World History 1914 to the Present: Wars, Cold War, Decolonization, Globalization
This is the largest slice of the exam: the two world wars, the Cold War, decolonization, globalization, and human rights. Questions typically require you to separate long-term causes from triggers, identify turning points, and read documents for perspective. Expect stimuli such as speeches, treaties, maps of alliances, and United Nations materials.
Core content
- WWI: long-term causes summarized as militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 as the trigger. Total war, trench warfare, and the Treaty of Versailles (1919) with its war-guilt clause and reparations.
- Interwar: Russian Revolution (1917), Great Depression (1929), Mussolini in power 1922, Hitler 1933, appeasement at Munich in 1938.
- WWII and aftermath: the Holocaust; Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945); the United Nations; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
- Cold War: containment, Truman Doctrine (1947), Marshall Plan, NATO (1949) and Warsaw Pact (1955), Berlin Wall (1961–89), Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), and proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.
- Decolonization: Indian independence and partition (1947), Ghana (1957) under Nkrumah, Algeria (1962), the Non-Aligned Movement (1961).
- Globalization and human rights: trade blocs, the internet, the end of apartheid (1994), the Rwandan genocide (1994).
Worked example
A CRQ provides a 1947 speech by a US official denouncing Soviet expansion. To source it, identify the speaker's position, the date, the audience, and the purpose, which was building congressional support for aid to Greece and Turkey. That purpose does not make the document worthless; it tells you what the speaker was trying to accomplish and limits what the document can prove.
Traps
Mixing WWI and WWII causes; describing the Cold War as direct combat between superpowers; assuming decolonization was peaceful everywhere; ignoring the perspectives of newly independent states.