British History BBNAN-12500 CV (Only Exam)
Spring 2013
History of Britain (BBNAN-12500) CV (Only Exam)
Lecturer: Karáth Tamás (kartauzi@gmx.de)
This is a so called CV (Only Exam) course: registration for it is allowed only to
third-year (or older) BA students who have already obtained a signature (for the
same code) in a previous semester. There is no lecture preparing for the exam.
As soon as the exam dates are fixed on Neptun, make sure you register for one
of them.
Exam information
The written exam itself will consist of three parts: (1) Fact questions (15
questions), (2) two essay questions related to one piece of secondary literature
of your choice from the list below, and (3) two essay questions related to a
historical source of your choice from the list below. The final mark will be the
average of all the three graded constituents. If you fail any two parts of the
exam, you automatically fail the exam.
1. Fact questions
Below, there is a list of names and concepts any of which may occur in the
written test. You are supposed to check all of them in David MacDowall’s An
Illustrated History of Britain (Longman, 1989). In the written test, you do not
have to expect open-ended questions, but rather gap-filling, as e.g.:
- The last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, .............................. died heirless, and the
throne of England went to the Stuarts.
Or:
- The most influential Conservative politician of the second half of the 19th
century was …………………………, several times alternating in power with Gladstone.
I. Romano-Celtic Britain and Anglo-Saxon England
Romano-Britons
Arthur (Aurelius Ambrosianus)
Jutes
Pope Gregory the Great
Saxons
Augustine of Canterbury
Angles
St. Patrick
Northumbria
Columba
Mercia
Beda Venerabilis
Wessex
King Offa
Picts
King Alfred the Great
Scots
Brian Boru
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British History BBNAN-12500 CV (Only Exam)
Spring 2013
Offa’s Dyke
Lindisfarne
Celtic Christianity
Synod of Whitby
Thegn
Burh
Danelaw
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)
Ealdorman (earl)
II. High and Late Middle Ages
Doomsday Book
Manorial agriculture
“The March” (Wales)
Aquitaine
Exchequer
Magna Charta
Cymru
Black Death
Poll tax (14th c.)
Order of the Garter
Auld Alliance
Perpendicular style
Lollards
III. Tudor England
Star Chamber
Utopia
Act of Supremacy
dissolution of the monasteries
Pilgrimage of Grace
Chantry
Kenneth I MacAlpin
Gruffudd ap Llywelyn
Aethelred the Unready
Cnut (Canute)
Edward the Confessor
Harold Godwinson
William the Conqueror
Matilda
Stephen of Blois
Geoffrey Plantagenet
Anselm of Canterbury
Henry II
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Thomas à Becket
Richard I
John Lackland
Simon de Montfort
Llywelyn the Great
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd
John Balliol
William Wallace
Robert Bruce
Wat Tyler
The Black Prince
Owain Glyndŵr (Owen Glendower)
John Wyclif
Joan of Arc
Henry VII
Henry VIII
Catherine of Aragon
Cardinal Wolsey
William Tyndale
Erasmus of Rotterdam
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British History BBNAN-12500 CV (Only Exam)
Spring 2013
Book of Common Prayer
Marian “martyrs”
Thirty-nine Articles
Puritans
Enclosures
Monopoly
Poor laws
IV. The Century of the Stuarts
Ship money
Petition of Right
Short Parliament
Long Parliament
New Model Army
Cavaliers
Roundheads
Independents
Levellers
Rump Parliament
Protectorate
Commonwealth (17th century)
Instrument of Government
Barebones Parliament
Drogheda Massacre
Tories
Whigs
Dissenters (Conventiclers)
Penal laws
Test Acts
Great Fire
Royal Society
V. 18th Century Britain
Jacobites
Thomas More
Thomas Cromwell
Anne Boleyn
Archbishop Cranmer
Edward VI
Mary Tudor
Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots)
John Knox
Sir Francis Drake
Elizabeth I
Sir Robert Cecil
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
William Laud
James I
Charles I
Oliver Cromwell
General Monck
Charles II
Titus Oates
Earl of Danby
Lord Shaftesbury
James II
William of Orange
Sir Christopher Wren
Sir Isaac Newton
Thomas Hobbes
John Locke
George I
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British History BBNAN-12500 CV (Only Exam)
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Bank of England
Cabinet
West Indies
“borough corporation”
“radicals”
“Orange lodges”
Parish workhouse
Highland Clearances
Nonconformists
Methodism
Corresponding Society
VI. Victorian Britain
Middle class
Poor law of 1834
Rotten boroughs
Chartism
Metropolitan Police
Corn Laws
Liberal Party
Conservative Party
Great Exhibition
Splendid isolation
Reform Acts
Boer War
Salvation Army
Pre-Raphaelites
Arts and crafts movement
VII. 20th-Century Britain
Laissez-faire
Home Rule
Parliament Act of 1911
Representation of the People Act
Labour Party
“Phoney war” (WWII)
Blitz on London
Prince Charles Edward Stuart
(“Bonny Prince Charlie”)
Sir Robert Walpole
William Pitt “the Elder”
George III
James Watt
