Dandylion Salad Anyone?

This is a little different from my normal content but it gives you a good idea of what people will do when they are hungry, human beings are very resourceful and can survive through the most extreme times. This is what people ate when they were desperate during the Great Depression in America. Remember, of course, that the country at this time was overflowing with surplus food, John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath writes about orchards and orangeries being patrolled by armed guards to stop the hungry from stealing fruit while it sat, unpicked on the trees.

The great depression was an example of capitalism failing as a means of efficiently allocating resources (in this instance, food) to people. Watch this video and see

Treaty of Brest Litovsk update!

This is specifically for Year 10, we've been talking about the Treaty of Brest Litovsk this week and here is an animation that shows the treaty and also the Treaty of Versailles that followed it. Check it out here.

The Bonus Army

The journalist John Pilger called World War Two the 'cleansing moral bath' that expunged from the history books any crimes or deviations of the allied powers, Britain and America. One very good example of this is the largely forgotten crimes perpetrated against the bonus army in 1932. World War One Veterans who camped out in Washington, demanding the 'bonus' they were entitled to for fighting the war, were dispersed with terrible violence by the 'heroes' of the next war General Douglas MacArthur and his able deputies George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower. It would be highly unlikely, considering subsequent events, that these figures would ever be held up to public scrutiny and aprobrium over their extremely violent and largely unnecessary (and in more than one instance, illegal) actions regarding the Bonus Army. We as history students, however, look beyond the historical legends of these three men into their more questionable behaviours and beliefs.

Have you joined our new history answers forum yet?

Hi there everyone, just to remind you that if you're not using it, you're missing out on a really hand resource. Join the free resource forum and get-

* Daily bulletins when cool new stuff goes on the site.
* Access to history debates that help clarify anything you learn in class.
* The chance to ask any question you want and the answers you need.
* Links to all the resources you get in lesson time in case you've missed anything.
* There's lots more stuff in the post, plus you can engage other students in the weekly debates.

Free Learning Resources Page

Hi there here's the link to all the resources I create in the classroom, just in case you lose one or need a new one. To any visitors from elsewhere, feel free to download for free as many worksheets, lesson plans etc that you need.

Eventually this page will include sample essays, revision tips and all the works, give me time and it'll be on there

The End of the Third Reich

Richard J Evans, the best historian of the 3rd Reich I've ever read, gives a lecture here on the fall of the Third Reich. This is the sort of thing that will be indispensable at exam time, watch it, make use of it!

The Great Depression Video

This is a video link to Liquiat Ahmed's lecture on his book The Lords of Finance. It's an absorbing and fascinating account of how 'the wrong economics' was applied in the 1930s, it has interesting parallels with today.

A cartoon history of American Empire

This is a brilliant way of understanding one view of American Foreign Policy. Traditionally, America has been thought of as a non-imperial nation, certainly it differs from the European Empires of the 19th and 20th Centuries. But it is only different in its strategies for empire, not its intention. This cartoon, narrated by Viggo Mortensen, written by the US historian Howard Zinn, shows a different view of US Imperialism, from the massacre of the Plains Indians, all the way to the invasion of Iraq.

a film about my cat (not quite)

This is Manufacturing Consent, it's about Noam Chomsky, one of the great minds of the 20th Century, he discusses thought control in a democratic society. As a scientist he creates a very compelling model of how the individual in a democracy is manipulated and influenced. If you as students want to explore the deeper themes of 20th Century history and look beyond simple definitions, watch this.

A veritable goldmine of ideas but for serious history students only!

This is a series of brilliant interviews with politicians, diplomats, political thinkers, historians and journalists on videocast from the University of California, look up Robert Fisk if you can.

The Anti War Movement

This is just a trailer (can't seem to get the whole film, though it's worth watching if you can) for The USA VS John Lennon. In 1969 John Lennon began to become increasingly involved with the anti war movement in the USA. He was judged by the Nixon administration as being a dangerous radical and eventually threatened with deportation. The documentary shows the extent of radicalism at the time and the fact that the Vietnam War had become a cause for the radical and hippy movements in the US

Worth a look

A US view of the Vietnam War, remember our source material work here guys, take it with a pinch of salt....

