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Paper 1: Depth Studies
D1: The French Revolution, c1780–99
P1.D1.01 - The origins of the Revolution, c1780–87The French Revolution did not begin because one bad decision suddenly made people rebel. By 1787, several pressures had been building for years: new political ideas, anger at privilege, financial weakness, doubts about the royal family, and hardship caused by food supply problems. This lesson sto...
P1.D1.02 - Short-term causes of the Revolution - from Assembly of Notables to Estates General, 1787–89In 1787, Louis XVI's government was trying to solve a financial crisis; by summer 1789, France had a National Assembly, Paris had stormed the Bastille and peasants were attacking signs of feudal power. This lesson traces how attempts to tax privilege raised larger questions about who could make d...
P1.D1.03 - Developments 1789-92Between 1789 and 1792, the French Revolution moved from reforming monarchy to overthrowing it. This lesson follows one chain of development: the Constituent Assembly tried to rebuild France around law, citizenship and constitutional monarchy; Louis XVI's flight to Varennes damaged trust; politica...
P1.D1.04 - Convention and Terror, 1792–94In September 1792 France had no king, no settled constitution and no guarantee that the Revolution would survive. The Convention had to build a republic while facing foreign war, internal unrest and factional rivalry, and this lesson traces how those pressures drove emergency government and the T...
P1.D1.05 - Directory and First Consul - Fall of Robespierre to Rise of Napoleon, 1794-99Between 1794 and 1799, the French Revolution moved from emergency government and Terror to a new political problem: how could France keep the gains of 1789 without sliding back into monarchy, popular dictatorship, or military rule? The answer first seemed to be the Directory, a cautious republic...
D2: Development of a nation: unification of Italy, 1848–70
P1.D2.01 - The 1848 Revolutions in the Italian StatesIn 1848 there was no single country called Italy. The peninsula was divided into states with different rulers, while Austria directly controlled Lombardy-Venetia and had strong influence over several central states. The revolutions of 1848 were therefore not one tidy national rising. They were a...
P1.D2.02 - Developments in Piedmont, 1849–54Between 1849 and 1854 Piedmont-Sardinia did not unite Italy; it made itself look like the Italian state most able to lead unification later. After defeat in 1849, Victor Emmanuel II kept the Statuto and moderate constitutional government, while Cavour's appointment in 1852 turned political surviv...
P1.D2.03 - The defeat of Austria, 1854–59This lesson follows one chain of cause and consequence: Piedmont could not defeat Austria alone, so Cavour turned the Italian question into a European diplomatic problem, secured French help, and used Austria's own ultimatum to trigger war. The result was not complete Italian unity, but it was a...
P1.D2.04 - Garibaldi and the Papal StatesIn 1860, Italian unification suddenly stopped being only Cavour's careful diplomatic project. Giuseppe Garibaldi, a radical nationalist soldier with a huge popular reputation, sailed south with volunteers and overthrew the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His victories made unification look p...
P1.D2.05 - Venice and Rome and the extent of unification by 1870In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy existed, but it was not yet a complete Italian nation-state. Venetia was still under Austrian control, Rome was still ruled by the Pope and protected by French troops, and many people inside the new kingdom felt that "Italy" was being built by imposing Piedmontese law...
D3: Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45
P1.D3.01 - The establishment of the Weimar Republic and its early problemsGermany did not simply move from monarchy to democracy in a neat handover. Between 1918 and 1923, the Weimar Republic was born from defeat, blamed for an unpopular peace, challenged by violence from left and right, and shaken by an economic crisis that destroyed trust in money. This lesson asks w...
P1.D3.02 - The recovery of Germany, 1924–29Between 1924 and 1929, Germany seemed to move away from the chaos of hyperinflation, the Ruhr occupation and diplomatic isolation. This recovery was closely associated with Gustav Stresemann, first as chancellor in 1923 and then as foreign minister until his death in October 1929. His central ide...
P1.D3.03 - The rise of Hitler and the Nazis to January 1933This lesson explains how Hitler and the Nazi Party moved from a small Munich movement to the leadership of the German government by 30 January 1933. The key pattern is not a smooth rise. It is a sequence of failures, adaptations, crises and political deals.
P1.D3.04 - Nazi Germany 1933–39In January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor. By August 1934 he had turned that position into a personal dictatorship. This lesson follows how that happened, then asks a harder Edexcel question: how far did Nazi control work between 1933 and 1939?
