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Why significance matters to us

For us, both ‘significance’ and ‘interpretations’ are a bit of a category of their own. Whilst regular second-order concepts such as causation and change get pupils involved in history first-hand, significance and interpretations seem to do something different. These concepts allow us to take a step back and look at history being made, asking them to analyse the why and how in a ‘meta-historical’ way. This is an important part of classroom history as it encourages them to move away from seeing the past as ‘fixed’ facts and see history as a subject where varying claims to ‘truth’ are made.

Significance as degrees of importance

Although infamously difficult to pin down, we have started to find ways of thinking about significance that work for us and our pupils. Like others before, we have also rejected the idea of ‘significance’ as a fixed feature of particular aspects of the past and have instead focused on it being ‘ascribed.’ In the most recent Teaching History (190) there are some really helpful ways of approaching this; we especially recommend Worth’s exploration of how she has placed historians’ own accounts of the way they have ascribed significance at the forefront to illustrate how significance is relative. In the same edition, Card discusses how the extent to which some events of the past have been deemed significant have waxed and waned over the years.

We find thinking about significance in these terms really helpful. The extent to which things have/have not been seen as an important part of history and the reasons for this (such as Counsell’s criteria known as the ‘5 Rs) are fascinating points to explore. However, we also think there is something to consider in Brown and Woodcock’s point in their TH (143) article:

‘While this kind of analysis is important, only considering degree of significance would perhaps hide a more profound aspect to significance.’

What else is significance to us?

So, what else is there to explore? 

Rather than just looking at comparative extent of ‘weight’ and ‘importance’ given to aspects of the past, we have started exploring what one area symbolises to different people, a type of thinking about significance that cannot be characterised on a scale.

In other words, we are using ‘significance’ less as defined by Oxford languages as ‘the quality of being worthy of attention’ but rather by the secondary definition offered: ‘the meaning to be found in words and events.’ By following this approach, we are left to consider what different aspects of the past have signified to various individuals, movements, generations and groups. To do this we can explore the local, temporal or personal concerns that have affected the way in which something is remembered. We might find an aspect or individual from the past to be celebrated, criticised, manipulated, distorted, accentuated, diminished or presented in any other way imaginable for all manner of complex reasons. The way we have been experimenting with significance, is therefore not a question of ‘significant or not’ but a question of ‘signifier of what.’

The ‘mysterious box’ of significance

‘Historical significance’ is, like interpretations, about exploring how history is made. It is the mysterious process of the production of history that we want our pupils to explore and analyse.

We have played around with a number of analogies but none did the process justice. Instead, we settled on the idea of a ‘mysterious box’ into which the past enters and is transformed into ‘history.’ We started to see this as a two-step process:

 1) What bits of the past make it into the box in order to be processed into history and why? This is the well-theorised aspect of significance, dealing with comparative ‘importance’, ‘weight’ and ‘silences’ in the past.

 2) What form does this aspect of the past take on when it has been through the process and comes out the other side as history? And how do different representations of the same aspect of the past go through the process and emerge looking so different? This is the less theorised part we’ve been experimenting with. We think there are lots of exciting opportunities here for pupils to explore the impact of the archive, archivists, historians and wider creators of History on the form the past becomes. 

But why is the process within the box ‘mysterious’? One reason is that it is not directly visible to us. The different influences on the historians as they make the past into their own version of history and many and varied. It takes a lot of unpicking to see how these different forces work together to create the outcome.

Another reason it is mysterious is that the manufacturing of past into history is not the work of professional historians alone. It might also involve popular memory which often doesn’t have a standard set of methodologies, such as making claims from a range of evidence, which makes the challenges of understanding the process even greater for pupils. There is not always a set process that significance can be boiled down to as each area under investigation is unique to the particular circumstances and events of each of society. This makes the exploration of what happens when the past is becoming history all the more mysterious and intriguing….

How could this translate into the classroom?

Enquiries centred on the input (weight and inclusion)	Enquiries centred on the output (different representations)
Why have the voices of X been silenced?	How has X been constructed/ invented?
Why have historians included X in their stories about Y?	How has the history of X been rewritten?
Why has the topic of X recently become of interest to Y?	Why has X been remembered so differently?
Why do X still care about Y?	Why has X become a symbol of opposing histories?
	Why do X present the Y so positively?

Our enquiry: How can Thanksgiving be a symbol of such opposing histories?

Rationale for the enquiry

Our pupils study the Making of America paper (1789-1900) at GCSE and we have always been painfully aware of the lack of knowledge pupils have about life in America before 1789. Our department philosophy is that pupils should encounter those colonised only after they have encountered a group before colonialism and so we currently do this with a unit entitled ‘How useful is the term Native American?’ This year we decided that to fully prepare our pupils with the background knowledge about Native and white relationships which gets picked up by our GCSE course, it would be really helpful for pupils to have a better understanding of the Early encounters between Native Americans and European settlers. 