Berlin Wall PT3

This is the third installment of the Berlin Wall documentary

The Volga Famine

The Volga Famine of 1892
Last Chances for the Romanovs
For many who were undecided as to where they stood on the future of the Empire the Volga famine of 1891-2 clarified the issue, millions of waverers chose active or passive resistance to the Romanov dynasty. Statistics on the number of deaths range from 200 to 400,000, and the occasional survey placing it at nearly a million. Perhaps the full extent of the deaths will never be known, and certainly at the time, the more important ideas being disseminated were the likely causes. The government was blamed for excessively taxing the peasants, thus depleting their supplies of grain and foodstuffs to see them through hard times, Robert Service, however, in his biography of Lenin disputes that the issue of taxation was really where the regime was at fault.
The Volga provinces had endured several poor harvests, short summers, early frosts and typhus epidemics, all of which combined added up to a catastrophic decline in grain levels by the summer of 1891. The government was still exporting grain in order to pay for Russia's industrialisation, and perhaps this is a key reason for its lack of interest in addressing peasant needs. I think that it is more likely that the nature of autocracy itself was fundamentally the issue that caused mass governmental inaction, not callousness, not even incompetence (though there may have been plenty of the latter) simply an institutional inability to react to crisis. The institution of autocracy had really been failing for a century, every major crisis it faced in the 19th Century, it failed to adequately deal with. The famine was no different, it required the action of a modern decentralised, efficiently organised state. The famine relief that emerged was very much this state, or rather a state in waiting. Leo Tolstoy Prince Georgi Lvov and the entire local administrative structure of the Zemstva heroically swung into action.
Tolstoy, famous for his paternalist attitudes to the peasants was the prefect figurehead for a campaign to save the stricken people of the Volga region. Lvov, similarly adoring of the peasants and steadfast in his belief of the worthiness of them, also worked tirelessly to save the region.
Tens of thousands of doctors, aid workers, students, nurses and volunteers descended on the region, and in a rare spirit of national unity they risked their own lives in many cases to alleviate the famine and disease that followed it.
In the same way that adversity united the British in 1940, the experience of fighting famine in the Volga forged a sense of national community in Russia that would have been weak, if none existent beforehand. This was the kind of 'patrie' that the Czars of Russia could not comprehend or see, and it was lethal to them. A middle class had risen to the challenge of a crisis where the autocracy had been largely blind to it and they had triumphed. Prince Lvov, who later headed the Provisional Government had managed to pull off a humanitarian feat worthy of a Nobel Prize and he and his class emerged from the crisis confident, aware of their own capabilities and painfully aware of the shortcomings of the Autocracy. Middle Russia had grown up and come of age.
An illuminating footnote to the entire affair was the behaviour of one Vladimir Ulyanov, who was present at the time of the famine, witnessing peasant death all around him. Unmoved by the suffering, he argued that there should be no interference in the crisis, that Marx's predictions about capitalism were coming true and that any attempt to alleviate the suffering of the peasants would affect the chances of the coming revolution. Based on these attitudes, his later treatment of peasants is somewhat unsurprising.

Berlin Wall PT2

Here is the next Berlin Wall video

Berlin Wall

Hi guys, here's a video from the Guardian Website on the Berlin Wall. It is now 20 years since it was dismantled (I was there when it was being pulled down, I have a piece of it somewhere) but its significance in the Cold War should not be underestimated, it was a physical representation of the world divided and it symbolised the whole conflict.

That Stalin Bloke

Ok Katya, here you are, the one, the only Comrade Stalin

A new take on Lenin and Trotsky

Noam Chomsky speaks hereon his opinions (pretty damning) on the Bolsheviks and their treatment of the Russian workers

A handy BBC page

Check this page out, it's very useful for 'nutshell' histories of lots of different eras.

Useful Sources For Revision

Anyone wanting to add to their knowledge, look at GCSEPod it's a good way to learn

The Most Important Resource Posted Yet!

Guys I genuinely couldn't believe my luck when I found this site on Twitter, it's FREE podcasts and videos by the biggest selling UK historians, on practically every topic you're likely to study with me! There's no catch and what you can gain from this site is huge, new perspectives, ideas, arguments and understandings. It's a MUST for anyone who seriously wants to do well at GCSE!

American Hard Times 1929 or 2009?

