https://www.pet.cam.ac.uk/essay-prizes
Writing your essay
Write an essay of between 2,000 and 4,000 words including footnotes and appendices on one of the following questions. Include a bibliography and ensure all sources are referenced. Essays must be submitted as a PDF via the online form. Please ensure that the pages in your essay are numbered and that your name and school appears clearly on the first page. Please also name the PDF file in the following format: Prize-Question number-Surname-Initial e.g. Vellacott-2-Smith-F.pdf.
Competitors are advised that the main focus of the essay should not be material previously or currently being studied by the entrant as part of their sixth form studies. The entrant may refer to topics that will be studied in future so long as, at the time of the closing date, the entrant has received no formal tuition on the topic in question. All entries must be verified by a Head of Sixth Form or Head of History confirming that the essay is the entrant’s own work and that the main focus of the essay is not something which they have hitherto studied in the sixth form classroom.
How to submit
A maximum of two entries per competition per school can be accepted, except by prior arrangement with your school. All entries must be approved by a teacher, so make sure your History teacher and Head of Department know you are entering and you have the relevant email address to hand when you create your account. Once essays are uploaded to our system, it is not possible to make changes – please ensure you are happy with your work before pressing ‘submit’. It is unfortunately not possible to provide feedback on essays. The deadline for you to submit your essay is 16:00 GMT on Monday 25th March 2019. Essays which are not submitted by this time will not be considered under any circumstances. Your teacher will then receive emails from Peterhouse asking them to confirm that you are eligible and that the work complies with our guidelines, as listed in this document and on our website. They must do this by 16:00 GMT on Monday 1st April 2019 – please inform them of this. Essays which have not been approved by a teacher will not be considered. For this reason, submission by post, fax or email will only be accepted in exceptional circumstances, and only by prior arrangement. Please direct any questions to essayprize@pet.cam.ac.uk
Prizes
Each competition has a prize pool of £750. Winners will be contacted by post - please make sure your postal address and other contact details are entered correctly!
This is a History prize but I have picked out the interesting political questions for you! (Including one about Brexit!)
1. Was Rome's transition from republic to monarchy a revolution?
6. What difference did the Norman Conquest make to the governance of England?
16. Did the early modern period witness the emergence of a new category of “race”?
23. Why did imperialism fail?
24. Discuss how and why understandings of economic inequality changed during EITHER the eighteenth OR nineteenth OR twentieth century.
26. How and why did popular ideas of the state change in the twentieth century?
28. Was there a 'fascist international'?
29. Was Nationalism a project of the left or the right?
30. Was Henry Luce right to say that freedom needs a greater living space than tyranny?
32. Is Cowling still relevant to political historians?
33. Was the Iraq war lost at home?
34. Account for the rise of ‘identity politics’.
35. Is Brexit a case of imperial nostalgia or of imperial amnesia?
37. Discuss the effect of technological developments on the operation of political ideas in EITHER modern America OR modern Africa OR modern Europe.
40. Is ‘class’ still a useful category of historical analysis?
42. Should academic historians set aside their personal political inclinations?
43. Why do historians need to pay attention to patriarchy?