History Societies enthuse pupils with a passion for the past

Since March, our History Societies have continued to flourish with new committees from the Lower Sixth taking on the leadership of these groups. The Lower School, Middle School and Sixth Form History Societies have all put on a series of talks, mostly led by Lower Sixth students and sometimes by staff to budding young historians eager to learn more about the past. These have largely been on topics outside of History curriculum and have served as opportunities for those giving the talks to research topics as well as improve their skills of public speaking, presentation and answering questions.

As ever, there have been many wonderful and insightful questions for those Habs students attending these talks. The presentations from Sixth Form students to their peers in younger years have been given via Zoom with our speakers handling the technology, Covid-19 regulations and historical presentation equally with aplomb.

Our Sixth Form History Society has received excellent talks in recent week from Ameya on “The Creation and Decolonisation of French Algeria, 1830-1962”,  Faiz on “Did Mao Zedong lay the foundations for China’s rapid development?”, from Joshua on “From Herero to the Holocaust: The History of Two German Genocides” and will hear from Noah on “The downfall and partition of the Ottoman Empire.”

Felix has spoken in a scholarly and engaging manner to students in Year 9 and 10 about “The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” and Mr Clark has given presentations on “The War of 1812” and “The Death of Napoleon” which coincided with the 200^th anniversary of the famous Corsican.

Under the leadership of Mrs Bardou, the Lower School History Club goes from strength to strength with a superb set of talks from Year 12 students. Harjeevan spoke about the French Revolution, Aadam’s talk was on the Whig Theory of History, Julien gave a talk on the Luddites, Thomas enthused the group about the Aztecs, Jake spoke about religious conflict in the Twentieth Century and Noah’s presentation was on the Swing Riots.

The School would like to thank the boys for their hard work in preparing such excellent presentations.