UPSC GS Paper-I — WORLD HISTORY

Complete Mains Notes, Mind-Maps, Timeline, Revision Summaries & Model Answers

Based on the PW OnlyIAS World History study material + UPSC Previous-Year Question trends (selfstudyhistory.com).

Syllabus covered: History of the World from the 18th century — Industrial Revolution, World Wars, Redrawal of National Boundaries, Colonization & Decolonization, and political philosophies (Communism, Capitalism, Socialism) — their forms and effect on society.

How to use this document

Part 1 – Topic-wise Notes: Exam-depth but compressed. Each topic gives you enough to write a full 250-word (or longer) answer.
Part 2 – Mind-Maps: Text/outline maps for fast recall.
Part 3 – Master Timeline: One continuous timeline of modern world history.
Part 4 – Last-Minute Revision Summaries: One tight box per topic.
Part 5 – Model Answers: ~35 grouped model answers covering the ~100 previous-year/practice questions from the linked question bank.

PART 1 — TOPIC-WISE NOTES

TOPIC 1 — THE ENLIGHTENMENT (THE AGE OF REASON)

[Very high weight — UPSC 2014, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023]

Context & Meaning

The Enlightenment (18th century, the “Century of Philosophy”) was an intellectual movement that made human reason, not faith, tradition or authority, the test of truth. It challenged the twin pillars of the ancien régime — absolute monarchy and the Catholic Church — and held that society, politics and economy could be reformed scientifically to advance human progress and happiness. France was its hub (the philosophes and Diderot’s Encyclopédie), with strong currents in Scotland and Germany.

Sources / Roots

Greek rationalism (Aristotle) — order in nature is knowable by reason.
Renaissance & Reformation — revived classical learning, broke the Church’s intellectual monopoly, promoted individualism.
Scientific Revolution — Bacon, Descartes, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton. Newton’s laws gave confidence that natural and social laws could be discovered by reason. (UPSC 2020: Enlightenment as a continuation of the Scientific Revolution.)

Key Thinkers & Ideas

Locke — natural rights (life, liberty, property), government by consent/social contract, mind as “blank slate” (tabula rasa).
Montesquieu — separation of powers (legislature, executive, judiciary); shaped the US Constitution.
Voltaire — freedom of speech, religious toleration, separation of church & state; satire against bigotry and despotism.
Rousseau — The Social Contract; sovereignty of the General Will; “Man is born free but everywhere in chains.” (UPSC 2022 — Rousseau “kindled the spirit of the Enlightenment.”)
Kant — defined enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”; Sapere aude (“dare to know”); but his critique of pure reason and rehabilitation of conscience marked a reaction against extreme rationalism (UPSC 2017).
Adam Smith — The Wealth of Nations (1776); free-market capitalism, the “invisible hand,” minimal state interference.
Diderot — Encyclopédie, disseminating reason. Mary Wollstonecraft — A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, early feminism.

Religious dimension

Spectrum from Deism (rational belief in a creator-God of natural law) to skepticism, materialism and atheism. Reason was turned upon revelation itself.

Effects on Society

Ideological fuel for the American and French Revolutions (Declaration of Independence; Declaration of the Rights of Man).
Enlightened Despotism (Frederick the Great, Catherine II, Joseph II) — rulers adopted reform but rarely surrendered absolute power (UPSC: despots “not necessarily politically liberal”).
Seeded liberalism, democracy, secularism, capitalism and later socialism.
Limits/backlash: the Romantic movement revolted against cold rationalism; the Reign of Terror showed the dark side of abstract reason. Hence Kant’s “the age was not yet enlightened.”

Exam angle

Recurrent debate: Was the link between Enlightenment ideas and the French Revolution direct or “remote and indirect”? Best line: ideas supplied the vocabulary, legitimacy and critique, but the Revolution was triggered by fiscal-social-economic crisis — ideas sustained more than caused it.

TOPIC 2 — THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

[Core syllabus item; UPSC 1990, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 — very heavy]

Meaning

The transition (c.1760 onward) from agrarian, handicraft, rural economies to machine-based, factory, urban economies — first in Britain, then Europe, USA, Russia, Japan. “Whoever says Industrial Revolution, says cotton.”

Why Britain First? (very frequent question)

Capital from commerce, banking, and colonial/Atlantic trade.
Colonies & markets — captive raw material (cotton) and export markets, esp. India.
Agricultural Revolution + Enclosures — surplus food, surplus labour freed for factories.
Coal & iron in abundance and proximity.
Political stability, rule of law, property rights (post-1688 settlement); no internal tariff barriers.
Scientific/technical climate — patents, inventors; navigable rivers, ports, canals.
Demographic growth providing labour and demand.

Key inventions

Flying shuttle (Kay), Spinning Jenny (Hargreaves), Water frame (Arkwright), Mule (Crompton), Power loom (Cartwright); Watt’s steam engine; coke-smelting (Darby); railways (Stephenson); telegraph. Textiles → coal/iron → transport → engineering.

Spread / variants (UPSC 2019, 2024)

France — slower, smaller scale, more state-guided, less disruptive.
Germany — late but rapid; heavy industry, cartels, banks, state support; basis of unification’s “coal and iron.”
Russia — overwhelmingly state-driven (Witte’s policies, railways, foreign capital) atop a backward agrarian base (UPSC 2024: “the state was the most important factor”).
USA & Japan (Meiji) — state-fostered late industrialisation.
Colonial India — de-industrialisation of handicrafts; selective, dependent industrialisation serving metropolitan interests.

New classes: industrial bourgeoisie and urban proletariat; decline of artisans.
Urbanisation, slums, factory discipline, child & woman labour, long hours.
“Put mobility in place of stability” (UPSC 1990/2018) — broke fixed feudal/agrarian order; created social and geographic mobility but also insecurity.
Rise of trade unions, Chartism, factory acts, socialism and Marxism as responses.
Intellectual reflections: Adam Smith (free market), Malthus (population), Bentham (utilitarianism) — the middle-class worldview (UPSC 2023).
Weber thesis: Protestant ethic aided capitalism’s spirit.

Effect on society (balance sheet)

Raised aggregate wealth, productivity and living standards over the long run; but short-term exploitation, inequality and dislocation “jolted the social conscience of England,” producing reform and the labour movement. Globally it powered new imperialism (markets + raw materials).

TOPIC 3 — POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES: CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM

[Core syllabus item #5 — forms and effects on society; UPSC 2022, 2023, 2024]

A. CAPITALISM

Definition: economic system where trade, industry and the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, coordinated by markets and prices, not the state.
Features: private property, profit motive, free markets, competition, wage labour, capital accumulation.
Founding text: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) — “invisible hand,” division of labour, laissez-faire.
Forms: mercantile/commercial → industrial → finance/monopoly capitalism (trusts, cartels) → welfare/state-regulated capitalism → neo-liberal/global capitalism.
Effects: unprecedented growth, innovation, rising output; but inequality, boom-bust cycles, labour exploitation — provoking socialist critique and the welfare state.

B. SOCIALISM

Core idea: social (public/collective/cooperative) ownership and democratic control of the means of production to achieve equality; a response to capitalism’s inequality. Intellectual ancestry traced to Plato’s Republic and More’s Utopia.

