Understanding the Modern World: The Romans to the Information Society

This course is being offered to members of the University of the Third Age in Worthing. Please feel free to use the material on your own courses. I can also supply you with the primary sources that go with the sessions.

1. Introduction: What is History?

Discussion Points

Quotations

2. The Romans in Britain

3. The Dark Ages and Alfred the Great

4. The Battle of Hastings

5. William the Conqueror and the Feudal System

6. The Struggle for Power: The Sons of William the Conqueror

7. The Monarchy, the Church and the Barons

8. The Economic Consequences of the Black Death

9. The Peasant's Revolt and the end of Feudalism

10. The Tudors and Religious Reforms

11. The English Bible

12. Mary and Elizabeth: Catholics and Protestants

13. The English Civil War

14. The Commonwealth and Restoration

15. The Birth of Capitalism: Richard Arkwright and Robert Owen

16. James Watt and Steam Power

17. Transport and the Industrial Revolution

18. The British Empire

19. Parliamentary Reform

20. Marxism and the 19th Century

21. Life in 19th Century Britain

22. Political Parties in the 19th Century

23. The Struggle for Women's Rights: 1500-1870

24. Emancipation of Women: 1870-1928

25. The Growth of Liberalism: 1880-1910

26. Political Crisis in Britain: 1910-1914

27. Outbreak of the First World War

28. First World War: 1914-1916

29. The Romanov Dynasty

30. Russia in Revolution: 1890-1918

31. The United States and the First World War

32. The First World War Peace Settlement

33. Russia: 1918-1924

34: Britain: 1918-1924

35. The Birth of Modern Capitalism

36. John Maynard Keynes and the Wall Street Crash

37. The Great Depression in Britain

38. Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt

39. The New Deal

40. Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky

41. Adolf Hitler (1889-1924)

42. Adolf Hitler (1924-1928)

43. Life in Nazi Germany: 1933-1939

44. Hitler and the Night of the Long Knives

45. Anti-Semitism in Britain

45. Fascism in Britain in the 1930s

46. Fascism in Sussex

47. Spanish Civil War

48. British Foreign Policy: 1919-1939

49. Winston Churchill: 1874-1906

50. Winston Churchill: 1906-1916

51. Winston Churchill: 1916-1926

52. Winston Churchill: 1927-1939

53. Clement Attlee: 1883-1918

54. Clement Attlee: 1919-1939

55. Stanley Baldwin

56. Appeasement: 1935-1938

57. Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler

58. Britain at War: 1939-1940

59. Finland, Norway and Dunkirk

60. Operation Sea Lion and the Battle of Britain

61. The Blitz: September 1940 - May 1941

62. Bomb Disposal Unit, Air Raid Wardens and the British Media

63. Nazi Germany Invades the Soviet Union

64. The British Security Co-Ordination and Pearl Harbor

65. War in the Far East: 1941-1942

66. Adolf Hitler and Anti-Semitism

67. Jews in Nazi Germany

68. German Resistance to Adolf Hitler: Politics and Sport

69. German Resistance to Adolf Hitler: Artists

Discussion Points

Primary and Secondary Sources

70. German Resistance to Adolf Hitler: Novelists and Playwrights