1. Cause and Consequence

2. To disregard long term causes is to disregard people’s histories.
Change is driven by multiple causes and multiple consequences – often we can be mistaken for only appreciating the immediate causes and effects.
To disregard long term causes is to disregard people’s histories.
The historians job is also to look beyond this and investigate the longer social, economic and political causes and consequences.

3. It also the task of the Historian to evaluate the varying levels of influence.
Events result from the interplay of two types of factors;
Historical actors – people/groups who take actions that cause historical events.
Conditions – the social, political and economic condition within which these actors operate.

4. The surprise of History, is that often the intended cause of an event elicits unexpected consequences – people face opposition and conditions often change.
Agency Vs Prevailing Conditions – Social theorists have persuasively argued that there is a strong dependency on each other – Human agency, is what produces and reproduces social structures, which in turn act as constraints to human agency in the future.

5. To what extent can individuals alter History
To what extent can individuals alter History?? - ‘Great Man theory’- Matthias Illyricus (Lutheran) - However out of favour with Annales historians such as Fernand Braudel, and Marxist historians.

6. Task
Task – World War 2 - in groups of 3 and 4 you need to read the relevant chapters in ‘Path to Destruction’ and develop an argument for the 2 most important causes of World War 2.