History — UK A-Level
Curated flashcards for UK A-Level History (AQA, Edexcel, OCR). Covers historical skills — source evaluation, interpretations and historiography, causation, change and significance — alongside British, European and wider-world history from the Tudors to the Cold War.
Ämne: Historia · Nivå: Gymnasium (16–19) · 403 kort
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- Provenance refers to the origin of a source — who made it, when, where, and in what circumstances. It is the starting point for evaluating any primary source.
- The 'utility' (or value) of a source is how useful it is for answering a specific historical question — it depends on the enquiry, not just on whether the source is reliable.
- A biased or unreliable source can still be highly valuable to a historian — it reveals the attitudes, assumptions and propaganda aims of the person or group that produced it.
- A primary source is produced at the time of the event by someone present or directly involved; a secondary source is a later account or analysis produced by someone studying the event.
- Tone and emphasis in a source — the language, what it stresses and what it omits — are clues to the author's purpose and audience, which shape how the source should be interpreted.
- Cross-referencing means comparing a source against other sources to test whether its claims are corroborated or contradicted, strengthening or weakening confidence in it.
- Historiography is the study of how history has been written — how interpretations of a topic have changed over time and why historians disagree.
- Historians disagree because they ask different questions, use different sources, write in different times, and bring different political or methodological assumptions to the past.
- A 'Whig' interpretation of history sees the past as a story of steady progress toward liberty and enlightenment, judging earlier eras by present-day values. The term was coined by Herbert Butterfield.
- Marxist historians (e.g. Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm) emphasise class conflict and economic forces as the driving causes of historical change.
- Causation in history distinguishes long-term causes (underlying conditions), short-term causes (preconditions building up), and triggers (the immediate spark that sets events off).
- Historical significance is not fixed: an event's significance depends on its consequences, how many people it affected, how long its effects lasted, and how it is remembered.
- Change and continuity asks what altered and what stayed the same over a period — historians measure the pace, extent and direction of change rather than assuming everything transformed.
- Periodisation is the dividing of the past into named periods (e.g. 'the Tudor era', 'the Cold War'). The labels are constructed by historians and can shape — or distort — how we see continuity across the boundaries.
- Anachronism is the error of imposing the values, ideas or technology of one period onto another — historians try to understand the past on its own terms.
- Hindsight bias is the tendency to see past outcomes as inevitable once we know how events turned out. Good historians reconstruct the genuine uncertainty contemporaries faced.
- Corroboration is when two or more independent sources support the same claim, which strengthens a historian's confidence that it is accurate.
- Empathy in history means understanding why people in the past acted as they did, given their beliefs and circumstances — it is not approval of their actions.
- A historical interpretation is a constructed account that selects, organises and explains evidence to make an argument — it is more than a simple report of 'what happened'.
- 'Revisionist' historians challenge an established interpretation; 'post-revisionists' often seek a synthesis between the orthodox view and the revisionist challenge.
- Henry VII won the throne by defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, ending the Wars of the Roses and founding the Tudor dynasty.
- Henry VII married Elizabeth of York in 1486, uniting the houses of Lancaster and York and symbolising an end to dynastic conflict through the Tudor rose.
- Henry VII used bonds and recognisances — financial pledges of good behaviour — to control the nobility and fill the royal treasury.
- Lambert Simnel (1487) and Perkin Warbeck (1490s) were pretenders to Henry VII's throne, each claiming to be a Yorkist heir; both rebellions ultimately failed.
- Henry VIII became king in 1509 and reigned until 1547. His desire to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon triggered England's break with Rome.
- The Act of Supremacy (1534) declared Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church of England, severing papal authority and establishing royal control over the Church.
- The Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1540), driven by Thomas Cromwell, closed England's religious houses and transferred their vast wealth and land to the Crown.
- The Pilgrimage of Grace (1536) was a major rebellion in northern England against Henry VIII's religious changes and the dissolution of the monasteries.
- Thomas Cromwell was Henry VIII's chief minister who engineered the break with Rome and reformed government administration before his execution in 1540.
- Henry VIII had six wives: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr.
- Edward VI (reigned 1547–1553) was a minor whose regime, under Protectors Somerset then Northumberland, drove England in a strongly Protestant direction.
- Thomas Cranmer's Books of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552) introduced Protestant English-language worship during the reign of Edward VI.
- Mary I (reigned 1553–1558) restored Catholicism in England and had nearly 300 Protestants burned for heresy, earning the later nickname 'Bloody Mary'.
- Mary I married Philip II of Spain in 1554, an unpopular union that tied England to Spanish interests and led to the loss of Calais in 1558.
- Elizabeth I reigned 1558–1603, the last Tudor monarch. Her long reign is associated with the Religious Settlement, naval expansion and a cultural 'golden age'.
- The Elizabethan Religious Settlement (1559) — the Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity — created a moderate Protestant Church with Elizabeth as 'Supreme Governor'.
- Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic claimant to the English throne, was held prisoner by Elizabeth I for 19 years and executed in 1587 for her part in the Babington Plot.
- The Spanish Armada of 1588 was a fleet sent by Philip II to invade England; its defeat became a defining moment of Elizabethan national pride.
- The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 codified state responsibility for poor relief, distinguishing the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving' poor and influencing welfare policy for centuries.
- Geoffrey Elton argued the 1530s saw a 'Tudor revolution in government' — a deliberate, bureaucratic modernisation led by Thomas Cromwell. Later historians have challenged how revolutionary it really was.
- James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, uniting the two crowns and beginning the Stuart dynasty. He believed in the divine right of kings.
- The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a failed Catholic conspiracy, involving Guy Fawkes, to blow up Parliament and King James I.
- Charles I ruled without Parliament from 1629 to 1640, a period known as the 'Personal Rule' or, by his critics, the 'Eleven Years' Tyranny'.
- Ship Money, a tax Charles I levied without parliamentary consent during the 1630s, became a symbol of royal overreach and provoked the Hampden case of 1637.
- The English Civil War broke out in 1642 between Royalists (Cavaliers) loyal to Charles I and Parliamentarians (Roundheads).
- The New Model Army, formed in 1645 and associated with Oliver Cromwell, was a disciplined professional force whose victory at Naseby was decisive for Parliament.
- Charles I was tried for treason and executed on 30 January 1649 — the only English monarch to be put to death by his own subjects.
- England was a republic — the Commonwealth — from 1649 to 1660, with no monarch; Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658.
- Cromwell's campaign in Ireland (1649–1650), including the storming of Drogheda and Wexford, was marked by massacres that remain deeply controversial.
- The Restoration of 1660 returned the monarchy under Charles II after the collapse of the Protectorate, ending the Interregnum.