We were particularly inspired by the talk giving at the last HA conference by the new Hodder textbook team and particularly by Tom Allen where he introduced us to David Silverman’s book: This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. In the introduction to this book, Silverman asserts:

 “The Thanksgiving myth promotes the idea that this event involved Indians gifting their country bloodlessly to Europeans and their descendants to launch the United States as a great Christian, democratic, family-centred nation blessed by God’. 

We thought it would be really interesting to explore how divergent views of this event could have come to exist. We have always looked from a European-focused perspective at the Pilgrim Fathers when we explore the consequences of the Protestant Reformation in Year 8 so we thought it would be really important to try and challenge this perspective.

Outline of the enquiry

Lesson Question	Content covered	Aspect of significance developed
Lesson 1: What role do early encounters between Europeans and Natives play in how Thanksgiving is remembered?	Traditional myth of Thanksgiving – the celebratory version given to young children in America Story of early encounters between Native Americans and White Americans (e.g. epidemic of 1616-1619) up to the Mayflower landing.	What might the Mayflower have symbolised to those white Americans and Native (Wampanoag) Americans at the time?
Lesson 2: What role does Massasoit’s story play in how Thanksgiving is remembered?	The story of the creation of Plymouth Colony Wampanoag and Pilgrim Fathers’ temporary alliance  Events of original ‘Thanksgiving’	How was Massasoit viewed by… the English settlers at the time (using sources from the period) and also Native oral accounts of who Massasoit was. How do these contribute to opposing stories?
Lesson 3: What role does the story of King Philip’s War play in how Thanksgiving is remembered?	Relationships after Massasoit’s death leading to King Philip’s War 1675-1676	How including contextualisation of Thanksgiving with negative relations following changes its overall impression. Pupils question which event better symbolises the relationship between white and Native (Wampanoag) Americans – King Philip’s War or Thanksgiving? Pupils also think about the nature of the source record available and how this might have influenced what has been remembered (including Native wampum belts)
Lesson 4: How can Thanksgiving be a symbol of such opposing histories?	Pupils look at the Native American version of Thanksgiving as the Day of Mourning (created by Frank James in 1970) by looking at an overview timeline of settler-colonialism in America from 1676-1900. Pupils explore how Native ideas about identity, gender and nation were eroded through land acquisition and other processes such as putting young children into boarding schools.	Pupils explore why an overview of destruction of Native culture changes the light in which Thanksgiving can be remembered. Why would these two groups want to tell such different stories about the conception of America?  Is Thanksgiving (in isolation) representative of the beginning of America?

Building up a sense of two versions of History

At the heart of this enquiry was ensuring that pupils were clear on the fact that different versions of ‘Thanksgiving’ clearly existed. Pupils were initially exposed to the traditional sanitised version of the ‘holiday’ story to build on any general awareness they had about the event already. 

However, we then contrasted this image with ‘National Day of Mourning’, which was the name given to Thanksgiving, by a Native American, Frank James in 1970, saying:

 “This is a time of celebration for you – celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.’

This powerful speech contrasts so vividly with the traditional story of Thanksgiving that it shows the different ‘outputs’ and representations that get created very clearly. Also helpful in this was the opportunity to explore the nature of the language that was used in both ‘versions’ of how Thanksgiving has been presented. This supported pupils in getting to grips with the wider ideas and meanings of both representations.

Symbols: a way into thinking about the mysterious box

One way we introduced pupils to what might go on inside the ‘mysterious box’ is by getting them to think about what the same aspect of the past could have represented to both the white settlers and the Wampanoag. This was to highlight that the making of history involves agency and decision making: both what and how you might remember something might vary depending on the impact that it has on you and your community. We hoped that this engagement with human emotion and the role of the present in understanding the past would open up pupils’ understanding of why events could represent opposing things to different people.

Events as representations

Of course, the selection of different aspects of the past (input to historical process) cannot be totally separated from the form the end product takes (output of historical process). As Trouillot explores in his work Silencing the Past, archives, archivists, historians and public memory can affect what parts of history are emphasised and left out. What is typically explored in the classroom is the reasons for these inclusions and omissions. What we were especially interested in however is how said inclusions and omissions create certain impressions in the wider representations. 

For instance, in the context of our Thanksgiving enquiry, it is notable that the traditional telling of Thanksgiving zooms in on a few days of particularly harmonious relations between the settlers and the Wampanoag. By filtering out negative relations prior to Thanksgiving and the deterioration of relations after, the traditional narrative ends up taking a more celebratory and peaceful tone of America’s conception. Conversely, these filtered out aspects of the past hold a more powerful place in Wampanoag collective memory, meaning they might perceive the conflict of King Philips’ War as perhaps more emblematic of the story. Even more so, when it is viewed from the perspective of the longer-term destruction of Native identity and culture over the following centuries. By emphasising, contextualising, filtering and highlighting different aspects of the same story, very different versions of history can therefore come to light. 

