Lesson video

Hello, welcome back my name is Miss Apps, and today we hit our final lesson on decolonization in the 20th century.

And it's also my final ever lesson for Oak National, this is the last ever video I'll record, so I'm very excited and a little bit sad that you're joining me on my final ever lesson, it's a bit like a weird online version of my last day of term, even though it's not really the last day of term at all.

In today's lesson we will recap what we have covered so far, so we will look back over the independence movement in Ireland, the independence movement in Ghana and Jamaica, and draw out similarities and differences before, I can never speak have you learned that yet, before coming to writing of final piece on our inquiry question which is, who decolonized in the 20th century? So grab a pen, grab some paper and let's get started.

I feel quite sad that this is the final time that I'll see myself as a little tiny head on a screen, thank you so much for coming on this journey with me and let's get started with our final lesson, so you should now have your pen and your paper.

Today's lesson title is actually our inquiry question, so can you get our title written down, who decolonized in the 20th century? Put a pause on the video now and have a go.

Okay, well done you should have written down your title by now, so let's get started.

Let's see if we can fill the gaps, let's see if we can trigger our memories so I'm going to ask you in a second, to put a pause on the video, but can you fill these gaps? So something, something led independent Ghana, who was that figure, can you remember his name? Alexander who was Jamaica's first Prime Minister and finally Constance Markievicz, Miss App's history hero, fought in the what Rising? Put a pause on the video now and have a go, don't worry about spelling if you can remember the basic gist or around about the right thing brilliant, pause the video and I'll let you know the gaps in a second.

Okay, how did we do? Let's see, so you should have remembered that it was Kwame Nkrumah who led independent Ghana, you can't see the A it's just underneath my shoulder.

Alexander Bustamante, now you might not have spelt that quite correctly, was Jamaica's first Prime Minister remember he was the leader of the Jamaican Labour Party, and he'd been arrested in Jamaica in the 1930s and '40s for being involved in trade unionism.

Finally, Constance Markievicz, who we started our inquiry with, fought in the Easter Rising which was the 1916 rebellion against British English rule in Ireland and it was one of the trigger points of Irish independence.

So, over these lessons we have been looking at decolonization, this process of releasing an area of the British Empire, from the status of being a colony.

And it is the process by which these different colonies were given the ability to either become self-governing or independent.

So in our lessons, we have looked at Ireland, we've looked at Ghana and we've looked at Jamaica and hopefully you've come to understand that actually, there is a reason why a historical professors or historians talk about decolonization as being a tricky word because it's complex, it's not a single process, things happen differently in different areas of the world based upon the local context.

And it's also controversial, because historically speaking when you say the word decolonization, the process of undoing colonisation, it makes it sound as if the British just handed over independence and that's not the case.

And often independence wasn't something gifted by the British it was something that had to be campaigned for.

So let's recap our knowledge, let's see if we've learned these key ideas across our lessons so I'd like you to write number one in your margin, and we're going to try and answer these multiple choice questions, so number one, decolonization is? Option one, the process of building an empire.

Option two, the process of granting colonies independence from empire.

Option three, the process of assessing whether you should have an empire.

Or option four, the process of taking new colonies to add to your empire.

Which one was it? Write it down now, okay, it was option two, the process of granting colonies independence from empire.

You should know this by now, we've gone through this so many times.

Decolonization was? Was it option one, complex, changing from colony to colony.

Was option two, easy, happened with ease in the different colonies.

Option three, uniform, the same process happened in each colony.

Or option four, non-violent, there was no violence involved in the process anywhere.

Which was it, write down your option next to the number two, okay, it was option one, complex, changing from colony to colony, Right, I am now going to get rid of my face so you can see my task, well done on answering those questions I'm sure you've done absolutely brilliantly.

So today's lesson is going to be a little bit different because we are recapping what we've already covered, so we aren't necessarily going to be going through a load of comprehension questions, instead, we're going to be having a go at a comprehension task.

So I would like you now, to spend 30 seconds getting this tabled down in your book or on your paper, a table I would like similarities in one column, differences in the other, leave yourself about 10 lines, can you get that done for me now? Okay now that you've done that, what I would like you to do is in a second, you are going to have a read through my information on the next page.

As you're reading through my information, recapping the independence movements in Ireland, Ghana, and Jamaica I would like you to use this table to note down similarities and differences between the processes of decolonization in Ireland, Ghana and Jamaica.

Once you've done that I then want you to have a go at answering my challenge question, which is, can we define decolonization as a single process or journey that every colony went through? Can we generalise on what the process of decolonization was? I've put a sentence starter for you for when you get onto that task, so put a pause on the video now, have a read for the information and complete these tasks for me please, I will meet you in our recap section.

So pause the video, read the slides on the next page and complete the comprehension task, resume this video once you've finished.

Okay, how did we do? Well done, let's go through now some of the similarities and differences that I would have drawn out of our task and our reading, so what would I have said? So similarities, I would have said that there was nationalism, so there were nationalists people campaigning for independence in Ireland, so during the Easter Rising, in Jamaica our evidence could have been the People's National Party and also in Ghana, with the Convention People's Party as well.

Workers' rights, trade unionism, Marxism was important in Ghana if we remember Kwame Nkrumah was a Marxist, but also in Jamaica because it's in 1938, when all those protests and strikes are going on in the sugar and transport industries, that the People's National Party of Jamaica is set up by Norman Manley.

Protests was also important, so drawing on from that there were protests in Ghana in 1948 and Jamaica in 1938 as well.

In terms of differences, I would have drawn out the fact that violence was the most prevalent, with the most significant aspects of the independence movement in Ireland.