(i) Utopian (Pre-Marxian) Socialism (UPSC repeatedly) - Founders: Saint-Simon (technocracy/industrialism), Charles Fourier (cooperative “phalanstères”), Robert Owen (New Lanark model, cooperatives), Louis Blanc (France — “social workshops,” “the State is the banker of the poor”). - Method: moral persuasion, model communities, appeal to reason/ethics — not revolution. - Marx’s critique: idealistic, no class analysis, no agent (the proletariat) or transition strategy.

(ii) Scientific Socialism / Marxism (UPSC 2022, 2023) - Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848), Das Kapital (1867). - Three pillars: Historical/Dialectical Materialism (economic base shapes superstructure; history moves slavery→feudalism→capitalism→socialism→communism); Class Struggle (“history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”); Theory of Surplus Value (capitalists appropriate value workers create → exploitation). - “Capitalism produces its own grave-diggers” (the proletariat). Change comes by revolution, not reform. - Engels — co-author; popularised, funded and organised Marxism; Anti-Dühring, Origin of the Family. (UPSC 2022: did Engels do more than Marx to popularise Marxism?) - The Internationals: First (1864, London — Marx; split 1872 with Bakunin), Second (1889 — reformist/revisionist debate, collapsed in WWI), Third/Comintern (1919 — Lenin).

C. COMMUNISM

The stateless, classless end-stage in Marx’s scheme: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”; abolition of private property.
Leninism adapted Marx for backward Russia — vanguard party, democratic centralism, imperialism as “highest stage of capitalism.” Realised in the USSR (1917), then China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.

Effects on society (comparative)

Capitalism = dynamism + inequality; Socialism/Communism = equality/security aims but, in their state-communist form, central planning, single-party rule, suppression of liberty. The 20th century was substantially a contest between these forms (Cold War), ending with the collapse of Soviet communism (1991) and the spread of mixed/welfare economies.

TOPIC 4 — THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR

[UPSC 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024]

A. American Revolution (1775–83)

Causes - “No taxation without representation” — Stamp Act (1765), Townshend duties, Tea Act; Boston Massacre (1770), Boston Tea Party (1773), Intolerable Acts. - Mercantilism & Navigation Acts strangled colonial commerce. - Enlightenment ideas (Locke’s natural rights) + colonial self-government experience — “a people come of age.” - British mismanagement — lack of statesmanship in London in the 1760s–70s (UPSC 2022).

Course: First Continental Congress (1774) → Lexington & Concord (1775) → Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776 (Jefferson, Lockean) → French alliance (1778, decisive) → Yorktown (1781) → Treaty of Paris 1783.

Significance (UPSC 2018 — “transformed Europe as well as America”) - First successful anti-colonial revolution; created a republic founded on rights and popular sovereignty. - Inspired the French Revolution and later Latin American independence. - Model of a written, federal, republican constitution with separation of powers and Bill of Rights.

B. The US Constitution (1787)

Drafted at Philadelphia; federalism, separation of powers, checks & balances, Bill of Rights.
Charles Beard’s thesis — an “economic document” protecting propertied interests (debate: how far English in origin? how far economic?).

C. American Civil War (1861–65)

Causes (UPSC 2024): clash between the industrial, free-labour North and the agrarian, slave-based South; disputes over slavery’s extension to new states, tariffs, states’ rights. Lincoln’s election (1860) → secession → war.

Course/outcome: Emancipation Proclamation (1863), Gettysburg, Northern victory (1865); 13th–15th Amendments abolished slavery.

Consequences (UPSC 2021 — indirect effects more important): preserved the Union; ended slavery; ensured Northern industrial-capitalist model would shape US development → rise of the USA as an industrial power. Lincoln’s thesis: slavery had to be decided, not endlessly compromised.

TOPIC 5 — THE FRENCH REVOLUTION & NAPOLEON

[Highest weight — UPSC 1996, 1997, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023]

A. Causes of the French Revolution (1789)

Long-term/structural + immediate (UPSC 2020): - Social: rigid Estates — First (clergy), Second (nobility) privileged & tax-exempt; Third Estate (98%) bore taxes — bourgeoisie, peasants, urban poor. - Political: Bourbon absolutism, inefficiency, Louis XVI’s weak rule. - Economic: state bankruptcy (American war, court extravagance), bad harvests (1788), bread prices, unemployment. - Intellectual: philosophes (Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu) delegitimised the old order — “lofty ideas inspired and sustained it” (UPSC 1997/2020), though the trigger was fiscal-social crisis. - American example inspired (UPSC).

B. Course (key milestones)

Estates-General → National Assembly & Tennis Court Oath (June 1789) → Fall of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 → Declaration of the Rights of Man (Aug 1789) → abolition of feudalism → Civil Constitution of the Clergy → Constitution of 1791 (constitutional monarchy) → War (1792), Republic declared → Reign of Terror (1793–94, Robespierre/Jacobins) → Thermidorian reaction → Directory (1795) → Napoleon’s coup, 1799 (18 Brumaire).

C. Significance

Destroyed feudalism & privilege; proclaimed liberty, equality, fraternity, popular sovereignty, secularism.
Removed both “religious and secular props of the old order” (UPSC 1996).
Spread nationalism and liberalism across Europe; the Declaration of Rights = “death-warrant of privilege.”
Limits: “achieved far less than it intended” — Terror, then Napoleon’s autocracy; full democracy deferred.

D. Napoleon Bonaparte

“Child of the Revolution” yet betrayer of it: consolidated revolutionary gains while ending its liberty. - Reforms (fused old & new France — UPSC 2009/2012): Napoleonic Code (Code Civil) — equality before law, property rights, secular civil law (his “most enduring achievement”); Concordat (1801) with the Pope; Bank of France, centralised administration (prefects), meritocracy, education (lycées), Legion of Honour. - Wars & fall: dominated Europe; the Continental System (economic blockade of Britain) backfired — “monument of misdirected energy” (UPSC 2021); the Peninsular/“Spanish ulcer” drained him; Russian disaster (1812); defeated at Leipzig (1813) and Waterloo (1815). - Legacy: carried Revolutionary principles (Code, nationalism, anti-feudalism) across Europe — “ironically the creator of modern Germany/Italy.”

TOPIC 6 — RISE OF NATIONALISM & UNIFICATION OF ITALY AND GERMANY

[Very high weight — UPSC almost every year; 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024]

A. Background

Nationalism = identity based on shared language, culture, history, territory. Boosted by French Revolution & Napoleon, the Romantic movement (Herder, language, folk culture), and the Industrial Revolution.
Congress of Vienna (1815, Metternich) restored conservatism & “balance of power,” suppressing nationalism — provoking the Revolutions of 1830 & 1848 (“springtime of peoples,” which failed but seeded later unifications).
Crimean War (1853–56) broke the Concert of Europe and isolated Russia/Austria, opening space for Piedmont and Prussia.

B. Unification of Italy (Risorgimento, 1859–70)

Pre-1860 Italy = patchwork (Sardinia-Piedmont, Austrian Lombardy-Venetia, Papal States, Bourbon Two Sicilies). Three architects: - Mazzini (“the Heart”) — Young Italy, republican idealist, moral-spiritual nationalism. - Cavour (“the Brain”) — PM of Sardinia; realpolitik, economic modernisation, French alliance (Plombières); provoked war with Austria (1859) → gained Lombardy; central duchies plebiscites. - Garibaldi (“the Sword”) — Expedition of the Thousand (Red Shirts, 1860) conquered Sicily & Naples, handed to Victor Emmanuel II. Completion: Kingdom of Italy proclaimed 1861 (Victor Emmanuel II king); Venetia 1866 (via Austro-Prussian War); Rome 1870 (after France withdrew during Franco-Prussian War). Post-unification problems: North–South divide, Church hostility (settled by Lateran Treaty 1929), poverty/emigration.

