How to Think About History: Approaches, Methods & Ideology
Most history podcasts tell you what happened. These episodes go further — asking how we know what happened, who writes history and why, and how to understand the political ideologies that drove so much of 20th-century conflict. Whether you want to understand what fascism actually means as a political system, why Marxist historians see the past differently from liberal ones, or how to approach a primary source critically, this is where to start.
This page is particularly useful for A-level and undergraduate students studying historiography, source analysis, or political thought. It also serves as the foundation for the Explaining History teacher resources →
Part One: How Historians Think — Approaches to History
History is not simply a record of events — it is an argument about the past, constructed from incomplete and contested evidence. Different historians ask different questions, use different sources, and reach very different conclusions. These episodes examine the craft of history itself: how schools of thought develop, how ideological assumptions shape interpretation, and how to read historical writing critically.
What Is History? The Craft of Historical Thinking
An introduction to how historians construct arguments — the difference between primary and secondary sources, how evidence is weighed, why historians disagree, and what it means to make a historical claim. Essential context for anyone approaching the rest of the archive.
History from Below: Social History and the Study of Ordinary People
The shift from political and military history to social history — the study of working-class life, women’s experience, everyday resistance — transformed the discipline in the 20th century. This episode examines why historians like E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, and the Annales school argued that the lives of ordinary people were as historically significant as the decisions of kings and generals.
Marxist Historiography: Class, Contradiction, and Historical Change
Marxist history does not simply celebrate the left — it offers a systematic method for understanding how economic structures shape politics, culture, and conflict. This episode examines how Marxist historians approach periodisation, class struggle, and the relationship between base and superstructure, and why this framework remains indispensable for understanding the 20th century even for those who reject its politics.
The Frankfurt School: Critical Theory and the Culture of Domination
The Frankfurt School — Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Benjamin — produced some of the 20th century’s most challenging thinking about culture, authoritarianism, and mass society. Formed by the catastrophe of Nazism and the contradictions of liberal capitalism, their critical theory asks why apparently rational societies produce barbarism — and remains urgently relevant today.
Memory, Myth, and the Politics of History
Who controls the past controls the present. This episode examines how nations, movements, and regimes construct historical memory — the myths that sustain national identity, the silences that conceal inconvenient truths, and how historians challenge official narratives. From the commemoration of the First World War to the memory of empire, history is always a political act.
Part Two: Understanding Political Ideology
The 20th century was an age of competing ideologies. To understand why people fought, collaborated, or submitted — why ordinary Germans voted for the Nazis, why Russian workers supported the Bolsheviks, why British workers backed Thatcher — you need to understand what these ideologies actually claimed, and why they were compelling. These episodes break down the major political systems not as caricatures but as serious systems of thought.
What Is Fascism? The Ideology of the New Right
Fascism is one of the most misused words in political discourse. This episode cuts through the confusion: what did fascist movements actually believe, how did fascism differ from conservatism and from communist dictatorship, and why was it able to mobilise mass support across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s? Essential context for the Explaining History fascism archive.
What Is Marxism? From Theory to Revolutionary Practice
Marx’s analysis of capitalism, alienation, and class conflict produced the most influential political movement of the 20th century — and the most catastrophically misapplied. This episode examines what Marx and Engels actually argued, how Leninism adapted Marxism for revolutionary conditions, and why the gap between Marxist theory and Soviet practice matters for understanding the history of communism.
Anarchism: The Politics of No Masters
Anarchism is the most consistently misrepresented political tradition in modern history — reduced to chaos and bomb-throwing when it was in fact a sophisticated challenge to all forms of illegitimate authority. This episode introduces the core anarchist critique of the state and capital, the key thinkers from Proudhon to Bakunin and Kropotkin, and why anarchist ideas ran through some of the 20th century’s most important political moments from the Spanish Civil War to the New Left.
What Is NeoliberalismSupply Side Economics Full Description:Supply-Side Economics posits that production (supply) is the key to economic prosperity. Proponents argue that by reducing the “burden” of taxes on the wealthy and removing regulatory barriers for corporations, investment will increase, creating jobs and expanding the economy. Key Policies: Tax Cuts: Specifically for high-income earners and corporations, under the premise that this releases capital for investment. Deregulation: Removing environmental, labor, and safety protections to lower the cost of doing business. Critical Perspective:Historical analysis suggests that supply-side policies rarely lead to the promised broad-based prosperity. Instead, they often result in massive budget deficits (starving the state of revenue) and a dramatic concentration of wealth at the top. Critics argue the “trickle-down” effect is a myth used to justify the upward redistribution of wealth.? The Ideology of the Market State
Neoliberalism is not simply a set of economic policies — it is a comprehensive vision of society in which market relations replace political ones. This episode examines the intellectual roots of neoliberalism in Hayek and the Mont Pelerin SocietyMont Pelerin Society Full Description:An exclusive international organization founded by Friedrich Hayek and others to combat the rise of state planning and social democracy. It served as the primary intellectual incubator for neoliberal thought, playing a long-term strategic role in shifting global economic consensus. The Mont Pelerin Society was the “thought collective” behind the neoliberal counter-revolution. Established when free-market ideas were politically marginalized, it brought together economists, philosophers, and historians to refine and propagate individualist economic theories.
Critical Perspective:Critically, this group exemplifies the “long game” of ideology. They understood that to change policy, they first had to change the intellectual climate. By building a network of think tanks and academic departments, they successfully waited for a crisis (stagflation) to present their pre-packaged ideas as the only viable solution, effectively manufacturing a new “common sense” that favored the elite.
Read more, how it achieved hegemony through ThatcherismMonetarism Monetarism is the economic school of thought associated with Milton Friedman, which rose to dominance as a counter to Keynesian economics. It posits that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon and that the government’s role should be limited to managing the currency rather than stimulating demand.
Key Mechanisms:
Inflation Targeting: Using interest rates to keep inflation low, even if high interest rates cause recession or unemployment.
Fiscal Restraint: Opposing government deficit spending to boost the economy during downturns.
Critical Perspective:Critics argue that monetarism breaks the post-war social contract. By prioritizing “sound money” and low inflation above all else, monetarist policies often induce deliberately high unemployment to discipline the labor force and suppress wages. It represents a technical solution to political problems, removing economic policy from democratic accountability.
and Reaganomics, and why its consequences — inequality, precarity, the erosion of public goods — are still the central context for contemporary politics.
For Teachers: Using These Episodes in the Classroom
These episodes map directly onto the historiography and interpretations components of A-level History specifications. Key exam board applications:
- AQA History — Historical interpretations questions (Paper 2 and Paper 3) require students to understand how and why historians disagree. The historiography episodes in Part One provide essential grounding.
- OCR History — The “Thematic Study and Historical Interpretations” component explicitly examines changing historical views over time.
- Edexcel History — Paper 3 “Aspects in Breadth” includes historiographical debate. The ideology episodes in Part Two support contextual understanding of the political movements being studied.
- IB History — The Theory of Knowledge connection to historiography; Paper 1 source analysis benefits directly from the approaches episodes.
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