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What is
in the British Empire exhibition? |
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This exhibition is intended for students of the
History National Curriculum at Key Stage 3-4.
The National Archives holds a wealth of original papers, letters,
posters, photos, maps and other material that records important
moments in the history of the British empire. Because the empire
lasted so long and covered so much of the world, we haven’t
even tried to study everything about the empire in this exhibition.
Instead, we’ve picked out some of the most interesting original
sources and put them online.
We’ve grouped sources according to time and place.
- Gallery 1 The Rise of the British empire
asks: why did the British become empire builders? It looks at 4
case studies: North America, Africa, India and Australia.
- Gallery 2 Living in the British empire
asks: How should we remember the British empire? The first case
study in this gallery has sources that show how the British viewed
their empire. The next 4 case studies look at North America, Africa,
India and Australia. The final case study on migration looks at
people who moved to a different part of the empire.
- Gallery 3 The end of the British empire
asks: what factors caused the end of the empire? It looks at 4 case
studies: The Dominions, Ghana, India and Ireland.
Each case study contains a selection of original sources. The empire
is a controversial subject and some of these sources are on difficult
topics. Some sources contain views that we may strongly disagree
with. Some sources contain information that still has the power
to anger and shock. We have tried to present each source with some
background information that gives it historical context. We have
also provided discussion questions that we hope will encourage classroom
debate and help students to critically examine these sources. The
British empire is a sensitive topic for study, but also a fascinating
one, and a significant era in British and world history.
Students can examine one or many original sources and answer questions
about each source. There are useful notes to help with answering
the questions. Where the original source is difficult to read or
understand, we have provided transcripts. For the older and most
difficult documents, there is also a simplified transcript in modern
English.
Each gallery has a selection of activities or quizzes, and worksheets
to help students organise their study. Background pages give an
introduction to the historical background and the themes that run
through each case study. A glossary and a simple set of world maps
can be accessed from the links at the foot of each page. |
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| In some parts of this site we provide you with
access to a database where you can save your work (on activities,
exercises etc). While we take all reasonable care with this information,
we accept no liability or responsibility should your work be lost.
We reserve the right to withdraw access to this database at any
time. See a full disclaimer and copyright notice for The National
Archives. |
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In Gallery 2 of this Learning Curve exhibition
there is an activity where you can create your own Online Exhibition.
You can log in, work on this activity, save your work and then continue
working on it at a later date. In order to do this, you need to
sign up for a Learning Curve account. You can still create your
own online exhibition without signing up, but your work will not
be saved.
The Gallery 2 Online Exhibition section has a "Log In"
button with instructions to guide you through the process of signing
up. Details that you must give us to get an account (like your name)
are shown with an asterisk; other details are optional. There is
a “Help” page to assist you.
For more information, see on this Help page:
Creating your own Online Exhibition
Privacy
Disclaimer |
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If you choose to create a Learning Curve account,
you will be asked to provide some registration information, such as
your name and email address. This information is used only for the
purpose of creating a Learning Curve account. We also ask you to provide
optional information such as your school and year. You do not have
to provide this information in order to receive a Learning Curve account,
but if you do, we will use the information only to help us improve
our service to you. We respect your right to privacy and we will always
protect the personal information that you share with us. The National
Archives stores information internally in a controlled, secure environment.
No information collected will be passed on to a third party outside
The National Archives. See a full  Privacy
Statement.
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Recommended
specifications and plugins |
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For best viewing of this exhibition we recommend:
- 800 x 600 (minimum screen resolution)
- 16-bit colour monitor
- Cookies, style sheets, automatically load images and JavaScript
to be enabled
- 16-bit stereo soundcard (or better)
- Internet Explorer 4.5+ or Netscape 4.7+ or Opera 6.0+
To access our worksheets, presentations and films, you may need
the following:
- A word processing package that can read rtf
files (e.g. Microsoft Word). If not available, get Word viewer:
PC
or Mac
- Windows Media Player. Get Windows Media Player: PC
and Mac
- Macromedia Flash 6.0 player. Get the latest Flash plugin: PC
and Mac
- Adobe Acrobat reader. Get the latest plugin: PC
and Mac
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Search
and other ways to find stuff |
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Finding your way around:
- Site Map: At the foot of each page there is
a link to a site map that will show you the main sections of this
exhibition.
- Getting back to where you started: At
the top left of each page there is a breadcrumb trail (e.g. Home
> Gallery > Case Study) that shows you where you are and how
to retrace your steps through the exhibition. To go back to other
exhibitions in the Learning Curve, click on the Learning Curve logo
at the top right of any page.
- Contact us: If you have questions for
us, choose the link to ‘Feedback’ from the foot of any
page.
How to use the Search:
Enter a keyword or keywords into the search to find web pages within
the British empire exhibition on the subject of your choice. Note:
This search only looks for web pages within the British empire exhibition,
not the whole Learning Curve website. It only looks for web pages,
not other file formats (such as rtf, pdf, films).
You can search for any word or phrase that appears on the web pages
in British empire. Consecutive words are treated as a phrase, eg
slave trade will find pages that have those two words appearing
together in that order. To search for several words in a document,
separate the words with a comma, eg Irish, migration,
America will find pages with some or all of these words,
with the best matches first.
To create a more precise search you can use Boolean operators (AND,
OR, and NOT) and the proximity operator (NEAR).