C. Unification of Germany (1864–71)

Foundations: Zollverein (customs union — “coal and iron”), 1848 failure, Prussian economic & military strength.
Bismarck (“Iron Chancellor”), Junker conservative, realpolitik, “blood and iron.” Three wars:
1. Danish War (1864) — Schleswig-Holstein.
2. Austro-Prussian (Seven Weeks’) War (1866) — excluded Austria; North German Confederation.
3. Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) — defeated France; brought in southern states.
German Empire proclaimed at Versailles, Jan 1871, Wilhelm I as Kaiser; France ceded Alsace-Lorraine (seed of future enmity).
Comparison (UPSC): Cavour & Bismarck both used realpolitik, diplomacy, war, a strong core state and a national monarchy; but Italy was weaker, less industrial (“made by diplomacy”) whereas Germany emerged a dominant military-industrial power — altering the European balance and the road to WWI. Debate: “coal and iron” (economic) vs “blood and iron” (military) — both were essential.

D. Other nationalisms

Eastern Question / Crimean War / Congress of Berlin (1878) — decline of Ottoman Turkey; Balkan nationalisms (“powder keg”).
Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (1867) — multi-national tensions.
Asian/African nationalism differed — it was anti-colonial, mass-based, often fused with religion/anti-racism, reactive to European rule, not the European “one nation-one state” model (UPSC 2023).

TOPIC 7 — COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM & DECOLONISATION

[Core syllabus #4; UPSC 2013, 2014, 2023 — very heavy]

A. Concepts

Imperialism = a state’s policy of extending power/dominion beyond its borders (from Latin imperium). Colonialism = its most direct form — settlement and full administrative control.
Forms of control: colony (direct rule), protectorate (internal self-rule, external power controls defence/foreign affairs), sphere of influence (economic/strategic dominance, e.g., China after the 1899 Open Door).

B. Causes of “New Imperialism” (post-1870) — the big question

Economic (Hobson–Lenin): Industrial Revolution’s hunger for raw materials, markets and investment outlets for surplus capital; the 1873–96 depression; protectionism → “sheltered markets.” Lenin: imperialism = “highest stage of capitalism.”
Political/strategic: great-power rivalry, naval bases (Suez Canal), prestige, balance of power.
Nationalism & prestige — “new imperialism was nationalistic, not (only) economic” (debate).
Ideological/cultural: Social Darwinism, racial “superiority,” Christian missionary “civilising mission,” Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden.”

C. Case studies

Scramble for Africa (1884–1914): Berlin Conference (1884–85) partitioned Africa on paper; artificial borders ignoring ethnic realities → lasting instability (“Africa chopped into states by accident of European competition,” UPSC 2013). South Africa — diamonds/gold drove British imperialism (Cecil Rhodes; Boer Wars) (UPSC 2023).
China — “century of humiliation” (1839–1949): Opium Wars (1839–42, 1856–60), Treaty of Nanking (1842) (Hong Kong, treaty ports, extraterritoriality), spheres of influence, Open Door, Self-Strengthening Movement, Boxer Rebellion — domination without annexation.
Indonesia (Dutch East Indies): the Culture System (Cultuurstelsel) — forced cash-crop cultivation; systematic exploitation; dismantled under liberal/ethical critique.
Japan — Meiji Restoration (1868): unique — defensive modernisation that avoided colonisation and made Japan itself an imperial power (Korea, China, Taiwan), 1853 (Perry) → 1894 (Sino-Japanese War).

D. Effects of colonialism

Drain of wealth, de-industrialisation, famines, racial subordination; but also railways, ports, Western education, legal systems (mixed legacy).
“Colonialism deprives a society of freedom, wealth and its very character” (Aimé Césaire / Fanon line, UPSC 2013).

E. Decolonisation (post-1945)

Drivers: WWII weakened Europe; rise of USA & USSR (both anti-colonial in rhetoric); UN Charter & self-determination; mass nationalist movements; economic unviability of empire.
Asia: India/Pakistan (1947), Indonesia (1949), Indochina (1954), etc. Africa: “Year of Africa” 1960; Ghana (1957) first; Algeria (1962). Latin America decolonised earlier (19th c.).
Aftermath: arbitrary borders, partition violence, weak institutions, neo-colonialism (continued economic dependence) — “decolonisation refuses to become history” (UPSC 2013).

TOPIC 8 — FIRST WORLD WAR (1914–18) & ITS AFTERMATH

[Core syllabus #2 & #3 — World Wars + Redrawal of Boundaries]

Causes (MAIN + spark)

Militarism — arms & naval race (Anglo-German).
Alliances — Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) vs Triple Entente (France, Russia, Britain).
Imperialism — colonial rivalries (Morocco crises, etc.).
Nationalism — Pan-Slavism vs Pan-Germanism; the Balkans = “powder keg” (Eastern Question, decaying Ottoman Empire).
Spark: assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo (28 June 1914) by Gavrilo Princip → Austrian ultimatum to Serbia → alliance chain-reaction.

Course (in brief)

Schlieffen Plan → invasion of Belgium → trench warfare/stalemate on the Western Front; war at sea (U-boats, Lusitania); 1917 — USA enters, Russia exits (Revolution, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918); Armistice 11 Nov 1918.

Peace Settlement — Paris 1919 (Redrawal of Boundaries)

Treaty of Versailles (Germany): war-guilt clause (231), huge reparations, loss of Alsace-Lorraine, colonies (as Mandates), Rhineland demilitarised, army limited, Polish Corridor. (“Carthaginian peace” — Keynes.)
Treaties of St. Germain (Austria), Trianon (Hungary), Neuilly (Bulgaria), Sèvres (Turkey, later Lausanne 1923).
New map of Europe: break-up of German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires; birth of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Finland, Baltic states — based loosely on self-determination (Wilson’s 14 Points) but leaving minorities & grievances.
League of Nations created.

Verdict & effects

A flawed peace — too harsh to reconcile, too soft to cripple. Bred German revanchism, economic chaos, and the conditions for fascism and WWII. Effects: ~10 million dead, economic ruin, redrawn boundaries, decline of Europe, rise of USA & USSR, stimulus to anti-colonial nationalism.

TOPIC 9 — RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1917) & RISE OF THE USSR

[Links to syllabus #5 — Communism realised]

Causes

Tsarist autocracy (Nicholas II), no real reform after 1905.
Peasant land hunger, industrial worker misery, backward economy.
WWI catastrophe — military defeats, food shortages, inflation — the immediate trigger.
Revolutionary ideology — Bolsheviks (Lenin), Mensheviks, SRs.

The Two Revolutions of 1917

February Revolution — fall of the Tsar; Provisional Government + Soviets (dual power); continued the war (its fatal error).
October Revolution — Bolsheviks seize power (Lenin, Trotsky); “Peace, Land, Bread”; “All power to the Soviets.”

Consolidation

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) exited WWI; Civil War (1918–21) Reds vs Whites; War Communism → NEP (1921) (limited markets).
USSR formed (1922); Lenin dies 1924 → Stalin: collectivisation, Five-Year Plans, rapid industrialisation, purges/Great Terror, totalitarian state.

