HKDSE History cheat sheet
HKDSE History · Keep the key ideas within reach.
Hong Kong: territorial change, occupation and social transformation
Distinguish the 1842 cession,1860 cession and 1898 lease.
The entire territory was not acquired by one 99-year lease.
Trade, migration and social experience require more than treaty chronology.
Japanese occupation and postwar development are distinct phases.
The 1984 declaration and 1997 transfer do not by themselves establish every current legal rule.
China1840–1949: treaty systems, reform and revolution
Read the four treaties as one mechanism: defeat → indemnity → fiscal crisis → rural unrest.
马关条约 (1895) marks the shift from 商品输出 to 资本输出 and the cession of Taiwan.
The 器物 → 制度 → 思想 sequence gives the ladder for judging each rescue programme.
洋务 failed for lack of institutional change; 辛亥革命 succeeded politically but not socially.
The CCP's rural turn runs 南昌起义 → 井冈山 → 长征 → 延安 → 敌后根据地 → 解放战争.
The PRC after1949: institutions, campaigns and reform
1950–52 土地改革 created peasant private ownership; 1953–56 三大改造 created public ownership.
Distinguish 1956 party analysis, the 1958 Great Leap Forward and communes, and the severe human consequences of later campaigns; evaluation needs evidence and criteria.
The 1978 十一届三中全会 is the pivot: focus on 经济建设 plus 改革开放.
The market-economy goal dates to the 1992 十四大, following 南方谈话; not to 1978.
Judge revolution versus reform by whether the ownership relation itself changes.
Japan: Meiji institutions, imperial expansion and postwar transformation
The 1868 Restoration began a process rather than completing all modernization at once.
The 1889 constitution combined imperial authority and representative institutions.
Industrial output alone does not establish universal welfare.
Imperial expansion requires perspectives of affected neighboring societies.
Distinguish wartime, occupation and postwar institutional arrangements.
Southeast Asia: colonial rule, nationalism and postwar independence
Southeast Asia contains different national and colonial histories.
Colonial export economies require analysis of labor and distribution.
Japanese occupation disrupted colonial authority but did not create one uniform postwar outcome.
Proclamation, conflict and recognition may be different independence milestones.
Cold War connections and local agency must both be examined.
World and European transformations from the revolutionary age through the Cold War and beyond
Dual revolution: French politics and British industry interact; neither explains 1789–1914 alone.
Key German dates: Zollverein 1834, railway 1835, Paulskirche constitution 1849, Gründerkrach 1873.
Bismarck's 1883–89 insurance laws were both welfare and anti-socialist strategy.
The Sonderweg is a contested thesis (Blackbourn/Eley), not a datum.
Compete the theories: Hobson/Lenin, Schumpeter, Cain and Hopkins; don't blend them.
Versailles detail: Article 231, 100,000-man army, 132 bn gold marks under the 1921 London Schedule.
Weimar stabilisation (1924–29) and collapse (after 1929) must be explained separately.
Fischer's war-guilt thesis and the centenary July-crisis debate are positions, not settled facts.
Key distinctions: Fire Decree 28 February 1933; Enabling Act adopted 23 March and promulgated 24 March 1933; Nuremberg Laws 1935; November pogrom 1938.
Wannsee, 20 Jan 1942, coordinates an ongoing genocide; it is not its starting point.
The invasion of the Soviet Union inJune 1941 was followed by a major expansion of systematic mass shootings; shooting was itself a method of murder.
Intentionalism vs. functionalism and Goldhagen vs. Browning must be named as positions.
Bloc dates: Marshall Plan 1947, NATO 1949, Warsaw Pact 1955, Wall 1961.
Ostpolitik chain: Moscow and Warsaw Treaties 1970, Basic Treaty 1972, Helsinki 1975.
Integration chain: ECSC 1951, Rome 1957, SEA 1986, Maastricht 1992.
Wandel durch Annäherung describes change through rapprochement; assess its aims and effects without attributing 1989 to a single policy.
1990–91: Two-Plus-Four, Charter of Paris, Soviet dissolution; a moment of institutionalism.
Srebrenica 1995 and Kosovo 1999 test the tension between human rights and UN-mandate rules.
Enlargement waves 2004/2007 and NATO's 1999/2004 rounds shape later Russian perceptions.
Key dates: 9/11 2001, Iraq 2003, Crimea 2014, Zeitenwende 27 Feb 2022.
Historical evidence, chronology and justified interpretation
Identify provenance, audience, genre and transmission before judging evidentiary value.
A normative text does not by itself establish actual compliance.
Chronological sequence alone does not prove a causal mechanism.
Periodization is an interpretation with explicit criteria.
Different perspectives remain subject to evidence and contextual evaluation.