Lesson video

Hello, hi, welcome back.

My name is Miss Apps and I'm very excited, but also a little bit sad to be introducing you today to our final lesson of our inquiry into the Tudors, and the Elizabethan's place in the wider world.

And seeing as it is our last inquiry lesson together, I thought I'd highlight to you just how much of a historical nerd I am.

You've seen the documents behind me.

You've seen the postcards behind me, et cetera.

But what you haven't seen is the whole time, I've had my secret, ooh, it's on that side, Tudor costume in the corner that my friend, who is a costume designer made me years ago for my 25th birthday.

It's actually based on the portrait, or a supposed portrait, of Henry VIII's fifth wife, Catherine Howard, and I have worn it twice.

So, without further ado, in today's lesson, we're going to bring together all the wonderful knowledge of the Elizabethan era, and all our wonderful knowledge of the Elizabethan's place in the wider world, bringing it together to come up with a final answer to our inquiry question, why was the world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people? So, let's get started.

Make sure you have a pen, make sure you have some paper.

And when you're ready, I will meet you at our title.

Well done, you've grabbed your pen, you've grabbed your paper, now, let's get started.

First, you will never know how tempted I've been this whole time to put on that costume, but I just figured it would just be too distracting.

In today's lesson, we are going to be finally answering our inquiry question which is, why was the world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people? So, can we get that down as our title now, please? Pause the video now if you need to.

Okay, a little image to get started, as always.

So, what you have in front of you is an Italian map of the world from the Elizabethan period, so from around about the year 1600.

This shows the Ottoman Empire, which was one of the areas of the world which the Elizabethans were becoming increasingly connected to.

But can you remember the other places that we've covered so far that had connections with Elizabethan England? I want you to take a couple of seconds now, and write down as many as you can remember.

Put a pause on the video now, and write down on your piece of paper as many places in the world linked to Elizabethan England as possible.

Pause the video if you need to.

Okay, how did we do? Thinking about our Elizabethan world connections, we could have written down tonnes.

So, give yourself a tick if you've gotten these, and add to your list if you need to.

So, you could have said America, so North America, where the first colony at Roanoke was established in 1585.

You could have mentioned Panama, if we remember back to Sir Francis Drake, Diego and the Spanish treasure train.

You might also have written down the Caribbean because we might remember the privateers going around, and stealing all that treasure from the Spanish.

Morocco, so the kingdom of Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who we learned about in our third, if I remember correctly, lesson.

The Ottoman Empire, which I gave you a hint at, and you can see in this image.

Ireland, remembering our lesson about Hugh O'Neill's rebellion.

And lastly, if you think back to our lesson on trade, we also discussed the fact that the Elizabethans were beginning to trade with Moscow via a company called the Muscovy Company.

So, you might've written down Russia or Moscow.

If you got most of those down, well done.

If you need to add some to your list, please do that now.

Okay, so, we're looking to answer this question, why was the world opening up to the English? Or why was the world opening up to the Elizabethans or the Elizabethan period, Elizabethan people in the Elizabeth period? I can't talk today.

So, I've created this table.

I like to do tables, that's the way I like to organise my notes.

You might like to do a spider diagram, it is up to you.

However, what I would like you to do now is copy down this table or create yourself a spider diagram, if that's what you prefer.

And I would like you to write down anything and everything that you can remember about the Elizabethan's journeys or voyages to America and the Caribbean.

Who went there, what were they doing? Morocco, what was that all about? Who was the leader? Why were the Elizabethans trading there? What were they trading for? Why did they want connections with Morocco? And then finally Ireland, why were the Elizabethans becoming more in contact or in more control of Ireland? Put a pause on the video and have a go at that now.

You should probably spend about two minutes trying to write down as much as you can remember.

Okay, well done.

I'm sure you've done absolutely fantastically.

Don't worry if you haven't written down a tremendous amount of writing or knowledge or facts because actually what we are going to do now is go over some of this knowledge anyway.

So, if you want to have your pen in hand, you can pause it as it goes through each of these areas and add some more knowledge to your table.

So, if we begin with America and the Caribbean, you might remember straight away this image of the Drake Jewel which represents, we think now, and certainly the historian, Miranda Kaufmann, would argue, that this jewel represents the figure of Diego and Sir Francis Drake's alliance with the Cimarron people.

So, if we step back a second, when we remember America and the Caribbean, we might remember that there were lots of privateers in America, around American and the Caribbean Sea.

And the privateers like Sir Francis Drake were men who had permission from Queen Elizabeth to raid and attack Spanish colonies and shipping, and try and make Elizabeth as much money as possible.

One of the most famous privateering raids or privateering actions was the Panama Raid.

So, if we remember back in 1572, Sir Francis drake, who we can see in his portrait here.