Significance

First socialist state; model & sponsor of world communism (Comintern); transformed Russia into an industrial-military superpower; ideological pole of the 20th century → Cold War.

TOPIC 10 — THE INTERWAR YEARS: FASCISM, NAZISM, DEPRESSION, LEAGUE

[Background to WWII; political philosophies’ dark forms]

Great Depression (1929)

US Wall Street Crash (Oct 1929) → global slump, mass unemployment, collapse of trade.
Discredited liberal capitalism; boosted state intervention (Roosevelt’s New Deal) and extremist politics.

Fascism (Italy) & Nazism (Germany) — “forms and effect on society”

Fascism (Mussolini, 1922 March on Rome): ultra-nationalist, authoritarian, anti-communist, anti-liberal, corporatist, cult of state & leader, militarism.
Nazism (Hitler, 1933): racial ideology (Aryan supremacy, anti-Semitism), Lebensraum, Führerprinzip, totalitarian terror, rearmament; arose from Versailles humiliation + Depression + fear of communism + Weimar’s weakness.
Spain: Franco (Civil War 1936–39).
Effect on society: suppression of liberty, militarisation, propaganda, persecution → road to genocide and war.

League of Nations — why it failed

Absence of USA, exclusion of USSR/Germany initially; no army; unanimity rule; tied to Versailles; failed at Manchuria (1931), Abyssinia (1935), Rhineland (1936).
Appeasement (Munich 1938) emboldened Hitler.

TOPIC 11 — THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1939–45)

[Core syllabus #2]

Causes

Treaty of Versailles grievances; rise of fascism/Nazism; failure of the League & appeasement; Great Depression; Hitler’s expansionism (Rhineland, Anschluss, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia); Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939); invasion of Poland (1 Sept 1939).

Course (brief)

Blitzkrieg, fall of France (1940), Battle of Britain; Operation Barbarossa (USSR, 1941); Pearl Harbor → USA enters (Dec 1941); turning points — Stalingrad, El Alamein, Midway (1942–43); D-Day (1944); fall of Berlin (May 1945); atomic bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki → Japan surrenders (Aug 1945).

Consequences (huge)

~60–70 million dead; the Holocaust.
Redrawal of boundaries again — Poland shifted west; Germany divided; Iron Curtain descends over Eastern Europe.
Decline of Europe, emergence of two superpowers (USA & USSR) → Cold War.
Birth of the United Nations (1945); decolonisation accelerates; nuclear age begins; Bretton Woods economic order.

TOPIC 12 — THE COLD WAR & DECOLONISATION ERA (1945–91)

[Syllabus #4, #5; “redrawal” of the geopolitical map]

Nature & origins

Ideological-geopolitical rivalry between US-led capitalist West and USSR-led communist East; “war” fought by every means short of direct great-power war — propaganda, arms race, espionage, proxy wars, blocs.
Origins: wartime distrust, Soviet control of Eastern Europe, Iron Curtain (Churchill 1946), atomic monopoly.

Key phases & events

Containment: Truman Doctrine (1947), Marshall Plan, NATO (1949) vs Cominform/Warsaw Pact (1955).
Berlin Blockade & Airlift (1948–49); Berlin Wall (1961).
Korean War (1950–53); Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) — closest to nuclear war.
Vietnam War; arms race & MAD; the Thaw/Détente (1970s — SALT).
Spread of communism — China (Mao, 1949), Eastern Europe, Cuba, Indochina.
Non-Aligned Movement (1961) — the Third World as a force.

End of the Cold War

Gorbachev — Glasnost & Perestroika; fall of the Berlin Wall (1989); collapse of Eastern European communism; disintegration of the USSR (1991) → unipolar moment.

Decolonisation & the Third World

Post-1945 collapse of empires (see Topic 7E). Third World = newly independent, non-aligned, developing nations seeking a “third path” between the blocs; NAM, Bandung (1955), demands for a New International Economic Order.

TOPIC 13 — REDRAWAL OF NATIONAL BOUNDARIES (SYNTHESIS)

[Explicit syllabus item #3 — pull-together theme]

A recurring engine of modern history is the redrawing of maps: - Congress of Vienna (1815) — conservative restoration after Napoleon. - Unifications of Italy & Germany (1861–71) — new great powers. - Congress of Berlin (1878) & Balkan changes — Ottoman retreat. - Berlin Conference (1884–85) — partition of Africa (artificial borders). - Paris Settlement (1919–20) — collapse of four empires; new nation-states in Europe & the Mandate system in the Middle East (Sykes-Picot legacy). - Post-WWII (1945) — divided Germany, shifted Poland, Soviet bloc, divided Korea. - Decolonisation (1947–60s) — dozens of new states; partitions (India-Pakistan, Palestine/Israel 1948, Korea, Vietnam). - Post-Cold War (1991) — break-up of USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia; German reunification (1990).

Analytical line for answers: boundaries have been redrawn by war, diplomacy (congresses/treaties), nationalism and decolonisation — and artificial or punitive redrawing (Versailles, Berlin Conference, colonial partitions) repeatedly sowed future conflict, whereas boundaries reflecting genuine national/ethnic realities proved more durable.

PART 2 — MIND-MAPS (TEXT / OUTLINE FORMAT)

Read these top-down; each indented level branches from the one above. Ideal for the night before the exam.

Mind-Map 1 — ENLIGHTENMENT

ENLIGHTENMENT (Reason vs Authority)
- Roots: Greek reason → Renaissance → Reformation → Scientific Revolution (Newton)
- Thinkers: Locke (natural rights) | Montesquieu (separation of powers) | Voltaire (tolerance) | Rousseau (general will) | Kant (dare to know) | Smith (free market) | Wollstonecraft (women)
- Targets: Absolute monarchy + Church
- Outputs: American & French Revolutions | Liberalism | Secularism | Capitalism | Enlightened Despotism
- Backlash: Romanticism + Reign of Terror

Mind-Map 2 — INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (Agrarian → Industrial)
- Why Britain: capital + colonies/markets + enclosures/labour + coal & iron + stability + science
- Inventions: textiles (Jenny, mule, power loom) → steam (Watt) → iron → railways
- Spread: France (slow) | Germany (heavy/cartels) | Russia (state) | USA/Japan (state) | India (de-industrialisation)
- Society: bourgeoisie + proletariat | urbanisation | “mobility over stability”
- Reactions: unions, Chartism, Factory Acts, Socialism/Marxism, New Imperialism

Mind-Map 3 — CAPITALISM / SOCIALISM / COMMUNISM

POLITICAL ECONOMY
- Capitalism: private ownership + profit + markets | Adam Smith 1776 | forms: merchant→industrial→finance→welfare→neoliberal | effect: growth + inequality
- Socialism: social ownership + equality
  - Utopian: Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc (persuasion, model communities)
  - Scientific (Marx-Engels): historical materialism + class struggle + surplus value → revolution
  - Internationals: 1st (1864) | 2nd (1889) | 3rd/Comintern (1919)
- Communism: classless, stateless end-state | Leninism (vanguard party) → USSR/China/Cuba