Sources and the form of History

One way we got pupils to focus on what happens in the ‘mysterious box’ was by looking at the role of the evidential material in the representations of history created. We explored this in Lesson 2 when we looked at the story of Massasoit, the chief sachem of the Wampanoags. He worked in an alliance with the Pilgrim Fathers, leading to the events that have become known as Thanksgiving. Pupils explored original sources produced by the Mayflower passengers and considered how these could have contributed to the traditional sanitised version of Thanksgiving. Then, pupils contrasted this with Wampanoag oral accounts of Massasoit. This micro-level exploration of differences in the source record itself allowed pupils to see how different versions of history were shaped from the moment they occurred. 

In his person he is a very lusty man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech. In his attire little or nothing differing from the rest of his followers, only in a great chain of white bone beads about his neck, and at it behind his neck hangs a little bag of tobacco, which he drank and gave us to drink; his face was painted with a sad red like murry, and oiled both head and face, that he looked greasily. All his followers likewise, were in their faces, in part or in whole painted, some black, some red, some yellow, and some white, some with crosses, and other antic works; some had skins on them, and some naked, all strong, tall, all men of appearance . . . [he] had in his bosom hanging in a string, a great long knife; he marvelled much at our trumpet, and some of his men would sound it as well as they could.

Mayflower passenger Edward Winslow described Massasoit in Mourt’s relations, 1622

Pupil outcome work

To many people, Thanksgiving is seen as a time of celebration because, in the traditional story, the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims and they ate a feast together as friends. Many events before and after the meal were filtered out, and the emphasis is put on the Native Americans and the Pilgrims eating together in peace. All the sources that got recorded were by the European settlers, who wanted to make it seem like they did nothing wrong. These biased records presented the Native Americans as wild and uncivilised because the settlers wanted to justify their hostility towards them and show that they had the supposed right to be in charge of America. Many people want the start of America to be remembered as a peaceful time which started off with a friendship between the Europeans and the Native Americans whereas, in reality, it started with lots of conflict and death.

To many people, Thanksgiving is seen as symbol of mourning because it marks the start of the conflict of King Philip’s war, which was responsible for the deaths of many Native Americans. When the traditional events are put into context then it shows that, in reality, the friendship between the Native Americans and Pilgrims only lasted for a few days. For example, in the years leading up to 1620, there was a deadly epidemic brought over by French traders that wiped out many in the Wampanoag nation. This created mistrust between the Wampanoag and the new settlers because they were worried that a similar event would happen again. When the Pilgrims came over in 1620, they stole all the Wampanoag’s food supplies and tried to take their land. Later, after Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims started taking more land, forcing their laws onto the Native Americans. This created tension because the European settlers were taking all the resources and trying to take power away from the Wampanoag. Soon, a war broke out which led to many Native Americans being killed and the remaining Natives being sent to ‘reservations’. The children were sent to Christian boarding schools where they were lied to about their history and forced to abandon their identities and beliefs. Many of the Native American perspectives were lost because they were not recorded – apart from on a few surviving wampum belts, which told the story of what really happened. Because so many of the records were written by the Pilgrims, key events in the true story were left out.

Conclusion: Thanksgiving can be seen as a symbol of such opposing histories because many of the original events were filtered out by the European settlers. It wasn’t the start of

America as it is seen today, but the end of thousands of years of Native Americans living there peacefully with the land. The settlers were barbaric towards the Native Americans, and

Thanksgiving should be remembered as a tragic event which was the cause of many deaths instead of a time of peace and friendship.

Of all the examples of colonial loot, the Koh-i-Noor diamond is one of the most controversial. The recent decision to avoid using it in the upcoming coronation ceremony seems a sensible one considering the many disagreements and competing claims over its past and future. The question we wanted to explore with our Year 9s is: how has one stone come to symbolise so many things over the centuries?

By tracking the diamond through the ages as it is dramatically passed from empire to empire, we can observe how the cultural value of the Koh-i-Noor grows and evolves. We can extract lessons about the use and display of power and how an object is afforded its value through what it comes to represent. Even though the story is one told at overview level, we can gain a real depth of knowledge about the empires of the Indian subcontinent and the nature of British colonial rule. As a result, the story is full of opportunities to incorporate aspects of decolonial thinking in authentic and challenging ways.

In this short blog post, we hope to show how we went about exploring this unbelievable story and perhaps to inspire others to incorporate the powerful history of the Koh-i-Noor into their own teaching.

EQ: What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of its possessors?

