Tripos Requirements (for Students Matriculating in or before 2021)

One of the great strengths of the Historical Tripos is that it offers students a huge amount of choice. In the first two years, it is possible to study any period of European history from the Greeks to the present, any period of British history from the end of the Roman occupation, global and imperial history from 1500 to the present day, North American history since 1500, and the history of political thought from Plato to Marx. In the third year, you can choose from over thirty specialised options from within these same time-spans, and to write a dissertation on a topic of your own choosing.
There are certain requirements that must be fulfilled during the course of your studies, however, and it is important that you choose your papers for Parts I and II with guidance from your Director of Studies.  The regulations are set out in the University Statutes and Ordinances, and summarised below:

In your Part I examination (at the end of Year 2), you must offer Paper 1 and five other papers, as follows:

• at least one paper from Section B,
• at least one paper from Section C,
• at least one paper from Sections D-G

In your Part II examination (at the end of Year 3), you must offer:

• Paper 1 (HAP)
• Papers 2 and 3 (Special Subject),
• either two papers from Sections C-D

or one paper from Sections C-D and a dissertation.

At least one of your papers in either Part I or Part II must be:

• a pre-1750 paper,
• a European paper.

Papers currently meeting the PRE-1750 requirement are:

Part I:

1.   Themes and Sources options (NB: These papers are variable and may not be offered each year):

(i)     Money and society from late antiquity to the financial revolution
(ii)    Royal & princely courts: ancient, medieval and early modern
(vii)   Performance and power in ancient and medieval cities
(xi)    Utopian writing 1516-1789 

2.   British political history, 380 - 1100
3.   British political history, 1050 - 1509
4.   British political history, 1485 - 1714
7.   British economic and social history, 380 - 1100
8.   British economic and social history, 1050 - c.1500
9.   British economic and social history, c.1500 - 1750
12. European history, 776 B.C. - A.D. 69
13. European history, 31 B.C. - A.D. 900
14. European history, c. 900 - c.1450
16. European history, 1450 - 1760
19. History of political thought to c. 1700

Part II   (NB: These papers are variable and may not be offered each year):

Special Subject Papers 2 and 3:

(A)  Roman religion: Identity and empire
(B)  The 'Angevin Empire', 1150s - 1230s
(C)  Memory in early modern England
(D)  Albrecht Dürer and Uses of the Visual in Early Modern Germany, c.1450-1600   
(E)  The Palace and the Coffeehouse: The power of place in Ottoman history, 1300-1800)
(F) The Little Lion - Edward III's England, 1327-1347
(G)  The culture of the miraculous in Renaissance Italy

Advanced Topics:

7.   Transformation of the Roman world
8.   The Near East in the age of Justinian and Muhammad, AD527-700
9.   Slavery in the Greek and Roman World
10.  The invention of history: Thucydides
11.  Early medicine
12.  The 'rule of law' in early modern Britain: State power, criminal justice, and civil liberties, c. 1500-c. 1800
13.  Man, Nature and the Supernatural, c. 1000- c. 1600
14.  Material culture in the early modern world
15.  The medieval globe
16.  Overseas expansion and British identities, 1585-1714
17.  The politics of knowledge from the late Renaissance to the early Enlightenment
21.   Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman frontier, 1521-1881

or A dissertation, provided that its subject falls mainly in the period before 1750.

The following chronologically broad papers do not fulfil the pre-1750 requirement:

Part I:
21. Empires and world history from the fifteenth century to the First World War
22. North American history from c. 1500 to 1865

Part II:
6.   States between states: the history of international political thought from the Roman empire to the early nineteenth century
19. The problem of Sustainability, 1500-1987
27. The history of Latin America from 1500 to the present day
 
Papers currently meeting the EUROPEAN requirement are:

Part I:
12. European history, 776 B.C. - A.D. 69
13. European history, 31 B.C. - A.D. 900
14. European history, c. 900 - c.1450
16. European history, 1450 - 1760
17. European history, 1715 - 1890
18. European history, since 1890

Part II (NB: These papers are variable and may not be offered each year):
7.   Transformation of the Roman world
8.   The Near East in the age of Justinian and Muhammad, AD527-700
14. Material culture in the early modern world
21. Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman frontier, 1521-1881
22. Connected histories of the USA, USSR and Russia since 1945
23. The long road to modernisation: Spain since 1808
24. Rethinking Europe from the Mediterranean shores 1796-1914
25. Central Europe in the global twentieth century

The regulations also specify that if you have previously taken a paper in either the Historical Tripos or another Tripos examination, you cannot offer it for examination again.  

NB: The chronological and European requirements do not apply to students transferring into History Part II from another Tripos.  More information on transferring can be found here.