LOCAL HISTORY EXAMINATION PAPERS, 1998-2000

Answer three questions [out of nine]. Illustrate your answers, where applicable, with examples drawn from your research or other case studies which you have read.

 

Local History in Ireland

1. What themes should be most important in the writing of local history in Ireland? (98)

2. How would you apply the ideas of Le Roy Ladurie in framing a local study in Ireland? (99)

3. "To understand properly the history of south Ulster we must first understand the history of Munster." Discuss. (99)

4. Why do you consider the study of local history in Ireland to be important? (00)

5. What do you consider the most important Irish local histories written in the last ten years ? Justify your selection . (00)

Local History in England

6. How has your approach to local history been influenced by reading English studies in local history? (98)

7. How has your own approach to local history been influenced by reading either French or English studies of localities? (00)

Local History in France

8. How applicable do you think the models developed for the study of local history in France by Ladurie are to the Irish situation? (98)

 

Local History and Geography

9. "Geography is essentially about places while history is about people and so there is little that one can learn from practitioners of the other." Comment on this from the point of view of the local historian. (98)

10. How important do you think material evidence (including the landscape) is in writing a local study? (99)

11. What do you think is the most significant contribution of the historian as opposed to the geographer in local history? (99)

12. The sense of place offered by maps has little to offer the local historian who is concerned with people. Discuss. (00)

 

 

Local versus National History

13. What links, if any, do you see between the study of ‘national’ history and ‘local’ history? (99)

14. What differentiates the study of local history from that of national history? How are the two disciplines connected? (98)

15. "The study of politics is largely irrelevant to understanding the local experience in the past." Do you think this is a reasonable comment? (98)

Local and Human versus Administrative Boundaries

16. Why do you think the study of county history is potentially misleading to the local historian? (98)

17. 'When selecting regions for local historical study, "the main criterion should not he administrative boundaries but rather the identification of the people living in the region with the place". Discuss. (99)

18. To what extent is the study of local history the story of 'particular places'? (98)

19. Why do you think local historians should study humanised regions, rather than administrative divisions? (00)

Local History: Theories and Definitions

20. What do you understand by the term 'community'? How useful do you find it in organising local historical research? (98)

21. "Local history is about the interaction of three variables: people, space and time." Which of these do you consider the most important and why is it central to local history? (99)

22. "The business of the local historian --- is to re-enact in his own mind and to portray for his readers the origin, growth, and decline and fall of a local community" (Finberg). What do you consider the strengths and weaknesses of this definition of local history? (99)

23. The idea of community in local history presents more problems than solutions in the study of a locality'. Discuss. (00)

24. What do you consider the ideas offered by the ‘New History ' offer to the local historian ? (00)

25. "All good local history is comparative local history". Discuss (00)

Local History: Specific Themes

26. How would you go about writing a study of either religious life or economic life in a particular region? (99)

27. What themes would you consider important in writing the. history of either a rural or an urban community? (00)