Lesson question	Content covered	Sources used to construct the cultural ‘meaning’ of the diamond through the ages.
Lesson 1: What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of the Early Mughals?	Humayun (Mughal Emperor) and Shah Tahmasp (Ruler of Persia).
Lesson 2: What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of Shah Jahan?	Shah Jahan and the Mughal Empire.	Close analysis of Peacock Throne.
Lesson 3: What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of Nader Shah?	Nader Shah and the Persian Empire.	Contemporary description of Nader Shah. Comparison of Mughal Peacock Throne and Nader Shah’s Peacock Throne and armband.
Lesson 4: What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of Ranjit Singh?	Ranjit Singh and the founding of the Sikh Empire	Close analysis of a source from a courtier who wrote about the display of the diamond.
Lesson 5: What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of the East India Company?	Story of Duleep Singh and the growth of the East India Company.	Lord Dalhousie’s comments after getting the Koh-i-Noor
Lesson 6: What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of the British?	Story of the diamond’s journey to England, its recutting and the Great Exhibition, its presentation by Queen Victoria to Duleep Singh and Duleep’s Singh troubled life.	Close focus on the difference between the diamond before and after cutting

The Koh-i-Noor’s story

The Koh-i-Noor by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand is one of the most page-turning history books we have come across. The first half, written by Dalrymple, focuses on the diamond’s history before it came to England. It explores how, initially, the diamond was not a particularly desired gemstone – it sat atop the Mughal Empire’s illustrious Peacock Throne, just another treasure among the 2500 lbs of gold and 500 lbs of gemstones it featured. Yet it soon came to symbolise much more and the lure of the diamond became central to multiple power struggles, in Dalrymple words, leaving a “trail of blood and suffering” wherever it went. The diamond’s possessors were deeply unfortunate, earning its reputation as ‘cursed.’ From violent assassinations such as that of Nader Shah to the memorable tale of Ahmed Shah, ruler of the Afghan Empire, whose face was devoured by a gruesome ulcer.

The second half of the book is written by Anita Anand and recounts the story of how the British East India Company seized the diamond, along with the power of the child Maharaja, Duleep Singh. Later, he was sent to England, refused contact with his own mother and kept as one of Victoria’s ‘exotic’ princes. In one of the most memorable moments of the story, Queen Victoria is said to have shown the Maharaja the diamond now in her possession, only for him to fail to recognise it due to the extent to which it had been re-cut to meet the ‘beauty’ expectations of Western jewellery. 

While the Koh-i-Noor’s story is a complex one, which takes getting your head around, helpfully there is a children’s version of the book available called The Adventures Of The Kohinoor. There is also a helpful podcast episode on it from Dalyrmple and Anand’s Empire: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5FMRc4C9R5MwITtTNuQBOs?si=eF5GKNMUQG2vgZjRrF6t9g&utm_source=native-share-menu&nd=1

Characterising the use of power

This enquiry provided a really good opportunity for pupils to unpick how power operated in a range of situations. The passing of the diamond reflected the rise and fall of various Empires and, over time, the diamond became a symbol of imperial power in its own right. Through the range of Empires pupils encounter (including the Mughal Empire, Persian Empire, Afghan Empire, Sikh Empire and finally the British Empire), pupils are able to appreciate the nature and fragility of imperial rule.

As well as the trends and overview of imperial power, there are moments of real depth for pupils to explore different methods of power used by each of the emperors to obtain the diamond and, often by extension, dominance. Some of the stories are absolutely fascinating and are gripping in themselves. 

A short extract from a guided reading in Lesson 4 – What does the Koh-i-Noor reveal about the power of Ranjit Singh?

Pupils are given the challenge of describing what kind of techniques and power-play each ruler used to obtain the diamond, which varied widely from coercion and violence by Ranjit Singh to  the more subtle manipulation used by the East India Company. This enables pupils to think carefully about the nature by which power was wielded by the diamond’s various rulers. 

A spectrum we used to encourage pupils to characterise the wielding of power at points in the story:

Material culture angle

Something else we love about the Koh-i-Noor’s story is the opportunity it provides for focusing on ‘material culture.’ As the diamond passes from hand to hand, it begins to carry cultural connotations that only increase its value. To unravel the multiple meanings that have been attached to one physically unchanging object is at the heart of the way we want pupils to engage with cultural history. It requires them to understand that the ideas behind the actions and words of people in the past take some dissecting and contextualising to appreciate. For instance, by studying the lengths various rulers went through to obtain the Koh-i-Noor, pupils can start to make inferences about what it meant to them.

More revealingly still, we found that analysing how each of the Koh-i-Noor’s owners displayed the diamond once it was in their possession provided great insight into their ideas about it. For instance, as one of many of many gems on the Peacock Throne, the Mughals characteristically saw the diamond in terms of its artistic value. Yet when Nader Shah stripped the Throne of the jewel and wore it on an armband into battle, we can suppose he was invoking the might of the by-gone days of Mughal Empire. Ranjit Singh’s insistence that the diamond was transported in one of 40 identical camels’ pouches (should they be ambushed on their travels) might even suggest that he saw ownership of the diamond as synonymous with his legitimacy to rule. Finally, the diamond’s own dedicated room in London’s 1851 Great Exhibition brings us back round to its status as prized colonial loot…

Below is an example of an activity from Lesson 4 where pupils’ analyse a source from an old courtier through a cultural history lens to unpick what Ranjit’s actions revealed about what the diamond ‘meant’ to him

Example of overview sheet that pupils completed throughout the enquiry to record their ideas about what the Koh-i-Noor reveals about power

Aspects of decoloniality

One of the particular strengths of this enquiry is that the British Empire does not feature until Lesson 5. The richness of the Indian subcontinent and its various Empires are covered on their own terms, which challenges the narrative of  ‘European Empire’ as exceptional or as a unique form of Empire. During a reading homework, which is a chapter from the children’s Adventures of the Koh-i-Noor book, pupils are exposed to the origins of the word mogul (definition: a rich or powerful businessmen) and in so doing how the British were astounded by the wealth and prosperity of the Mughal Empire when they came across it. The opulence of the Peacock throne, having cost four times as much as the Taj Mahal to build, demonstrated the power of the Mughals to Europeans at the time. 