I'm always tempted to put my head above him, so I look like I am Sir Francis Drake.

If we remember, during the Panama Raid, Sir Francis Drake travelled there in 1572.

He was waiting in hope for the Spanish treasure train to cross the isthmus of Panama to be transported back to Spain.

However, he found in 1572, that all those donkeys in that treasure train had already moved through for the year.

So, he stays in Panama and he joins an alliance with the Cimarron and in particular with Diego, who is a Cimarron.

And the Cimarron, if we remember, were freed enslaved people who'd escaped the Spanish and were living in communities in the mountains of Panama.

And so, Sir Francis Drake aligns himself with the Cimarron and together they work in 1573 to manage to steal 150,000 pesos worth of Spanish treasure, which they bring back to Elizabeth I.

We might also remember that there was a colony established called Roanoke.

So, Sir Walter Raleigh, another privateer, was obsessed with the idea of establishing an English empire just like the Spanish empire.

And so he establishes a colony at a place called Roanoke.

He settles loads of English people there.

It's on the East Coast of America.

And he hopes that it become a base for privateers to come into to reload their ships, to get water, to get food, et cetera.

However, it doesn't work.

And we know that by the 1590s that most of the people in the Roanoke colony have just disappeared.

And we don't really necessarily know what's happened to them, what happened to them, sorry.

It's still a bit of a mystery.

Moving on to Morocco, which we looked at in our third or fourth lesson, I can't quite remember.

We might have remembered that the leader of Morocco was the Sultan.

And if we were really, really, really brilliant memories, we might have remembered that his name was Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.

And that he was known as the golden one because he had invaded taking over parts of West Africa, which were full of gold reserves, full of gold under the ground.

And as a consequence of that, he was known as the golden one.

You might remember that I mentioned to you that it was said that he was so wealthy that 1,400 hammers struck fresh coins at his gate at all hours of the day.

So, you just imagine all that wealth just coming, coming, coming constantly.

And if we remember in 1600, he sent a delegation to Elizabeth, and we have that beautiful portrait of his ambassador.

And he sent a delegation to Elizabeth because Spain was both a mutual enemy of Morocco and England.

And so, in 1600, it was decided that England and Morocco would trade.

England would trade cloth for Moroccan gold, for Moroccan sugar, for Moroccan silks, for Moroccan wine.

And in return, both Elizabeth's troop, so Elizabeth's English troops, and Elizabeth's Navy, her ships, and Moroccan troops and the Moroccan Navy, would at some point in the future invade their mutual enemy of Spain.

Now, this unfortunately never happened because both leaders, Ahmad al-Mansur and Elizabeth, sadly died before it could happen.

Lastly, moving on to Ireland.

Now, Morocco has a religious aspect to it because Spain is Catholic so therefore, it's the enemy of Morocco which is Islamic.

And at the same time, it's the enemy of England, which is Protestant.

And we see this Protestant-Catholic connection come in when we look at Ireland.

So, if we remember, there was a figure, a man called Sir Thomas More, who was alive during the reign of Henry VIII.

Henry VIII actually eventually had his head chopped off.

But Sir Thomas More was a writer, he was a lawyer, and he wrote a book called "Utopia." And in the book "Utopia" he said that it was the responsibility of the English to go around the world if they needed to and spread their civilization, their manners, their way of living to people who lived a worse lifestyle.

And so, Henry VIII looks at Ireland, and he's technically the lord of Ireland.

But he's worried after the reformation that Ireland, one, speaks Gaelic, for the most part, they speak Gaelic, that they have Irish laws.

They don't have the same laws as in England.

They don't rule themselves in the same way as England.

And he's also worried because for the most part, the population of Ireland are Catholic.

And so he announces himself in the 1540s as king of Ireland.

And the Tudors have quite a negative attitude towards the Irish people.

They call them the wild Irish.

They don't trust them because they're Catholic.

They don't trust them because for the most part, they speak Gaelic, particularly in the North and the West, outside of the areas, which are controlled by the English.

And so the Elizabethans, the Tudors, Elizabeth I, sees it as her responsibility to impart English civilization on Ireland.

So, the Elizabethans begin to undermine the rule and the power of the old traditional Gaelic chiefs, their Gaelic Chieftains.

And this leads to rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone in the 1590s.

And so, Hugh O'Neill tries to rebel against English Elizabethan rule across the whole of the island of Ireland.

As a consequence of that, English rule in Ireland is actually nearly gotten rid of, but the Elizabethans managed to just hold on.

And across the reign of Elizabeth and going into James I, who will come after her, we see this period known as the plantation, where more and more English settlers are placed in Ireland to control it.

And that causes in the longterm, lots of issues that we still see to this day in Ireland.

Okay, we've done a big recap there of things that we should have known, and should have remembered anyway.

