World History: revolutions, world wars and the interwar years
World History in this paper concentrates on the great revolutions, the two world wars and the interwar decades. The examiner wants causal analysis, comparative judgement and a firm grip on dates, treaties and institutions.
Foundations
- Revolutions. American (1776); French (1789: fiscal crisis, Estates-General, Bastille, Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Terror, Napoleon's rise); Russian (February 1917 - bread riots and the fall of the Tsar; October 1917 - Bolshevik seizure under Lenin; 1905 as the "dress rehearsal").
- First World War. Alliance blocs, Anglo-German naval rivalry, Morocco and Balkan crises, Sarajevo and the July Crisis of 1914; Versailles 1919; the League of Nations.
- Interwar. Weimar fragility and hyperinflation in 1923; Wall Street Crash 1929; Stalin's Five-Year Plans and collectivisation; Mussolini's March on Rome 1922; Hitler's chancellorship 1933; appeasement and Munich 1938; the Nazi–Soviet Pact 1939.
- Second World War. 1939–45; the Holocaust; Pearl Harbor 1941; Stalingrad; Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Worked example
Question: Was the Treaty of Versailles chiefly responsible for the Second World War?
Reasoning: build the case for the treaty - Article 231, reparations fixed at 132 billion gold marks, army and air-force limits, territorial losses - then qualify it: the Depression destroyed Weimar's legitimacy, the League lacked enforcement powers, appeasement encouraged revisionism, and Stalin's calculations mattered too. A strong answer judges Versailles a necessary but not sufficient cause, anchoring each step with a specific date.
Traps
- Collapsing the February and October Revolutions into one event.
- Treating the League of Nations as identical to the UN.
- Making the French Revolution end in 1789.
- Confusing fascism with Nazism.
- Offering a monocausal explanation of either world war.