This story promotes a decolonial view in the sense that it exposes the brutal power struggle and harsh reality of British imperial rule. There is nothing to recommend the Empire in this story and certainly no balance sheet approach would be possible. Through the story of Duleep Singh and the British Empire, pupils encounter the merciless manipulation of a child of 10 years old, separated from his mother, Jindan Singh (who the British imprisoned fearing her anti-British influence over the young ruler) and forced to sign a legal document relinquishing both his territory and the diamond. Furthermore, the strangely possessive relationship between Victoria and Duleep Singh once he is taken across to England provides real food for thought. 

Extract from Lesson 6 guided reading

Challenging colonial values

While researching the history of the diamond, we came across a fascinating exploration of the diamond being cut by Danielle Kinsey called “Koh-i-Noor: Empire, Diamonds, and the Performance of British Material Culture” in the Journal of British Studies (2009). We found this piece inspirational for thinking about how material culture could expose colonial power and sentiment.

Victoria, keen on showing off her new possession the Koh-i-noor decided to display the diamond in the Great Exhibition. However, the response to the diamond was lukewarm at best and was seen as a disappointment by many. The diamond was not as shiny or brilliant as many Western cut diamonds due to its imperfections and irregular shape. As a consequence, and perhaps as a symbol of their new found power, Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert ended up paying vast sums to cut down the weight of the diamond by an astounding 42% to make it shine! The huge transformation is highly emblematic of the perceived superiority of Westernised standards and allowed us to draw a symbolic parallel to the Empire’s aims of ‘improving’ and ‘modernising its territories.

Worksheet encouraging pupils to compare the diamond before and after re-cutting to think about what the shape of the cut reveals about attitudes.

Sample of pupils’ outcomes

Typically high-attaining pupil’s paragraph

The Koh-i-Noor symbolised different kinds of power to each of its possessors. For example, Ranjit SIngh went to great lengths to get the diamond. He tried everything to get it off Shah Shuja, from appealing to him to threatening him and torturing his family. Once he had the diamond, he was extremely paranoid about it being stolen, and had it kept in a very secure treasury when it wasn’t being worn. The British, however, got it in 1849 by taking advantage of the young Duleep Singh. Once Prince Albert got it, he put it on display. In 1852, he got it cut down to almost half the original size to make it fit British ideas and expectations around the “beauty” of the diamond. This shows how the Koh-i-noor was valued by Ranjit Singh for the influential power it represented because of the effort he put into getting it. He could have put that effort into taking more land, getting more followers or overthrowing other powerful people around him. Instead, he devoted the time, money, resources and troops to obtaining the Koh-i-noor. This shows how he thought that the diamond represented the same amount of power in terms of his influence and authority over people Whereas, for the British Empire it represented imperial power because it had been the property of all the powerful empires around India and the British had got it. They had it shown off in an exhibition of things they had looted from places all over the world. This exhibition was a demonstration of the extent of the British Empire, and the diamond was the centrepiece. When the diamond was cut down, it showed the British were discarding all the culture and history that the Koh-i-noor held. Additionally to Prince Albert specifically, the diamond represented reputation and status. He was unpopular among the British, due to his German background. Albert hoped that the diamond would make people like him more, and tried his best to make it look as pretty (by British standards) as he could. This led to the cutting of the diamond.

Typically middle-attaining pupil’s paragraph

The Koh-i-noor symbolised different kinds of power of each of its possesors. For example, Ranjit Singh got the power of the diamond by being ‘friends’ with Shuja and he got given the diamond after a lot of pleading. This shows that the Koh-i-noor was valued by Ranjit Singh for the power to show he is the most important person. An example of this is when he placed the Koh-i-Noor diamond on his turban and walks around the streets with it on his head (he didn’t walk around only once but many times). He was also so obsessed over it that he did EVERYTHING to make sure it didn’t get stolen. Whenever he let researchers or scientists look at it or even touch it he would always be there to watch. 

Whereas, for Victoria and Albert it was another kind of power. For Albert, the Koh-i-Nooe diamond was more used to gain popularity. For example Albert created a huge exhibition called the Great Exhibition featuring art, culture, science and British inventions and obviously the diamond. But the Koh-i-Noor didn’t exactly get the reaction Albert wanted instead everyone was disappointed. This was because people weren’t used to diamonds that weren’t ‘perfect’. So the Koh-i-Noor diamond had very different uses. 

