OCR A-Level History A H505
Y101: Alfred and the Making of England 871–1016Unit group 1
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035–1107Unit group 1
Y103: England 1199–1272Unit group 1
Y104: England 1377–1455Unit group 1
Y105: England 1445–1509: Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VIIUnit group 1
Y106: England 1485–1558: The Early TudorsUnit group 1
Y107: England 1547–1603: The Later TudorsUnit group 1
Y108: The Early Stuarts and the Origins of the Civil War 1603–1660Unit group 1
Y109: The Making of Georgian Britain 1678–c.1760Unit group 1
Y110: From Pitt to Peel 1783–1853Unit group 1
Y111: Liberals, Conservatives and the Rise of Labour 1846–1918Unit group 1
Y112: Britain 1900–1951Unit group 1
Y113: Britain 1930–1997Unit group 1
Y201: The Rise of Islam c.550–750Unit group 2
Y202: Charlemagne 768–814Unit group 2
Y203: The Crusades and the Crusader States 1095–1192Unit group 2
Y204: Genghis Khan and the Explosion From the Steppes c.1167–1405Unit group 2
Y205: Exploration, Encounters and Empire 1445–1570Unit group 2
Y206: Spain 1469–1556Unit group 2
Y207: The German Reformation and the Rule of Charles v 1500–1559Unit group 2
Y208: Philip II 1556–1598Unit group 2
Y209: African Kingdoms c.1400–c.1800: Four Case StudiesUnit group 2
Y210: Russia 1645–1741Unit group 2
Y211: The Rise and Decline of the Mughal Empire in India 1526–1739Unit group 2
Y212: The American Revolution 1740–1796Unit group 2
Y213: The French Revolution and the Rule of Napoleon 1774–1815Unit group 2
Y214: France 1814–1870Unit group 2
Y215: Italy and Unification 1789–1896Unit group 2
Y216: The USA in the 19th Century: Westward Expansion and Civil War 1803–c.1890Unit group 2
Y217: Japan 1853–1937Unit group 2
Y218: International Relations 1890–1941Unit group 2
Y219: Russia 1894–1941Unit group 2
Y220: Italy 1896–1943Unit group 2
Y221: Democracy and Dictatorships in Germany 1919–1963Unit group 2
Y222: The Cold War in Asia 1945–1993Unit group 2
Y223: The Cold War in Europe 1941–1995Unit group 2
Y224: Apartheid and Reconciliation: South African Politics 1948–1999Unit group 2
Y301: The Early Anglo-Saxons c.400–800Unit group 3
Y302: The Viking Age c.790–1066Unit group 3
Y303: English Government and the Church 1066–1216Unit group 3
Y304: The Church and Medieval Heresy c.1100–1437Unit group 3
Y305: The Renaissance c.1400–c.1600Unit group 3
Y306: Rebellion and Disorder Under the Tudors 1485–1603Unit group 3
Y307: Tudor Foreign Policy 1485–1603Unit group 3
Y308: The Catholic Reformation 1492–1610Unit group 3
Y309: The Ascendancy of the Ottoman Empire 1453–1606Unit group 3
Y310: The Development of the Nation State: France 1498–1610Unit group 3
Y311: The Origins and Growth of the British Empire 1558–1783Unit group 3
Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th CenturiesUnit group 3
Y313: The Ascendancy of France 1610–1715Unit group 3
Y314: The Challenge of German Nationalism 1789–1919Unit group 3
Y315: The Changing Nature of Warfare 1792–1945Unit group 3
Y316: Britain and Ireland 1791–1921Unit group 3
Y317: China and Its Rulers 1839–1989Unit group 3
Y318: Russia and Its Rulers 1855–1964Unit group 3
Y319: Civil Rights in the USA 1865–1992Unit group 3
Y320: From Colonialism to Independence: The British Empire 1857–1965Unit group 3
Y321: The Middle East 1908–2011: Ottomans to Arab SpringUnit group 3
Y320: From Colonialism to Independence: The British Empire 1857–1965
The impact of imperial power on the periphery and Britain: Orientalism and the effects of rule on the colonies
- 1 thing to know
- Unit group 3
Overview
Recall questions on Said’s Orientalism, colonial labour, Indian famines, technology and modernisation, medicine, national identities, missions, gender, education, indigenous culture, sport and colonial law and order.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
What did Edward Said mean by Orientalism, and how have historians criticised it?
Model answer
Said argued in 1978 that European scholarship, travel writing and art constructed the East as an unchanging, sensual and irrational other whose supposed backwardness justified rule, so that knowledge and power reinforced one another; John MacKenzie and others replied that Western engagement with Asian art and religion was often admiring and transformative rather than simply denigrating, and that Said's model leaves colonised people no agency.
- 2
Explain how imperial rule changed patterns of work in the colonies.
Model answer
Subsistence farming gave way to export crops such as cotton, cocoa, tea and rubber, mines and plantations demanded large migrant workforces, hut and poll taxes were levied specifically to force men into wage labour, pass laws such as the Kenyan kipande of 1920 controlled their movement, and after slavery was abolished more than a million indentured Indians were shipped to Mauritius, Natal, Fiji and the Caribbean.
- 3
How have historians explained the famines of British India?
Model answer
The famine of 1876 to 1878 killed several million and further famines followed in 1896 and 1899; contemporaries blamed drought, but critics from Naoroji onwards blamed export of grain, revenue demands and Lytton's insistence on minimal relief, Mike Davis has argued that market ideology turned drought into mass death, and Amartya Sen's work on entitlements showed that famine can occur without any fall in the food supply, as in Bengal in 1943.
- 4
Assess the argument that Britain modernised India through technology.
Model answer
India gained the largest rail network in Asia, running to about 40,000 miles by 1947, together with the telegraph and major canal irrigation in the Punjab; but the lines were laid to move troops and export crops to ports rather than to link Indian markets, they were built by British firms on a guaranteed return charged to Indian taxpayers, and the associated tariff policy helped destroy indigenous textile manufacture.
- 5
Assess the record of imperial medicine.
Model answer
Britain introduced smallpox vaccination, founded schools of tropical medicine at Liverpool and London at the end of the 1890s, and applied Ross's demonstration of mosquito transmission to malaria control; but the effort was directed first at keeping soldiers, officials and plantation labour fit, coercive anti-plague searches in Bombay in the 1890s provoked riots, and imperial shipping and railways spread disease as effectively as they carried its remedies, as the rinderpest epidemic of the 1890s and the influenza pandemic of 1918 showed.
- 6
How did imperial rule shape national identities?
Model answer
Colonial borders drawn for administrative convenience created territories that later became nations, censuses and administrative categories hardened fluid identities into fixed communities and castes, the theory of martial races reorganised army recruitment along ethnic lines, and separate electorates and communal representation in India entrenched religious identity as a political category.
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