hi so in this video i'm going to talk through topic four um for paper one britain 16 25 to 1701 and topic 4 is all about economy trade and empire 16 25 to 88 so in this video i'm going to talk through key content for this topic the common essay questions and exam technique essay technique and look at an exemplar essay as well um so topic four is usually section b of the exam so it's a um breadth topic rather than something that's in depth um so we're really usually looking at the whole period and that's something to think about in your essays thinking about this idea of kind of change and continuity which is usually um you know with the breadth question that's really what we're thinking about changing continuity okay so um in terms of the key areas of economic change um these are the main parts of this topic so agriculture cloth growth of london and that includes banking and insurance imperial expansion so north america jamaica the east india company triangular trade and then anglo dutch rivalry and the navigation acts so um these are the main these are the main areas there for this topic so i'm going to quickly run through each of these in terms of key content and some analysis so and obviously you can pause this video and kind of take notes um as i'm gonna be going you know reasonably quickly here so the first area is agriculture and agriculture is very important uh the majority of the population was rural at this time and worked on farms um and agriculture is is really important because of the growing population and and urbanization the growth of towns means there's more growth of food and if i had to really boil it down to one word i would say the key word for agricultural change in the 17th century in britain is efficiency the agricultural uh fun you know farming agriculture becomes more efficient okay um and and the idea that you know there's an increased yield there's there's new techniques and new crops and it's all about efficiency to feed this growing population so i've put some examples i'm not going to kind of talk through these in detail but water meadows rotate crop rotation new crops selective breeding market gardens capital investment and specialized farming different regions specializing in different uh types of farming so what you should do in terms of this this content is really have a look at the textbook and get some precise examples and pick you know um pick some of these and really get some precise examples some concrete evidence to really support your points on these things i'm just going to talk about the new crops one um just in a little bit more detail so the new crops is a really good example of what i was talking about so clover asparagus the frost resistant turnip and it's not just kind of we're talking about these new crops because they are new but if you think about something like clover it was nitrogen rich it enriched the soil which meant that um there was an increased yield of future crops from that soil the frost resistant turnip means that that can be grown in colder times and so there's food grown you know throughout the year so can you see how it's all about this kind of like increased efficiency in terms of the analysis as i've said before links to growing population and the need for more food also dutch immigration so a lot of these ideas were uh inspired by by the dutch however in terms of changing continuity as i've said here the majority of these i mean some of the new crops were obviously new but the majority of these things things like water meadows crop rotation enclosure as well these things are more of a continuation rather than brand new changes so in terms of your analysis overall really the agricultural change is i would argue largely a continuation okay moving on to national markets and cloth so we've got the development of national markets and this links with with agriculture so and specialized farming um but the cloth trade really was dominant in the 17th century and as it says here i think this is a really good statistic that 92 of london's exports were cloth in 1640 so it really did dominate particularly kind of exports and and overseas trade you've also again got the the influence of im immigration and dutch immigrants and french huguenots um in the late part of this period um bringing new skills so new draperies and kind of skilled weaving by the the french huguenots there um so really really important in terms of economic uh growth in this period however the club take actually is starting to be overtaken by other things it still dominates it's still the the main area of trade but it's starting you know overseas trade and things like that are starting to gain in importance as this period goes on um also national markets are not as developed in scotland and ireland as it says um but cloth is very significant and it's um it's very important as this period goes on and goes into the industrial revolution so it forms the basis of that you know the industrial revolution if you think about the mills you know what they what they're using in the industrial revolution they're using uh cloth aren't they so it is very important but again it's more of a continuation so so far agriculture and cloth both largely continuation um if we go into london and banking so london becomes the largest city um in western europe in this period and we get the growth of kind of a merchant class um and banking and insurance so we get kind of goldsmith bankers and money scriveners the growth of these things you can see the statistics there on the screen um and also the development of insurance so marine insurance and fire insurance and these things also link to overseas expansions that's a really good link you can show how things like