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Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route A: Conquest, control and resistance in the medieval world

Required Paper 1 - 1A: The crusades, c1095-1204

P1.1A.01 - Reasons for the crusades, 1095-1192The crusades were not caused by one simple emotion or one papal speech. For Edexcel Paper 1, the strong answer is the one that can explain how religious conviction, papal politics, Byzantine emergency, knightly culture, disorder in Europe, and the defence of the crusader states worked together ac...

P1.1A.02 - Leadership of the crusades, 1095-1192This lesson treats leadership as a historical problem across the First, Second and Third Crusades. Their outcomes depended on authority, shared priorities, local knowledge and whether military success could become a stable political result, so leaders cannot simply be labelled good or bad. Compar...

P1.1A.03 - The crusader states of Outremer, 1100-92This lesson is about how the crusader states survived, adapted and weakened after the First Crusade. Edexcel is not asking for a simple story of battles. The row is a breadth enquiry into the structures of Outremer: its geography and economy, its defensive system, and its government from Baldwin...

P1.1A.04 - The changing Muslim response to the crusades, 1095-1192This lesson is about a change in the balance of power. In 1097-99 the crusaders benefited from a Muslim Near East divided by dynasty, religion, local rivalry, and poor coordination. By 1187 Saladin could draw on Egypt, Syria, and northern Mesopotamian support to destroy the main Frankish army at...

P1.1A.05 - What explains the failure of the Fourth Crusade?This lesson is about a crusade that failed twice: it did not recover Jerusalem, and it ended by attacking Christian cities. To answer the Edexcel interpretations question well, you need the chronology, but you also need to decide which explanation best accounts for the collapse of the original cr...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2A.1: Anglo-Saxon England and the Anglo-Norman Kingdom, c1053-1106

P2.2A.1.01 - Late Anglo-Saxon England, c1053-66Late Anglo-Saxon England was not a weak kingdom waiting to be conquered. It had a powerful monarchy, a sophisticated local administration, an unusually reliable coinage and tax system, and a political elite used to governing through shires, earldoms and assemblies. The problem was different: the...

P2.2A.1.02 - The Norman conquest of England and extension of control in Wales and Scotland, 1066-93This lesson is about the difference between winning a battle and securing a kingdom. William of Normandy's victory at Hastings made him king of England, but it did not by itself make England obedient, Wales controllable, or Scotland harmless. Between 1066 and 1093, Norman control had to be built...

P2.2A.1.03 - State, church and society, 1066-1106This lesson is about the machinery of conquest after the battlefield. By 1106, the Normans had not simply replaced one king with another. They had turned England's unusually strong late Anglo-Saxon government into a Norman royal state, destroyed most of the old English aristocracy, reshaped lords...

P2.2A.1.04 - Normandy, 1066-1106This lesson is about the making, breaking, and restoration of the Anglo-Norman kingdom. Normandy was not just William's launch pad for the conquest of England. It remained the dynastic homeland, a frontier duchy surrounded by rivals, and the place where the Conqueror's sons fought over what his v...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2A.2: England and the Angevin Empire in the reign of Henry II, 1154-89

P2.2A.2.01 - The restoration and extension of royal authority, 1154-72Henry II became king in December 1154 with a rare combination of problems and advantages. England had been damaged by the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, but Henry also ruled or claimed a huge collection of lands in western France. The key issue is not simply that Henry was powerful. It is...

P2.2A.2.02 - Reforms in England, 1154-89Henry II did not invent royal government from nothing. His achievement was to make older royal institutions work harder, more regularly, and more profitably after the disorder of Stephen's reign. The key question is how far his reforms turned the king's personal authority into a system that could...

P2.2A.2.03 - Henry II and the English church, 1154-74This lesson is about a problem Henry II could not solve simply by being a strong king. In the 1150s and 1160s the English Church was not just a religious institution. It ran courts, held land, controlled moral discipline, sent appeals to Rome, crowned kings, punished offenders through penance and...