So, let's just put a pause on it and check our knowledge.

So, we're going to have a little go at some multiple choice questions.

So, number one, from which country did Sir France Drake steal 150,000 pesos of Spanish silver? Write down now number one and which option it was.

Is it option one, Roanoke? Is it option two, Morocco? Is it option number three, Cuba? Or is it option four, Panama? I'll give you a couple of seconds to do that now.

How did you do? It was Panama.

It was Panama, the Spanish colony, where he managed to steal 150,000 pesos of Spanish silver.

Okay, question number two, so write number two in your margin.

What was the main religion of Ireland in the time of Elizabeth I? Write down your option.

So, was it option one, Catholicism? Was it option two, Protestantism? Was it option three, the Church of England? Or was it option four, Christianity? Bit of a tricky question, this one.

You have to think about it quite carefully.

So, write down your option now.

Okay, it was option one, Catholicism.

So, Catholicism is a form of Christianity.

Protestantism is a sort of Christianity.

So, Ireland was technically Christian, but actually it's Catholicism which is the correct answer here.

Next question, who was the mutual enemy of Morocco and England? Was it option one, Hugh O'Neill? Was it option two, Sultan Murad III, who was the leader of the Ottoman Empire? Was it option three, Ivan the Terrible, the leader of Russia? What a brilliant name.

Or was it option four, Philip II of Spain? I'll give you a couple of seconds to write down which option it was.

Okay, it was option four, Philip II of Spain.

Okay, what we're going to do now, I'm going to have to move my face so that you can see this.

Now that we've had a go at those questions, I want you to have a go at recapping the whole of the knowledge of these lessons that we've studied together by yourself.

So, I would like you to pause the video, read the slides on the next page just like we have every lesson and through doing that, you will be able to recap why the world was opening up to the Elizabethans.

Resume the video once you've finished answering your comprehension questions.

Good luck and I will see you in a couple of minutes.

Welcome back, how did you do? I'm sure you've done absolutely fantastically as a historical superstar, particularly considering that we are just recapping things that we already know.

So, let's have a go now at going through our answers to these questions.

Remember as always, if you haven't quite written the same things that I've written, that's absolutely fine.

If the general gist is there, that is perfect.

And as always, if you want to correct yourself, if you want to rewrite things, you can always pause the video and have a go.

So, question number one was, what had the Spanish developed from 1492? An acceptable answer would have been, an empire.

But a really, really brilliant good answer would have been, from 1492, the Spanish had developed an empire in the New World.

Remember, as a historian, we want to try and add in as much detail as possible when we're writing.

Question number two, explain what happened during the most famous privateering mission.

So here, of course, I am talking about Sir Francis Drake's Panama Raid.

So, I would have said as an acceptable answer, Sir Francis Drake stole lots of treasure.

It's kind of in his job description as a privateer.

But a really, really good answer might have been, during the most famous privateering mission, Sir Francis Drake managed to steal 150,000 pesos worth of treasure.

Just like the word isthmus of Panama, I have been trying to get you to remember 150,000 pesos this whole time.

Question number three.

Why did Elizabeth wish to develop a relationship with Morocco and the Islamic world? An acceptable answer might have been, they both hated Spain.

Whereas a really, really good answer would have been, the English developed a relationship with Morocco and the Islamic world as both saw Spain as their mutual enemy.

Number four, why did Hugh O'Neill rebel against the Tudors? A good answer might have been, Hugh O'Neill did not wish to be controlled by them.

Sorry, an acceptable answer.

A really good answer though would have been, the Irish Gaelic Chieftains such as Hugh O'Neill did not want their power to be undermined.

Or they did not want to be controlled by the English.

Or they did not want the Elizabethans or the English in control.

Five, challenge question.

This was quite tricky, actually.

So, if you did have a go at this, I am really, really impressed with you.

So, challenge, which country could we argue was an underlying factor behind Elizabethan England becoming more connected to the wider world? I might have written something along these lines.

So, Spain was the underlying factor.

Spain's wealth meant that the Elizabethans wished to increase their own by expanding who they traded with, and becoming involved in privateering.

Privateering also linked to the war with Spain, and Elizabeth felt justified in sending her sailors to steal Spanish treasure.

Finally, this all was sparked by the religious differences between England and Spain, which made England seek new allies in the Islamic world.

So, how did you do, did you get five out of five? Did you try every question? Have you been really sensible, and are you now having a go at rewriting? Whatever you're doing right now, if you need to pause the video for a second, you always can do.

Well done for continuing this far through.

Well done for getting through our inquiry.

I'm so, so, so proud of you.

We're now going to come back to these initial areas that we looked at, and this table that we started our lesson with.

So, we have the area of Caribbean and America.

And we've learned about the Panama Raid.