lloyd's coffee house um is not just a new development in terms of insurance but it's also influencing and leading to the growth of overseas trade as well um so yes 64 000 merchants in london by 1688 however accounts a counter point here or a few a few county points really is that it's still largely in its infancy i mean look at the dates of a lot of these things lloyd's coffee house not established to 1688 and the fire office and friendly society these fire insurance companies not established until the 1680s so really it's the end of this period that sees the most growth and if you think about topic five with the bank of england that really kind of state starts to stabilize things it's really not until the next century that banking insurance really becomes more stabilized um also in this period charles the first and charles ii as it says here kind of limit confidence um in you know because of things like the stop of the exchequer um and charles the first you know uh seizing control of the royal men and things like that so really this there isn't a great deal of confidence um in banking and insurance but it is new um it is new um and it does link to overseas expansion as we said london is very very important in terms of economic change um it dominates trade into linking to agriculture you could think about market gardens you could think about the growth of the population in london um you could also link to the growth of new ideas and social change so london is very very important here and there actually hasn't been a question yet on the growth of london in terms of economic change and i feel like that could be something that could come up in the future a question where london is the the kind of factor okay so going on to um imperial expansion so we've got things like east india company uh colonies in north america and jamaica we've got cromwell's western design um and triangular trade royal africa company so really get the the beginnings of the british empire in this period i mean obviously in the elizabethan period we we get that so slightly it's not the the exact beginnings but really the development of that and then again going into the next century is when it really kind of takes off and as you can see in the analysis box sugar becomes really really important really profitable by the mid 17th century it's the most valuable crop um and it's you know known as the sugar revolution barbados was the most lucrative place on earth to own land in this period so it's extremely profitable and and like i said with with agriculture if the key word for agriculture is efficiency i think this is about profit um and and the growth of imperial expansion you know is is about profit obviously it's it's extremely inhumane and this is something i think this this course kind of really doesn't talk about which is which is obviously a shame and we're looking at this just solely from a kind of economic point of view not a not a kind of human point of view um but that's in terms of these essays that's what you're probably going to be arguing that it's about the growth of the overseas expansion is about kind of profit and um linking to banking and insurance as i said before in this growth of the merchant class okay so the last area for content is kind of overseas mercantilism and angry guts rivalry so really the key piece of legislation is the navigation act 1651 which is an example of mercantilism which mercantilism is just government uh policies aimed at growing you know kind of trade particularly overseas trade and it's passed by the rump in 1651 and it's so important that it was passed again by by the restoration parliament in 1660 and the navigation act is quite interesting because it is an economic policy but the rump also passed it for political reasons because they wanted to ensure that the colonies weren't trading with other countries that the trade from the colonies was coming to to england first which really to me highlights how important kind of overseas trade is becoming that the restoration parliament felt the need to pass it again straight away um unlike a lot of the legislation passed by the rump if you think about topic three things like the toleration act or the marriage act the adultery act these things are kind of not passed again whereas the navigation act is is passed again it was reissued another example is the staple act and then i've put the anglo-dutch wars there um just as a kind of catalyst for economic change and i think that's a word i would use here that's it that you know mercantilism and angularjs rivalry is a uh is a catalyst for economic growth um and particularly kind of overseas expansion um and then going on to the essay questions so here are the kind of four kinds of questions that have come up so far on topic four so the first one is how far do you agree that i put imperial expansion i've put it in brackets because it's a factor what's the most significant factor in economic change between 16 and 25 and 88 so you should plan all of these questions so the first one is a factors question so they might say imperial expansion versus agriculture cloth banking and as i've said in my essay video essay writing video go for you know three paragraphs so imperial expansion then choose two others of those and then you weigh them up against imperial expansion what was the most important factor so kind of factors question the other type another type of question you can get is how far do you agree that the economy changed radically or was transformed or something like that so i would suggest doing it by factor again so picking three areas imperial expansion agriculture cloth banking but consistently engaging with how to what extent this these changes were radical so