HI 112 - British History since 1688

Fulfills SUNY General Education – Western Civilization.

Course Outcomes
Upon completion of the course, the student will be able to:

• Relate developments in modern British history (such as industrial and political reform) to the development of North American, European and global history;
• Demonstrate an understanding of British parliamentary democracy, including the role of the House of Commons;
• Describe the mainstream ideologies and political parties in contemporary Britain and analyze their historical evolution;
• Summarize and explain the first-past-the-post electoral system;
• Describe the role of the prime minister within the cabinet;
• Outline the importance of the Bill of Rights (1689);
• Analyze the origins and consequences of the Industrial Revolution;
• Explain the impact of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) on the relationship between Britain and her American colonies;
• Describe the American Revolution from multiple viewpoints;
• Summarize the salient points of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776);
• Summarize the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, author of An Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation (1780);
• Describe the effort by William Wilberforce to abolish the British slave trade;
• Illustrate various British reactions to the French Revolution, including those of Edmund Burke;
• Explain the historical circumstance that led to the creation of the Great Reform Bill in 1832;
• Demonstrate the dysfunctional politics that produced the Corn Law of 1815;
• Relate Sadler Committee testimony about child labor industrialization and assess the impact of laissez faire economics on the working class;
• Analyze the development of Chartism;
• Relate the Charge of the light Brigade to Britain’s involvement in the Crimean War (1854-1856);
• Compare the writings of Samuel Smiles with those of Karl Marx;
• Explain the global impact of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859);
• Outline the effectiveness of whistlestop campaigning in the late 19th century;
• Explain the causes and consequences of the First World War;
• Explain the causes and consequences of Irish Home Rule;
• Summarize the arguments of George Dangerfield’s Strange Death of Liberal England;
• Analyze the impact of the suffragette movement;
• Identify the traumatic consequences of World War I through art and poetry;
• Describe the impact of the Great Depression on Britain;
• Differentiate between the attitude of Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain toward the appeasement of German aggression in the 1930’s;
• Explain why the evacuation of Dunkirk may have been the single most important turning point of WW II;
• Assess the political, social, and economic consequences of WW II;
• Conclude why the welfare state (including the National Health Service) was established after the end of the war;
• Explain why the Suez Crisis was a blow to Britain’s standing in the world;
• Compare and contrast the domestic and foreign policy records of every post-war prime minister;
• Define and categorize Thatcherism as both and ideology and a political style;
• Describe the rejuvenation of the Labour Party under first Neil Kinnock and then Tony Blair; and
• Analyze the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ in the light of British support for American foreign policy in Iraq.