BA Hons History & Economics

This class focuses on the history of the British Isles from 1700 to 1914. It was a period of phenomenal change in terms of who ruled the country, the main economic activities, emerging cultural expression and attitudes and the growth of British power overseas on an unprecedented scale.

In the class we'll use the British Isles as a historical 'laboratory' to discuss key themes that have shaped the modern world.

We'll look at:

• the formation of the British state
• the ideas that were shaped by the Enlightenment, in which Scottish writers played an important part
• why Britain industrialised and Ireland did not
• the often dire social consequences of industrialisation
• how and why Britain created the Empire
• the growth of British overseas trade will be looked at
• the impact of Britain on Asian, African and American societies
• the ideological effects of the American War of Independence, the French Revolution and the 1798 rebellion in Ireland
• the meaning of Victorian values in Scotland and the development of modern political parties and the growth of democracy
• the roles of gender and class in shaping modern British and Irish society

This class follows on from History 1A and takes the story up to the end of the 20th century. We'll look at:

• the effects of World War I on Scottish society and why Ireland broke away from the United Kingdom
• the growth of the Labour Party and the rise of socialism will be traced
• the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s on British society
• the reasons why the British government formulated a policy of appeasement, to show how foreign policy and domestic policy were inextricably linked
• the impact of World War II on British society
• the demands that led to the creation of the Welfare State will be explored
• the new international realities facing Britain in 1945
• the beginnings of the Cold War, to show how effectively Britain adapted to the loss of Great Power status
• post-war society and the cultural revolution of the "Swinging Sixties". We'll ask whether a generation gap emerged
• the long slow march of women's rights
• the impact of immigration, to show the ways in which British society was changing fundamentally
• the collapse of the traditional industrial economy in the 1980s and changes in Scottish family life, to show how social norms were being overturned
• the advent and effects of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Just as in the first semester History class, we will use carefully selected documents in tutorials to help us analyse each topic.

The purpose of this class is to provide you with a balanced introduction to economics which will be at once self-contained and lay the foundation for further study in economics and more generally. The work of the class will be based on a programme of systematic directed reading, supplemented by tutorials, using group projects and in-class short answer tests as cumulative assessment.

This course will focus on the period from the final establishment of the territorial boundaries of the Scottish kingdom in James III’s reign through to the Union of Crowns in 1603. In covering the era of the Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland, as well as the regnal union of 1603, it will focus on the reigns of successive Stewart monarchs and their subsequent accession to the English and Irish thrones, thereby creating a British imperial monarchy.

Scotland’s contact with Europe and its strained relations with England form core themes but political history will be studied in the light of the social, religious, economic and cultural developments that lend early-modern Scotland its distinct identity, thereby examining issues such as trade and economic development, the impact of the Renaissance in Scotland, literacy and the spread of reforming ideas, the arts, education and issues of identity.

This class provides a broad introduction to the historical relationship between diseases and human societies in the early modern and modern periods.

It examines the core thesis that diseases and other health conditions have had dramatic impacts on history, shaping economic relations, political and social structures and cultural and religious beliefs.  However, it also explores the reverse of this, the thesis that human activities, ideas and behaviours have radically altered the diseases and conditions that afflict our societies over the last five hundred years.

The course is grouped around three themes:

• infectious disease
• chronic disease
• society's responses to disease

Lectures in the first two sections focus on exploring the origins of key diseases/debilities, the ways in which social structures/behaviours have caused or abetted these conditions, and their impacts on society, economics, politics and culture.

In the final section, lectures focus more on the ways in which societies have sought to conceptualise, control and cure diseases. The key questions that students should be able to answer by the end is how have diseases and debilities shaped human societies, and how have human societies shaped diseases and debilities?

This course will explore Scotland’s political, economic, religious, intellectual and social development in the aftermath of the Union of 1707 through to 1832.  The benefits, disadvantages and tensions that arose from the process of becoming part of the British state will be explored through such issues as:

• causes and impact of union
• the significance of Jacobitism
• the nature and consequence of agricultural and industrial change
• Empire
• the role of the Scottish Enlightenment.

