Teaching
History Online
Number
39: 12th May, 2002
Introduction
1.
Centre
for Study of Cartoon and Caricature
2.
First
World War
3.
Battle
for Berlin
4.
Nazi
and East German Propaganda
5.
The
Cotton Times
6.
Notable
American Unitarians
7.
History
Gateway
8.
Berlin
Wall Online
9.
Mother
Jones
Introduction
Spartacus Educational
publishes Teaching
History Online
every week. The newsletter includes news, reviews of websites and
articles on using ICT in the history classroom. Members of the mailing
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History Online. In this way we hope to create
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Currently there are 18,980 subscribers to the newsletter.
John Simkin
spartacus@pavilion.co.uk
Centre
for Study of Cartoon and Caricature: This site based at the library
of the University of Kent at Canterbury is an excellent location for
all those interested in the use of cartoons as historical sources.
In particular teachers will find the searchable database an excellent
resource for creating source-based questions. The database contains
a wide range of British cartoons from the First World War to the Gulf
War. This site is superb and it is worth taking a little while to
come to terms with a slightly idiosyncratic search engine (if you
are having trouble getting it to recognise keywords try using the
year of the event instead).
First
World War.com: This is a wide-ranging frequently updated website
providing information on a variety of Great War topics. Containing
some 500 biographical sketches and over 100 battle summaries from
all fronts of the war, the site also offers an extensive (and eclectic)
collection of short memoirs penned by participants (from nurses to
infantrymen to prisoners). A special section addresses the impact
of much of the prose and poetry written during and as a consequence
of the war's effects. Archive photographs are set alongside pictures
of the battlefields today, each with a short summary describing its
significance. A timeline is available detailing events for every day
of the war from the July Crisis to the Armistice. Special features
deal with given aspects of the war, from its planning and origins
to the curious Christmas Truce of 1914. Archive songs and speeches
from the 1914-18 era recall the popular tunes of the day in audio.
Finally the site offers a collection of key source documents associated
with the conflict, including treaty texts (Versailles, Brest-Litovsk)
and diplomatic agreements.
Battle
for Berlin: Stalin's attempt to take Berlin ahead of his allies
in 1945 led to the death of 70,000 Russian soldiers. This BBC website
follows historian Antony Beevor as he examined the conquering army's
conduct and unearthed evidence to suggest that Stalin's nuclear ambitions
may have driven him to take such military risks. Beevor's task was
awesome. There were tens of thousands of unexplored documents in the
Russian archives relevant to the Battle of Berlin. Would the new material
shed light on controversial issues such as the alleged mass rape of
German women by Red Army soldiers? Why did Stalin sacrifice the lives
of tens of thousands of his soldiers in order to be in Berlin before
the Americans?
Nazi
and East German Propaganda: Propaganda was central to Nazi Germany
and the postwar German Democratic Republic. The German Propaganda
Archive website maintained by Randall Bytwerk, includes both propaganda
itself and material produced for the guidance of propagandists. The
goal is to help people understand the two great totalitarian systems
of the 20th Century by giving them access to the primary material.
The website includes speeches, posters, cartoons and photographs.
The
Cotton Times: The Industrial Revolution was arguably the most
significant single event in history. Almost overnight, a tide of change
swept away the old order and altered the world forever. Britain abandoned
her rural, agricultural economy and plunged headlong into the unknown,
creating the world's first industrial society. It was a process driven
forward at breakneck speed by the textile industry, masterminded by
the inventors and entrepreneurs who sprang into action in the hitherto
backwater county of Lancashire from the mid-18th century. This site
describes how it happened. It tells of the men whose machines made
it possible, those who exploited the inventions, and the politicians,
reformers and medical scientists who battled to contain the worst
of the inevitable social fall-out. Sadly, it also tells of those who
paid the price of progress with their health and often their lives.
Notable
American Unitarians: This online project of the First Parish and
the First Church in Cambridge (Unitarian Universalist) is based on
research concerning some representative women and men who made significant
contributions to life in the quarter-century 1936-1961. The website
includes biographies of Blanche Ames, Emily Greene Balche, Roger Baldwin,
Ray Bradbury, Buckminster Fuller, John Haynes Holmes, Pete Seeger,
Witney Young and Frank Lloyd Wright.
History
Gateway: This site is produced by Beal High School in Ilford and
aims to provide pupils with a resource for research, homework and
revision to use at home or at school. The site contains links to hundreds
of useful websites (some of which have been reviewed in this newsletter).
Pupils will find it especially useful that the sites are organised
into National Curriculum topics, and the areas of the OCR GCSE Modern
World Syllabus. Many of the sites have been reviewed and given 'star',
'recommended' or 'hard site' ratings to help pupils choose the most
suitable sites.
Berlin
Wall Online: On 13th August 1961 the East German security forces
suddenly sealed off sixty-eight of the eighty crossing points in Berlin,
erecting overnight a barrier of barbed wire and, in places, of concrete
across the city and restricting all interzonal movements. Western
governments protested at the erection of this Berlin Wall and American
concern was emphasized by a visit made by President Kennedy to the
city in June 1963. This website provides a detailed history of the
Berlin Wall.
Book
Section
Mother
Jones: Revolutionary Leader of Labor and Social Reform: Dorothy
L. Wake, the author of this book, defines Mother Jones as the most
significant and relevant political voice for the working class to
ever emerge from within the United States. Although Mary Harris "Mother"
Jones identified herself as a socialist, her politics coincided with
revolutionary syndicalism. The duality of Socialism and Syndicalism
defined her role as a leader of labour and social reform during the
late 1800s and early 1900s, and structured her beliefs and attitudes
about women, which paralleled her general perceptions of class warfare.
Jones has been dismissed as being simply a "hell-raiser"
or reduced to a "folksy" or "colorful" old woman
who endeared herself to the miners by taking up their cause. Most
who wrote about her diminished or eliminated her historical and political
significance by failing to establish that she changed the face of
labour in the United States forever. Some have even resorted to writing
malicious and unprovable accusations about her. Ms. Wake´s extensive
research brings to light the impact Mother Jones had on the labour
movement for nearly half a century and reveals Jones as an intellectual
and a feminist voice.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