John Wilkes
Edmund Burke
Tom Paine
Horatio Nelson
John Wesley
William Pitt, “the Younger”
Charles James Fox
Lord Grey
Robert Peel
Queen Victoria
Lord Palmerston
Benjamin Disraeli
William Gladstone
David Livingstone
Charles Stewart Parnell
William Booth
Charles Darwin
David Lloyd George
Ramsey MacDonald
Emmeline Pankhurst
Michael Collins
Eamon de Valera
Stanley Baldwin
Neville Chamberlain
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British History BBNAN-12500 CV (Only Exam)
Spring 2013
Beveridge report
Butler Education Act (1944)
welfare state
National Health Service (NHS)
Festival of Britain
Butskellism
“Angry young men”
“Plate glass” style
IRA
Sinn Fein
Stormont
EEC
European Single Market
Falklands War
Commonwealth (20th century)
Maastricht Treaty
Winston Churchill
General Bernard Montgomery
John Maynard Keynes
Ernest Bevin
Clement Attlee
Harold MacMillan
Harold Wilson
Enoch Powell
Ian Paisley
Margaret Thatcher
John Major
Tony Blair
David Trimble
2. Two essay questions related to a piece of secondary literature
Choose one of the following pieces of secondary literature. You can expect two
questions related to the work: one of them will inquire about an important fact
concerning the period. E.g., if you choose John Guy’s The Tudors from the list
below, the first question may simply ask you to explain the role of Thomas More
in Henry VIII’s government. The second question will be more complex, and ask
you to explain a problematic issue in the period. E.g., again, if you choose John
Guy’s The Tudors, the second question may ask you to illustrate what made
Elizabeth I a Renaissance ruler. The list is arranged in a chronological order as
to its material, and not in alphabetical order of the authors:
Blair, John, The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford
University Press, 2000
Gillingham, John and Ralph A. Griffiths, Medieval Britain: A Very Short
Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2000
Guy, John, The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press,
2000.
Morrill, John, Stuart Britain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University
Press, 2000
Langford, Paul, Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford
University Press, 2000
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British History BBNAN-12500 CV (Only Exam)
Spring 2013
Harvie, Christopher and H. C. G. Matthew, Nineteenth-Century Britain. Oxford
University Press, 2000
Morgan, Kenneth O., Twentieth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Two essay questions related to a source from the list below
Choose one of the following source texts. The source cannot come from the
same period as that analyzed by the piece of secondary literature of your
choice. Prepare the text according to the given aspects:
- Situate the author of the source in his/her historical context
- Which contemporaneous problems/phenomena does the text reflect on?
- Which are the main arguments of the text?
- What is the significance of the text in the given historical/cultural
context?
- What can we know about the contemporaneous reception of the text?
You can expect two questions related to your source: one of a more factual type.
E.g., if you choose Bede, the question may ask you to clarify (on the basis of the
assigned passages) what sources Bede might have known when writing his
Historia Ecclesiastica. The second question will be more analytical, and more
closely related to the text. E.g., in the case of Bede, you may be asked to point
out the overall purpose of his work in the passage on the conversion of the
Northumbrians.
The sources are listed chronologically with the indication of the age they were
written in. Even if a Hungarian translation is given as an option, the discussion of
the text in the essays has to be in English.
I. ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
 Beda Venerabilis, Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. (The Venerable
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People) Excerpts: Book I,
Chap. 22-33; Book II, Chap. 9-14; Book III, Chap. 25; Book IV, Chap. 2730.
II. THE MIDDLE AGES
 Magna Carta
III. TUDOR ENGLAND
 Thomas More’s Utopia
IV. THE STUART CENTURY
 Samuel Pepys’ Diary:The year of 1660
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British History BBNAN-12500 CV (Only Exam)
Spring 2013
V.
18TH-CENTURY BRITAIN
 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Cf.: E. Burke,
Töprengések a francia forradalomról. (Ford.: Kontler László) Budapest:
Atlantisz, 1990
VI. VICTORIAN BRITAIN
 Victorian Issues in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II
VII.
20TH CENTURY
 Winston Churchill, Excerpts from The Second World War. Vol. II, Book 2,
Chap. 15-17 and 21; Vol. VI, Book 2. Cf.: Winston S. Churchill, A második
világháború I-II. (Ford. Betlen János, 1989) Budapest: Európa, 1995
Good luck for the exam.
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