Look inside the OCR A-Level History A guide (H505)

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Look inside the OCR A-Level History A guide

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OCR · A-Level · H505
History A
Active Recall Guide
6,240 questions
History AContents
Contents
58 units, 582 subtopics
  1. Y101: Alfred and the Making of England 871-1016114
  2. Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035-1107113
  3. Y103: England 1199-1272114
  4. Y104: England 1377-1455105
  5. Y105: England 1445-1509: Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VII104
  6. Y106: England 1485-1558: the Early Tudors99
  7. Y107: England 1547-1603: the Later Tudors100
  8. Y108: the Early Stuarts and the Origins of the Civil War 1603-1660115
  9. Y109: the Making of Georgian Britain 1678-C.1760100
  10. Y110: from Pitt to Peel 1783-1853107
  11. Y111: Liberals, Conservatives and the Rise of Labour 1846-1918115
  12. Y112: Britain 1900-1951112
  13. and 46 more
ii
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035-1107Questions
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035-1107
Anglo-Saxon England 1035–1066: England in 1035 and Edward’s upbringing
  1. Describe the condition of England in 1035.
  2. Name the three great earldoms of late Anglo-Saxon England and the men who held them.
  3. What were the immediate consequences of Cnut's death in 1035?
  4. Give two actions by which Harthacnut made himself unpopular after 1040.
  5. How did the continuation of Danish influence create instability between 1035 and 1042?
  6. Describe Edward's upbringing before 1042.
  7. What problems did Edward face on his accession?
  8. Assess Edward's qualities as a leader.
12
Y102: Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest 1035-1107Answers
Answers
Anglo-Saxon England 1035–1066: England in 1035 and Edward’s upbringing
  1. It was a wealthy and well-governed kingdom with a uniform coinage, shires and hundreds and an effective land tax, but it formed only one part of Cnut's wider North Sea empire.
  2. Wessex was held by Godwin, Mercia by Leofric and Northumbria by Siward.
  3. His empire broke apart and England was disputed between his two sons, so the kingdom was divided in practice between Harold Harefoot in the north and Emma holding Wessex for the absent Harthacnut.
  4. He levied a very heavy tax to pay his fleet, and he had his half-brother's body exhumed and cast out.
  5. Two short-lived Danish kings ruled in succession with rival Scandinavian and English backers, so the crown changed hands twice in seven years and no settled following could form around either man.
  6. He was the son of Aethelred and Emma and spent roughly a quarter of a century in exile in Normandy, returning to England only shortly before he became king.
  7. He had no landed power base or following in England, faced earls far richer than himself, and could not claim the loyalty owed to a king who had grown up among his own magnates.
  8. He was skilful at balancing the great families against one another and gave England more than twenty years of peace, but he never broke the earls' dominance and left no clear heir.
13
Y211: the Rise and Decline of the Mughal Empire in India 1526-1739Questions
Y211: the Rise and Decline of the Mughal Empire in India 1526-1739
The foundation of the Mughal Empire and its rulers 1526–1556: wars and instability under Humayun
  1. Explain what the Baburnama is.
  2. Why was Humayun's position unstable after 1530?
  3. Which two defeats drove Humayun out of India?
  4. What did Humayun gain from his connection with Persia?
  5. What is meant by the Afghan interlude?
  6. Identify Sher Shah.
  7. Describe Sher Shah's administrative reforms.
  8. What did Sher Shah do for communications and trade?
  9. How did Sher Shah die?
34
Y211: the Rise and Decline of the Mughal Empire in India 1526-1739Answers
Answers
The foundation of the Mughal Empire and its rulers 1526–1556: wars and instability under Humayun
  1. It is Babur's own memoir, written in Chaghatai Turkish, an unusually candid record of his campaigns, his court and his observations of India that remains the main source for his reign.
  2. He had to share the inheritance with his brothers Kamran, Askari and Hindal under Timurid custom, and Kamran's hold on Kabul and the Punjab denied him his best troops, while he faced simultaneous threats from Gujarat and from the rising Afghan power in the east.
  3. Sher Shah beat him at Chausa in 1539 and again at Kannauj in 1540, after which Humayun fled through Sind into exile.
