A Level History: approaches to exam questions
A Level history is designed to test your knowledge, critical thinking skills and essay writing abilities. We'll be looking at A Level questions to see how answers can be structured and presented to make best use of relevant material. At A Level, the highest grades go to candidates who:
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offer sustained analysis, with relevant supporting detail
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maintain a consistent argument
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cover all parts of the question with a reasonable balance between the parts
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attempt to offer judgement
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communicate effectively through accurate, fluent and well directed prose.
These are the skills we should be either busy at work honing to perfection or at least aspiring towards. Not only do they offer a valuable guide when writing your own essays, they also provide a useful brief checklist to impose on the texts you read in your studies. You should be asking yourself whether x historian's examples bear out his or her argument, whether there are counter arguments and have they been successfully dealt with, is the argument convincing, is it effectively communicated, has he or she dealt well with the source material?
What examiners are looking for in response to a particular question:
Our first question, which comes courtesy of the AQA, is:
Was military superiority the main reason for the expansion of British influence in India in the period c1757 to c1785? Explain your answer.
A knowledge of British expansion in India is clearly helpful though not absolutely necessary for our purposes here. What I aim to show is how a question such as the one posed here can act as a springboard for widely different answers. This is obviously the question-setters express intention - afterall they are trying to assess those qualities listed above, and a great deal of thought goes into each and every question set.
Before we go further, it might be useful to see what the examiners broadly expect from essays responding to the question above. Here's what the AQA's marking notes say: "Candidates should focus their attention on the military aspects of the expansion of British influence, notably through the activities of Clive and Hastings, and the opportunities presented by the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. They should then balance this with reference to other factors, which are likely to include:
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the importance of trade and the developing role of the East India Company
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the opportunities supplied by the petty rivalries between, and ambitions, of native Indian princes, rivalries which were to be exploited by EIC officials such as Clive
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the role of British governments of this period in supporting and confirming initiatives made by the EIC and its officials.
Candidates may well approach the question through examination of the relevant steps taken by Clive and Hastings. Clive combined military ability with diplomatic skill to ensure British control of Bengal by the end of the Seven Years’ War.
On subsequent visits to India Clive was to further expand British influence, notably securing control of Bengali finances for the East India Company. Widely criticised for concentrating on his personal wealth, and certainly neglecting the interests of the natives, there were many issues unresolved on his departure.
Hastings was more interested in restoring stability in Bengal through administrative and financial reform than in expanding British power and influence, though the latter undoubtedly occurred.
The Regulating Act of 1772 enhanced Hastings’ status as Governor-General of Bengal, but limited his independence of British government control. In the Mahratta Wars of 1777-82, Hastings asserted British rights against possible French Expansion, but was less successful in dealing with the invasion of the Carnatic 1780-83, and was involved in a financial scandal with the Begums of Oudh (1782). Ended with a conclusion or a summary."
We'll now look at a sample essay plan before moving on to my own two attempts at providing different essays (yes, they're timed to an hour!) to meet the question posed (and you may notice I don't completely agree with all of the examining body's suggestions). I have done these purely for demonstrative purposes and I would sincerely advise against plagiarism because your own spontaneous, well-planned and well-formed responses are far more likely to shine on the page than a rehash of somebody else's work.