Mind-Map 4 — AMERICAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR

USA
- Revolution: “No taxation w/o representation” → Tea Party → Declaration 1776 → French aid → 1783
- Constitution 1787: federal + separation of powers + Bill of Rights (Beard: economic doc)
- Civil War 1861-65: industrial North vs slave South → Emancipation 1863 → Union saved + slavery ended → US industrial rise

Mind-Map 5 — FRENCH REVOLUTION & NAPOLEON

FRENCH REVOLUTION 1789
- Causes: Estates inequality + absolutism + bankruptcy + bad harvests + philosophes + American example
- Course: Bastille → Rights of Man → Republic → Terror (Robespierre) → Directory → Napoleon 1799
- Significance: end feudalism | liberty-equality-fraternity | nationalism spreads
- NAPOLEON: Code Civil | Concordat | Bank of France | merit | wars | Continental System (blunder) | Spanish ulcer | Waterloo 1815 | “child of revolution”

Mind-Map 6 — NATIONALISM & UNIFICATIONS

NATIONALISM (post-Vienna 1815)
- Boosters: French Rev + Napoleon + Romanticism + Industrialisation
- 1830 & 1848 revolutions (fail but seed)
- ITALY (Risorgimento): Mazzini (Heart) + Cavour (Brain) + Garibaldi (Sword) → 1861 → Venetia 1866 → Rome 1870
- GERMANY: Zollverein + Bismarck (blood & iron, realpolitik) → Denmark 1864 → Austria 1866 → France 1870-71 → Empire at Versailles
- Eastern Question: Ottoman decline → Balkans powder-keg
- Asia/Africa nationalism = anti-colonial, mass-based (different from Europe)

Mind-Map 7 — IMPERIALISM & DECOLONISATION

IMPERIALISM
- Causes: economic (markets/raw materials/capital — Hobson, Lenin) + strategic + nationalism/prestige + Social Darwinism/missionary
- Forms: colony | protectorate | sphere of influence
- Cases: Africa (Berlin 1884-85, artificial borders) | China (Opium Wars, Nanking 1842, “humiliation”) | Indonesia (Culture System) | Japan (Meiji — modernised, became imperialist)
- Effects: drain + de-industrialisation + racism (mixed legacy)
- DECOLONISATION (post-1945): weakened Europe + USA/USSR + UN + mass nationalism → Asia/Africa free → neo-colonialism

Mind-Map 8 — WORLD WARS & BOUNDARIES

WORLD WARS
- WWI: MAIN causes + Sarajevo 1914 → trenches → US in/Russia out 1917 → 1918
  - Paris 1919: Versailles (war guilt, reparations) | 4 empires fall | new states | League
- Interwar: Depression 1929 | Fascism (Mussolini) | Nazism (Hitler) | League fails | Appeasement
- WWII: Poland 1939 → Barbarossa + Pearl Harbor → Stalingrad/Midway → atom bombs 1945
  - Results: UN | 2 superpowers | Cold War | decolonisation | divided Germany/Korea
- COLD WAR: Truman/Marshall/NATO vs Warsaw Pact | Berlin | Korea | Cuba 1962 | Vietnam | détente | 1989 Wall | 1991 USSR ends

PART 3 — MASTER TIMELINE OF MODERN WORLD HISTORY

Year	Event
1688	England’s Glorious Revolution (constitutional monarchy)
1748–76	Peak of the Enlightenment; Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith
1760s	Industrial Revolution begins in Britain
1765–73	American grievances: Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party
1776	US Declaration of Independence; Smith’s Wealth of Nations
1783	Treaty of Paris — US independence
1787	US Constitution drafted
1789	French Revolution; Fall of Bastille; Declaration of Rights of Man
1793–94	Reign of Terror (Robespierre)
1799	Napoleon’s coup (18 Brumaire)
1804	Napoleonic Code; Napoleon crowned Emperor
1806–13	Continental System; Peninsular War (“Spanish ulcer”)
1815	Waterloo; Congress of Vienna (conservative restoration)
1830, 1848	Liberal–nationalist revolutions across Europe
1848	Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels)
1853–56	Crimean War
1859–61	Italian unification (Kingdom of Italy, 1861)
1861–65	American Civil War; Emancipation Proclamation 1863
1864	First International (Marx); Geneva Convention
1864–71	German unification (Empire proclaimed 1871, Versailles)
1868	Meiji Restoration, Japan
1870–1914	“New Imperialism”; Scramble for Africa
1878	Congress of Berlin (Eastern Question)
1884–85	Berlin Conference — partition of Africa
1889	Second International
1894–95	First Sino-Japanese War
1914–18	First World War
1917	Russian Revolution (Feb & Oct); USA enters WWI
1919–20	Paris Peace Settlement (Versailles etc.); League of Nations
1919	Third International (Comintern)
1922	Mussolini’s March on Rome; USSR formed
1929	Wall Street Crash → Great Depression
1933	Hitler becomes Chancellor; FDR’s New Deal
1936–39	Spanish Civil War
1938	Munich Agreement (appeasement)
1939–45	Second World War
1945	Atom bombs; UN founded; Cold War begins
1947	Truman Doctrine; Marshall Plan; Indian independence
1949	NATO; Communist victory in China (Mao); Indonesia free
1950–53	Korean War
1955	Warsaw Pact; Bandung Conference
1960	“Year of Africa”
1961	Berlin Wall; Non-Aligned Movement founded
1962	Cuban Missile Crisis
1965–73	Vietnam War (US phase)
1989	Fall of the Berlin Wall
1990	German reunification
1991	Disintegration of the USSR — end of the Cold War

PART 4 — LAST-MINUTE REVISION SUMMARIES

1. Enlightenment — 18th-c. “Age of Reason”; reason over faith/authority; Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Smith; attacked monarchy + Church; fuelled American & French Revolutions, liberalism, secularism, capitalism; backlash = Romanticism + Terror. Key debate: ideas sustained more than caused the French Revolution.

2. Industrial Revolution — Britain first (capital, colonies, coal/iron, enclosures, stability); textiles→steam→railways; created bourgeoisie & proletariat, urbanisation, “mobility over stability”; varied by country (state-led in Germany/Russia/Japan; de-industrialised India); spurred unions, socialism and new imperialism.

3. Capitalism/Socialism/Communism — Capitalism: private ownership + markets (Smith 1776). Socialism: social ownership + equality — Utopian (Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc) vs Scientific (Marx-Engels: historical materialism, class struggle, surplus value, revolution). Communism: classless/stateless goal; Leninism → USSR. 20th c. = capitalism vs communism (Cold War); communism collapses 1991.

4. American Revolution & Civil War — Revolution: taxation/representation + Enlightenment → 1776 → 1783; first modern republic, inspired France. Civil War (1861-65): industrial North vs slave South → slavery abolished, Union preserved, USA’s industrial rise.

5. French Revolution & Napoleon — Causes: estates inequality, bankruptcy, philosophes, harvest crisis. Bastille 1789 → Rights of Man → Republic → Terror → Napoleon 1799. Napoleon: Code Civil, Concordat, merit, but Continental System & Spanish ulcer ruined him; Waterloo 1815. Spread revolutionary ideas & nationalism across Europe.

6. Nationalism & Unifications — Post-Vienna conservatism vs nationalism; 1848 fails. Italy: Mazzini (heart), Cavour (brain), Garibaldi (sword) → 1861/66/70. Germany: Zollverein + Bismarck’s “blood & iron” realpolitik, 3 wars → Empire 1871. Asian/African nationalism = anti-colonial, different from European.

