conditions appeared to be in place:
recent examples from America and France showing how readily and rapidly established systems could be overturned...
Towards Reform in 1809
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Using eighteenth-century material culture to develop evidential thinking in Year 8
Teaching History article
It seems that teapots really can talk. Eleanor Dimond took her undergraduate experience of studying material culture into the classroom, with startling results. Historians of material culture have developed distinctive evidential methods which, in stark contrast to typical GCSE and A-Level approaches, see a strong interplay between analysis of the physical attributes...
Using eighteenth-century material culture to develop evidential thinking in Year 8
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The Victorian Age
Classic Pamphlet
This Classic Pamphlet was published in 1937 (the centenary of the accession of Queen Victoria, who succeeded to the throne on June 20, 1837).
Synopsis of contents:
1. Is the Victorian Age a distinct 'period' of history?
Landmarks establishing its beginning: the Reform Bill, railways, other inventions, new leaders in...
The Victorian Age
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Bismarck after Fifty Years
Classic Pamphlet
This notable essay by Dr. Erich Eyck, the most distinguished Bismarckian scholar of the mid-twentieth century was written on the invitation of the HA to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bismark's death. Dr. Eyck, a German Liberal of the school of Ludwig Bamberger, found his way to England in the...
Bismarck after Fifty Years
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Ensuring Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children do not feel unseen in the history classroom
Teaching History article
Richard Kerridge and Helen Snelson present a brief sequence of lessons using the life of the Gypsy woman Mary Squires as a way into the changes of industrialising Britain. More significantly, they also present a compelling rationale for why history teachers should be slotting in the stories of Gypsy, Roma...
Ensuring Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children do not feel unseen in the history classroom
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Historical thinking and art education in Canada’s era of societal reckoning
Teaching History article
Michael Pitblado and Agnieszka Chalas, history teacher and art teacher respectively, describe how and why they responded to a call by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to engage students with difficult aspects of Canada’s past, including the forced cultural assimilation of Indigenous peoples through the Indian Residential School System. Having reflected...
Historical thinking and art education in Canada’s era of societal reckoning
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Radicalism and its Results, 1760-1837
Classic Pamphlet
Radicalism with a large "R", unlike Conservatism with a large "C" and Liberalism with a large "L", is not a historical term of even proximate precision. There was never a Radical Party with a national organization, local associations, or a treasury. But there were, and there are, "Radicals", generally qualified...
Radicalism and its Results, 1760-1837
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Thomas Paine
Pamphlet
The radical writer Tom Paine (1737-1809) has become a neglected figure, but this work argues that he should be rightly regarded as an original thinker, whose publications contributed to revolutionary discourses in America, France and Britain in the late 18th Century. He deserves to be remembered in the United States...
Thomas Paine
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Putting black into the Union Jack: weaving Black history into the Year 7 to 9 curriculum
Teaching History article
Making a passionate case for teaching Black British history in the secondary school curriculum, Hannah shares here the personal journey she has travelled in planning for Black British history in her curriculum. She cites her inspirations and offers striking examples to illustrate her rationale and approach to teaching this history....
Putting black into the Union Jack: weaving Black history into the Year 7 to 9 curriculum
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Broadening and deepening narratives of Benin for Year 8
Teaching History article
Josh Garry describes his effort to refresh his approach to teaching the British transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on reading, lectures and discussions during an Historical Association Teacher Fellowship programme, Garry built a sequence of lessons designed to contextualise the trade while showing African agency and complexity. The result was a sequence...
Broadening and deepening narratives of Benin for Year 8
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Decolonise, don’t diversify: enabling a paradigm shift in the KS3 history curriculum
Teaching History article
In this article, Dan Lyndon-Cohen makes the case that history departments should move from diversifying the curriculum to decolonising it. After reflecting on some examples of how he made the content of his lessons more representative, he explores how the influence of writers such as Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Emma Dabiri...
Decolonise, don’t diversify: enabling a paradigm shift in the KS3 history curriculum
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Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
Teaching History article
In this article, Theo Woods shares the experience of one history department as they embarked on a substantial process of curriculum review and development. The department sought to address concerns that the range of history taught in their school, across the full seven years of students’ secondary experience, was too ‘traditional,...
Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
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Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Classic Pamphlet
Irene Collins explores the origins of Liberalism within a turbulent nineteenth century Europe. From the beginnings of its use for Spanish rebels in 1820 and the insult it became when used by French royalists, to the growth of political Liberalism in Marxism and Russia in the turn of the century....
Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe
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Transatlantic slavery – shaping the question, lengthening the narrative, broadening the meaning
Teaching History article
Nathanael Davies explains his radical rethink of how to teach transatlantic slavery. He explains how he came to question his earlier approach of focusing on the causation of ‘abolition’ and ‘emancipation’ and, instead, allowed scholarship, sources and his own students’ meaning-making to guide him to a different, and much more...
Transatlantic slavery – shaping the question, lengthening the narrative, broadening the meaning
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
A Polychronicon of the past
In autumn 2019, Kara Walker’s monumental sculpture, Fons Americanus, went on display in the Tate Modern, offering a poignant, troubling challenge to national commemoration. Walker depicts not the lingering vestiges of imperial glory, but sharks, tears, and haunted memories. She brings history into conversation with its contemporary legacies and engages...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
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Local Authority Housing
Classic Pamphlet
Local authority housing has been a distinctive feature of the British housing system throughout the twentieth century. This pamphlet outlines the development of local authority housing in Britain from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the present day, focusing on the ways in which policy changes have affected...
Local Authority Housing