P2.2A.2.04 - Crises of the Angevin Empire, 1170-89Henry II's last two decades were shaped by a contradiction at the heart of Angevin power. He wanted his sons to inherit a vast collection of lands, but he did not want to surrender real authority while he lived. That made family politics dangerous. The king's sons had titles, expectations and for...

Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route B: Religion and the state in early modern Europe

Required Paper 1 - 1B: England, 1509-1603: authority, nation and religion

P1.1B.01 - Monarchy and government, 1509-88This lesson is about the political machinery of Tudor England: monarchs, Parliament, ministers, councils, and the question of who could safely rule. The core argument is that Tudor monarchy remained personally dominant, but the ways in which royal power worked changed sharply between 1509 and 1588.

P1.1B.02 - Religious changes, 1509-88This lesson is about the direction, pace, and limits of religious change under the Tudors. The key argument is not simply that England "became Protestant". Between 1509 and 1588 the English Church moved from papal Catholicism, through royal supremacy, Edwardian Protestantism, Marian Catholic rest...

P1.1B.03 - State control and popular resistance, 1509-88This lesson explores how Tudor monarchs tried to make royal policy effective across a kingdom still governed through local people and institutions. You will weigh the reach of regional councils, nobles, justices and poor-relief law against episodes of tax resistance and rebellion, asking why larg...

P1.1B.04 - Economic, social and cultural change, 1509-88This row is about how Tudor England was reshaped beneath the level of parliaments, rebellions, and royal policy. The argument is not that England became modern overnight. It is that the years 1509-88 saw older patterns of cloth-based trade, parish religion, rural landholding, and court culture pl...

P1.1B.05 - Was there a general crisis of government in the last years of Elizabeth I's reign, 1589-1603?This Paper 1 interpretations row is about a historical argument, not just a late-Tudor timeline. The question is whether the last years of Elizabeth I's reign produced a general crisis of government: a linked crisis across security, finance, court politics, parliament, succession, and social order.

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2B.1: Luther and the German Reformation, c1515-55

P2.2B.1.01 - Conditions in early sixteenth-century GermanyThis lesson explains the conditions that made the German lands a difficult place to govern and a fertile place for religious criticism before Luther's challenge gathered force. The key is not to treat politics, economy, church and papacy as four separate lists. In early sixteenth-century Germany...

P2.2B.1.02 - Luther's early challenge to the Catholic Church, 1517-20Luther's early challenge began as a dispute about indulgence preaching, but it became much more dangerous because it exposed deeper questions about salvation, papal authority, Scripture, and who had the right to reform the Church. By 1520 Luther was no longer only asking whether Johann Tetzel had...

P2.2B.1.03 - The development of Lutheranism, 1521-46Between 1521 and 1546 Lutheranism changed from a condemned professor's protest into a recognisable religious and political movement. That development was not smooth. Luther's message gained force because it offered a clear route to salvation, but it also had to survive imperial condemnation, radi...

P2.2B.1.04 - The spread and survival of Lutheranism, 1521-55Lutheranism survived between 1521 and 1555 because a religious movement became embedded in the political structure of the Holy Roman Empire. This did not mean that the German Reformation was inevitable, or that Charles V and the papacy were powerless. It means that Lutheranism gained time, territ...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2B.2: The Dutch Revolt, c1563-1609

P2.2B.2.01 - Origins of the Dutch Revolt, c1563-67The Dutch Revolt did not begin as a simple nationalist war against Spain. In the mid-1560s the Habsburg Netherlands was a composite monarchy: Philip II ruled seventeen provinces that had their own laws, privileges, estates, towns and noble families. The crisis came because Philip tried to defend...

P2.2B.2.02 - Alva and Orange, 1567-73In 1567 Philip II sent the Duke of Alva to the Netherlands to restore obedience after the Iconoclastic Fury and the noble opposition of 1566. By the end of 1573 Alva had been recalled, and William of Orange had a working rebel base in Holland and Zeeland. That change was not simple or inevitable....

