Edexcel IGCSE History
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Paper 1: Depth Studies
1: The French Revolution, c1780–99
1, key topic 1 - 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...
1, key topic 2 - 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...
1, key topic 3 - 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...
1, key topic 4 - 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...
1, key topic 5 - Directory and First Consul, 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...
2: Development of a nation: unification of Italy, 1848–70
2, key topic 1 - 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...
2, key topic 2 - 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...
2, key topic 3 - 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...
2, key topic 4 - 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...
2, key topic 5 - Venice, Rome and the extent of unity 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...
3: Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45
3, key topic 1 - 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...
3, key topic 2 - 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...
3, key topic 3 - 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.
3, key topic 4 - 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?
3, key topic 5 - Germany and the occupied territories, 1939–45This 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...
4: Colonial rule and the nationalist challenge in India, 1919–47
4, key topic 1 - Rowlatt Acts, Amritsar and the 1919 India ActIn 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...
4, key topic 2 - 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...
4, key topic 3 - 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...
4, key topic 4 - 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...
4, key topic 5 - 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...
5: Dictatorship and conflict in the USSR, 1924–53
5, key topic 1 - 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...
5, key topic 2 - 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...
5, key topic 3 - Purges, show trials, 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 key topic from the causes of the purges through...
5, key topic 4 - 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...
5, key topic 5 - 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...
6: A world divided: superpower relations, 1943–72
6, key topic 1 - Reasons for the Cold WarThe Cold War did not begin because one meeting went badly or because one leader disliked another. It grew from a pile-up of causes: long-term ideological rivalry, suspicion during the Second World War, disagreements about what should happen to Germany and Eastern Europe, and the changing attitude...
6, key topic 2 - Early developments in the Cold War, 1945–49Between 1945 and 1949, the wartime alliance against Nazi Germany turned into a Cold War. This lesson is about the early developments that made that change visible: Soviet control in Eastern Europe, Churchill's "iron curtain" warning, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, Soviet counter-measures...
6, key topic 3 - The Cold War in the 1950sThe 1950s did not make the Cold War calmer. It made it more organised, more global, and more dangerous. A war in Korea showed that Cold War rivalry could become a real shooting war outside Europe. The Warsaw Pact turned Soviet control of Eastern Europe into a formal military alliance. Khrushchev...
6, key topic 4 - Three crises: Berlin, Cuba and CzechoslovakiaIn this lesson, "crisis" means more than a dramatic event. It means a moment when Cold War pressure narrowed the choices available to leaders and made each side ask: can we protect our security and prestige without starting a wider war? Between 1960 and 1968, Berlin, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia each...
6, key topic 5 - Thaw and détente, 1963–72The Cuban Missile Crisis did not end the Cold War, but it changed the way the superpowers managed danger. From 1963 to 1972 the United States and the Soviet Union still competed, still armed themselves, and still backed rival sides in world politics. Yet they also began to accept that unlimited c...
7: A divided union: civil rights in the USA, 1945–74
7, key topic 1 - The Red Scare and McCarthyismThe Red Scare was a period of intense fear in the USA that communism was spreading abroad and secretly threatening the country from within. McCarthyism was the most famous and aggressive form of that fear, linked to Senator Joseph McCarthy's public accusations from 1950 to 1954.
7, key topic 2 - Civil rights in the 1950sThe 1950s were a turning point in the struggle for civil rights in the USA, but not a simple victory story. The Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional. Black communities used boycotts, court cases and national publicity to challenge Jim Crow. Congress passed its first civil ri...
7, key topic 3 - The impact of civil rights protests, 1960–74The civil rights movement after 1960 was not one single organisation or one single method. It was a wave of protest campaigns, legal pressure, voter registration drives, marches, speeches, riots, Black nationalist ideas and community self-defence. Some protests aimed to dramatise injustice throug...
7, key topic 4 - Student, women’s and anti-Vietnam protestsThe civil rights movement was not the only protest movement that reshaped the United States after 1945. By the 1960s, many Americans were challenging authority in universities, foreign policy, gender roles, family life and culture. Some wanted reform inside American democracy. Some wanted a more...
7, key topic 5 - Nixon and WatergateWatergate was not just one burglary. It became a crisis about presidential power, political honesty, the rule of law, and whether Congress and the courts could hold a president to account. The scandal began with the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in June 1972, but it damage...
