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.

Sort by: Date (Newest first) | Title A-Z
Show: All | Articles | Podcasts | Multipage Articles
  • Imperialism resurgent: European attempts to 'recolonise' South East Asia after 1945

    Article

    ‘To think that the people of Indochina would be content to settle for less [from the French] than Indonesia has gained from the Dutch or India from the British is to underestimate the power of the forces that are sweeping Asia today'. An American adviser in 1949 cited: Robin Jeffrey...

    Click to view
  • India and the British war effort, 1939-1945

    Article

    India was vital as a source of men and material for the British in the Second World War, despite the constitutional, social and economic issues which posed threats to its contribution. Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India 1940-5, wrote to Churchill, 8 April 1941: ‘My prime care had naturally...

    Click to view
  • India in 1914

    Article

    Rather as Queen Victoria was never as ‘Victorian' as we tend to assume, so British India in the years leading up to 1914 does not present the cliched spectacle of colonists in pith helmets and shorts lording it over subservient natives that we might assume. Certainly that sort of relationship...

    Click to view
  • JFK: the medium, the message and the myth

    Article

    Dale Banham and Russell Hall present a multi-faceted rationale for an in-depth study of the 1991 film, JFK. They treat it as an ‘interpretation’ in the National Curriculum sense, constructing a varied and meticulous learning journey towards its analysis. By the end of that journey pupils had examined the central...

    Click to view
  • Learning lessons from genocides

    Article

    ‘Never again'? Helping Year 9 think about what happened after the Holocaust and learning lessons from genocides ‘Never again' is the clarion call of much Holocaust and genocide education. There is a danger, however, that it can become an empty, if pious, wish. How can we help pupils reflect seriously on...

    Click to view
  • Lions of the Great War: How are Sikh soldiers of the First World War seen today?

    Multipage Article

    This Key Stage Three History scheme of work focuses in depth on the contribution of Sikh soldiers from the Indian subcontinent fighting on behalf of the UK between 1914 and 1918. It is designed to follow on from a focus on the First World War, probably in Year Nine and...

    Click to view
  • Martin Luther King - Judge for Yourself

    Article

    Judge For Yourself: Martin Luther King by Christine Hatt, pub 2009,Evans Publishing, p/b £9.99, ISBN: 978  0 237 53624 4 Reviewed by Alf Wilkinson This is a re-issue of a book published in 2002, but now out in paperback for the first time. The first part of the book is...

    Click to view
  • 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,...

    Click to view
  • Nutshell

    Article

    This edition of 'Nutshell' examines the philosophical concept of the End of History.

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: Britain's Cold War

    Multipage Article

    In this set of podcasts our author Dr Helen Parr examines Britain's role in the Cold War. Katharine Hudson, General Secretary of CND, looks at the history of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Britain.

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: Canadian Confederation

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Professor Edward MacDonald of the University of Prince Edward Island discusses the origins of the Charlottetown Conference of 1864, Canadian Confederation and the development of Canada over the 20th Century.

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: Modern China

    Multipage Article

    An HA Podcasted History of Modern China  featuring Dr Yangwen Zeng of the University of Manchester, Professor Rana Mitter and Professor Patricia Thornton of the University of Oxford and Professor Arne Westad of the London School of Economics. 

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: Russia and the USSR

    Multipage Article

    An HA Podcasted History of Russia and the USSR featuring Dr Beryl Williams, Dr Jonathan Davis of Anglia Ruskin University, Dr Edwin Bacon of Birkbeck University of London and Professor Peter Waldron of the University of East Anglia.

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: The British Empire 1800-Present

    Multipage Article

    An HA Podcasted History of the British Empire 1800-Present featuring Dr Seán Lang of Anglia Ruskin University, Dr John Stuart of Kingston University London, Professor A. J. Stockwell and Dr Larry Butler of the University of East Anglia.

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: The Cold War

    Multipage Article

    An HA Podcasted History of the Cold War featuring Dr Elena Hore of the University of Essex, Dr Matthew Grant of Teeside University, Dr Holger Nehring of the University of Sheffield, Dr Michael Shin of the University of Cambridge, Professor Mark White of Queen Mary University of London, Professor Charles...

    Click to view
  • Polychronicon 119: The Second World War and popular culture

    Article

    Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' investigates World War...

    Click to view
  • Polychronicon 137: Bringing space travel down to Earth

    Article

    It nearly began like this: ‘On Christmas Eve 1968, two episcopalians and a Roman Catholic were in orbit around the Moon.' I was writing a book called Earthrise, about the first views of Earth from space. Most other books about the Apollo programme of the 1960s and 1970s took an...

    Click to view
  • Polychronicon 138: The Civil Rights Movement

    Article

    "He was The One, The Hero, The One Fearless Person for whom we had waited. I hadn't even realized before that we had been waiting for Martin Luther King, Jr, but we had." So spoke the novelist Alice Walker in 1972, looking back on her teenage years. And so wrote...

    Click to view
  • Polychronicon 139: Civic denouncer: The lives of Pavlik Morozov

    Article

    Germaine Greer (in the context of the Pirelli Calendar) once commented that the defining feature of a legend was that almost nothing said and believed about it was true. Pavlik Morozov, notorious both inside Russia and internationally for having denounced his father, almost certainly never did so. In September 1932, local...

    Click to view
  • Polychronicon 140: Why did the Cold War End?

    Article

    The end of the Cold War is a controversial subject. Contemporary analysts did not see it coming. Any explanation of its ending which seeks to build up a network of causation will therefore be forced to make arguments based on events whose significance was not  necessarily seen at the time....

    Click to view