Overall, I would say that the experience of writing the Extended Essay was a success as I was really able to understand the basics and foundation of the process undertaken when writing the EE. My research question was “is the use of counterfactual analysis in historical fiction literature significant and of value to historians?” The problem with my essay is that the “significant and of value” part to the question was not explicitly addressed, I did not directly talk about this question and should have done so according to my feedback. Other things that I could have worked on were the introduction, being a bit too general and maybe using more specific examples to back up my point and introduce what I would be talking about in the essay.

Following the PEEL format was also required; I think I satisfied 3/4 of it, but the link towards the main point at the end was vital which I missed out in my first paragraph of evidence talking about why the historian Richard Evans did not see any value in counterfactualism. Making a link back to my main points and directly addressing what I was meant to be arguing was what I missed out on for most of the evidence paragraphs. Some paragraphs required more in depth analysis, having a bit more detail on the view of other historians and other perspectives such as Niall Ferguson, and what they believed what they did.

According to Mr. Sharry, the main point I missed is counterfactualism’s “SIGNIFICANCE BECAUSE IF HISTORY IS TO help draw out empathy we can see what could happened if people had not sacrificed so much”. I would agree with this because I needed to talk about its significance and value more, prove my opinion and point more instead of providing more evidence in the end.

UK manufacturing has relatively declined since the 1960s. As a part of the GDP, it has fallen 18% from 1970 to 2010.

Real industrial output in the UK increased 40% from 1970 to 2000. Manufacturing in the UK accounted for 8.2% of the workforce and 12% of the national output in 2010. 25% of the UK’s manufacturing exports are high tech goods; there has been strong growth in high tech industries such as car production, aerospace and nuclear technology, but has seen a strong decline in the clothing and textile industry.

Industrial output growth was weak in the UK overall to relative economy during a period known as the great moderation, a period of economic balance with low inflation, positive economic growth and a belief that the boom and bust cycle of the economy had been overcome. This happened between 1997 and 2007. The manufacturing output (not including mining and primary industries) showed low growth, even though overall growth was still positive; it was failing relative to the growth of the GDP.

In reality, manufacturing in the UK has been in a ‘relative’ decline since the 60s. The percentage of manpower involved in industrial production has undergone a steady decline from having 25% of jobs in manufacturing in 1980 to 8.2% in 2010.

One of the reasons for the decline in UK manufacturing were wages in other sectors rose, leading to percentage of manpower in other more high tech sectors being increased. Relative wage costs and the relative productivity of a country’s manufacturing are also important; the UK failed to keep up with the low wage-cost economies of the world, like China. Since manufacturing is led by exports, changes in the Pound can highly affect the sector. During the periods of the time the Pound was strong, the manufacturing sector struggled like the early 1980s and 2000s. A strong Pound held back the growth of manufacturing, even though it may not contribute to long-term decline and simply temporary busts. Another reason is recessions; a concern is that a deep recession can lead to a “permanent loss of output” even with top firms struggling. A consequence that relative decline in manufacturing in the UK was the impact on the UK account deficit.

The government in 1970s UK was more involved and tried to help failing industries with subsidies, which in the end was considered a failure; ergo, since the 1980s the government has been very minimalistic when it comes to subsidies. The labour force was a heavy factor in the decline of the manufacturing sector, as mentioned before; it has been argued before that the UK placed more value on academic degrees rather than engineering skills which had a stronger benefit to the industrial sector. The British macroeconomic policy has also been heavily scrutinised, with claims being made that it relies “too heavily on consumer spending to power economic growth”, therefore causing a low savings rate. This and being reliant on spending has led to low levels of business investment.

Economics Help, Pettinger, Tejvan “Relative decline in UK manufacturing”, Date retrieved October 6 2018 https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/7617/economics/economic-growth-during-great-moderation/

The service sector has grown to become the biggest economic sector in the UK, covering nearly 80% of GDP and a similar employment ratio as well. Main service sectors in the UK include the retail industry, computer and technology services, hotels and tourism, restaurants, banking, transport services and more.

Developed economies have seen a transition from a more secondary production focused economy to a dominating tertiary service sector in the last 100 years. The growth of the service sector usually signifies an improved standard of living and enables people to focus more on wants than needs.

The reasons as to the growth of the service sector in the UK are composed into six main reasons. A key factor is “improved labour productivity”; the improvement of technology has increased the output of manufactured goods and agriculture while requiring less manual labour, therefore leading to increased incomes of the workers and more manpower to work on more labour intensive jobs in the tertiary sector therefore further contributing to economy. “Globalisation” also contributes to the growth of the service sector; it has enabled more developed economies to import more manufactured products which means a higher amount of the economy can be put into developing the higher value service sectors. “Income elasticity of demand” means that as the incomes are improved, people begin to have more choice in their spending and manual labor and . As incomes increase, it becomes to pay others to do manual labour rather than for oneself to do it. “Rising real incomes/wages” means that a rise in the income leads to increased and better living standards which enables people to spend more on service sector goods. “More leisure time” in the UK has lead to an average working week of 32 hours, which leaves much more time for activities and opportunities to spend on service sector services. “Technology” and its development has helped service sector industries to develop much more rapidly and efficiently. The development of the computer and the phone, as well as the Internet has enabled a much newer and wider range of tertiary services.

Economics Help, “Tertiary – Service Sector of the Economy”, Date retrieved October 3 2018 https://www.economicshelp.org/tertiary-service-sector/

In this example, the reason that the Paris Climate Summit is shown as a failure was because of India seeking greater emission cuts from developed countries and it is clear that India is being portrayed as representing hypocrisy here; the people are led to believe that the accord failed because of India’s contribution to carbon emission and other forms of pollution in the world which is very wrong because India’s per capita carbon emissions were 1.73, which was 10 times less than the USA’s. India is therefore being portrayed as a major cause of global warming and stereotyped as having the worst carbon emissions due to its industrialisation, which was much more minimal compared to the amount of non-renewable resources and produced pollutants created by much more developed countries such as the USA and the UK at the peak of their industrialisation. These types of stereotypes lead the Western world into believing that their countries such as the USA, Australia, Canada and much more contribute much less to the impact of global warming than India does, and that India is directly to blame for the consequences that global warming is having on our world. This also presents the preconceived notion that India’s methods of industrialisation and production methods are much more primitive than the Western world, therefore the carbon emission count is not controlled well enough because of the lack of technology.

Source Used

Union of Concerned Scientists, “Each Country’s Share of CO2 Emissions”, Date retrieved 24th September 2018
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html#.W6jIfpMzbOR