This class examines some of the principal developments in international history of twentieth century Europe. It pays particular attention to:

• the causes of the First World War
• the impact of the war upon the international system
• the rise of new powers within the international community after 1919
• the causes of the Second World War
• the Cold War and the forces driving European integration since 1945
• the role of the USA and USSR in recent European history

This is the core Microeconomics class in Year 2. It aims to develop your understanding of: the concepts of consumer choice; the motives of the firm and profit maximisation; the market and its role in achieving equilibrium prices and quantities; and the implications of market power. It introduces you to mathematical techniques commonplace in Economics, giving you the ability to apply these in a wider economic context.   

The class builds upon the macroeconomic foundations established in the first year Economics class and both extends and deepens analysis. This class will develop your ability to use key macroeconomic models and will also provide an introduction to the analysis of economic data. 

Please note that this is compulsory for students who wish to use oral history in their dissertation.

Oral history is a way of engaging with the past via the experiences and memories of those who were there. ‘Oral history’ is a multifaceted term that refers to the sources (interviews), the methodology (interviewing), theory (analysis), and products (of which there are many).

This new class aims to alert students to the possibilities of using oral history as a way of understanding the past. It will examine key concepts and methodologies in oral history and explore how oral history has helped to shape historical understanding.

This class also has an important practice-based focus – students taking the class will gain an opportunity to develop practical skills in oral history interviewing and analysis as well as to reflect critically on theory in relation to practice. They will also get an opportunity to explore the application and use of history in the public arena through engaging with work on oral history and public history.

Because of the practical nature of this class and the limited supply of equipment, numbers are capped at 25.

The aim of this class is to gain an understanding of the key role that disability plays in the study of the historical past.

The class will explore the ways in which disability has been defined, treated and experienced. It will place developments in disability policy within wider social, cultural and political contexts. Students will engage with, and think critically about, primary sources ranging from official papers, newspaper articles, and oral testimonies, in addition to relevant secondary source material.

The use of oral testimonies in particular will help you to consider the lived experiences of disabled people and the ways in which society sought to define and treat disability. 

This class explores the role that health and medicine has played in the major wars of the twentieth century. In particular, it considers the vital contribution that medicine has made to manpower economy, discipline and morale.

Focusing predominantly on Britain, the USA and Europe, the class analyses the ways that different countries have responded to the medical issues posed by modern warfare in both military and civilian contexts. As such, it considers issues such as wartime disability, welfare provision, occupational health and psychiatry, and explores the role that military doctors, women and humanitarian organisations have played in shaping medical responses to war.

The key objective of this class is to place military-medical developments within their wider social, cultural and political contexts and to examine the impact of military health and medicine on the lived experience of war.

The class begins with the traumatic episodes of the Franco-Prussian War and the Communes of 1871. By analysing the often problematic political and cultural consolidation of the Third Republic, this class will explore the ‘culture wars’ and the internal divisions that culminated in the Dreyfus Affair. After the humiliation of losing its status as Europe’s dominant power, France sought greatness in colonial expansion in Africa and Indochina, while seeking to consolidate national identity by transforming ‘peasants into Frenchmen’.

You'll explore the experiences of the First World War, assessing the strength of French unity in the face of the German enemy. The interwar clashes between fascism and the Popular Front will then be examined and how the First World War impacted upon French foreign policy and attitudes towards future war.

You'll spend three weeks exploring the enduring controversies of the Second World War, focusing upon the collapse, resistance, collaboration, and French involvement in the persecution of the Jews, as France faced its ‘hereditary enemy’ once again.

The class concludes with an analysis of the French withdrawal from Indochina and Algeria and an assessment of France’s position in the post-war global order.

A variety of sources will be explored throughout the class, including paintings, monuments, films, literary sources, newspaper reports, memoirs and archival documents. 

