History

Why study this subject?

History is the study of the human condition by looking at the past and the evidence left behind by those who lived in the past. It is an exciting, broad subject that develops better understanding of the world around us, as well as many useful skills for academic, professional, and personal life. It is also a lot of fun. Everything around us has a history. History helps us understand changes and continuities that have allowed things around us to develop. Historians use a range of analytical methods to answer questions about the past and to reconstruct the diversity of past human experience: how people have differed in their ideas, institutions, and cultural practices and how widely their experiences have varied by time and place. History gives us the tools to analyse problems in the past, providing an informed perspective for understanding current and future problems. Studying the diversity of human experience helps us appreciate cultures, ideas, and traditions that are not our own and to recognise them as products of specific times and places. History helps us realise how different our own lived experience is from those who went before us. In learning about the past, we also discover how our own lives fit into the human experience.

What skills will you develop?

The history courses across both schools will develop skills that are vital to the modern world. History develops a range of analytical skills that will help students develop as learners and as historians. Source skills enable students to see how historians build up a picture of the past and give them a chance to develop their own interpretations and to test their own historical hypotheses against the evidence of the source base. Elsewhere students learn to question and deconstruct interpretations of the past created by other. This is an important skill in the modern world where history is often used, erroneously and dishonestly, to support political and social narratives of the present. Students will learn to challenge poorly constructed arguments about the past. The courses both schools teach will provide students with an excellent grounding in some of the most decisive events in early modern and modern history which continue to shape the present and define our place in the world.

What are the key elements to the course?

Option A

Stuart Britain 1603-1702, 2C Reformation in Europe 1500-1564, Coursework: Tudor Rebellions 14831603

OR

Tudors 1509-1603 & European Reformation, Witchcraft (Coursework) & British Empire 1763-1914

Option B

Industrialisation and the People 1783-1885, America: A Nation Divided c.1845-1877. Coursework: US Civil Rights 1890-1992 or Russia Rulers 1894-1991

OR

USA 1917-1980 & South Africa 1948-1991, Cold War (Coursework) & Britain 1780-1928