History BA (Tripos)

You take five papers:

• Two Outline papers – these typically survey a long period and broad geographical area. You choose from around ten papers, ranging over Britain and Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia.
   
• Sources paper – this examines in detail a body of primary material on a particular historical theme, issue, or event. You choose from a range of options which vary each year. Typical examples include Travel and Trade in the Medieval World; Letters in Antiquity; Arab Intellectual History.
   
• An Historical Thinking paper – this introduces methods and debates by examining a single work of history that has influenced the discipline.
   
• An Historical Skills paper – this covers the research skills essential in History, such as the use of archives, digital sources, and oral history, as well as quantitative approaches. You will also be taught good academic practice.

You take four papers:

• Two Topic papers – these explore focused areas of historical knowledge in depth. The Topics available each year may vary, but there will be a wide choice, reflecting the diverse research interests of the Faculty's staff. Typical examples may include ‘British Worlds, 1750-1914’, ‘State formation in medieval Britain and Europe’, ‘The history of the US since World War I’, and ‘Empires and world history’.
   
• A Research Project – this paper equips you to undertake your own historical research. Each project covers analytical and conceptual features of a particular area of history, and offers guidance on the methodologies and skills needed to research it.
   
• Historical Thinking II – this introduces you to broad methodological fields of history, such as environmental history, material culture, and intellectual history.

You take five papers, three of which are compulsory:

• Historical Thinking III – a general methods paper building on IA and IB, encouraging you to reflect critically on major historical concepts encountered throughout your degree. These range from empire to gender, and from revolutions to race.
   
• A Special Subject – which counts as two papers and provides sophisticated in-depth study of an historical period, process or problem, using primary sources. Topics on offer vary year to year, but currently include the heresy in medieval southern France, early modern memory, the 1848 revolutions, women’s experience of war in the 18th century, and Zimbabwe from 1948 onwards.

Additionally, you choose two taught options from amongst the following categories of paper:

• Advanced Topic papers – exploring a complex theme at the forefront of historical scholarship. Topics change from year to year, but currently include the supernatural, medicine, women’s work, material culture, and frontiers.
   
• Political Thought papers – examining changing ideas about how societies and individuals should govern themselves and each other

Alternatively, you take one taught option and write a dissertation of 10,000 words (2024-25 onwards), on a topic you devise. Many students find this one of the most rewarding aspects of their time at Cambridge. Recent examples of dissertation topics include Elizabeth I’s Scottish correspondence; British India from the standpoint of a nineteenth-century Bengali intellectual; community life on a twentieth-century council estate; and the Iranian revolution in twentieth-century France.