This class examines means by which states conduct informal activities to promote their domestic and foreign objectives during wartime. In particular, it analyses the role of propaganda throughout the twentieth century, focusing on the use of modern mass communication and technology by states involved in conflicts.

The class is structured around a number of historical themes, which help shed light on the emergence of propaganda as an important means of modern warfare. Key themes analysed throughout the course include:

• the First World War as the first ‘total war’
• the growth of international radio broadcasting
• the creation of centralised propaganda machines in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
• home-front propaganda during the Second World War
• propaganda, disinformation and the Cold War
• the United States and the experience of Vietnam
• information, media coverage and the Gulf War
• 9/11 and the war on terrorism

This class is compulsory for students who want to study history at Honours level.

This class will introduce students to the methods used by historians to reconstruct the past, exploring and analysing the techniques used by historians in doing primary research. The class is designed to demonstrate how students can use these techniques in their own work, particularly their 4th year/Honours dissertation.

Among the topics that will be covered are:

• constructing bibliographies
• using evidence
• using academic conventions
• constructing research plans
• writing historical prose

The objectives of this class include introducing students to recent examples of genocide and related mass atrocities, and writing and thinking about these cases in a critical and engaged manner through analysis of primary and secondary materials.

Students will be introduced to historical, sociological, anthropological, and legal perspectives related to the occurrence of genocide and related atrocity crimes. Using case studies from the 20th century, we'll discuss:

• contemporary issues related to the labelling of cases
• the evolution of international legal, diplomatic, economic and military measures to prevent, interdict and punish atrocity crimes
• the phenomenon of genocide denial
• the politics of commemoration
• the lingering legacies of violence on individuals and communities in the post-genocide period

Case studies will include clear-cut (recognized in international humanitarian law) examples of genocide, including:

• the Armenian genocide
• the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe
• the 1994 Rwandan genocide

Less clear-cut examples will also be looked at, such as:

• Canada’s Residential School System
• Stalinist crimes in Soviet Russia
• Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia
• the scorched earth policies in Guatemala
• ethnic cleansing surrounding the Bosnian War.

This class will cover the political developments and social groups from the late-nineteenth century till the decolonisation of South Asia in 1947.

This is a key period in the social and political history of modern South Asia as it witnessed the growth of a mass-based anti-colonial struggle.  Simultaneously, the involvement of different social groups in this process led to the emergence of community and caste based identity politics.  Under pressure from demands for independence, the colonial state initiated a process of phased devolution of power, and decolonisation after the Second World War.  The class will compare these developments to raise questions about the 'modernity' of colonial society and polity.  The class will analyse how different social groups - such as the peasantry, the working class and tribal groups - participated in and shaped political movements in South Asia.

Students will also be encouraged to use the regional perspective of South Asian history to understand the different expressions of class, gender and ethnicity in non-Western societies.

Historiography had tended to isolate Highland history from Scottish political development during the late medieval and early modern periods.  This class will re-address this trend, emphasising the Highlands as an integral part of Scottish society, at the same time exploring the division within Scotland between the ‘barbaric’ Highlands and the ‘civil’ Lowlands.

Students will study the nature and structure of clan society and place Highland events within the wider context of national and British politics during the sixteenth century.  While relations between the Scottish crown and its Highland subjects is the key theme of this class, students will analyse the extent to which such relations changed through time, and why.

The class will also highlight divergent policies within clan society itself, a factor which warns against treating the Highlands as a homogenous whole, instead taking into consideration regional, local and personal biases.  

The class provides a broad survey of Scottish social history since 1914. The aim of this class is to explore the nature and development of Scottish society in the twentieth century by assessing the impact of industrialisation and the problems associated with de-industrialisation, as well as the development of an urban society.