  4. Shah Tahmasp gave him refuge and troops in return for his acknowledgement of Shia observance, which enabled him to take Kandahar and Kabul from his brother, and Persian artists who joined him there founded the Mughal painting studio.
  5. It is the period from 1540 to 1555 when the Mughals were expelled from India and the Afghan Suri dynasty ruled the north from Delhi.
  6. Born Farid and known as Sher Khan, he was an Afghan noble from Bihar who took the title Sher Shah after seizing power in 1540 and ruled northern India until his death in 1545.
  7. He divided the empire into sarkars subdivided into parganas with paid officials, had cultivated land measured and the state's share fixed in cash with written agreements given to each peasant, issued the standard silver rupiya, and separated civil and military authority in the provinces.
  8. He rebuilt and extended the great road from Bengal to the Indus, planting trees and building rest houses at regular intervals, ran a relay postal service by horse, and standardised customs so that duties were paid only at the frontier and the point of sale.
  9. He was killed in 1545 by an explosion while besieging the Rajput fortress of Kalinjar, and was succeeded by his son Islam Shah.
35
Y307: Tudor Foreign Policy 1485-1603Questions
Y307: Tudor Foreign Policy 1485-1603
The aims and methods of Tudor foreign policy: aims, methods and constraints
  1. What was the overriding aim of Henry VII's foreign policy?
  2. Name three instruments other than war that Tudor monarchs used to pursue their foreign policy aims.
  3. Why did financial weakness limit English foreign policy throughout the period?
  4. Explain how the cloth trade shaped English policy towards the Low Countries.
  5. How did the break with Rome change the religious dimension of foreign policy?
  6. Give two dynastic marriages arranged for foreign policy purposes before 1509.
  7. Why is Henry VIII's foreign policy so often described as personally driven?
  8. State two ways in which trade could be used as a weapon of diplomacy.
  9. How did her religion constrain Elizabeth's choice of allies?
56
Y307: Tudor Foreign Policy 1485-1603Answers
Answers
The aims and methods of Tudor foreign policy: aims, methods and constraints
  1. Security for a new and vulnerable dynasty: winning foreign recognition of the Tudor title and denying shelter or support to pretenders.
  2. Dynastic marriage, treaty alliance and the manipulation of trade, including embargoes.
  3. Ordinary Crown revenue could not sustain a long continental war, so campaigns required parliamentary taxation, loans, land sales or debasement, each of which carried domestic risk.
  4. England's economy depended on exporting unfinished woollen cloth through Antwerp, so governments avoided lasting quarrels with the ruler of the Netherlands and felt embargoes acutely.
  5. It cut England off from the Catholic powers and created a permanent fear of a papal-backed Franco-Imperial crusade, making the division of Catholic Europe essential to English security.
  6. Arthur's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, agreed at Medina del Campo, and Margaret Tudor's marriage to James IV of Scotland in 1503.
  7. He sought chivalric glory and the revival of English claims in France, modelling himself on Henry V rather than on his father's cautious diplomacy.
  8. A government could impose an embargo on exports to damage a rival's economy, or grant favourable customs terms in a treaty to buy political goodwill.
  9. As a Protestant queen excommunicated by the pope she could not rely on Catholic Spain or, for much of the reign, France, and increasingly backed Protestant movements in Scotland, France and the Netherlands.
57
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6,240
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582 subtopics

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6,240 questions
Across 582 subtopics, every one of them from specification H505.
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Covering the answers is a matter of not turning the page, which is what makes the closed-book pass possible.

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

  1. Step 1 · Closed book

    Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.

  2. Step 2 · Open book

    Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.

  3. Step 3 · Closed book again

    Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.

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