I suspect a lot of students struggle to go over their notes and the lecture notes I publish on this website in a way that makes them ready to acquire the kind of knowledge that they can then put to use when commenting a historical document.
AI can provide assistance to help you learn the material of my lectures in a deeper way, i.e. in a way that allows you to remember the details of historical events and ideas as parts of broader historical processes and logic.
Here is a possible example of what you can ask AI. I paste below the result of an experiment I made with Perplexity.
PROMPT: Act as a history tutor and help me learn the lecture I am pasting below. You should ask me questions about the main points of the lecture in such a way that I am made to check that I have understood the logic of historical events, ideas and processes.
AI’s OUPUT:
Absolutely — paste the lecture, and I’ll turn it into a set of probing study questions that test whether you understand the historical logic, not just the facts. I’ll focus on causation, chronology, change and continuity, significance, and the links between ideas and events.
To make it useful, I can do this in one of three ways:
- Short oral-quiz style: 10–15 questions, one at a time.
- Structured by themes: questions grouped under the lecture’s main sections.
- Exam mode: harder questions that push you to explain causes, consequences, and comparisons.
If you want, I can also:
- ask follow-up questions after each answer,
- correct your answers,
- or build a revision sheet from the lecture afterward.
Paste the lecture whenever you’re ready.
PROMPT: [I pasted the chapter on imperial and european identities, leaving out the last sections about Europe]
AI’s OUPUT:
Great — I’ll quiz you on the lecture’s logic, not just its facts. Answer in your own words, and I’ll then probe the weak spots and push you to connect causes, consequences, and turning points.
First round: core logic
- Why does the lecture say Britain’s imperial identity and European identity were hard to reconcile after the Second World War?
- What changed in the inter-war years that made imperial preference more attractive than global free trade?
- Why was the 1931 gold-standard crisis so important for Britain’s imperial economy?
- What was the political significance of the Statute of Westminster, and how did it change the meaning of “Empire”?
- Why does the lecture argue that decolonisation after 1945 was not originally a rejection of imperialism?
- In what sense did India’s independence in 1947 represent “cutting losses” rather than the end of Empire?
- Why did Britain initially think it could remain a world power without joining European integration?
- How did the Suez Crisis change Britain’s position, and why does the lecture say it was important but not the absolute end of empire?
Second round: Cold War and empire
- Why did NATO and the “special relationship” with the US initially seem compatible with British world power?
- How did Britain’s role in Greece, Germany, and the wider Cold War reduce its costs while preserving influence?
- What is meant by “informal empire,” and why did Britain prefer it in the postwar period?
- Why was Malaya such an important example of Britain’s postwar imperial strategy?
- Why did Britain’s global role become increasingly dependent on American support in the 1960s?
- Why did devaluation in 1967 push Britain toward Europe and away from the Sterling Area?
- Why does the lecture say that the decision to leave East of Suez was primarily political, not just economic?
Third round: Britain at home
- How did the 1948 British Nationality Act reflect imperial thinking?
- Why did this same law help produce large-scale migration to Britain?
- Why did many white Britons not see Commonwealth migrants as fully “British” or “English,” even when they were legally citizens?
- What were the two main aims of the immigration and race relations laws of the 1960s and 1970s?
- Why does the lecture say multicultural Britain was shaped by imperial history rather than by European integration?
Higher-level synthesis
- If you had to sum up the lecture in one argument, what is the relationship between empire, decolonisation, immigration, and Europe?
- Which event do you think is the real turning point in the lecture: 1931, 1947, 1956, 1967, or 1971? Defend your choice.
- Does the lecture present Britain as moving from empire to Europe in a clean break, or as carrying imperial habits into the European era?
- How does the lecture explain the rise of Brexit nostalgia in relation to this longer imperial history?
Answer whichever questions you want, and I’ll continue from there.
You could also try to get what AI called question in “exam mode” to go over the material another time, but I think the questions above already do a very good job at helping you learn.
A Few Words of Caution
I have not widely experimented with answering the questions and evaluating the way AI then reacts. I cannot therefore advise about how profitable it is to use AI to check the accuracy or thoroughness of your answers to the above questions.
You should keep in mind that AI does not actually understand what you write in the chatbox. AI’s output is the result of complex statistical calculations. After being trained on virtually the whole content of the internet, AI forms sentences in response to your prompts by calculating the probability of which words should appear after which other words.
Another problem with AI is that it is programmed with what is called a confirmation bias; in other words it is programmed not to contradict what you say. I tried to answer question 2 of the higher-level synthesis by saying that I saw two turning points: 1931 and 1967 (and I briefly explained why in three lines). I observed that AI commented in helpful ways that helped to reflect on how much what I had written matched the complexity of what the lecture described. But AI never challenged me on why I had chosen two turning points and not one; neither did it challenge me to justify why I did not add a third possible turning point.
If you use AI to check your answers, I think it is a good idea to also go back to the lecture and to your notes yourself, and attempt to find validation of your answer and/or the material that will enable you to make your answer more accurate or thorough.