By the end, the successful student should have expanded their knowledge of contemporary Scottish history and have a good idea of the diversity of issues, techniques and arguments which historians have deployed in the study of twentieth-century Scotland. Among the themes to be covered are:

• the extent to which Scotland had a recognisable culture and identity
• the myths and realities of 'Red Clydeside'
• the notion that Scotland was a more intensely patriarchal society than the rest of Britain
• the idea that Scotland was an anti-immigrant, racist and religiously intolerant society

Adam Smith's hidden hand - markets result in efficient outcomes - doesn't always work. We seek to understand why by using the tool of game theory to analyse how agents interact and discuss market power and externalities.  We then consider other issues in public economics including cost-benefit analysis, fiscal federalism, taxation and crime.  You will also learn more about how to analyse microeconomic data.

This class builds on the Macroeconomics you studied in second year by covering four topics in detail:

• models of economic growth
• the effects of macroeconomic policy in an open economy
• the interrelationships between money growth, output, unemployment and inflation
• the implications of high government debt. 

You will also learn more about how to analyse macroeconomic data. 

The interwar years are central to any analysis of the decline of European colonial rule in the Middle East and the formation of nation states. It was in the 1920s and 1930s that British and French mandatory authorities faced the emergence of nationalist movements throughout the Arab world as well as the increasing competition and penetration of hostile forces.

Students will examine historical themes and events that are significant to the development of political and cultural identities in the Middle East. Through the analysis of primary sources, students will focus on:

• the debate surrounding British and French colonial practices
• the emergence of the Zionist movement and the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine
• the radicalisation of Arab nationalism and its impact upon the relations between local political elites and European colonial powers
• the increasing tension between Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine
• the creation of the mandates in Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon and the process that led to the independence of Egypt and Iraq
• the challenge brought by German and Italian subversive activities to British and French strategic interests in the region

The class will explore major themes in twentieth-century European history:

• the post-World War I settlement
• the rise of fascism
• the origins and course of the Second World War, Soviet expansion, the Cold War, the social and political revolutions of the 1960s and the waning of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s -- from the perspective of a central European country which was created in 1918, dissolved in 1993, and whose opinions were seldom taken into account by the Great Powers.

Students will obtain a solid grounding in the history of Czechoslovakia from its creation to its dissolution. The class should also offer a useful introduction to themes in twentieth-century European history more generally.

Independent reading will concentrate heavily on source material, enabling students to taste the excitement as well as the frustrations of historical research. By being encouraged to view European affairs from a Czech perspective while at the same time having special responsibility for one other European country, students will be led to consider the problems of historical bias and subjectivity, and should develop historical empathy as well as considerable sensitivity to the complexity of international affairs.

The purpose of this special subject is to introduce students to the study of peace and conflict, broadly defined, and to encourage them to write and think about these subjects in a critical and engaged manner informed first and foremost by history-based discourse, but also borrowing from political science, anthropology, and related disciplines.

The module will focus on the case study of Rwanda, with individual classes proceeding chronologically.

The first semester will cover the pre-colonial period to the start of the second Hutu Republic in 1973, while the second semester will cover 1973 to present.

Throughout, students will analyse relevant primary and secondary sources to explore the benefits of applying a historical lens to understanding a nation whose recent history includes both periods of peace and political stability, and several manifestations of state-sanctioned violence, including colonialism, small-scale ethnic, regional, and political conflicts, civil war, genocide, and authoritarianism.

Students seeking careers in human rights advocacy, international law, diplomacy, and journalism will also find this course particularly relevant.

This class will explore the plantations that took place in Ulster during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Students will examine the emergence of the idea for plantation in Ireland, why Ulster was regarded as suitable for plantation, and the various endeavours by English and Scots to settle in the north of Ireland, whether by private enterprise or by the state. This will culminate in the official Plantation of Ulster, a 'British' project initiated by James VI and I in the early years of his reign as king of England, Ireland and Scotland.

Students will also look at a couple of cases studies of individuals who were involved in plantation, enabling a detailed study of the political, social, economic and confessional reasons why they chose to migrate to and settle in Ireland at this time.