7. Imperialism & Decolonisation — New imperialism (post-1870): economic (Lenin), strategic, prestige, Social Darwinism. Forms: colony/protectorate/sphere. Africa partitioned (Berlin 1884-85, artificial borders); China “humiliated” without annexation; Indonesia’s Culture System; Japan modernised & became imperialist. Decolonisation post-1945; legacy of neo-colonialism.

8. WWI & Aftermath — MAIN causes + Sarajevo 1914. Versailles 1919 (war guilt, reparations); four empires collapse; new European states; League created (then failed). Bred WWII.

9. Russian Revolution — Tsarist autocracy + WWI strain → Feb (Tsar falls) & Oct 1917 (Bolsheviks/Lenin). Brest-Litovsk, Civil War, USSR 1922, Stalin’s planning/terror. First socialist superpower.

10. Interwar/Fascism/Nazism — Depression 1929 discredits liberal capitalism; Mussolini (1922) & Hitler (1933) — ultra-nationalist, racist, totalitarian; League & appeasement fail → WWII.

11. WWII — Versailles grievance + fascism + appeasement → Poland 1939. Barbarossa, Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad/Midway turning points; atom bombs 1945. Results: UN, two superpowers, Cold War, decolonisation, divided Germany/Korea.

12. Cold War & Third World — US capitalism vs USSR communism; Truman/Marshall/NATO vs Warsaw Pact; Berlin, Korea, Cuba 1962, Vietnam; détente; NAM/Third World; ends with 1989 Wall & 1991 USSR collapse.

13. Redrawal of Boundaries — Vienna 1815 → unifications → Berlin 1878/1884 → Paris 1919 → 1945 division → decolonisation → 1991 break-ups. Punitive/artificial borders breed conflict; organic national borders endure.

PART 5 — MODEL ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION BANK

The ~100 questions in the linked bank are heavily repetitive. They are grouped below into themed model answers; each answer is written to ~250 words and covers all the listed variants. The questions each answer addresses are noted in italics.

A1. Nature of the Enlightenment — “What was enlightened about it?”

Covers: “What was ‘enlightened’ about the Age of Enlightenment?” (2021); “Enlightenment as continuation of the Scientific Revolution” (2020); “humanism and ideas of progress too were its constituents” (2023); “ideas were profoundly unsettling to old regime” (2014).

What was genuinely “enlightened” about the eighteenth century was its insistence that human reason, not inherited authority, was the test of truth. Kant captured it as mankind’s emergence from “self-imposed immaturity” — Sapere aude, dare to know. The movement was enlightened in three senses. First, it was rationalist and scientific: building directly on the Scientific Revolution, Newton’s demonstration that nature obeyed discoverable laws convinced thinkers that society, politics and economy were equally knowable and reformable. The Enlightenment was thus a continuation of that revolution, extending its method from the heavens to humanity. Second, it was humanist and progressive: it placed human welfare, happiness and progress at the centre, rejecting cyclical or providential views of history for a faith in improvement through education and inquiry. Humanism and the idea of progress were therefore inseparable constituents, not by-products. Third, it was critical and emancipatory: it questioned absolutism, the Church, slavery, torture and privilege, proposing natural rights, toleration and the social contract. This is precisely why it was “profoundly unsettling” to old-regime society — it delegitimised the divine right of kings and ecclesiastical authority, supplying the vocabulary of the American and French Revolutions. Yet “enlightened” must be qualified: the age retained slavery, censorship and inequality, and produced its own backlash (Romanticism, the Terror). It was less a finished enlightened condition than, in Kant’s words, “an age of enlightenment” — a society becoming enlightened.

A2. Rousseau’s political philosophy

Covers: “Rousseau’s philosophy contains seeds of Socialism, Absolutism and Democracy” (Comment); “Rousseau kindled a hope which became the spirit of the Enlightenment” (2022); “promptings of the heart more to be trusted than logic of the mind”; “Rousseau reconciled liberty of the individual with Government through the Contract” (10m).

Rousseau is the most paradoxical of the philosophes, which is why his thought is said to contain the seeds of socialism, absolutism and democracy at once. His Social Contract (1762) opens with “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains,” and seeks to reconcile individual liberty with political authority through the concept of the General Will — sovereignty residing in the whole community willing the common good. From this flow three legacies. The democratic seed: popular sovereignty, equality and government deriving legitimacy from the people, directly inspiring revolutionary republicanism. The socialist seed: his attack on private property as the origin of inequality (“the first man who fenced a plot and said ‘this is mine’…”) prefigured socialist critique. The absolutist/totalitarian seed: his claim that dissenters could be “forced to be free” by the General Will could justify majoritarian or even authoritarian coercion. Rousseau also marked the emotional turn of the age — against the cold rationalism of Voltaire, he trusted “the promptings of the heart” and natural feeling, making him a bridge to Romanticism. In this sense he “kindled a hope” — a vision of regenerated, virtuous community — that became central to the Enlightenment’s spirit even as it strained against its rationalism. His enduring contribution is the attempt to reconcile the liberty of the individual with the authority of the state through consent, making him the philosophical father of modern democratic theory while also warning of its dangers.

A3. Voltaire, Kant and the limits of reason

Covers: “Voltaire was living in the Age of Enlightenment… the age itself was not enlightened” (Kant); “Kant’s redefinition of reason and rehabilitation of conscience marked a high point in reaction against dominant rationalism” (2017); “For Kant, enlightenment is mankind’s final coming of age” (20m).

Kant’s distinction between an “age of enlightenment” and an “enlightened age” is the key to assessing both Voltaire and the movement. Voltaire epitomised Enlightenment reason — championing freedom of speech, religious toleration (“Écrasez l’infâme”), and the separation of church and state, using satire to expose bigotry and absolutism. Yet, Kant argued, the age itself was not enlightened: society still rested on superstition, privilege and despotism; people had not yet achieved the autonomous use of reason. Enlightenment was a process, not a completed state — mankind’s gradual “coming of age,” the emancipation of consciousness from “self-imposed immaturity.” Crucially, Kant himself redefined reason. In his Critique of Pure Reason, he showed reason’s limits — it cannot prove metaphysical truths (God, freedom, immortality) — and in his moral philosophy he rehabilitated conscience and duty (the categorical imperative), locating morality in the rational will rather than in sensory experience or mere calculation. This was a “high point in the intellectual reaction against the dominant rationalism” of figures like Voltaire and the materialists: Kant rescued faith, freedom and moral autonomy from a reason that threatened to dissolve them. He thus both fulfilled and corrected the Enlightenment — affirming reason’s authority while disciplining its pretensions. The synthesis is that Voltaire represents the Enlightenment’s critical, optimistic phase, while Kant represents its mature self-reflection, recognising that genuine enlightenment lay in moral autonomy, not merely in scientific confidence.

A4. Enlightened Despotism

Covers: “Despotic rulers of Europe influenced by Enlightenment began benevolent policy” (Critically examine); “Enlightened despots were not necessarily politically liberal” (10m).