P2.2B.2.03 - Spain and the reconquest, 1573-84This lesson covers the exact Pearson Edexcel 9HI0 row Spain and the reconquest, 1573-84. The main story is not simply that Spain "won back" the Netherlands. It is sharper than that: Spanish authority collapsed under Requesens, was rebuilt by Parma in the Catholic south, and at the same time becam...

P2.2B.2.04 - Securing the independence of the United Provinces, 1584-1609This lesson is about how a revolt that looked fragile in the mid-1580s became a defensible republic by 1609. The United Provinces did not win independence by one heroic battle, and Spain did not simply collapse. Independence was secured through the interaction of military recovery under Maurice o...

Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route C: Revolutions in early modern and modern Europe

Required Paper 1 - 1C: Britain, 1625-1701: conflict, revolution and settlement

P1.1C.01 - The quest for political stability, 1625-88This lesson is about the repeated search for a workable political settlement in Stuart Britain. The core argument is that stability broke down whenever rulers could not secure trust over four connected issues: money, religion, Parliament, and control of armed force. The period did not move in a s...

P1.1C.02 - Religion - conflict and dissent, 1625-88Between 1625 and 1688, arguments about worship repeatedly became arguments about who held political power. Charles I and Laud used bishops, prayer books and church courts to impose order; civil war opened space for Presbyterians, Independents and radical sects; and the Restoration rebuilt Anglica...

P1.1C.03 - Social and intellectual challenge, 1625-88Between 1625 and 1688, Britain changed below the level of kings and Parliaments. Population growth strained land, wages, towns and poor relief, while gentry, merchants and professionals gained influence and civil war, print, religious division and experimental science made inherited authority eas...

P1.1C.04 - Economy, trade and empire, 1625-88This lesson covers the exact Pearson Edexcel 9HI0 row Economy, trade and empire, 1625-88. The row is about three connected developments: agricultural change inside England, changing domestic trade patterns, and the impact of imperial expansion. The central judgement is not simply that England bec...

P1.1C.05 - How revolutionary, in the years to 1701, was the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89?How revolutionary was the Glorious Revolution once its settlement had developed by 1701? This lesson tests change in the working constitution, religious order, parliamentary system and financial state, rather than just the drama of William's landing in 1688. The settlement made monarchy condition...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2C.1: France in revolution, 1774-99

P2.2C.1.01 - The origins and onset of revolution, 1774-89The French Revolution did not begin because one bad harvest, one weak king, or one angry crowd suddenly destroyed the old order. It began because several pressures converged. The monarchy needed money; the tax system made serious reform politically explosive; privileged bodies used the language o...

P2.2C.1.02 - Revolution and the failure of constitutional monarchy, 1789-93Between 1789 and 1793 the French Revolution moved from an attempt to limit monarchy to the destruction of monarchy itself. That movement was not a straight line. In 1789 many revolutionaries still believed that a king, a constitution, a representative assembly and a declaration of rights could si...

P2.2C.1.03 - The National Convention, the Jacobins and the Terror, 1793-94The Terror was not a single law, a single massacre, or the private project of one man. It was a system of emergency government created by the National Convention in a republic fighting foreign war, civil war, economic crisis and factional collapse. The Jacobins and Montagnards did not invent thos...

P2.2C.1.04 - From the Directory to Brumaire, 1795-99This lesson covers the exact Pearson Edexcel 9HI0 row From the Directory to Brumaire, 1795-99. The central argument is that the Directory was not simply four years of failure before Napoleon. It was an attempt to build a moderate, property-owning republic after the Terror, during war, bankruptcy...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2C.2: Russia in revolution, 1894-1924

P2.2C.2.01 - The rule of Nicholas II, 1894-1905This lesson examines why an autocracy supported by bureaucracy, church, army and police could be shaken so deeply in 1905 yet still survive. You will connect Nicholas II's political choices to national, social and economic pressures, and distinguish the causes of revolutionary crisis from the con...

P2.2C.2.02 - The end of Romanov rule, 1906-17Romanov rule did not collapse simply because Russia went to war in 1914. The deeper problem was that Nicholas II kept the heart of autocracy after 1905 while allowing enough public politics to create expectations he would not satisfy. Between 1906 and 1914 the regime restored order, limited the d...