This is a fascinating article. California 2009 is broke and is, by all accounts on the verge of some major economic and social collapse (the rest of America based its economy and social structure on California and so, oops, did Britain...) Read it here and see if there are any similarities with the stuff we have recently done on the great depression. Also, if you can find out, look at the causes of the current economic crisis and see if they are similar to the causes of the previous one or if there are differences.

The Nazis: A Warning From History

This documentary covers most of what we learned last year, it is probably the best series of its kind on Nazi Germany. It is important that everyone watches this because it will be a very useful addition to your revision and ongoing historical knowledge.

Slavery and Emancipation

The radical historian Howard Zinn writes here about the American Civil War, fought, ostensibly, to free the slaves. Histories writted since 1865 have portrayed Abraham Lincoln as a heroic saviour. The truth, as always, is more ambiguous. Read this essay and make your own minds up.

Our very own forum!

Hurrah! With but a moment's internet tinkering, I've set up the Kings Monkton history forum for everyone to use and enjoy. Here is the link and I expect at least half a dozen responses to the questions I have posted.

http://kings-monkton-history.socialgo.com/home.html

Discussion Topic

Ok I''m hoping to make this site a little bit more interactive at some point by linking it to a forum, but I suspect that creating a forum might be prohibitively expensive, so in the absence of that I'd like to start off the first of hopefully many discussion topics, I really do want as many people to contribute as possible and to argue passionately either for or against this idea.

'Far from being too harsh of Germany, the Treaty of Versailles was too lenient.'

Why We Fight

In his presidential farewell address Dwight Eisenhower warned about the 'Military Industrial Complex' a defence establishment and a vast arms industry colluding and undermining democracy. This Storyville documentary charts the growth of this complex from WWII to the present day.

The Tet Offensive

Here are some fascinating documentary pictures of the Tet Offensive 1968, the North Vietnamese Assault on South Vietnam. It was these pictures that convinced much of America that the Vietnam War could not be won.

The rights and wrongs of bombing

World War Two was the first war that was decided primarily by air power. When Louis Bleriot completed his first flight of the channel he was asked by a journalist exactly what this new contraption, the aeroplane would be primarily used for. He answered succinctly.
"La Guerre." War.
Aerial bombing was often found to be ineffective, inaccurate and sometimes caused more problems than it solved. This little bit of footage of the battle of Montecassino demonstrates how air power was useful to the allies, but also how it often caused as many problems as it solved. Also, ask yourselves this, was mass bombing ever justified, given that so many civilians were killed at places such as Montecassino, Dresden or Hiroshima?

Sidney Poitier

In the mid 1960s one actor came to represent the struggle for civil rights, fair treatment and justice more than any other. That actor was Sidney Poitier and he chose a number of film roles to emphasise the struggle. He starred in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, the story of a black man who falls in love with a white girl and what happens when he meets her family. In the film he is the eponymous guest at dinner and inter racial farce ensues. The film did have a serious point however, the films shows us that the time when ones parents, or ones society can tell you who to love and why is long since gone. The other iconic films that he is most remembered for is In The Heat of the Night and the Defiant Ones. The first two films were released in 1967 the latter a decade earlier in 1958, in In The Heat of the Night, he plays black homicide detective Virgil Tibbs, home to see his mother in the rural south. He is arrested on general principles when a rich white man is found dead, and Tibbs' being Black is enough reason. When his identity is established, his boss offers his services to the small town sheriff who has little experience with murder investigations. As the two policemen learn how to work together, they begin to make progress on the crime. He was one of the first ever black male lead heroes in a movie, and having a white sidekick at the time was nothing short of extraordinary. In The Defiant Ones, it's a similar plot except on the other side of the law. White Joker Jackson and black Noah Cullen are two convicts on a chain gang who hate each other. After a truck prison accident, they flee and are pursued by the police. While they're chained, the two are dependent on one another. When they eventually get rid of their chains, their hostility has been changed into fellowship and respect. It is very difficult to overestimate the importance of Sidney Poitier, largely for the reason that when he portrayed 'blackness' to a white audience, he did it with a dignity and strength that they were unlikely to have seen before, most other black entertainers would have been portrayed rather more like this

In America with Matt Frei

The BBC's Washington Correspondent Matt Frei has recorded a series of programmes for Radio 4 about contemporary American culture, society and politics. Each touch upon themes that run throughout our study of America, its racial tensions, presidents, foreign policy etc. Listen to these recordings, they will give you additional insights into America and its past.

