A level history help!

[Jux]

Causes of the English Civil War besides religion.

DD needs to find reasons for it and needs decent online info to read for her hw. She has looked in our tiny library and there is nothing, tried the slightly larger library in the next town, nothing. What she's found online has been inadequate (BBC bitesize type things). Our reference books are all ancient history, and our encyclopaedias are not really more informative than the online things she's found.

Help! Where can she look? Any specialist sites?

I just put Causes of the English Civil War into an Amazon search and it comes up with over 400 books most under a tenner and delivered next day.

Just remembered I did an OU module on this. Google 'Ship money' re ECW and should get more useful resources?

Historic-uk.com and Wikipedia are a start. However a good book or two fills out the detail. Religion, money, power and expectation of power.

DD's teacher should have given her a list of recommended reading regarding the course content. She should also have a text book; the text book should be referenced and those are also books you can try and get.

Part of the problem with being a budding academic is you have no idea which historians are actually of any quality, that's why you have teachers, to point you in the direction of good quality introductions, from whence you can begin to dig deeper.

PS, don't know how it stands in the UK, but I always warned my students that use of Wikipedia was grounds for failing (this was at university level though, maybe a-level don't mind non-peer-reviewed sources)

Christopher Hill used to be the standard author on the period. Probably dated now, but easily obtainable. Also J P Kenyon wrote various textbooks on the 17th century.

Didn't the teacher give any guidance at all? What did they do in the lesson when this homework was set?

I said Wikipedia was a start - not the only source of info. It is reasonable background reading though. Obviously one wouldn't rely on that but I do agree the teacher should give guidance.

Thank you all. I shall show dd this thread

I don't really have the spare cash to buy a book unless I can be sure it will be helpful, so dd can go to Wayerstones and peruse your recommended authors.

Religion, money, power, w,pwctation of power, eh? Very helpful and trebles all round!!

You may be able to find second-hand books very reasonably on line. At university DD used Abe books but Amazon frequently have used book that are cheap. It will not matter if they are dog-eared. The books on the English Civil War will not go out of date so a few £ may suffice. Waterstones is over the top. She will not need loads of books but a carefully chosen two would suffice. Also see if you can find first hand-accounts written at the time by either side to illustrate her points. The war was about taxation, the power or otherwise of parliament and expectations of Charles 1 and his relationship with parliament. This split the loyalties of the more powerful people in the country who took sides ending in warfare. (In a nutshell obviously).

I was going to say Christopher Hill too. He was a Marxist so very much made it about economic forces e.g. the rise of the Middle Class - hence Hampden and ship money. (This is from what I remember of history A level more than 40 years ago.)

BubblesBuddy, thank you for your synopsis! Do you have a recommendation of a good book? I have no background in history - barely remember any of what I supposedly learnt at school 50 years ago - so have no idea how to discern and 'carefully choose' anything!

Kenyon and Hill were suggested upthread. Would you agree?

Yes - but you could look at The English Civil Wars 1640-1660 by Blair Worden which is very readable and covers the difficulties which led to war. Also A History of the English Civil Wars by John Miller may be of use.

Peregrina, BubblesBuddy, HarriVane thank youl so much for the recommendations and taking time to help.

Thanks all xx