World 1901-present

Some of the most profound and influential changes in world history take place from 1901 to today and covered here are many of the important and well known ones as well as some of the smaller stories. In terms of reach this section covers huge themes on diplomacy, post imperialism and economics. The articles cover the time period right up into recent events such as the State of the Union address by the US President Barrack Obama.

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  • How representing women can convey a more complex narrative of the Russian Revolution to Year 9

    Article

    Barbara Trapani was troubled by the oversimplified judgements her students were making about the Russian Revolution. Could the women of the revolution help her students overcome their tendency to focus on success and failure? Trapani revised her enquiry, selecting stories of women who could ‘illuminate’ a longer, more complex history of...

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  • Recorded Webinar: India and the Second World War

    Article

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  • Recorded Webinar: ‘Drawing the Line’: the 1947 Partition of India

    Article

    August 2022 marks 75 years since British India was divided at independence into two separate states: India and Pakistan (the latter including today’s Bangladesh). As with the 70th commemoration in 2017, this anniversary will trigger a great deal of collective remembering in Britain just as in South Asia itself. Freedom from...

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  • Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan

    Article

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  • Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War

    Article

    In this HA Virtual Branch talk Professor Richard Toye explores Churchill’s response to the USSR and how his actions during the early Cold War years intersected with his views of traditional Anglo-Russian tensions and the legacy of the ‘Great Game’. Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University...

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  • Telling difficult stories about the creation of Bangladesh

    Article

    Nathanael Davies recognised that previous efforts to diversify the history taught at his school by weaving new stories into the curriculum had made little impression on his students’ assumptions about what really counted as history. Planning a new enquiry on the creation of Bangladesh was intended both to bridge a...

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  • What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Chinese history?

    Article

    Teaching Chinese history in the UK runs up against some immediate obstacles. It lacks the familiar staging posts of European history: Chairman Mao is among the few well-known names, and terms such as Cultural Revolution and Opium War may attract recognition, but are often not understood in detail. The situation...

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  • Helping Year 9 to engage effectively with ‘other genocides’

    Article

    In this article, Andy Lawrence returns to arguments made in Teaching History 153 about the importance of teaching young people about other modern genocides in addition to the Holocaust. Building on those arguments with his own rationale, Lawrence also acknowledges the constraints on curriculum time that compel all departments to...

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  • Navigating the ‘imperial history wars’

    Article

    Concerned by the growing tendency of politicians and press to revive the moral balance-sheet approach to British imperial history and by some evidence of its resurgence in schools, Alex Benger set about devising a framework which would keep pupils’ analysis rigorously historical, rather than moral and politicised. In this article,...

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  • Reimagining the ‘Aba Riots’

    Article

    As an Early Career Teacher, Eleri Hedley-Carter set out to make the history she teaches in school more reflective of her undergraduate study of history – a discipline that strives to uncover a diverse past through various lenses and historical methods. In addition to expanding her school’s curriculum to include an...

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  • Teaching about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and events happening there

    Article

    The events of the last few days appear to have come out of nowhere to many people, especially children. While tensions have existed in the region for some time Russia’s decision to attack Ukraine was without provocation. To have war return in such a way to the edges of Europe...

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  • Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?

    Article

    Why is the term 'Armenian Genocide' controversial, with many countries still not acknowledging a genocide at all? What do we know about the event of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian community in Turkey? How can we grapple with a history that many people want to forget? In this...

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  • Recorded webinar: History, Politics and Journalism

    Article

    History, politics and journalism are intertwined. In this webinar (filmed in December 2021) Professor Anna Whitelock and members of her department from City, University of London explore the inter-related history, politics and journalism of Russia and the Cold War. First, Dina Fainberg explores Soviet relations with the world under Nikita...

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  • What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?

    Article

    The murder of George Floyd during the summer of 2020 and the ongoing ‘culture war’ in Britain over the legacy of the British Empire have reignited interest in imperial history. This focuses, in particular, on the question of the empire’s impact on Britain itself: on how the act of conquering...

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  • Decolonise, don’t diversify: enabling a paradigm shift in the KS3 history curriculum

    Article

    In this article, Dan Lyndon-Cohen makes the case that history departments should move from diversifying the curriculum to decolonising it. After reflecting on some examples of how he made the content of his lessons more representative, he explores how the influence of writers such as Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Emma Dabiri...

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  • Film: China's Good War

    Article

    In this lecture Professor Mitter uses film and other propaganda works to explore how key events of global history are being represented in China to develop a different understanding of its own past. The talk addresses a number of the factors for this change in how China is reflecting on...

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  • How introducing cultural and intellectual history improves critical analysis in the classroom

    Article

    In his article in this journal just over a year ago, Steven Driver set out his vision for a less myopic range of topics in A-level coursework. In this edition, Driver demonstrates how he has built student enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, a topic which he had previously identified as...

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  • Exploring and Teaching the Korean War

    Multipage Article

    The Korean War has been called ‘The Forgotten War’. Yet it was profoundly significant to the development of the Cold War. It had a cataclysmic impact on both North and South Korea which continues to affect both nations’ development to this day. And it continues to influence relationships between the...

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  • Exploring and Teaching Twentieth-Century History

    Article

    This resource is free to everyone. For access to our library of high-quality secondary history materials along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of history teachers and subject leaders, join the Historical Association today  For a long time, history curricula on the 20th century prioritised...

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  • Teaching 20th-Century History Resources

    Article

    We hope you enjoyed reading Exploring and Teaching Twentieth-Century History. To help you explore the topic further we’ve put together a selection of just a few additional 20th-century history and teaching resources below. All these resources are available free to HA Secondary Members – find out more about Secondary Membership. 20th-century history podcast series We have recorded...

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