8: South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94
8, key topic 1 - Setting up apartheid, 1948–54Apartheid did not appear from nowhere in 1948. South Africa already had a long history of racial segregation, white political dominance, land restriction, pass controls and unequal access to work, housing and education. What changed after the National Party victory in 1948 was the scale, coherenc...
8, key topic 2 - The growth of apartheid, 1955–59By 1955 apartheid was no longer just an election promise or a set of early laws. It was becoming a connected system that shaped daily movement, public facilities, schooling, work, political rights and the future of African land. This lesson focuses on that growth between 1955 and 1959: petty apar...
8, key topic 3 - Resisting apartheid, 1955–78Between 1955 and 1978, resistance to apartheid changed shape several times. It began with mass political organisation, petitions, speeches and civil disobedience. After Sharpeville and the banning of the ANC and PAC, some resistance became underground and armed. In the 1970s, Black Consciousness...
8, key topic 4 - PW Botha – response to resistance, 1978–90P.W. Botha came to power in 1978 knowing that apartheid was under pressure. The Soweto uprising had exposed deep anger inside South Africa, the banned ANC was still active from exile, Black trade unions were growing, and international criticism was becoming harder to ignore.
8, key topic 5 - Dismantling Apartheid, 1990–94Between 1990 and 1994 South Africa moved from legal apartheid and white minority rule to a multiracial democratic election. This was not a simple story of one leader deciding to be kind. It was a negotiated transition caused by pressure, political calculation, mass resistance, economic strain, in...
Paper 2, Section A: Historical Investigations
A1: The origins and course of the First World War, 1905–18
A1, key topic 1 - Alliances and international rivalry, 1905–14Before 1914, the Great Powers of Europe did not stand alone. They watched each other through alliances, understandings, arms programmes, trade competition and imperial disputes. This lesson explains how the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente developed, and how economic, imperial and military...
A1, key topic 2 - The growth of tension in Europe, 1905–14Between 1905 and 1914, Europe did not slide into war by accident. Tension grew through repeated crises. Each crisis was settled at the time, but each one left behind more suspicion, stronger nationalist feeling, sharper alliance expectations, and less trust in peaceful diplomacy.
A1, key topic 3 - Schlieffen Plan and Western Front deadlockGermany began the First World War hoping for movement, speed and decision. By the end of 1914, that hope had collapsed on the Western Front. The failure of the Schlieffen Plan led to a long line of trenches in France and Belgium, where modern weapons made attack far harder than defence.
A1, key topic 4 - The war at sea and GallipoliThe First World War was not only fought in trenches. Britain depended on sea routes for food, raw materials, troops and trade, while Germany wanted to weaken Britain without having to invade it. That made the North Sea, the Atlantic approaches and the Dardanelles strategically important.
A1, key topic 5 - The defeat of GermanyGermany was not defeated in 1918 by one simple event. The result came from a connected sequence: the United States entered the war, Ludendorff gambled on a final offensive before American power fully arrived, that offensive failed, and the Allies then drove Germany back between July and November...
A2: Russia and the Soviet Union, 1905–24
A2, key topic 1 - Tsarist rule in Russia, 1905–14In 1905 Russia was still an autocracy under Tsar Nicholas II: ministers answered to him, and ordinary people had no fully representative parliament. Between 1905 and 1914 that system bent under pressure but did not become a secure democracy. This lesson traces discontent and the 1905 Revolution,...
A2, key topic 2 - War and the February Revolution, 1914–17The February Revolution did not begin as a carefully planned seizure of power. It grew from wartime pressure, loss of trust in the monarchy, shortages in Petrograd and the failure of soldiers to defend the state; by March 1917, Nicholas II had abdicated and a Provisional Government had formed. Th...
A2, key topic 3 - The Provisional Government and the BolsheviksAfter the Romanov monarchy collapsed in March 1917, power was divided between the Provisional Government, which claimed legal authority, and the Petrograd Soviet, which influenced workers and soldiers. Between March and November, that unstable arrangement was tested by war, land hunger, economic...
A2, key topic 4 - Bolshevik consolidation and Civil WarAfter the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks had captured power in Petrograd but had not yet secured Russia. This lesson examines how the 1917 Decrees, closure of the Constituent Assembly and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk shaped consolidation before comparing the Civil War's sides, key events and reaso...