BBC WWII Archive

This is an archive by the BBC called People's War, it's a vast treasure trove of personal recollections and memories of every aspect of the war for the British people. People's histories are a very popular way of recounting the past, ensuring that we don't see history as the actions of 'great men' but the struggles of millions of largely anonymous people like us, it reminds us that history is made by the many not the few and that we can make it for good or for ill.

Quiz

You can also test yourself here online about American History with a flash cards quiz.

Vietnam

Getting ahead of myself slightly here, but this is for the Vietnam War which we will be studying in a few weeks. Because America is an outline study, we can only go into so much depth on the subject, but the kind, if slightly naive folks at Spark Notes have left this veritable treasure trove of notes online for you to peruse. Read the full course of the Vietnam War here

The Lego Battle of Stalingrad

a must watch

Propaganda

Here is an example of how the British and American Allies in WWI created propagandafilms to demonise their enemy. If you've watched The Century Of The Self video, you'll have already heard about Edward Bernays, the father of modern advertising. Bernays learnt the art of persuasion through film and billboard poster during World War One, persuading a largely pacifist American public to join the war. He later turned these skills to good use advertising the products of the post war American boom. In a way, a propaganda film and an advertisement are quite similar, their job is to persuade you to think in a particular way. Watch this clip and then compare it with an advert on TV, todays ads are far more subtle, and are trying to convince you to act in a different way, but both are part of the 20th Century science of public relations, the control of the public mind.

The Century Of The Self

Year 11 History Pupils doing America now really should watch this documentary, it's one of the most astute and fascinating programmes ever made on the ideas that created early 20th Century America, it's a real education.

Democracy and its frailties

This is a very thought provoking article about democracy in Britain today but it is also important to us as history students because it draws parallels with the 1930s, showing that many of the popular anxieties that existed then are still with us, if only in slightly different guises.

A fascinating Russia resource

Check out Orlando Figes Website, it is an excellent resource that gives a broad synoptic picture to 'what happened next', after we finish with Russia in 1924, one of mankind's darkest chapters began, the rule of Stalin and his purges. The question we'll be addressing at the end of the Russia topic is 'did Lenin's rule innevitably lead to Stalin's?' opnions, as ever, are divided, look at this and see what you think.

Further Reading on Rasputin

For anyone who would like to know more about the infamous holy man and look at his strange rise to power look at this link here. Remember though, most of Rasputin's life is mired in mystery and rumour, no one really knows the full truth about him so when you are reading about him, always be questioning how reliable your source really is.

Does racism still affect America?

Well I guess this is rather a silly question, there is probably no society on earth where human beings don't discriminate against one another on the grounds of 'difference'. Former US President Jimmy Carter recently criticised Barack Obama's opponents suggesting that they were targeting him because he was America's first black president, does this mean the legacy of slavery and segregation still live on? Read here and decide for yourself

Did Trotsky have a point?

Here is an extract of Trotsky's report on the 1905 Revolution. The first conclusion he makes about it is that it destroys the Pan Slavist, Muscovite myth that Russia is fundamentally different from the rest of Europe. In his book 1905 he wrote

"Our revolution destroyed the myth of the “uniqueness” of Russia. It demonstrated that history does not have special laws for Russia. Yet at the same time the Russian revolution bore a character wholly peculiar to itself, a character which was the outcome of the special features of our entire social and historical development and which, in turn, opened entirely new historical perspectives before us."

He is referring directly about the Czar's myth that Russia had a seperate and different destiny from the rest of Europe, that modernisation was not possible or desirable. In one way or another modernity would come to Russia, either by gradual reform or a revolution, both of which were modern concepts. Read more here

Welcome to the history blog

Hi there, and if you've found this site it must mean that lesson time hasn't been too dull this week. This is a bit of an experiment, I'm piloting it to see how well it works and then hopefully I can add to it on a more substantial site later, but first things first.
Anyway, each week I will post things on this site that relate to Year 9, 10 and 11 history for the WJEC syllabus. I come across so many handy bits of information, sites, links, news stories, features and other odds and ends that I can never fit all of it into lesson times, so for the really keen students, or those who just want to explore more to do with history, this is a place you can find out more.