Enlightened Despotism describes eighteenth-century rulers — Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, Joseph II of Austria — who absorbed Enlightenment ideas and presented themselves as “first servants of the state,” pursuing rational, reforming and apparently benevolent policies. They corresponded with philosophes (Voltaire, Diderot), promoted religious toleration, legal codification, education, administrative efficiency, agricultural improvement and curbs on the Church and serfdom (Joseph II abolished serfdom; Catherine convened a legislative commission). To this extent the claim that they “began to follow a benevolent policy” is valid — reform flowed partly from genuine conviction and partly from the practical desire for stronger, wealthier, better-administered states. However, they were “not necessarily politically liberal.” Their reforms were granted from above, never conceding popular sovereignty, constitutions or limits on royal power — the essence of Enlightenment political thought (Locke’s consent, Montesquieu’s separation of powers). Reform served to strengthen absolutism, not dismantle it: Frederick preserved the noble-dominated social order; Catherine, after Pugachev’s revolt and frightened by the French Revolution, entrenched serfdom and autocracy; Joseph II’s reforms were largely reversed. Their motive was often enlightened means for despotic ends — efficiency, taxation and military power. Thus enlightened despotism was a selective, top-down appropriation of Enlightenment administrative ideals while rejecting its political core of liberty and rights. It modernised the state without liberalising it, and its contradictions helped expose the gulf between reform-from-above and the revolutionary demand for self-government.

A5. Pre-Marxian (Utopian) Socialism

Covers: “Nature of pre-Marxian Socialism”; “France more fertile than Britain in producing Socialist theories” (20m); Louis Blanc — “the State is the banker of the poor” (20m).

Pre-Marxian or Utopian Socialism arose in the early nineteenth century as the first systematic moral response to the inequalities of industrial capitalism. Its nature was ethical and idealistic rather than revolutionary: it appealed to reason, justice and benevolence, and sought to persuade society — including enlightened employers and the state — to reorganise itself cooperatively. Its leading figures reflected national contexts. In Britain, Robert Owen combined practice with theory — his model factory at New Lanark, cooperative communities and trade-union activity gave British socialism a concrete, experimental character but limited theory. In France, socialism was more fertile in ideas: Saint-Simon envisioned a planned industrial society led by scientists and producers; Charles Fourier designed cooperative “phalanstères”; and Louis Blanc advanced the most political vision — the state as “the banker of the poor,” financing “social workshops” (ateliers sociaux) to guarantee the right to work, anticipating state socialism and the welfare state. France was thus theoretically richer (shaped by its revolutionary tradition) but achieved fewer concrete results, whereas Britain’s movement was practical but less doctrinal. Marx and Engels later called these thinkers “utopian” because they lacked a class analysis, identified no historical agent (the proletariat), relied on moral persuasion rather than struggle, and offered no transition strategy — yet Marx admired Owen and Fourier as pioneers. Pre-Marxian socialism’s enduring contribution was to place equality, cooperation and the social question on the political agenda, paving the way for scientific socialism and later social democracy.

A6. Marx, Engels and Scientific Socialism

Covers: “Engels did more than Marx to popularise Marxism” (2022); “Marxian socialism claims to be scientific” (2023); “Marxian Communism is offspring of German Hegelianism and French Socialism” (Comment).

Scientific Socialism, formulated by Marx and Engels, claimed to rest not on moral appeal but on the laws of historical development. Its scientific claim has three pillars: historical materialism (the economic mode of production determines society’s structure and drives its evolution through class conflict); the theory of surplus value (capitalists appropriate the unpaid value created by workers, the hidden mechanism of exploitation); and the prediction that capitalism’s internal contradictions would inevitably generate proletarian revolution and a classless society. It is “scientific” in claiming to explain and predict history through observable economic forces rather than wishful idealism — though critics note its predictions (immiseration, inevitable revolution in advanced states) largely failed, making the “scientific” claim contestable. Intellectually, Marxism was indeed the “offspring of German Hegelianism and French Socialism” (plus British political economy): from Hegel came the dialectic (turned “right side up” into materialism); from French socialism (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Blanc, the revolutionary tradition) came the vision of equality and class struggle; from British economists (Smith, Ricardo) came the labour theory of value. On Engels’ role: while Marx was the deeper theorist, Engels did much to popularise Marxism — he co-authored the Manifesto and The German Ideology, financed Marx, wrote accessible works (Anti-Dühring, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Origin of the Family), edited Volumes II–III of Das Kapital after Marx’s death, and systematised “Marxism” as a doctrine. Thus Engels was indispensable to its diffusion, even if Marx remained its originating mind.

A7. Causes of the American Revolution

Covers: “Lack of statesmanship in London in the 1760s-70s as a contributory factor” (2022); “American Revolution came with remarkable suddenness; talented leaders 1763-75”; “a natural and even expected event in the history of a colonial people come of age” (Comment).

The American Revolution sprang from both structural maturation and immediate political mismanagement. By the 1760s the thirteen colonies had developed a century of self-government (colonial assemblies), economic vitality, and an Enlightenment political culture rooted in Locke’s natural rights — a “people come of age.” In this sense the break was a natural and expected assertion of a maturing society against distant control. Yet revolution was not inevitable; it was precipitated by the lack of statesmanship in London. After 1763, needing revenue from the Seven Years’ War, Britain abandoned “salutary neglect” and imposed the Stamp Act (1765), Townshend duties and the Tea Act, insisting on parliamentary sovereignty while denying colonial representation — “no taxation without representation.” Clumsy coercion (the Boston Massacre, the “Intolerable Acts” after the Tea Party) radicalised moderate opinion and united the colonies. The apparent suddenness is explained by the rapid emergence, between 1763 and 1775, of a remarkable leadership cohort — Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton — who translated grievances into a coherent ideology of liberty and a continental organisation (the Continental Congress). Thus the Revolution combined deep currents (self-rule, prosperity, Enlightenment ideas, mercantilist friction) with contingent triggers (British fiscal blunders and the failure of conciliation). British inflexibility converted a constitutional dispute over taxation into a war of independence — confirming that while the colonies’ coming of age made some assertion of autonomy likely, the timing, speed and revolutionary form owed much to London’s failure of statecraft.

A8. Significance of the American Revolution

Covers: “American War of Independence transformed Europe as well as America” (2018); “ended in 1783 when Britain acknowledged independence” (2023); “to some extent the American War inspired the French Revolution” (Comment).

The American War of Independence (1775–83), concluded by the Treaty of Paris (1783) in which Britain acknowledged US sovereignty, “transformed Europe as well as America.” In America, it created the first large modern republic founded on popular sovereignty, natural rights and a written, federal constitution with separation of powers and a Bill of Rights — a working demonstration that Enlightenment principles could organise a state. In Europe, its impact was profound and several-fold. Ideologically, it proved that Enlightenment ideals were practicable, not merely speculative, energising reformers and radicals. Most directly, it inspired the French Revolution: French soldiers and officers (Lafayette) returned imbued with republican ideas; the Declaration of Independence influenced the Declaration of the Rights of Man; and France’s costly intervention on America’s side bankrupted the monarchy, precipitating the fiscal crisis that forced the calling of the Estates-General in 1789. Thus America inspired France both intellectually and, decisively, financially. More broadly, the Revolution seeded later Latin American independence movements and provided a template of anti-colonial self-determination. It also shifted the balance of empire, weakening Britain in North America while redirecting it toward Asia. Qualification: the “transformation” was gradual and partial — the new republic retained slavery, and European change had its own internal causes. Nonetheless, as the first successful colonial revolution producing a durable democratic republic, the American Revolution marked a turning point in the global history of liberty and self-government, with consequences far beyond the thirteen colonies.

