Board: OCR | Unit: Y109 | Component: 1 (British Period Study)
About this option
The Making of Georgian Britain covers the long transition from the instability of the Restoration period through the Glorious Revolution, the Hanoverian succession, and the political settlement that gave Britain its distinctive eighteenth-century character — constitutional monarchy, parliamentary sovereignty, the emerging party system, and the commercial expansion that laid the foundations of the first industrial revolution. Students trace political, religious, and economic change across eight decades of consolidation and growth.
Key themes
- The Restoration settlement and its instability: Charles II, the Exclusion Crisis, and the political conflicts of the 1670s–80s
- The Glorious Revolution 1688: its causes, course, and meaning — invasion or revolution?
- The Bill of Rights and the constitutional settlement: the nature of limited monarchy and parliamentary sovereignty after 1689
- The reign of William III: the Nine Years’ War, party politics, and the financial revolution
- The reign of Anne: the War of the Spanish Succession, Marlborough, and the Acts of Union with Scotland
- The Hanoverian succession and the Jacobite threat: the 1715 and 1745 rebellions and the security of the Protestant succession
- Walpole and the emergence of the prime ministership: the nature of Georgian political management and the role of patronage
What the exam asks
Y109 is a period study. Questions require breadth across the full chronological range, assessing change and the ability to make comparisons across different phases of the period. Students are expected to demonstrate precise factual knowledge and to sustain arguments across the whole option.
Historiography
The making of Georgian Britain has been interpreted through constitutional, social, and political frameworks:
- The Glorious Revolution: the Whig interpretation of 1688 as a bloodless constitutional settlement preserving English liberties versus revisionist accounts that emphasise Dutch invasion, royal flight, and the contingency of the outcome (Jonathan Israel, Steve Pincus)
- The financial revolution: the argument (John Brewer) that the creation of the Bank of England, the national debt, and the fiscal-military state after 1689 was as significant as the constitutional settlement in shaping Britain’s eighteenth-century power
- Walpole and political stability: the nature of Hanoverian political management — corruption and jobbery or the pragmatic settlement of an inherently unstable political system?
- The Jacobite threat: how serious was the challenge to the Hanoverian succession, and what does the survival of the regime tell us about the depth of support for constitutional monarchy?
Interpretations pack — coming September 2026
A teaching pack for this option is in development, covering all core historiographical debates. It will include named historians with argument summaries, paired comparison tasks built to OCR mark scheme logic, and provenance analysis prompts — all in a downloadable PDF.
£9.99 per pack · Available September 2026