Typically lower-attaining pupil’s paragraph

The koh-i-noor symbolises different kinds of power to each of its possessors of the diamond. For example Nadir Shah presented it so people can see it and he can show of how wealthy he is with the koh-i-noor in his possession .But on the other hand Ranjit Singh paid for the diamond to show off his personal wealth he put it on his turban and waited and watched the diamond get put on the turban until it was done. He also paid for an army to go and free Shah Shaja from prison. But then the East Indian company took the diamond of off a 10 year old boy and they bribed him that if he didnt give them the diamond then they would prison his mum and they intimidated the boy to sign it over and they valued it for their military power and financial power so they can be famous.

Curriculum connections

If you are interested in using the Koh-i-Noor diamond’s story in a future scheme of work it is worth noting that it has an amazing spin-off story attached. Sophia Duleep Singh, Maharaja Duleep Singh’s daughter, became a suffragette and was involved in Indian nationalism. Her story specifically offers a great opportunity to engage with a wide range of early 20th century History and explore complex forms of activism. Her sister, Catherine Singh ended up living in a lesbian relationship with Lina Schäfer in Germany and together they were instrumental in aiding many Jewish families escape during World War II.

This year we approached our Eleanor of Aquitaine enquiry differently. We focused on what Eleanor’s story has represented to different historians, and why she has therefore been presented in different ways. In doing so, we asked the question of how Eleanor’s story and character has been ‘invented’, a term which encapsulates the idea that historians are active creators of new content in their work.

As is often the case, the enquiry straddles the divide between significance and interpretations. The concept of significance shone through in pupils’ exploration of how the historians select and emphasise different aspects of the past within Eleanor’s story according to their values and interests. As such, these historians determined which parts of Eleanor’s story left the realm of the ‘past’ and entered historical consciousness. The different parts of Eleanor’s life historians featured resulted in different ‘versions’ of Eleanor being remembered. As such, the enquiry demonstrates how significance works in a disciplinary context. 

Yet the nature of the historians’ writing also presented an opportunity to explore how her story is framed and presented in a way typical of an interpretations enquiry. Even where historians featured the same events, we wanted pupils to see that the way they wrote about them differed in order to emphasise their version of Eleanor. Particularly valuable in this was the chance to explore the effect that the subtleties of language and tone have on the way we understand the past. 

The enquiry has proved surprisingly effective in challenging that notorious issue of pupils perceiving the past as fixed and objective. Instead, they appeared to leave with a sense of the decision-making that sits behind the history they encounter in the world around them.

We think this was achieved by exploring the context and motives of the historians, how this, in turn, affected historians’ selection and framing of evidence and by providing opportunities for our pupils to experiment with sequencing and presenting different parts of her story in the style of the interpretations they studied. This seems to have given them a stronger sense of the active and changeable nature of history which they have carried forward into subsequent enquiries.  

Due to the interest in the enquiry shown when we shared some resources, we thought that we would write-up what it is we felt made the particular approach we trialled successful for our department. Although not all departments include Eleanor of Aquitaine in their curriculum, most feature an enquiry which features opposing interpretations of an historical event or individual. We therefore hope there is something thought-provoking for anyone who does, or wants to, explore an enquiry of this type.

Overview of our Year 7 scheme of work

How has Eleanor been ‘invented’?

How has Eleanor’s ‘Black Legend’ been invented

How has Eleanor’s ‘Golden Myth’ been invented?

How has Eleanor’s role in the crusades been invented?

How has Eleanor’s role in the Great Revolt been invented? (1)

How has Eleanor’s role in the Great Revolt been invented? (2)

How has Eleanor’s relationship with her sons been invented?

Floating lesson – Why wasn’t Eleanor exceptional?

1. Narrowing the focus

Helpfully, there are some very striking interpretations of Eleanor’s life on which we were able to build. We used Inventing Eleanor by Michael Evans, which provided a detailed historiography of the different ways Eleanor’s life has been presented through time.¹ To keep things manageable, we selected only two of the most strongly opposing interpretations so that Year 7 could really grasp the clear-cut difference. It is a well-known difficulty of interpretations enquiries that pupils often struggle to juggle both the historical content itself along with the changing context in which the interpretation took place. We therefore hoped that, by sticking to only two interpretations, we would reduce the number of moving parts and therefore allow our pupils to become engrossed in the way in which the historians’ accounts differed. Moreover, it let pupils come to terms with the concept of contemporary values influencing the past in a way that was appropriately accessible for our Year 7’s first foray into interpretations/significance. 

The interpretations in question were a Victorian account by Agnes Strickland, which Evans referred to as the ‘Black Legend’ and a range of more feminist-led works about Eleanor, including Alison Weir, Marion Meade and Helen Castor, termed the ‘Golden Myth.’² Inspired by Rachel Foster’s enquiry on ‘What’s the story of women’s suffrage?’³, we often returned to the following timeline to illustrate the shift in what Eleanor signified to historians of each period. 