what you don't want to do is kind of end up weighing them up against each other and saying this was the area that was most important it's it's the bigger question of how radical were these changes so kind of thinking of counterpoints within the paragraphs how radical were these changes to extent what they knew to accept what they unprecedented to extend with a transformative long-term impact those kind of things uh the third type of question is just focusing on agriculture how far do you agree that british agriculture was transformed in these years so it's solely on agriculture so what i would suggest is definitely plan this one out so maybe paragraph one could be on agricultural techniques and the extent to which agricultural techniques were transformed so going back to the the page on um agriculture just quickly um so you could talk about water meadows um crop rotation enclosure things like that um and then you could talk about crops and specialized farming um and to extend those things were new and i talked a little bit about that already and the part of the you can maybe talk about capital investment national markets those kind of things and to what extent was that transformed um so that's solely on agriculture so definitely plan that one out it's quite a kind of narrow question there and then the final question that's kind of come up is just about overseas expansion and it kind of what what's the main cause of overseas expansion and so this one here is the east india company um so it's just about overseas expansion so east india company would be paragraph one but then as i say here as i suggest you could link to wider angle that's rivalry and mercantilism part of two could be north american caribbean colonies and triangular trades part of three you could you could talk about insurance and banking and you know marine and fire insurance and how that helped to promote overseas trade um and also banking just as you know people investing in these companies so that's slightly narrower uh the overseas expansion question but i think it's it's very doable so they're the four types of questions that have come up so far on topic four and i'd really strongly recommend that you plan out those questions for your revision um in terms of some kind of essay technique here's john oglebee who created the first ever road atlas which covered england and wales in 1675 which weighed over seven kilograms which helped the development of national markets so it's a good good little story good little um fact there um but what john b is telling us is that these essays are focused on change okay you know to what extended things change in this period so think about using words like this to example is it a change was it a continuity was it radical was it limited was it widespread was it narrow and examiners will really really like it if you can get these kind of words into your analysis in your essays so really try and do that um because the essays are because they're breadth essays they're focusing on change versus continuity so really try and weave those words into your essays so what i have got next is a a star essay which got 17 in the 2018 exam and um i'm not gonna kind of read through all of this um word for words what i'm going to do is is just put it on here for a little bit and i'll talk about each section and you can pause it if you want and kind of read through it in your own time um so here's the introduction and if you just look at you know one thing to look at is the words that this student uses and you know the student area was a time of relative economic dynamism um and i just think that what you know just using words like that dynamism the examiners like straight away wow this this student's got uh you know got a good handle on this yeah um [Music] and the clear argument here overall the unprecedented change to the expansion oc's trade allowed the economy to flourish and therefore was the most significant factor in financial growth during this period so this is a factors question it's about banking and insurance as you can see at the top right there and the students arguing that it's actually overseas trade was the most important factor with a really clear um argument there in the intro so here's the the first paragraph again you can pause this and read through this in your own time i'll just highlight a couple of things here before i move on precise evidence 1636 talking about robert abbott 1.1 million pounds transferred uh through the abbott accounts and it says which shows how transformative economic growth was catalyzed yeah by new banking industry so just think look at those words transformative catalyzed um really you know really good analytical language here okay going on so this is just the the containers in the first paragraph so talk about goldsmith bankers and how many there were at the time and then uh counterpoint towards the bottom there um talking about the stop of the exchequer in 1672 with charles ii so really good handle on the evidence and then finally um the the final paragraph um sorry another five paragraph that the last section of this paragraph um it's ju it's the thing that i would highlight here is just the summary at the end of the paragraph it's really really clear which is something i talk about in my uh essay writing technique video just offering a summary at the end of each paragraph is really really important which kind of fully weighs that up um and links it back to the question so i hope that was helpful and you know as i said you can go back and pause the section of this video where i've got the this essay up there i don't want to kind of read through it all um word for word you can look at that in your own time okay thank you for listening