P2.2C.2.03 - The Provisional government and its opponents, February-October 1917This lesson covers the exact Pearson Edexcel 9HI0 row The Provisional government and its opponents, February- October 1917. It teaches the nature of dual power, opposition to the Provisional Government, the second Provisional Government from July to October, and the October Revolution. The aim is...

P2.2C.2.04 - Defending the Bolshevik revolution, October 1917-24The Bolsheviks did not "win" the revolution in October 1917 and then simply rule Russia. They had seized the centre of government in Petrograd, but they still had to defeat elected rivals, anti-Bolshevik socialists, White armies, peasant revolt, economic collapse and foreign intervention. The cen...

Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route D: Challenges to the authority of the state in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Required Paper 1 - 1D: Britain, c1785-c1870: democracy, protest and reform

P1.1D.01 - The growth of parliamentary democracy, c1785-c1870Between c1785 and 1870 Britain did not move smoothly from aristocratic rule to modern democracy. The better argument is more exact: Parliament became harder to defend as an unreformed institution, pressure from outside Westminster became harder to ignore, and the political nation was gradually wi...

P1.1D.02 - Industrialisation and protest, c1785-c1870This lesson is about the social and political consequences of Britain's industrial transformation. The official row does not ask you to retell every invention of the Industrial Revolution. It asks you to explain how industrialisation changed wealth, work, towns, protest and reform between c1785 a...

P1.1D.03 - Unionism and cooperation, c1785-c1870This lesson covers the exact Pearson Edexcel 9HI0 row Unionism and cooperation, c1785-c1870. It teaches three connected developments: early trade societies and their opponents, the more durable "new model" unions of the mid-Victorian period, and the growth of cooperative and friendly-society self...

P1.1D.04 - Poverty and pauperism, c1785-c1870This lesson is about the changing relationship between poverty, poor relief and the state in Britain from the late eighteenth century to 1870. Poverty meant material hardship: low wages, unemployment, old age, sickness, orphanhood, debt or hunger. Pauperism meant dependence on the Poor Law. That...

P1.1D.05 - What explains the abolition of the slave trade at the end of the period, c1785-1807?This lesson is about why Parliament abolished Britain's participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807. It is not about the abolition of slavery itself, which remained legal in most British colonies until the 1830s. The precise issue is why a trade defended for decades as profitable, imperial...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2D.1: The unification of Italy, c1830-70

P2.2D.1.01 - Challenges to the restored order and the failure of revolution, c1830-49This lesson teaches Pearson Edexcel 9HI0 Paper 2 Option 2D.1: The unification of Italy, c1830-70. The official row is about the period before unification had a successful strategy. Between 1830 and 1849, Italian nationalism became more visible, better organised and more emotionally powerful, but...

P2.2D.1.02 - The rise of Piedmont, 1849-56After defeat at Novara in 1849, Sardinia-Piedmont seemed unlikely to lead Italian change, yet by 1856 it had become the main focus for many liberals and nationalists. This lesson explains how Victor Emmanuel II's preservation of the Statuto, Cavour's parliamentary and anticlerical reforms, and ec...

P2.2D.1.03 - The creation of the Kingdom of Italy, 1856-61Between 1856 and 1861, Piedmontese diplomacy, war with Austria, nationalist mobilisation and Garibaldi's southern campaign combined to create a new Kingdom of Italy. This lesson traces how French intervention opened northern expansion, how central and southern territories were annexed, and how Vi...

P2.2D.1.04 - Consolidating the Kingdom of Italy, 1861-70In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy existed, but Venetia and Rome remained outside it and many people experienced the new state as a Piedmontese takeover. This lesson examines how the monarchy imposed common institutions, confronted internal resistance and pursued the remaining territorial aims. It comp...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2D.2: The unification of Germany, c1840-71

P2.2D.2.02 - Failure of revolution, 1848-51This lesson explains why the German revolutions moved from dramatic promise in 1848 to defeat, reaction and renewed Austro-Prussian rivalry by 1851. The key is to avoid a simple story of "liberals failed because they talked too much". The Frankfurt Parliament did produce serious constitutional wo...