The two extracts below really encapsulate how powerfully diametrically opposed the interpretations we chose were (here the historians are commenting on the reasons for the annulment of Eleanor and her first husband, Louis’, marriage):

Black Legend: “Eleanora fell so desperately in love with him [Henry II] that without hesitation or advice she applied for a divorce from Louis, and got it. No doubt the king was glad to be rid of such an undutiful, unwomanly wife, though he did have to give up all control over his southern provinces, even Guienne.”⁴

Golden Myth: “Other queens had been desperately unhappy in their marriages, but they had accepted the situation, either because the prestige had made them so much better off than other women or perhaps from the feeling that husbands were lords and masters, free to treat wives as they wished.…. At her demand for a divorce, Louis was hurt, bewildered, and somewhat angry, but he still loved her and needed her.”⁵

2. Interpretations first

Perhaps unconventionally, we made the decision to introduce pupils to the interpretations themselves first, before teaching Eleanor’s story. We did this through two lessons exploring opposing extracts focused on her character and the very basics of her early life, at the same time exposing pupils to the context behind both interpretations. This was to keep the substantive content as simple as possible, meaning that the emphasis at this stage could be on how she was presented and the style of the historians’ writing, rather than the events of her life.

Knowing the nature of the interpretations before her story gave pupils the opportunity to immediately place new content within an argumentative framework as they learnt it. This created a closer relationship between the substantive content (Eleanor’s life) and disciplinary thinking (interpretations of her life) and avoided the issue of frontloading knowledge only to problematise it later in the enquiry. Instead, they were able to attach meaning to the new content they learnt as they encountered it.

The other key benefit of introducing the pupils to the overarching ideas of the interpretations was when we later encountered extended extracts from the historians, which were often complex (especially in the case of Agnes’ Strickland’s slightly unfamiliar Victorian turn of phrase) the ideas which sat behind them were not entirely strange or new.

3. Predictions

The other helpful aspect of using two strongly contrasting interpretations and introducing them at the start of the enquiry was that it also opened up opportunities for predictions throughout. For instance, when reading through the story of Eleanor’s escapades on the Second Crusade, pupils highlighted anything they thought would be controversial for a woman in Eleanor’s position, and therefore worthy of inclusion in either interpretation. For each highlighted example, (e.g. the many public disputes they had on the Crusade) we asked pupils what they thought a Black Legend historian might say about it and how a Golden Myth historian would disagree. This helped to highlight how the values of the different historians’ societies surrounding gender affected the historians’ presentation of Eleanor and therefore the evidence that they might choose to emphasise.

Another benefit of this approach was that by asking these questions throughout, pupils could access some of the more complex extracts as many things that our pupils predicted were reflected in the texts themselves. This was especially helpful because when they read some of the more challenging extracts their recognition of the ideas and arguments meant they could overcome complex language.

4. Framing through language

Helped greatly by the fact that the two opposing interpretations were so forceful in their nature, we repeatedly drew attention to the power of language in showing how historians framed the events of Eleanor’s life differently. In Duffy’s Devices, Ward experimented considering the adverbs and adjectives used in an extract from Duffy’s account of the Reformation to emphasise Duffy’s ‘views’ or arguments about the topic.⁶  We wanted to take this a stage further, by comparing the language from the interpretations to show how historians’ use of language could radically change the readers’ perception of Eleanor. Whilst planning the enquiry, we scanned the interpretations to look for the kind of key themes that would be helpful to draw out through the explicit pre-teaching of vocabulary. Therefore, at the start of the enquiry we taught pupils the language most closely related to the Black Legend/Golden myth interpretations by providing them with key adjectives associated with each view. For example, when Eleanor does not meet the expectations of a medieval woman she is, according to the Black Legend account, ‘scandalous, lustful, unmotherly, power-hungry and unholy.’ Whereas, according to the Golden Myth, these same transgressions show an empowered woman who is ‘liberated, ambitious, influential and challenges tradition.’

When introducing this language, the first thing we asked the class to do was generate their own synonyms for each word. The reason for this was to enable pupils to make links between new language and ideas with their existing vocabulary, thus securing a deeper understanding and creating a wider repertoire of words with which to discuss the interpretations. Through this, the language provided a window through which to see the stark contrast between the interpretations and, as such, the linguistic provided a scaffold to the conceptual.⁷

Pupils had the opportunity to put this language into practice, using the new language to fill the gaps in the sentence below, once as a Golden Myth writer and once in the style of the Black Legend.

Another way we drew attention to the importance of language in the construction of Eleanor’s life was an activity in which pupils actually changed a Golden Myth interpretation to a Black Legend one. Inspired by Christine Counsell’s example of CV Wedgewood’s account of Charles’ execution in which pupils rewrote a subordinate clause to change the tone, we asked pupils to alter a transcript of a Golden Myth documentary by changing key phrases on a piece of tracing paper.⁸ We found the value in the tracing paper lay in the fact that it allowed pupils to see both interpretations by flicking it back and forth. As a result, they could see that, whilst the content may remain the same, the decisions historians make about the language they use to portray it has a dramatic effect on the way an event or individual is remembered.