We've learned about Sir Francis Drake, the sea dog.

We've learned about privateering, Roanoke and Raleigh.

We've looked at Morocco, and we've learned about the Moroccan delegation.

We've learned about the alliance between the two countries, trade sugar, silk.

And in Ireland, we have these ideas of Elizabethan control, concerns surrounding Catholicism, and whether Irish Catholics would support the Spanish if they were to invade.

And finally, the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill.

If we were thinking about answering this question, why was the world opening up to the English? Or why was the world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people? We would want to break down these areas into themes that could become our paragraphs.

And so we might think about the idea of wealth as a reason for the world opening up to Elizabeth and her people.

We might think about religion as a theme behind the world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people.

And finally, warfare.

So, if we look back at our table, let's have a think now.

Caribbean and America, Morocco and Ireland, which themes do these fit into? Did the English go to the Caribbean and America because of war? Did they go because of wealth? Did they go because of religion? What about Morocco? What about Ireland? Pause the video now and have a think.

What would be the reasons for expansion in those different areas of the world? You can add this to the table you started the lesson with, or you could just write it down in sentences.

But whatever you would like to do, however you would like to do it, put a pause on the video now and have a go.

So, how did you do? You may have put a range of themes in each of these different areas.

I know that I certainly have.

And actually, what you can see on this slide here is the main themes I've put in bold, but I think these could be a mix.

So, for the Caribbean and America, certainly, the privateers went to New World in search of wealth.

They wanted that Spanish gold and silver.

They wanted a piece of that particular pie.

But also underlying the reasons why the privateers went to America was also the religious tensions between Spain and England, which had led to warfare.

So, remember, the privateers are partially sent to the New World at a time of war with Spain because Elizabeth sees the Spanish as her enemy, and therefore thinks it's acceptable to send her men to rob from them.

With Morocco, there's certainly an aspect of wealth because it's all about the merchants trading these luxury goods with Morocco, or trading for these luxury goods from Morocco.

But also, the theme of warfare is really strong there because if we remember, the Moroccans wanted to increase trade with England, and England wanted to increase trade with Morocco, so that they could both form an alliance against Spain and attack Spain.

And finally, with Ireland, I would actually argue that the main theme is religion because it's about the concern that for the most part, the Irish population are Catholic, but as part of that, there's also warfare.

So, when Hugh O'Neill rebels against Elizabeth, Elizabeth sends a lot of her soldiers there, and there becomes a war between the English and the Irish in Ireland.

And we need to see that war as also being part of the bigger picture of the war between Spain and England as well.

Because Elizabeth is really, really concerned that at any point, King Philip II, and then his son, once he's died, King Phillip III, might send troops into Ireland to gain support to get a larger army to then be able to invade England.

So, that's what I would have written.

So, actually, we find in history quite a lot that there's complexity, that we can put things that we've learned about in lots of different paragraphs, lots of different themes.

And that's part of the joy of being a historian.

We get to play around with our evidence.

We get to play around with what we've learnt.

So, what I would like us to do as our final piece for this lesson for these topics, for this topic, is we are going to have a go at answering our question, why was the world opening up the English, or why was the world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people? And I've actually written your introduction for you.

And I would like you to copy it down.

So, my introduction that I've written is, in the Elizabethan period, the world was opening up, largely as a result of increasing tensions with Spain.

This triggered the Elizabethans to expand their horizons, and become involved in privateering and trade.

As part of this expansion, they were motivated by wealth, religion and warfare.

So, I brought in my underlying factor.

My underlying factor behind all of this.

My underlying factor, the thing that makes the Elizabethans expand their horizon in the first place is the tensions with Spain after the reformation.

So, I've made that my introduction.

What I am then going to do is write a paragraph about the ways in which wealth motivated the Elizabethans.

So, I'll look at the different areas that they traded with.

I will look at the Moroccan alliance.

I might look at the privateers as well.

I'd probably focus in there on the privateers in Panama.

I would then look at religions, or I'd look at the ways in which religion caused tensions with Spain and caused the Elizabethans to develop their links with the world.

So, under religion, I would probably bring in Ireland, and I would talk about Morocco as well there.

And then finally for warfare, I would probably talk there about Ireland and Morocco.

So, I'd like you to put a pause on the video, and I would like you to have a go at doing that now for me.

How did you do? I'm sure you've written something absolutely wonderful.

And I would really love it if you would share your work with me so that I could see it.

So, what I would like you to do if you would like to share your work, if you would like to share your final answer with me, I would like you to ask your parent or your carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter by tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me.

I hope that you have enjoyed travelling with the Elizabethans around the world as much as I have.

I've been so, so impressed by all your work.

And I've been so, so impressed with the fact that you've gotten this far.

I've been Miss Apps.

Thank you again and goodbye.