A2, key topic 5 - War Communism and the New Economic Policy (NEP)Lenin's government survived the Civil War, but survival came at a cost. This lesson compares why War Communism helped centralise wartime resources yet deepened the crisis of 1921, and why the New Economic Policy revived production through a controlled economic retreat. It then assesses how that c...
A3: The USA, 1918–41
A3, key topic 1 - The Roaring TwentiesThe "Roaring Twenties" describes a decade of cars, radios, cinema, jazz, consumer goods and stock-market optimism in the USA. The label fits many urban consumers, business owners and young wage earners, but not farmers and workers in struggling older industries. This lesson explains the boom, mas...
A3, key topic 2 - Increased social tensions in the 1920sThe USA in the 1920s is often remembered through prosperity, cars, jazz, cinema and consumer goods. This lesson looks at the other side of the same decade: arguments about who counted as truly American, how far old moral rules should survive, and whether law and order protected society or exposed...
A3, key topic 3 - The USA in Depression, 1929–33The Great Depression did not arrive in one simple moment. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 was dramatic, but the deeper crisis came from a chain reaction: collapsing confidence, falling demand, banking panics, shrinking credit, business failures, unemployment, homelessness and political anger.
A3, key topic 4 - Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1933–41Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the White House in March 1933 during a banking crisis, mass unemployment, collapsing farm prices and deep public fear. The New Deal was his response. It was not one single law or one perfectly planned programme. It was a series of federal actions between 1933 and the...
A3, key topic 5 - The Opposition to the New DealThe New Deal won huge support because it promised action during the Great Depression. It also created opposition from almost every direction. Some critics thought Roosevelt had gone too far by expanding federal power, regulating business, spending public money, and threatening property rights. Ot...
A4: The Vietnam Conflict, 1945–75
A4, key topic 1 - Struggle against France, 1945–54Between 1945 and 1954, Vietnam's struggle against France moved from a post-war independence claim into a full colonial war. The central issue was simple to state but hard to settle: the Vietminh wanted real Vietnamese independence and unity, while France wanted to restore or preserve influence in...
A4, key topic 2 - US policy and intervention, 1954–64Between 1954 and 1964, Vietnam moved from a temporary post-colonial settlement to a conflict in which the United States was deeply involved. The key pattern is escalation without an immediate jump to full-scale U.S. combat war. American leaders first backed a separate anti-communist South Vietnam...
A4, key topic 3 - Escalation of the Vietnam War, 1964–68Between 1964 and 1968, the Vietnam conflict became a much larger American war. The United States moved from advice, money, and support towards bombing North Vietnam, deploying large numbers of combat troops, and fighting a war of attrition in South Vietnam. Yet greater force did not produce clear...
A4, key topic 4 - Vietnamisation and Communist victory, 1969–75From 1969 to 1975, the United States tried to leave Vietnam without looking defeated. Nixon called this a search for "peace with honour", combining U.S. troop withdrawals and a stronger South Vietnamese army with bombing and diplomacy to pressure North Vietnam.
A4, key topic 5 - Impact on civilians and US attitudesThe Vietnam conflict was fought in villages, forests, cities, television reports, Senate hearings, and university campuses. That is why this lesson links two theatres of impact: civilians in Vietnam experienced the war directly, while Americans at home increasingly argued about whether the war wa...
A5: East Germany, 1958–90
A5, key topic 1 - The Berlin Wall crisis, 1958–63The Berlin Wall was not built because one leader suddenly wanted a dramatic symbol. It was built because East Germany faced a practical crisis that was becoming impossible to hide: people were leaving through Berlin, the weak point in the GDR's border controls.
A5, key topic 2 - Stabilisation and control: the GDR, 1962–87After the Berlin Wall reduced emigration, the GDR became easier for the SED to govern, but stability did not mean freedom or secure popular consent. Between 1962 and 1987, the regime combined economic reform, welfare, surveillance, censorship and youth policy with support from the Soviet-led East...
A5, key topic 3 - Life in the GDR – social change, 1962–87Between 1962 and 1987, the East German state tried to make everyday life feel secure, modern and distinctively socialist. Under Erich Honecker, especially after 1971, it offered work, housing, education, welfare, greater opportunities for women, mass culture and sporting success in return for acc...
A5, key topic 4 - Ostpolitik and West German relations, 1969–87From 1969, West Germany's Ostpolitik replaced diplomatic isolation of the GDR with negotiation, contact and practical cooperation. You will examine why Willy Brandt changed course and how the agreements of 1970-72 reshaped relations between East and West Germany.