P1.D3.05 - Germany and the occupied territories during the Second World WarThis lesson follows Nazi Germany from the outbreak of war in 1939 to the collapse of the Third Reich in May 1945. Keep three linked stories in mind: war made Nazi racial policy more radical, defeat put the German home front under heavier pressure, and opposition grew but did not remove Hitler fro...
D4: Colonial rule and the nationalist challenge in India, 1919–47
P1.D4.01 - The Rowlatt Acts, Amritsar and the Government of India Act, 1919In 1919 many Indians judged British rule through two opposite experiences at once. Britain promised constitutional reform after India's wartime contribution, but it also kept using emergency powers against political opposition. The Rowlatt Acts, the Amritsar Massacre and the Government of India A...
P1.D4.02 - Gandhi and Congress, 1919-27Between 1919 and 1927, Indian nationalism changed shape. It did not simply become "more anti-British". It became broader, more public, more disciplined in some ways, and more difficult to control in others. Gandhi gave Congress a new method - satyagraha and non-cooperation - and a new language of...
P1.D4.03 - Key developments, 1927–39Between 1927 and 1939, the struggle over British rule in India moved through a repeating pattern: Britain offered consultation, Indian nationalists judged it too limited, protest forced further negotiation, and the resulting reform still left major political conflicts unresolved. This lesson stay...
P1.D4.04 - The impact of the Second World War on IndiaThe Second World War did not simply interrupt the Indian nationalist challenge. It changed it. Between 1939 and 1945, the British needed India's soldiers, money, food, ports and factories, but many Indian leaders argued that Britain had no right to demand wartime loyalty while refusing Indian sel...
P1.D4.05 - Communal violence, independence and partition, 1945–47Between 1945 and 1947, the question facing British India changed fast. In 1945, the main hope was still that Congress, the Muslim League and the British government might agree a united transfer of power. By August 1947, British India had been divided into India and Pakistan, and independence came...
D5: Dictatorship and conflict in the USSR, 1924–53
P1.D5.01 - The leadership struggle, 1924–29Lenin did not leave the USSR a neat system for choosing his successor. After his illness and death, leading Bolsheviks had to fight inside a one-party state where open factionalism was condemned, control of party machinery mattered, and every rival claimed to be the true defender of Leninism. The...
P1.D5.02 - Five-year Plans and CollectivisationStalin's economic revolution was not one policy. It was a linked attempt to turn the USSR into an industrial, state-controlled power and to force the countryside to supply the grain, labour and money needed for that transformation. The key difficulty for historians is judgement: the same policies...
P1.D5.03 - Purges, Show Trials, Stalin's Cult and Rewritten HistoryStalin's dictatorship did not rely only on laws or economic plans. In the 1930s it used fear, public confession, secret police power, labour camps, propaganda and rewritten history to make obedience feel unavoidable. This lesson follows the official row from the causes of the purges through to th...
P1.D5.04 - Life in the Soviet Union, 1924–41Stalin's rule changed Soviet life by turning politics and economics into everyday pressure. The state wanted rapid industrial growth, control over farming, loyal citizens, disciplined workers, educated young people and a society that could be presented as socialist and modern. Those aims brought...
P1.D5.05 - The Second World War and after, 1941-53Between 1941 and 1953 Stalin's USSR moved from possible defeat to superpower status. That journey was not smooth. The Soviet Union survived catastrophic setbacks in 1941-42, turned the war at Stalingrad, rebuilt much of its heavy industry after 1945, and emerged feared abroad and tightly controll...
D6: A world divided: superpower relations, 1943–72
D7: A divided union: civil rights in the USA, 1945–74
D8: South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94
Paper 2, Section A: Historical Investigations
A1: The origins and course of the First World War, 1905–18
A2: Russia and the Soviet Union, 1905–24
A3: The USA, 1918–41
A4: The Vietnam Conflict, 1945–75
A5: East Germany, 1958–90
Paper 2, Section B: Breadth Studies in Change
B1: America: from new nation to divided union, 1783–1877
B2: Changes in medicine, c1848–c1948
B3: Japan in transformation, 1853–1945
B4: China: conflict, crisis and change, 1900–89
B5: The changing role of international organisations: the League and the UN, 1919–c2011
B6: The changing nature of warfare and international conflict, 1919–2011
B7: The Middle East: conflict, crisis and change, 1917–2012
B8: Diversity, rights and equality in Britain, 1914–2010