Posted on 6th July 2011 by Judy Breck in Connective Expression, Emerging Online Knowledge and History
bbc, british, timeline
The challenge of making clear the long, complex history of Britain is met admirably by the interactive digital timeline across which the BBC has locked events and people into their positions. The timeline begins at 6000 BC marking the separation of Britain from the European mainland. As of this post, the most recent year is 2005. Any of us who at one time had to learn the sequence of British kings will wish we had had the BBC’s timeline at the time.
A long historical timeline has been tough to create physically until it could be done virtually in the digital world. Lengthy paper versions have been cumbersome or impossible to print, and even tougher to keep up-to-date. Museum walls dedicated to long timelines have been costly and inadequate to provide much detail. Spending some time with the BBC’s British History Timeline is an excellent way to enjoy the benefits of interactive digital technology for timelines as well as to learn some British history.
Posted on 13th January 2006 by Judy Breck in Subject Sampler
battles, british, red_coats
The military history website here contains a great deal of information about battles fought over the centuries by British soldiers. The “Red Coat” shown above is from the page about the Battle of Roucoux fought in Flanders in 1746. An interesting aspect of this commercial website is the issues it raises about objectivity toward historical events. No less than 23 of the battles described are from the American Revolutionary War, which the British lost. The information about battles I looked at from that war seemed accurate and straightforward to me. My conviction is that because historical accounts found on the open Internet can be read anywhere in the world, a new standard of objectivity is created. As always, nonetheless, it is better scholarship to study more than one source than to rely on complete objectivity of a single source. History