P2.2D.2.03 - Austro-Prussian rivalry, 1852-66Between 1852 and 1866, the balance of power in Germany shifted from Austrian diplomatic leadership to Prussian military and political dominance. This lesson compares Austria's inherited influence and weaknesses with Prussia's Zollverein, industrial, financial and railway development. It then foll...

P2.2D.2.04 - Prussia and the Kleindeutschland solution, 1866-71This lesson is about how Prussia turned victory over Austria into a German Empire that excluded Austria. Kleindeutschland means a "lesser Germany": not a small Germany in power, but a Germany built around Prussia rather than the Austrian Habsburg monarchy. The crucial point is that unification wa...

Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route E: Communist states in the twentieth century

Required Paper 1 - 1E: Russia, 1917-91: from Lenin to Yeltsin

P1.1E.01 - Communist government in the USSR, 1917-85This lesson is about how communist government worked in the USSR from the Bolshevik seizure of power to the eve of Gorbachev. The central argument is that the Communist Party's monopoly of power was the great continuity, but the way that monopoly operated changed sharply: Lenin built a one-party...

P1.1E.02 - Industrial and agricultural change, 1917-85This lesson is about how Soviet rulers tried to turn a poor, war-damaged, mainly agrarian empire into a modern industrial superpower. The central argument is not simply that the USSR moved from capitalism to communism. It is that each leadership faced the same problem in a different form: how cou...

P1.1E.03 - Control of the people, 1917-85Across Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Soviet control changed in intensity but not in its central purpose: protecting the Communist Party's monopoly of power. You will compare terror, censorship, propaganda, religious policy, cultural controls and surveillance, then judge which methods re...

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2E.1: Mao's China, 1949-76

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2E.2: The German Democratic Republic, 1949-90

Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route F: Searching for rights and freedoms in the twentieth century

Required Paper 1 - 1F: In search of the American Dream: the USA, c1917-96

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2F.1: India, c1914-48: the road to independence

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2F.2: South Africa, 1948-94: from apartheid state to 'rainbow nation'

Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route G: Nationalism, dictatorship and democracy in twentieth-century Europe

Required Paper 1 - 1G: Germany and West Germany, 1918-89

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2G.1: The rise and fall of fascism in Italy, c1911-46

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2G.2: Spain, 1930-78: republicanism, Francoism and the re-establishment of democracy

Paper 1 and Paper 2 - Route H: Democracies in change: Britain and the USA in the twentieth century

Required Paper 1 - 1H: Britain transformed, 1918-97

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2H.1: The USA, c1920-55: boom, bust and recovery

Choose one Paper 2 option - 2H.2: The USA, 1955-92: conformity and challenge

Paper 3: Themes in breadth with aspects in depth

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 30: Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VII, 1399-1509

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 31: Rebellion and disorder under the Tudors, 1485-1603

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 32: The Golden Age of Spain, 1474-1598

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 33: The witch craze in Britain, Europe and North America, c1580-c1750

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 34.1: Industrialisation and social change in Britain, 1759-1928: forging a new society

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 34.2: Poverty, public health and the state in Britain, c1780-1939

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 35.1: Britain: losing and gaining an empire, 1763-1914

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 35.2: The British experience of warfare, c1790-1918

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 36.1: Protest, agitation and parliamentary reform in Britain, c1780-1928

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 36.2: Ireland and the Union, c1774-1923

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 37.1: The changing nature of warfare, 1859-1991: perception and reality

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 37.2: Germany, 1871-1990: united, divided and reunited

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 38.1: The making of modern Russia, 1855-1991

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 38.2: The making of modern China, 1860-1997

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 39.1: Civil rights and race relations in the USA, 1850-2009

Choose one permitted Paper 3 option - 39.2: Mass media and social change in Britain, 1882-2004

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