A5, key topic 5 - The Peaceful Revolution, 1987–90Between 1987 and 1990 the German Democratic Republic moved from seeming stability to collapse in a Peaceful Revolution driven by mass protest, civic organisation, emigration pressure and political breakdown. SED rule ended without a civil war or Soviet military intervention.
Paper 2, Section B: Breadth Studies in Change
B1: America: from new nation to divided union, 1783–1877
B1, key topic 1 - Building a new nation, 1783–1809The United States did not become a stable nation the moment Britain recognised its independence. Between 1783 and 1809, Americans argued over a hard question: how could thirteen jealous states become one union without recreating the kind of distant central power they had just resisted?
B1, key topic 2 - Expansion and Native American removal, 1803–49Between 1803 and 1849 the United States expanded from the Mississippi towards the Pacific through purchases, treaties, migration, war, forced removal and political compromise. This expansion was contested rather than smooth or inevitable because foreign powers and Native American nations defended...
B1, key topic 3 - Slavery, the South and secession, 1850–61By 1850, expansion across North America kept reopening the dangerous question of whether new western territories would allow slavery. Slavery shaped political power, ideas about states' rights, the balance of free and slave states, and the Southern plantation economy, so repeated attempts at comp...
B1, key topic 4 - Civil War and the end of slavery, 1861–65The American Civil War was not decided by one battle, speech, general or law. Between 1861 and 1865, the Union had to turn larger resources into victory through military pressure, naval blockade, political leadership and a changing war aim.
B1, key topic 5 - A More Perfect Union? 1865–77The Civil War ended slavery and preserved the United States, but it did not settle what the restored Union would mean. Between 1865 and 1877, Americans argued over Reconstruction, freedpeople's rights, federal power and Native American sovereignty during western expansion.
B2: Changes in medicine, c1848–c1948
B2, key topic 1 - Medicine in the mid-19th centuryIn the mid-19th century, British medicine changed in important ways, but progress was uneven. Nightingale improved nursing and hospitals, Simpson reduced surgical pain, Chadwick pressed for sanitation, and Snow used evidence to link cholera to contaminated water.
B2, key topic 2 - Lister, Pasteur and discovery, 1860–75Between 1860 and 1875, medicine changed because scientific, surgical, public-health and professional developments began to reinforce one another. Pasteur's germ theory informed Lister's antiseptic surgery, while the 1875 Public Health Act, Nightingale's nursing reforms and Garrett's medical caree...
B2, key topic 3 - Koch, Ehrlich and chemistry, 1875–1905Between 1875 and the early twentieth century, medicine changed faster as laboratory science, clinical practice and government action began to reinforce one another. You will see how Koch's bacteriology informed aseptic surgery and public health, then how blood groups, Ehrlich's chemical treatment...
B2, key topic 4 - Government action and war, 1905–20Between 1905 and 1920, government action and the First World War changed who took responsibility for health and how treatment was organised. You will examine Liberal reforms for children and insured workers, then see how wartime medicine developed through women's service, the treatment chain, sur...
B2, key topic 5 - Medicine, surgery, health and the NHS, 1920–48Between 1920 and 1948, science, war and government combined to change treatment and access to care. You will trace penicillin from Fleming's discovery through Florey and Chain's development and wartime mass production, examine advances in surgery, transfusion and women's medical work, and disting...
B3: Japan in transformation, 1853–1945
B3, key topic 1 - Japan opening up to China and the West, 1853–67In 1853, Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate, while the emperor held symbolic authority and foreign contact was tightly controlled rather than absent. China's defeat by Western powers had already warned Japanese leaders what forced opening could mean. You will trace how Perry and the treati...
B3, key topic 2 - Transformation, 1867–1895The fall of the Tokugawa shogunate did not simply replace one ruler with another. Between 1867 and 1895, Japan was remade as a centralised, modernising state under the Meiji emperor. Domains became prefectures, samurai privileges were dismantled, new taxes funded state-building, Western knowledge...
B3, key topic 3 - An emerging power, 1895–1919Between 1895 and 1919, industry, military victories and diplomacy turned Japan into an emerging world power. You will examine how economic growth supported national power, how Taisho politics and social life changed unevenly in cities and villages, and how expansion in Korea and China won Western...
