QUESTION 5 – SOURCES AND QUESTIONS

This question will be based on Section II of the syllabus, ‘Studies of Change’, which is usually covered in Second Year. There are five broad topics within this section of the course, namely The Age of Exploration, The Reformation, The Plantations in Ireland, Revolutionary Movements in America, France and Ireland, and the Industrial Revolution.

You will be given two or three documents relating to one of the five topics listed above. The documents may be pieces of text or visual sources. This question is worth 30 marks (17% of total) and you should allow around 25 minutes to do it. There will be questions worth 2 marks which require you to extract information from the documents. Keep your answers brief for these. There will also be essay-type questions worth between 8 and 12 marks. For a 12-mark question you should be aiming to write about 1 full page.

Questions may ask you to explain the causes of an event, or they may ask you to discuss the consequences, effects, impacts, benefits etc. arising from an event. For example, if you were asked to discuss the consequences of Columbus’s voyages of discovery, details about the construction and names of his ships will not score any marks. Instead you will need to focus on how the voyages impacted on the Native American people and what consequences these voyages had for European nations.

Example: 2008 Question 5C

C. Write an account of one of the following topics: (i) Causes of the American War of Independence. (ii) The Reign of Terror in France, September 1793 to July 1794. (iii) Reasons for the failure of the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland.

(12)

Answer 5 C (i)

Britain and her 13 American colonies had been victorious in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) against the French in North America. Britain felt that the American colonists should pay more taxes to pay towards the defence of the American colonies. SRS In 1765, the Stamp Act was introduced. This was a tax to be paid on all printed documents in the colonies. The Stamp Act was repealed after widespread opposition and a boycott of British goods. SRS To replace this source of tax the British introduced the Townsend Acts. Under these Acts duties were charged on imported lead, paper, paint and tea. The colonists objected to having to pay taxes imposed by Parliament in Westminster. They adopted the slogan of

‘no taxation without representation’. SRS In 1770 a group of British soldiers guarding a customs house in the port of Boston were surrounded by an angry and abusive mob. The soldiers fired into the crowd and killed five men. This became known as ‘The Boston Massacre’. SRS The Tea Act of 1773 aimed to give the struggling British East India Company a monopoly of sales of tea to America. Merchants in Boston were strongly opposed to this threat to their livelihood so they boarded three ships in Boston harbour and threw their cargo of tea into the sea. This became known as ‘The Boston Tea-party’. SRS In response, the British passed a number of coercion acts known as the ‘Intolerable Acts’. The port of Boston was closed. The First

Continental Congress metin Philadelphia. Delegates from 12 of the 13 colonies attended and measures were put in place to fight a defensive war if British troops in Boston attacked them. [SRS] On the 19th of April 1775 British troops based in Boston were involved in skirmishes in Lexington and

Concord. The American War of Independence had begun.

[SRS] 5 x SRS’s @ 2m each + overall mark 2 = 12/12