Teaching
History Online
Number
81: 13th April, 2003
Introduction
1.
Historians
2.
Crime
and Punishment
3.
Kennedy
Assassination
4.
Political
Ideas and Concepts
5.
Paul
Robeson
6.
Tribune
Archive
7. Thomas
Jefferson
8. Charles
A. Lindberghs
9. The
Boar War
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 list are
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Teaching
History Online. In this way we hope to create a community
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there are 27,675 subscribers to the newsletter.
John Simkin
spartacus@pavilion.co.uk
Historians:
A collection of short biographies of famous historians. People covered
include Herbert Aptheker,
Charles Bean, Charles Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Teresa Billington-Greig,
Marc Bloch, Arna Bontemps, Alan Bullock, Thomas Carlyle, G. D. H.
Cole, Margaret Cole, Robert Conquest, Isaac Deutscher, William DuBois,
Friedrich Engels, E. Franklin Frazier, Barbara Hammond, J. L. Hammond,
William Hazlitt, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Ralph Miliband,
Eric Hobsbawn, Stetson Kennedy, Harold Laski, John Morley, A. L. Morton,
Harold Nicolson, Sylvia Pankhurst, Roy Porter, Eileen Power, George
Rudé, Raphael Samuel, Victor Serge, James Silver, David Shub,
A. J. P. Taylor, Richard Tawney, E. P. Thompson, Arnold Toynbee, George
M. Trevelyan, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Beatrice Webb, Sidney Webb, Ida Wells
and Howard Zinn.
Crime
and Punishment: In the years after 1660 the number of offences
carrying the death penalty increased enormously, from about 50, to
160 by 1750 and to 288 by 1815. You could be hanged for stealing goods
worth 5 shillings (25p), stealing from a shipwreck, pilfering from
a Naval Dockyard, damaging Westminster Bridge, impersonating a Chelsea
Pensioner or cutting down a young tree. This series of laws became
known as "The Bloody Code." This Public Record Office website
takes a close look at why the Bloody Code passed by parliament.
Kennedy
Assassination: It's the most controversial case in modern American
history. Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill John Kennedy by himself, or did
a conspiracy do it? And if a conspiracy did it, did the conspiracy
include Oswald? This web site is dedicated to debunking the mass of
misinformation and disinformation surrounding the murder of Kennedy.
The author claims that if you are believer in Oswald as a lone gunman,
you are likely to enjoy this web site, since most of that misinformation
and disinformation has come from conspiracists.
Political
Ideas and Concepts: This website provides a clear explanation
of key political ideas including anarchism, capitalism, colonialism,
communism, conservatism, democracy, fascism, feminism, individualism,
liberalism, marxism, nationalism, pluralism, social democracy, socialism,
zionism. Key political concepts such as anarchy, authority, equality,
globalisation, liberty, power, state power and totalitarian are also
defined.
Paul
Robeson: On 24th June 1937 Paul
Robeson made a speech in London about art and politics: "Like
every true artist, I have longed to see my talent contributing in
an unmistakably clear manner to the cause of humanity. Every artist,
every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. There
are no impartial observers. The battle front is everywhere. There
is no sheltered rear. The artist must take sides. He must elect to
fight for freedom or for slavery." During the McCarthy Era these
political beliefs resulted in him been blacklisted in the United States.
He was still highly popular in Europe but the American government
took away his passport to stop him performing in other countries.
This time line produced by Rutgers
University provides
a detailed account of his life and times.
Tribune
Archive: The
success of the Left Book Club during the summer of 1936 encouraged
socialists to believe there was a market for a left-wing weekly. Victor
Gollancz, the founder of the Left Book Club, was approached by a group
of Labour MPs that included Stafford Cripps, Aneurin Bevan, George
Strauss and Ellen Wilkinson and it was agreed to start publishing
a journal they decided to call Tribune. The
magazine is still going and its owners have decided to publish some
of its most important articles on the Internet. This includes material
by William Mellor, Clement Attlee, Aneurin
Bevan, Ian Mikardo,
Michael Foot, Mervyn Jones, Jennie Lee and Bertrand Russell.
Thomas
Jefferson: This website provides a wide range of information about
the interests and passions of Thomas Jefferson. This includes the
house he designed. The site allows the visitor to tour almost every
room in the house, complete with narrative information about each
room's dimensions, its original purpose, furnishing, and specific
architectural features. The website also contains a brief biography,
a timeline of his life, quotations, and physical descriptions of him
from his contemporaries.
Charles
A. Lindbergh: In 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh became the first American
to fly across the Atlantic. Over 4 million people lined the parade
route in New York and the mayor, Jimmy Walker, pined the city's Medal
of Valor upon him. Lindbergh became the most popular man in the United
States. On 1st March 1932 Lindbergh's baby son was kidnapped from
his home in Hopewell, New Jersey. He was later found dead and Bruno
Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter, was executed for the crime on
3rd April, 1936. Lindbergh returned to the country's front pages when
he became one of the leaders of the America First Committee, a lobbying
group that was determined to keep America out of the war with Germany.
Lindbergh's views were highly popular until the Japanese Air Force
attacked Pearl Harbor on 7th December, 1941. This website by PBS provides
a detailed account of the rise and fall of Charles A. Lindbergh.
Book
Section
The
Boer War: Victorious in its previous campaigns in Africa, the
British Army was shocked by the tactics used by the Boers. Their mobility,
expert use of cover, and knowledge of the terrain, in which they employed
powerful long-range magazine rifles, gave them initial advantages.
By contrast the British suffered from inadequate transport, insufficient
mounted troops and poor intelligence. This book by Gregory Fremont-Barnes
looks at a war which one general described as "the graveyard
of many a soldier's reputation." (Osprey
Publishing, 1 84176 513 9, £12.99)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