B3, key topic 4 - Political and economic challenges, 1919–31Between 1919 and 1931, Japan's party politics widened while repression and economic crises made the system increasingly fragile. You will examine universal manhood suffrage, labour organisation and the Peace Preservation Law, then trace how the Great Kanto Earthquake, banking strain and the world...
B3, key topic 5 - Depression, empire and collapse, 1931–45Between 1931 and 1945, political repression, military influence and imperial expansion transformed Japan into a wartime state that ended in defeat. You will examine Tenko and military rule, Manchukuo and conflict with the League and the USA, the Co-Prosperity Sphere and its effects on people in J...
B4: China: conflict, crisis and change, 1900–89
B4, key topic 1 - Fall of the Qing, warlords and chaos, 1900–34Between 1900 and 1934, China moved from Qing imperial rule to a fragile republic and then a Nationalist government, but armed conflict persisted. You will trace how foreign pressure and failed reform contributed to the 1911 Revolution, how Yuan Shikai and the warlords fractured authority, and how...
B4, key topic 2 - The triumph of Mao and the CCP, 1934–49In 1934 the Chinese Communist Party looked close to destruction: its base in Jiangxi had been surrounded by the Guomindang, its army was forced into retreat, and Mao Zedong was not yet secure as the party's leader. By 1949 Mao was able to proclaim the People's Republic of China in Beijing.
B4, key topic 3 - Change under Mao, 1949–63Mao's victory in 1949 did not just replace one government with another; it began a rapid attempt to remake land ownership, industry, family life, political loyalty and China's place in the communist world. The central pattern is state-led transformation: the Communist Party used laws, plans, camp...
B4, key topic 4 - The Cultural Revolution and its impact, 1965–76The Cultural Revolution was one of the most disruptive campaigns in twentieth-century China. It began with attacks on culture and education in 1965-66, became a mass movement led especially by young Red Guards, and ended only after Mao's death in 1976. It was not simply "young people causing chao...
B4, key topic 5 - China, 1976–89China after Mao was not simply "communist China becoming capitalist China"; it was a more complicated bargain. Deng Xiaoping and his allies wanted economic modernisation, better education, higher production and closer links with the outside world, while refusing multi-party democracy, a free pres...
B5: The changing role of international organisations: the League and the UN, 1919–c2011
B5, key topic 1 - Creation and successes of the League, 1919–29The League of Nations was created after the First World War because many leaders wanted a new way to prevent war. Instead of relying only on secret alliances, arms races and last-minute diplomacy, the League aimed to make states settle disputes openly and peacefully.
B5, key topic 2 - The League challenged, 1930–39In the 1920s, the League of Nations could still look useful: it settled some smaller disputes, developed agencies, and offered the hope that collective security might replace secret alliances and war. In the 1930s, that hope was tested by much stronger pressure from economic depression, aggressiv...
B5, key topic 3 - Founding the UN and its work to 1964The United Nations was created after the Second World War to provide a stronger framework for international security and cooperation than the League of Nations had managed. It was a member-state organisation, not a world government, built around the UN Charter, General Assembly, Security Council,...
B5, key topic 4 - The UN challenged, 1967–89Between 1967 and 1989, the United Nations was neither simply a failure nor simply a success: it faced wars, civil conflicts, occupation, Cold War rivalry and Permanent 5 vetoes, yet also created peacekeeping missions, supervised negotiations, supported decolonisation and ran specialised agencies.
B5, key topic 5 - The UN at bay, 1990–2011After the Cold War, the United Nations seemed to have a new opportunity because the Security Council was less constrained by US-Soviet rivalry. This lesson compares its work in Somalia, Bosnia, Mozambique, Sudan and the Gulf conflicts to explain why peacekeeping and collective security produced m...
B6: The changing nature of warfare and international conflict, 1919–2011
B6, key topic 1 - Warfare in 1919–39Between 1919 and 1939, armies adapted the industrial weapons of the First World War while testing new combinations of land, sea and air power. This lesson traces heavy artillery, gas, tanks, submarines, fighters and bombers through East Asia and Abyssinia, alongside guerrilla tactics in the Spani...
B6, key topic 2 - Land, air and sea warfare, 1939–45Between 1939 and 1945, warfare changed most through the closer integration of land, air and sea power. This lesson follows Blitzkrieg, air defence and bombing, U-boats, amphibious and airborne operations, resistance, and aircraft carriers to show how coordination shaped outcomes. It also examines...