The class begins with the traumatic episodes of the Franco-Prussian War and the Communes of 1871. By analysing the often problematic political and cultural consolidation of the Third Republic, this class will explore the ‘culture wars’ and the internal divisions that culminated in the Dreyfus Affair. After the humiliation of losing its status as Europe’s dominant power, France sought greatness in colonial expansion in Africa and Indochina, while seeking to consolidate national identity by transforming ‘peasants into Frenchmen’.

You'll explore the experiences of the First World War, assessing the strength of French unity in the face of the German enemy. The interwar clashes between fascism and the Popular Front will then be examined and how the First World War impacted upon French foreign policy and attitudes towards future war.

You'll spend three weeks exploring the enduring controversies of the Second World War, focusing upon the collapse, resistance, collaboration, and French involvement in the persecution of the Jews, as France faced its ‘hereditary enemy’ once again.

The class concludes with an analysis of the French withdrawal from Indochina and Algeria and an assessment of France’s position in the post-war global order.

A variety of sources will be explored throughout the class, including paintings, monuments, films, literary sources, newspaper reports, memoirs and archival documents.

This class explores the role that health and medicine has played in the major wars of the twentieth century. In particular, it considers the vital contribution that medicine has made to manpower economy, discipline and morale.

Focusing predominantly on Britain, the USA and Europe, the class analyses the ways that different countries have responded to the medical issues posed by modern warfare in both military and civilian contexts. As such, it considers issues such as wartime disability, welfare provision, occupational health and psychiatry, and explores the role that military doctors, women and humanitarian organisations have played in shaping medical responses to war.

The key objective of this class is to place military-medical developments within their wider social, cultural and political contexts and to examine the impact of military health and medicine on the lived experience of war.

The class provides a broad survey of Scottish social history since 1914.

The aim of this class is to explore the nature and development of Scottish society (and place it in a wider context) and to examine dominant narratives of Scotland and Scots in the twentieth century.

By the end, the successful student should have expanded their knowledge of contemporary Scottish history and have a good idea of the diversity of issues, methodologies and arguments which historians have deployed in the study of twentieth-century Scotland.  Among the themes to be covered are:

• gender relations (for example, analysis of the Scottish ‘hard man’ narrative)
• religion (including sectarianism and secularisation)
• health and deprivation
• the arts and culture (including festivals, theatre, cinema and television)
• industry (and de-industrialisation and its impacts)

Historiography had tended to isolate Highland history from Scottish political development during the late medieval and early modern periods.  This class will re-address this trend, emphasising the Highlands as an integral part of Scottish society, at the same time exploring the division within Scotland between the ‘barbaric’ Highlands and the ‘civil’ Lowlands.

Students will study the nature and structure of clan society and place Highland events within the wider context of national and British politics during the sixteenth century.  While relations between the Scottish crown and its Highland subjects is the key theme of this class, students will analyse the extent to which such relations changed through time, and why.

The class will also highlight divergent policies within clan society itself, a factor which warns against treating the Highlands as a homogenous whole, instead taking into consideration regional, local and personal biases.  

The objectives of this class include introducing students to recent examples of genocide and related mass atrocities, and writing and thinking about these cases in a critical and engaged manner through analysis of primary and secondary materials.

Students will be introduced to historical, sociological, anthropological, and legal perspectives related to the occurrence of genocide and related atrocity crimes. Using case studies from the 20th century, we'll discuss:

• contemporary issues related to the labelling of cases
• the evolution of international legal, diplomatic, economic and military measures to prevent, interdict and punish atrocity crimes
• the phenomenon of genocide denial
• the politics of commemoration
• the lingering legacies of violence on individuals and communities in the post-genocide period

Case studies will include clear-cut (recognized in international humanitarian law) examples of genocide, including:

• the Armenian genocide
• the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe
• the 1994 Rwandan genocide

Less clear-cut examples will also be looked at, such as:

• Canada’s Residential School System
• Stalinist crimes in Soviet Russia
• Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia
• the scorched earth policies in Guatemala
• ethnic cleansing surrounding the Bosnian War.

This class will cover the political developments and social groups from the late-nineteenth century till the decolonisation of South Asia in 1947.

