History

Autumn Term

Unit 1: From Pitt to Peel: How successful was Pitt the Younger’s premiership? (including foreign policy)

Royal support, the 1784 election; reform of finance and administration; trade; the impact of the French Revolution; radical threats; Whig splits 1790–1794; anti-radical legislation 1794–1801.

Ending isolation 1783–1789; French Revolution to 1793; Pitt as War Minister 1793–1806 (Blue water strategy, Coalitions, Peace of Amiens)

Unit 1: How successful was Lord Liverpool’s premiership? (including foreign policy)

Liverpool and the radical challenge 1812–1822, the Corn Law 1815, Peterloo, government policy on law and order, the Gagging Acts and the Six Acts 1819. Tory governments 1815–1830; Liverpool, Canning and Wellington as Prime Ministers; Huskisson on trade and finance; Peel at the Home Office; repeal of the Combination Laws and Test and Corporation Acts; Roman Catholic Emancipation.

War with Napoleon – blockades, coalitions and the Peninsular campaign; Castlereagh 1812–1822 (Vienna Settlement, Congress diplomacy), Canning 1822–1827 (Holy Alliance, Spain, Portugal, Latin America and the Greek Question to 1830).

Unit 2: French Revolution: What were the causes of the French Revolution, 1774 and how did the events of 1789?

The structure of the Ancien Régime; qualities of Louis XVI as King of France; financial problems and attempts by Turgot, Necker and Calonne to deal with them; the ideas of the Enlightenment and the impact of the American Revolution and the War of Independence; social discontents; economic problems from 1787; the Assembly of Notables and the political developments 1787–May 1789; the Estates General, events in Paris in 1789; the ‘Great Fear’; the October Days.

Unit 2: How did events of the French Revolution from October 1789 to the Directory 1795 unfold?

The attempts to establish a constitutional monarchy; reforms in church and state; the significance of riots and direct political action 1789–1792; the Jacobins; the flight to Varennes; the overthrow of the monarchy; the Convention and the Terror; the destruction of the Girondins; the ascendancy and fall of Robespierre; the establishment of the Thermidorian Regime; the constitution of the Directory.

Spring Term

Unit 1: From Pitt to Peel: Why was the Great Reform Act passed and how ‘great’ was it?

Whigs and Tory attitudes to reform 1783–1830; early reform attempts 1785–1830; reasons for parliamentary reform 1828–1830, extent of popular discontent 1830–1832, the aims and terms of the 1832 Act.

Unit 1: Assess Peel as party leader and prime minister 1834-1846.

Including the Tamworth Manifesto, elections and organisation to 1841; government 1841–1846, finance and the economy including the budgets, income tax, banking, tariff reform and the sugar duties, business reform (companies and railways); the Anti-Corn Law League, the Corn Laws, Peel and the reasons for their repeal, the debate over the Corn Laws and Peel’s fall from power.

Unit 2: French Revolution: How did Napoleon Bonaparte rise to dominance and how successful was he up to 1807?

The career of Bonaparte to 1799: early life and character; his military leadership and reasons for success to 1799 including Toulon, the Italian Campaign, Egypt, the weaknesses of the Thermidorian regime and the coup of Brumaire in 1799; Napoleon’s reforms as Consul, including the constitutional, legal, financial, educational changes; the establishment and nature of the Empire in France; nature of and reasons for military successes and failures after 1799: Marengo and the War of the Third Coalition, including the battles of Ulm and Austerlitz, Trafalgar.

Summer Term

Unit 1: Pitt to Peel: Assess Peel’s government and pressure groups between 1832-1846.

Trade Unions and the GNCTU; the Tolpuddle Martyrs: reasons for the emergence of Chartism, support for Chartism, the methods and leadership of Chartism, government attitudes and the impact of Chartism 1837–1848.

Unit 2: French Revolution: How did Napoleon’s power decline and why was he defeated between 1807–1815?

The Continental System and the war against Britain; the war in Spain; the Russian Campaign; Napoleon’s rule in France after 1807; the campaigns of 1813–1815 and abdication; the Hundred Days; personal failings and reasons for fall.

Autumn Term

Unit 3: The Role of the Great Powers in the Middle East

The aims, policies and methods of Britain and France to 1956 and of Russia and the US to 2011; the role of the League of Nations and the UN; the use of mandates, coups, occupations, allies, bases and client states; Great Power involvement in war from 1914 through the Cold War to the Gulf Wars (1987, 1991 and 2003); the Great Powers and resources: oil, the Seven Sisters, concessions and nationalisation, the Mossadeq Coup 1953, OPEC and oil as a weapon; oil wars and strategy.

Unit 4 coursework (on going)

Spring Term

Unit 3: Zionism, Israel and the Palestinian issue

Zionist ideas and the impact of the First and Second World War; the Jewish Agency; the creation of Israel and the 1948 War; Arab-Israeli Wars (1956, 1967, 1973) and invasions (Lebanon 1982 and 2006, Gaza 2008); the Occupied Territories Settlements and Wall; Israeli leadership and diplomacy including Sadat, Camp David and Oslo, the Road Map for peace; Palestine to 1948; Palestinian refugees and the impact on Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza; the PLO and Arafat; Intifadas (1987–1993, 2000–2011) and Palestinian divisions; the Palestinian Authority: the West Bank, Gaza, land, water and the conflict over resources.

Summer Term

Statehood and Pan Arabism in the Middle East

The progress of Arabism from 1908; Nasser and the Arab revolution in Egypt and Syria 1954–1970 (Suez, the United Arab Republic 1958–1961); the impact of the Arab-Israeli Wars and regional rivalries; democratic, monarchical and authoritarian States including Ataturk’s secular state and its successors; monarchies including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi Movement; Syria including the Baathist Movement, the Assads and risings to 2011; Iraq from Faisal to Saddam Hussein and the US; Iran from Shah (1925) to Ayatollahs (1979).

Revision and preparation for A-Level exam