- AND - Use to search for both terms in the same page, eg
missionary and Africa finds pages with both the words 'women'
and 'vote'.
- OR - Use to search for either term in a page, eg train
or railway finds pages with the word 'suffragette' or the word
'suffragist'.
- AND NOT - Use to search for the first term without the
second term, eg war and not first finds pages with the word
'war' but not 'first'.
- NEAR - Use to search for both terms close together in the
same page, eg Gandhi near protest finds pages with these
two words near to each other.
- Use quotation marks (") to indicate that an operator
should be ignored in your query, eg "positive or negative"
will match pages with the phrase 'positive or negative', not pages
that match the Boolean expression.
Use wildcard operators to help you find pages containing words similar
to a given word.
- * - Use to search for words with the same prefix, eg act*
finds pages with words such as 'action', 'activities', etc, as well
as 'act'.
- ** - Use to search for words based on the same stem word,
eg buy** finds pages with words such as 'buying', 'bought',
etc.
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To speed up download times and allow for the
best viewing of each film clip in this exhibition, please choose
the format that best matches your type of Internet connection. There
is a trade-off, so the larger the film file, the slower the download,
but the better the viewing quality. The table below is a rough estimate
of the download times for the clips:
| Average Time to Download a
Film |
| Connection |
100 KB |
500 KB |
1
MB |
| Modem |
16.5 sec |
82.3 sec |
164.6 sec |
| ISDN (128K)
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8.2 sec |
41.1 sec |
82.3 sec |
| Broadband |
0.6
sec |
3.2
sec |
6.4
sec |
If you cannot view the films, try updating to
the latest version of Windows Media Player. On each film page there
is a link to where you can download the plugin you need. |
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| If you see a "Warning: page has expired"
message, then refresh the page using the <F5> key (Internet
Explorer) or reload the page using <Ctrl> + <r> (Netscape
Navigator). This usually happens when users are working on an activity
and use the browser "back" button rather than the website
navigation buttons. |
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Creating
your own Online Exhibition (Gallery 2) |
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The aim:
The online exhibition that you create will have between 6 and 12
sources in it, which will provide a balanced view of the empire,
with a range of viewpoints, areas and issues.
You will create your exhibition in order from source 1 up to source
12. Note: it will be easier to create an exhibition if you complete
the research stages first. Fill in the research tables to help you
decide on the sources that you wish to use.
Researching sources:
Stage 1
You need to start your research by looking closely at the
sources in case study 1. Make a careful note of all the evidence
in case study 1 which supports a positive view of the British empire.
The research table will help you record what you find out. You can
print it out and write on it, and even enlarge it to A3 on a photocopier
to give you plenty of space to work. Otherwise you could download
it to your own computer and record on it there.
Stage 2
Now research case studies 2-6, looking for evidence that supports
either a positive or negative view of the British empire. Use the
research table in the same way as Stage 1 to record what you find
out.
Stage 3
When you have finished your research, you can plan an online exhibition
by clicking on the “Create Exhibition” button. Your
exhibition should display between 6-12 sources chosen from the sources
you’ve looked at in this gallery.
There are 2 ways in which you can select the exact source you
want to use:
- You can select the source from the drop down menu.
- You can search for it by keyword, then select it from the
list of search results.
If you choose to use one of the film clips in your exhibition, you
will get a still image from the film, not the moving film itself.
Once you have chosen your source, you can add a date, title, and caption
(which you will write – there are suggestions to help you do
this). You can move, edit or remove any of the sources you have chosen
at any time by using the options in the box on the right-hand side
of the page. Select the source from the list of those you have chosen
and then use the buttons to make your changes. Note: Removing
a source will permanently delete all the text you have typed into
the caption boxes for that source. You can see how your exhibition
will look by pressing the "View Exhibition" button. You
can make more changes or you can print your exhibition in a printer-friendly
format by pressing the "Print Exhibition" button. You can
work on your exhibition for as long as you like during a single session,
but you will need to log in if you want to save your work and come
back to it another time. Important! You may lose your work
if you are not logged in and you close your browser or do
not use the exhibition for more than 20 minutes - the computer does
this automatically. Remember to save your work by logging in if you
want to come back to your work another day.
Logging In:
The "Log In" button will take you to a login page. If you
already have an account you can log in by entering your e-mail address
and password. If you are a new user you can create a new Learning
Curve account. For more information, see on this Help page:
Learning Curve accounts
Privacy
Disclaimer
Logging Out:
Once you have completed working on the exhibition, click on the
"Log Out" button to end your session securely. Simply
leaving the exhibition page does not log you out and you can resume
work by opening the page again. You will be logged out if you do
not use the exhibition for more than 20 minutes - the computer does
this automatically. |
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Most pages of the British empire exhibition
have a "Print" button at the top right. For supporting
pages (like transcripts, useful notes, help, glossary, etc.) this
will just print the web page. For main pages (like the case studies
and source pages) this will print a page specially designed to print
the source images at a better quality.
These specially designed pages are in PDF format. Some PDFs are quite
large (over 1 MB) and so may be slow to open. If you chose to print
a whole case study rather than just one source page, this will be
a very large PDF. You will need the Adobe Reader to open and print
them. If you don't have it, get Adobe Reader from: Adobe |
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