April: Exams, anniversaries and site update
Tuesday 5 April 2022
The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past
Faulkner
April 4th - April 11th: Genocide Awareness week
Exam time
Exams are around the corner and so just a reminder that we have a revision section on this site to help students with revision strategies:
If you have not yet set up student access for your classes, this is a great time to do so as there are lots of pages that students would find useful to help them with revision. Not only the revision strategy tips section (to which we have added revision activities for Topic 10 - see above) but also the ATL and video pages, the essay planning and the interactive quiz pages on the rest of the site.
Please don't forget that the format of the exam for May 2022 is the same format as last year and so different to 'normal'. The format is explained in our last blog:
New resources on our site
In addition to new revision activities shown above, we have now completed The Ottomans - Topic 12 for Paper 3, Africa and the Middle East:
Anniversaries
This month sees the 40th Anniversary of the Falkands/Malvinas War of 1982
As ever, anniversaries generate a range of interesting sources and give a chance to reflect on a key event.
This is a fascinating perspective of the war from the viewpoint of an Argentinian soldier.
And see below for a new documentary which discusses previously unknown aspects of the war and reveals - as it says in the Guardian review below - how Britain nearly lost the war....
Falklands War: The Untold Story review - this gripping documentary tells how Britain nearly lost (the Guardian)
The occasions where the war could have gone differently are examined by this thorough, rigorous account of the conflict, featuring never-before-heard testimony
Genocide Awareness Week
Rather aptly, given global events at the moment, this week is Genocide Awareness Week - the aims of which are explained below:
This week is The 10th Rosenbluth Family Charitable Foundation Genocide Awareness Week, held April 4-9, 2022. It is a series of lectures, exhibits and storytelling by distinguished survivors, scholars, politicians, activists, artists, humanitarians and members of law enforcement. This week-long event seeks to address how we, as a global society, confront violent actions and current and ongoing threats of genocide throughout the world, while also looking to the past for guidance and to honor those affected by genocide.
Books that have caught our attention this month
On Ireland:
Between Two Hells (Profile Books)
The history of the war that shaped the Irish political landscape across the twentieth century and up to the present day, by Ireland's most prominent academic and broadcast historian
On the Second Reich
Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire by Katja Hoyer (Book Marks)
Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire by Katja Hoyer has an overall rating of Positive based on 6 book reviews.
And linking to the new topic on The Ottomans:
Empire and Jihad, by Neil Faulkner (Aspects of History)
Empire and Jihad is a new history of eastern Africa. It is closely associated to the slave trade as a new book has shown from Neil Faulkner.
The next book is interesting for a wider perspective of history and its 'myth busting' look at early civilisations. As this Guardian review says: myth-busting is a crucial task in itself. As we seek new, sustainable ways to organise our world, we need to understand the full range of ways our ancestors thought and lived. And we must certainly question conventional versions of our history which we have accepted, unexamined, for far too long.
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow - inequality is not the price of civilisation (the Guardian)
An archaeologist and an anthropologist dismantle received wisdom about the way early societies operated
And finally, a new documentary...
...which looks at the role of Black Americans in the Civil War
Black Patriots: Heroes of the Civil War (Sky)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar executive-produces this touching film exploring one of the most pivotal times in American history and shining a spotlight on heroic figures such as Harriet Tubman.