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Beneath the surface: social reports as primary sources

This resource is about a report on the public heath conditions of Leeds in 1842 by a medical doctor, Robert Baker. It provides a background to the report along with information on Robert Baker and his credentials for undertaking the investigation. Extracts from the report describe the poor conditions of sanitation, the ...

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Chartist Movement 1838-48

This resource is about the Chartist Movement, a movement for the political rights of working people in Britain. It gives a brief history of the movement and describes the three petitions with millions of signatures that were presented to parliament in 1839,1842 and 1848. It is organised under the following headings: the ...

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Britain's empire in 1815

This resource is about the British Empire after the defeat of Napoleon as Britain emerged dominant among the European great powers and was recognised as one of the world's great imperial powers. It shows through a series of maps the extent of the British Empire in 1815, with three disparate parts: North America, the eastern ...

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Social pecking order in the Roman world

This interactive resource is about the social structure of Ancient Rome. It includes detailed information about the stratification of Roman society and how this affected people's lives. The topics covered are: Legal status; Citizen and non-citizen - which includes information about the imperial hierarchy, the Senate and ...

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Medieval stonemasons

This resource is about the medieval stonemason. It includes text and some images. The resource is organised under four topic headings: A mason's craft; Soaring monuments; Heavenly Jerusalem; and Find out more. Interposed in the text are images of Ely Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral and Wells Cathedral.

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Viking women

This resource is about the role of women in the Viking world. It includes text and some images. The resource is organised under six topic headings: Female Vikings?; Viking women in England; Scandinavian immigration; Daily life; Women of influence; and Find out more. The images are interposed in the text.

Interactive

Genocide under the Nazis: timeline

This interactive timeline is about the persecution and mass murder of the Jews, Gypsies and other people by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. It includes background material and a description of how the timeline works. It shows events in the same sequence as experienced by those who lived during the twelve years of Nazi ...

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Spinning mill animation

This resource is about spinning mills in 19th-century Britain. The animation shows how a spinning mill used line shafting to spin cotton. Students read text material, then view the stages of line shafting: coal-fired furnaces produce steam, which passes through the valves and powers the piston rod; the piston rod transfers ...

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Stephenson's Rocket animation

This animated resource is about innovation in railway technology in 19th-century Britain. It models an early steam locomotive called Stephenson's Rocket, which won the Rainhill Trials in 1829, a competition to find the best locomotive engine for a railway line approaching completion. It includes background material, an ...

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Blast furnace animation

This resource is about blast furnaces and innovations in smelting iron in 18th-century Britain. The animation show how a blast furnace used a combination of iron ore and limestone with coke to produce iron. Students read text material and then view the animation, which also includes a segment on how to build a blast furnace.

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The Mongols' pastoral-nomadic life

This resource, a component of the online resource The Mongols in world history, details the nomadic lifestyle of the Mongols and the rise of Temujin (Genghis Khan). It includes a list of the animals upon which the precarious pastoral-nomadic life of the Mongols depended. It describes the various uses of the animals by the ...

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Black Death: the effect of the plague

This resource is about the effects of the plague, known as the Black Death, in rural England from 1348 to 1352. The resource describes deserted villages in rural England, uninhabited after the death of the population from the plague. It reports that the biggest effect of the plague was in rural areas because most people ...

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Black Death

This resource is about the plague that broke out in England from 1348-49. It provides an overview of the plague in the British Isles beginning with the initial outbreak in Dorset, which then spread to England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The resource includes many contemporary descriptions of the plague, the death toll ...

Interactive

The abolition of British slavery: interactive map

This interactive resource is about the abolition of slavery. It includes an interactive map, written material, images and audio recordings of related text. Students follow a trail on the map, which leads them to the topics: How the slave trade worked; Resistance and abolition; Return to Sierra Leone; Olaudah Equiano's adventures; ...

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Ancient China: geography - explore

This is a resource featuring six interactive maps and associated tools that address different aspects of the geography of China. The maps include geographical features and important cities, archaeological sites and political boundaries in ancient times, as well as a modern political map. The maps of ancient China depict ...

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Systems of Exchange and Trade

This short (4 minute) video offers an overview of the history of world trade, focusing on the beginnings during the time of agrarian civilisations. The four great civilisations of the Romans, the Kushans, the Parthians and the Han Chinese were the key players, with their development of roads, ports and coin systems. The ...

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How did change accelerate?

This 12 minute video is divided into two parts and presents an overview of the rapid development of the modern world. Part 1 presents reasons for the exponential growth in the world's population over the last 500 years including the development of global networks and commerce and the discovery of fossil fuel energy, which ...

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How did the first humans live?

This 10 minute video in three parts offers an overview of what life was like in the ancient world. Part 1 introduces the Palaeolithic era, marked by the use of stone tools, focusing on Homo Sapiens, and the tools used to study this era - archaeology and anthropology. Part 2 discusses human foraging and the specialist techniques ...

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Transition to Agriculture

This 6 minute video explains how agriculture drove change and why humans took the risk of abandoning foraging. As farming technologies improved, populations increased, which led to the growth of villages and then cities. This in turn enabled collective learning, so that farming regions got a head start on other regions. ...

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Why was agriculture so important?

This 10 minute video in 2 parts offers an overview of the development of agricultural practices in ancient societies. Part 1 discusses the limitations of foraging for food, and the advantages of farming - the domestication of animals and plants for nutrition. This move to agriculture meant humans changed also - technologically, ...