5. Selection and sequencing 

We developed the idea of illustrating how history is constructed by using the metaphor of a ‘filter’. We illustrated this using the image of a filter with several blocks representing the different events that could have been included from Eleanor’s story in historical accounts. The idea of the filter was that it represented the historical process whereby historians can make decisions about whether to include or filter out any evidence that does not support their argument. Those events which pass through the filter are selected and written into history. This helped our pupils to consider historical significance by getting them to consider the necessary role of selection and sequencing in the act of remembering — how different parts of Eleanor’s story have been chosen and retold because they resonate and reflect different values at different times.

To help pupils wrap their heads around this for the first time, we used an analogy of their history teacher writing a book about their time working at Sawston. If, in this book, they covered lots of different experiences, but never once mentioned Year 7 as a year group, what would they suppose their teacher thought of Year 7? Most suggested, ‘they didn’t like Year 7’, ‘they didn’t think Year 7 were interesting’ and one even suggested that ‘Year 7 weren’t significant to them.’’

In Lesson 6, we extended this idea through another form of prediction task by asking pupils to suggest which elements of Eleanor’s final years might have been left out by a Black Legend historian and why. Following this, we looked at a real Black Legend extract and recorded which parts of Eleanor’s story had, indeed, been silenced and what these gaps revealed about the aims and ideas of the writer.

For the final outcome task, pupils created their own timeline of Eleanor’s life from the perspective of either a Black Legend or Golden Myth historian. To do this, they picked 5 events to feature out of all those they had studied and justified their place on the line by explaining why these aspects of Eleanor’s story carried significance to their type of interpretation. This, we felt, gave us a strong sense of whether our pupils had understood their chosen interpretation by testing what they think would pass through ‘the filter’ and where tactful silences might be created.

6. Tackling exceptionalism

One of the issues we had when teaching our old enquiry on Eleanor was that pupils left thinking Eleanor was exceptional in her power and achievements. The problem with this is that, in order for Eleanor to be ‘exceptional’ every other woman has to be downtrodden and without power or prospect.

Of course, it is true that Eleanor was exceptional in many respects and that her particular circumstances makes her story stand-out as especially noteworthy. Yet, we know that women were able to challenge traditional gender roles in a range of contexts as shown in Eileen Power’s book Medieval Women.⁹ One way we aimed to demonstrate this was through a ‘Meanwhile, Elsewhere’ on Queen Melisende who was able to challenge gender expectations, also through her involvement in the Crusades.¹⁰

Secondly, we asked pupils to use examples from Power’s book to reframe misconceptions that some people might have about Eleanor being entirely atypical. The takeaway from this was that, even if less publicly, women have asserted their influence within their own spheres and contexts just as successfully. While this was only one lesson (which could come anywhere in the second half of the enquiry), we hope we illustrate examples of other ways in which women have challenged traditional gender roles throughout our curriculum in a way that will show rather than tell that Eleanor was not entirely exceptional in this regard.

Conclusion 

As an enquiry, this was immensely enjoyable to teach. The opportunity to get into the nitty-gritty of why historians present competing versions of the past and how felt really valuable for our Year 7s. Moreover, the story of Eleanor contains so many memorable stories that pupils were able to keep track of  the substantive and conceptual notably well. Whilst we can only say that this approach worked well for us in the context of our school and curriculum, we hope we have shared some approaches and ideas that others may find helpful in their own interpretations/significance based enquiries.

Footnotes

1. Evans, M. (2014). Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine. City. Publisher.
2. Castor, H. (2010). She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth. New York. Harper Collins; Weir, A (2000). Eleanor of Aquitaine. New york. Ballatine; Mead, M (1977). Eleanor of Aquitaine: a Biography. New York. Hawthorn Books. 
3. Foster, R. ‘What’s the story of the women’s suffrage campaign?’ https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3209/whats-the-story-of-the-womens-suffrage-campaign
4. Kaufman, R. (1882). Agnes Strickland’s Queens of England, Vol. I of III, Abridged. Boston: Estes & Lauriat
5. Mead, M. (1977). Eleanor of Aquitaine: a Biography. New York. Hawthorn Books. 
6. Ward, R. (2006), ‘Duffy’s devices: teaching Year 13 to read and write’, Teaching History 124 
7. Woodcock, J. (2005) ‘Does the linguistic release the conceptual?’, Teaching History 119 
8. Counsell, C. (2003) ‘Who cares about Charles I? Cunning Plan for a Year 8 lesson on C.V. Wedgwood’s writing’, Teaching History 111
9. Power, E. (2012), Medieval Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
10. Meanwhile, Elsewhere on Queen Melisende by Chelsey David https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yo4ZeSAhGyoxfW6RFDgpy4A2XwI_eVBg/view