B6, key topic 3 - New forms of conflict, 1945–75Between 1945 and 1975, nuclear weapons transformed strategy without making conventional or guerrilla war disappear. This lesson examines atomic weapons, the arms race and arms limitation alongside Arab-Israeli conventional wars and asymmetric conflict in Vietnam. Comparing these forms of conflict...
B6, key topic 4 - Conventional and ‘new’ wars, 1976–2000Between 1976 and 2000, conventional forces still fought for territory while guerrilla tactics, precision weapons and nuclear strategy continued to develop. This lesson uses the Falklands War, Soviet-Afghan War, first Gulf War, Strategic Defense Initiative and arms-control agreements to trace that...
B6, key topic 5 - Warfare in the early 21st century, 2000–11Between 2000 and 2011, states still used aircraft, missiles, vehicles and soldiers, but increasingly against terrorist networks and insurgencies rather than regular armies alone. This lesson follows the impact of 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, precision airpower, drones in Pakistan and u...
B7: The Middle East: conflict, crisis and change, 1917–2012
B7, key topic 1 - Build up of tension in Palestine, 1917–46Tension in Palestine did not suddenly appear in 1948. Between 1917 and 1946, Britain tried to govern a territory where Arab and Jewish national aims increasingly clashed. This lesson traces how the Balfour Declaration, Jewish immigration, communal violence, the Peel Commission and Arab and Jewish...
B7, key topic 2 - Israel’s creation, the 1948–49 war and SuezFrom 1947 to 1956, an unresolved dispute over Palestine moved from a failed UN partition plan to civil and interstate war, a refugee crisis and renewed conflict around Egypt. This lesson explains Israel's creation and victory in 1948-49, the refugee crisis and Law of Return, and the growth of bor...
B7, key topic 3 - Tension and conflict, 1956–73Between 1956 and 1973, the Arab-Israeli conflict changed from a tense post-Suez stand-off into two major wars and a much more complicated struggle. Israel fought Arab states in 1967 and 1973. At the same time, Palestinian organisations became more independent and more visible, especially under Ya...
B7, key topic 4 - Diplomacy, peace then wider war, 1973–83Between 1973 and 1983, the Middle East conflict moved in two directions at once. One direction was towards peace: the 1973 war made Egypt, Israel and the United States take diplomacy more seriously, and this eventually led to the Camp David Agreements and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. The other...
B7, key topic 5 - The attempts to find a lasting peace, 1987–2012Between 1987 and 2012, peace between Israel and the Palestinians was attempted through uprising, negotiation, recognition, interim self-rule, international plans and ceasefires. The story is not a straight line from war to peace. It is a pattern of pressure creating openings, agreements creating...
B8: Diversity, rights and equality in Britain, 1914–2010
B8, key topic 1 - The fight for recognition, 1914–28Britain in 1914 was diverse but unequal, and people were treated differently because of gender, class, race, nationality and disability. The First World War did not create equality, but it made old exclusions harder to defend as women and working-class people undertook nationally important work o...
B8, key topic 2 - The impact of Depression and war, 1928–45Between 1928 and 1945, Britain faced two shocks that tested ideas about equality: the Depression and the Second World War. Neither made Britain suddenly fairer. The Depression exposed how class, region, gender, race and disability shaped people's opportunities. War then forced the state to mobili...
B8, key topic 3 - Consequences of war and end of empire, 1944–62Between 1944 and 1962, Britain promised wider citizenship, education and welfare just as the empire was being reshaped into the Commonwealth. That created new openings: free secondary education, the NHS, migration from the Empire and Commonwealth, new cultural confidence, and public debate about...
B8, key topic 4 - Changes in civil rights, c1962–86Between the early 1960s and the mid-1980s, Britain experienced a broad civil-rights shift as laws changed, protest became more visible, and more people challenged discrimination based on race, sex, class, disability and sexuality. Yet this was not a smooth march towards equality: reforms could be...
B8, key topic 5 - Changes in opportunity and culture, 1986–2010Between 1986 and 2010, campaigns for equality in Britain moved into a more rights-based, public and legally connected phase. Earlier civil-rights laws had already challenged discrimination, but many barriers remained: racism in institutions, sexism in workplaces and politics, discrimination again...