This is a key period in the social and political history of modern South Asia as it witnessed the growth of a mass-based anti-colonial struggle.  Simultaneously, the involvement of different social groups in this process led to the emergence of community and caste based identity politics.  Under pressure from demands for independence, the colonial state initiated a process of phased devolution of power, and decolonisation after the Second World War.  The class will compare these developments to raise questions about the 'modernity' of colonial society and polity.  The class will analyse how different social groups - such as the peasantry, the working class and tribal groups - participated in and shaped political movements in South Asia.

Students will also be encouraged to use the regional perspective of South Asian history to understand the different expressions of class, gender and ethnicity in non-Western societies.

The dissertation is an important part of the fourth year programme. Single Honours Economics BA students are required to submit a dissertation in Economics while Joint Honours BA students may submit a dissertation in Economics or in their other Honours subject. 

Information Economics, the topic of this class, considers market failure resulting from uncertainty and information asymmetry. The course looks at two specific examples of market failures: moral hazard and adverse selection. We will discuss policy solutions to reduce the negative impacts of these market failures on society. We will also apply uncertainty to game theory and learn how to find Bayesian Nash Equilibria. Furthermore, we will examine the impact of externalities on social welfare and learn about the optimal provision of public goods.

This class aims to provide you with the required tools to understand current macroeconomic issues, such as the interactions between the banking sector and monetary policy or the policy responses to the global financial crisis.  Throughout the class, the analytical usefulness of the theoretical models taught is illustrated with real-world examples. 

This course investigates the actions that firms in an industry might take to preserve their profit in that industry, and the implications that this has for competition policy and regulation. We take an analytical approach to the issues which will be supported by examining case studies and current events. 

In third year, you will have learned about regression in both a cross-sectional data and time series data context. This class extends that knowledge to two core topics: causal inference and forecasting. Both are highly relevant topics to real-word economics. Understanding the effects of economic policies and decision-making requires careful empirical analysis and understanding of what the data can and cannot tell us. Topics on causal inference build skill in this area. Furthermore, policymakers and economist often want to know something about what to expect, for example of unemployment, given what has happened recently and in the past. Topics in forecasting build skills in this area.

In causal inference, we begin with foundations on how to think about correlation vs. causation and threats to interpreting regression model coefficients as causal effects. We then introduce two methodological approaches. These are instrumental variables and difference-in-differences. Under both we develop the intuition and key assumptions that will allow interpreting statistical results from a regression model as a causal effect from a variable or policy change of interest. We further work with example cases in labs and learn how to implement the methods with data in R, and we use tutorials to think about these methods in action and continue developing the intuition.

In forecasting, we will introduce you to basic tools needed to become a forecaster, such as understanding what a loss function and forecast horizon is. In addition, you will learn various forecasting evaluation techniques to compare competing models.

This class gives a balanced view of the role of finance in promoting long-run economic growth, but also booms and busts. The nature and role of financial intermediaries will be introduced, and, afterwards, formally addressed in a simple aggregate growth model. Empirical evidence will be examined, before turning to the specifics of micro-finance. The importance of financial globalisation will also be investigated. Finally, the rest of the class will be devoted to deciphering the causes and consequences of the current financial crisis.

Behavioural Economics offers alternative theories that merge psychological insights with economic theory and are based on experimental and other evidence, that attempt to provide a better explanation of real-world behaviour.

This class is concerned with exploring these behavioural theories with the aim of providing you with an expanded toolkit with which to approach ‘real-world Economics’ that is based on the burgeoning Behavioural Economics literature that has emerged over the past two or three decades.

After studying this, you should be able to extend much of your previously-learned knowledge in Microeconomics in various directions that take into account more realistic ways of modelling how individuals behave.

The class provides you with an introduction to Natural Resource Economics, Environmental Economics and Energy Economics, establishing connections between the economics and the policy aspects of the class topics. It focuses on the contributions of Economics to understanding environmental, energy and natural resource problems, their causes, and the design of effective public policies to counteract them.