World History: Revolutions, Nationalism and the World Wars
What this domain tests
Revolutionary upheavals, nationalism and the two World Wars. Expect questions on causes and consequences, comparative revolutions, the failure of the League of Nations and the postwar settlement.
Core concepts
- Revolutions: American (1776) independence from Britain; French (1789) fiscal crisis, estates, Bastille, Declaration of the Rights of Man, republic (1792), Terror; Russian (1917) February overthrow of tsarism, October Bolshevik seizure, civil war.
- Industrial Revolution: mechanisation, factory system, urbanisation and uneven development.
- Nationalism: Italian and German unification; Balkan nationalism as a factor in 1914.
- World Wars: alliance systems, militarism, imperialism and the Sarajevo assassination; Treaty of Versailles; the League's weakness; WWII and the UN.
Worked example
Question: Compare the French and Russian revolutions. Reasoning: both began with fiscal and military crisis, weakened monarchy and mobilised peasants and urban crowds. But the French Revolution attacked feudal privilege and produced liberal, bourgeois citizenship; the Russian Revolution, shaped by WWI and Marxist organisation, produced a socialist one-party state. Compare causes, class bases and outcomes separately.
Traps that cost marks
Dating the French Republic to 1789; merging February and October 1917; explaining WWI by a single cause; assuming the Treaty of Versailles caused WWII alone; confusing Italian and German unification leaders.