In Jamaica, independence came about within the law it also kind of happened in a similar manner in Jamaica, sorry, in Ghana as well.

However, in Ghana, in the years after independence, we see the dictatorship of Nkrumah whereas in Jamaica, we have democracy.

Now it's not, with ease that democracy continues in Jamaica there is violence, there is disorder, however, Jamaica is a very democratic place to this day.

And in the same way, there's a difference in Ireland because in Ireland, the nationalists do not achieve the full independence they wanted.

They wanted a fully independent Ireland, that was a whole of the island of Ireland, however, Ireland was divided, island was partitioned.

Now put a pause on the video, add some ideas if you want to or take things that you've written down you can get on with that now.

Okay, so coming back to this idea of who decolonized in the 20th century, I've just created a really basic diagram for you here to help you sort of draw across the similarities and differences.

So if we look at Ireland, there was violence, there was nationalism, there were really educated leaders, however, worker's rights wasn't necessarily a massive part of the independence movements.

We haven't seen protests, although there were protests and rebellions and independence in Ireland did not happen within the law, it happened as a result of the violence of the Easter Rising and then after the Easter rising, there were nationalist parties voted in, however, the British didn't accept that.

So it took the Easter Rising and the Irish war of independence for the British to finally give Ireland independence in the 1920s.

In Jamaica, there were protests and strikes, however, there wasn't necessarily violence deeply involved in the independence movement, there were nationalists, there were nationalists groups I'm thinking of the People's National Party.

There were educated leaders, Norman Manley was a lawyer who had been educated in Britain at one of the best universities in Britain, the London School of Economics.

There was an aspect of workers' rights involved as well, if we remember Alexander Bustamante, who comes to lead the Jamaica Labour Party is a trade unionist, at the same time the People's National Party set up by Manley was created in the same year as those workers strikes in 1938.

There were protests in Jamaica, but to make an independence came within the law, there was a process of working within the laws of Jamaica working with the British parliament to eventually achieve that independence in 1962.

In Ghana, we have nationalism being really important, we have the similarity throughout Ireland, Jamaica and Ghana of nationalists being heavily involved in independence movements.

We have educated leaders in Ireland, Jamaica and Ghana, just like Manley in Jamaica, Kwame Nkrumah had been educated in both Britain and America, he'd gone to top universities he was a very, very educated leader.

There was an aspect of a sense of workers' rights, if we remember back to the Accra protests in 1948, which were all about unemployment, et cetera.

However, Ghanaian independence again came from within the law so it was granted by the British, however, it was granted by the British not necessarily with the same positivity as in Jamaica, in Ghana, we see Nkrumah be imprisoned, we see a longer process towards independence.

Whereas in Jamaica, the Governor of Jamaica in the British Parliament were much more pro-giving independence within the law quite quickly.

So in Ireland, Jamaica and Ghana, we have nationalism as a similarity and we also have educated leaders as a similarity.

So when we talk about who decolonized in the 20th century we could generalise and say that it was well-educated nationalist figures who were significant to the decolonization processes across the British Empire, for example, in Ireland, Jamaica, Ghana, we can see in the other areas there are differences.

So to finish our inquiry today, we looked at this challenge question so my challenge question for you is can we define decolonization as a single process or journey that every colony went through? I would argue that it's difficult to generalise, so this is what I would have written see if what you have written is similar, if you need to improve it, you can pause the video and have a go if not if you've written something similar, you are amazing.

So what I would have written is, it is difficult to come up with a single way of describing the process of decolonization because the journey to independence was so different in different colonies.

There were some similarities in Ghana, Jamaica, and Ireland, for example, pressure from nationalists was important.

However, in Ireland violence was used to achieve independence, in Jamaica and Ghana leaders such as Nkrumah and Bustamante were imprisoned, however, independence was eventually achieved by legal means unlike in Ireland where warfare was used, it is really difficult therefore to generalise as to what decolonization was.

Part of our challenge task, we've somewhat written in an introduction to an essay that we could write answering this question, who decolonized in the 20th century? So as our extension final ever activity today, I would like us to now have a go at trying to write an extended piece of writing answering our question.

So I've written you an introduction, which I want you to copy down so I've said, it is difficult to come up with a single way of describing the process of decolonization, because the journey to independence was so different in different colonies.

What I would then like you to do is I would like you to explain to me how decolonization happened in Ireland, who led it, what events led to it, who was in control afterwards? So it was sparked by nationalist violence in the aftermath of independence, it was the men, the veterans of events such as the Easter Rising who came to be leaders of the country.

Then do the same for Ghana, so talk me through the process of independence for Ghana, how Ghana got to the point where it changed from the Gold Coast to Ghana, tell me who was in control afterwards, so afterwards a nationalist figure Kwame Nkrumah was in control as president.

Then again, talk me through the process in Jamaica, share with me the fact that Alexander Bustamante, for example, becomes the first leader, the first Prime Minister of independent Jamaica in 1962.

Put a pause on the video now and have a go at summarising who decolonized, so who were the people involved in the decolonization processes and how was it different in Ireland, Ghana and Jamaica? You might also draw out some similarities as well.

You have been so brilliant, I've been so, so pleased with you so once you've finished writing your extended writing, I would love for you to share your work with me at Oak National.

So if you'd like to please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter by tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

You've been brilliant to teach, I've loved teaching decolonization I felt really, really bad though, that I haven't been able to show you the sheer amounts of complexity, even when looking at Ghana or Jamaica or Ireland, because I've only had one lesson I'd love for you to be in my classroom where we can look at this and so much detail, however, unfortunately we are online.

It's been brilliant teaching you, I've loved planning these lessons, good luck with everything, you've been a pleasure I've been Miss Apps, goodbye.