AS Level International Option: Global Actors and Treaty Systems
What the International option rewards
The AS International option tests international and global history through Paper 1 documents and Paper 2 essays. It ranges beyond Europe: treaty systems, empires, collective security, economic diplomacy and decolonisation. You must identify the relevant actor and level of action - great power, small state, imperial administration or international body - and explain how these levels interacted. Precise chronology matters because international crises often turn on sequence: ultimatum, mobilisation, declaration, intervention.
Core rules
- Distinguish structural causes from triggers. Alliances, arms races and imperial rivalry may create risk; a specific diplomatic incident may activate it.
- Analyse treaties by terms, enforcement and legitimacy, not by signing date alone.
- In source work, ask who produced the document, for which audience, and what it can and cannot reveal. A covenant article is strong evidence for legal obligation, weak evidence for actual enforcement.
- Avoid treating 'the international community' as unified. States, empires and international organisations had different capacities and priorities.
Worked example
Question: 'How useful are Sources A and B for an enquiry into the weakness of the League of Nations in the 1930s?' Source A is Article 16 of the Covenant; Source B is Haile Selassie's 1936 speech to the League. Reasoning: Article 16 is useful for the League's formal sanctions machinery, but it reveals only paper obligations, not whether members would honour them. Selassie's speech is useful for the moral authority of the League and the gap between condemnation and effective action over Abyssinia; as a victim's appeal, it is less useful for the calculations of Britain and France. Cross-reference: both expose the collective-security problem - obligation without enforcement.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating League failure as identical with the cause of the Second World War.
- Assuming 'public opinion' was unified or decisive.
- Ignoring the absence of the USA and the priorities of imperial powers.
- Confusing the mandate system with straightforward annexation.
- Using hindsight to make outcomes seem inevitable.