A9. The American Constitution

Covers: “Every feature of the American Constitution was ultimately of English origin” (20m); “Main features of the US Federal Constitution” (10m); “Factors in drafting; Beard’s view of it as an Economic Document” (60m).

The US Constitution (1787) was the product of three influences — English inheritance, Enlightenment theory, and American interests. Its main features: a written, supreme and rigid constitution; federalism (division of powers between Union and states); separation of powers with checks and balances among legislature, executive and judiciary; a presidential system; bicameral Congress; judicial review (later, Marbury); and a Bill of Rights (1791). On the “English origin” claim: much was English-derived — the rule of law, common law, representative assemblies, habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the very rights claimed in 1776 descended from Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights and the parliamentary tradition. But the claim that “every feature” was English overstates: federalism, a written codified constitution, a separation of powers grounded in Montesquieu, republicanism without monarchy, and judicial review were either continental-Enlightenment or distinctively American innovations responding to the colonies’ experience of confederation. Charles Beard’s Economic Interpretation argued the Constitution was an “economic document” drafted by propertied creditors, merchants and bondholders to protect their interests against debtor majorities under the weak Articles of Confederation. There is force in this — the framers feared “excess of democracy” and safeguarded property — but later historians (and the document’s broad liberties) show it was not merely an economic instrument; ideology, the practical need for effective union, and compromise (over slavery and representation) were equally decisive. The Constitution thus blends English roots, Enlightenment design and American economic-political pragmatism.

A10. The American Civil War

Covers: “Victory of the North — indirect effects more important than direct” (2021); “result of disparity of needs of industrial north and agrarian south” (2024); Lincoln — “slavery had to be decided, not evaded by compromise” (2020); “If I could save the Union…” (Comment).

The American Civil War (1861–65) is best understood as a clash between two divergent socio-economic systems: the industrialising, free-labour, protectionist North and the agrarian, slave-based, free-trade South. Their “disparity of needs” — over tariffs, the extension of slavery into new western states, and states’ rights — made coexistence increasingly impossible. Lincoln’s central thesis was that the slavery question “had to be decided one way or the other and could no longer be evaded by compromise”; the era of the Missouri Compromise and Kansas-Nebraska had only deferred the conflict. His famous statement — “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it” — reveals that his primary aim was preserving the Union, with emancipation initially a means; yet the logic of war made the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) both a moral and strategic turning point, redefining the war as a struggle for freedom. The North’s victory had direct effects — the Union preserved, slavery abolished (13th–15th Amendments). But its indirect effects were arguably greater: it ensured the triumph of the Northern industrial-capitalist model over the plantation economy, clearing the way for the USA’s transformation into the world’s foremost industrial power; it strengthened federal authority over the states; and it set in motion (however incompletely) the long struggle over racial equality. Reconstruction’s failure left deep injustices, but the war settled the two questions on which the republic’s future hinged — union and slavery — and shaped American development for a century.

A11. Causes of the French Revolution

Covers: “Long-term/structural and immediate factors” (2020); “removed religious and secular props of the existing social order” (1996); “multiple contradictions and conflict among Estates before the Estates-General” (2015); “monarchical misrule ignited it, lofty ideas inspired and sustained it” (1997/2020); “philosophers laid foundation but precipitated by social and economic reasons” (2023).

The French Revolution of 1789 resulted from a convergence of long-term structural weaknesses and immediate triggers. Structurally, French society was an inegalitarian order of Estates: the First (clergy) and Second (nobility) enjoyed privilege and tax-exemption, while the Third Estate — bourgeoisie, peasants and urban workers, some 98% — bore the fiscal burden without political power. This rested on “religious and secular props” — the Church legitimising the order and the absolute monarchy sustaining privilege — both of which the Revolution would dismantle (abolition of feudalism, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the end of divine-right kingship). Politically, Bourbon absolutism under the irresolute Louis XVI was inefficient and unaccountable; “monarchical misrule” — financial mismanagement, court extravagance, support of the American war — drove the state to bankruptcy, the immediate trigger. Economically, the harvest failure of 1788, soaring bread prices and unemployment radicalised the poor. Intellectually, the philosophes (Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu) supplied a critique that delegitimised the old order and a vocabulary of rights and sovereignty — “lofty ideas both inspired and sustained” the Revolution, even if they did not single-handedly cause it. Crucially, the conflict among the Estates surfaced before the Estates-General met in 1789 — over voting “by head” versus “by order” — exposing the contradictions of the system. Thus monarchical misrule and fiscal-social crisis ignited the Revolution; Enlightenment ideas gave it direction and endurance; and the structural injustice of the Estates made upheaval, once begun, irreversible.

A12. Role of philosophers in the French Revolution — direct or indirect?

Covers: “Connection between philosophers’ ideas and the outbreak is remote and indirect” (10m); “No event as encompassing as the French Revolution occurs in an intellectual vacuum”; “writings of philosophers created revolutionary awakening / intellectual creed”; “French writers influenced by Locke and by contrasts with their own government”; “the ‘revolutionary situation’ mattered, the philosophers played no very important role.”

Historians divide over whether Enlightenment ideas caused the French Revolution or merely accompanied it. The maximalist view holds that the philosophes forged “the intellectual creed of the Revolution”: Voltaire’s assault on the Church, Rousseau’s Social Contract and General Will, Montesquieu’s separation of powers (and his admiration, via Locke, for English liberty by contrast with French absolutism) created a “revolutionary awakening” that legitimised resistance and shaped 1789’s institutions and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The minimalist view counters that the connection is “remote and indirect”: the philosophes were reformers, not revolutionaries; few sought to overthrow the monarchy; their readership was a narrow elite; and what actually “made men revolutionary almost in spite of themselves” was the concrete “revolutionary situation” — fiscal collapse, food crisis, the political deadlock of 1788–89. On this view ideas played “no very important role” in the outbreak. The balanced position, captured by “no event so encompassing occurs in an intellectual vacuum,” is that ideas and circumstances were complementary. The immediate causes were socio-economic and political; but Enlightenment thought supplied the language, legitimacy and programme that turned a fiscal crisis into a fundamental reconstruction of state and society — and, crucially, sustained the Revolution through its radical phases, when revolutionaries reached for Rousseau and natural rights to justify the Republic. Ideas were therefore less the spark than the accelerant and the blueprint: not the cause of the explosion, but what gave it shape, scope and durability.

A13. Achievements and limits of the French Revolution

Covers: “The French Revolution achieved far less than it intended” (Do you agree?); “Declaration of Rights was the death-warrant of privilege and of the ancien régime, yet belonged to the past rather than the future” (Examine).

The French Revolution’s achievements were epochal yet incomplete. Its supreme achievement was the destruction of the old order: the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) abolished feudal privilege, proclaimed equality before the law, popular sovereignty, careers open to talent, and freedom of speech and religion. It was indeed the “death-warrant of privilege” and of the ancien régime — no restoration could fully revive feudalism. The paradox in the quotation — that the Declaration “belonged to the past rather than the future” — reflects that its rights were framed as the recovery of natural, pre-existing liberties (in the Lockean tradition) rather than as a programme of future social transformation; it secured legal and political equality, not social or economic equality, leaving property and class hierarchies intact. Hence the claim that the Revolution “achieved far less than it intended.” It promised liberty, but produced the Reign of Terror; it proclaimed a republic, but ended in the autocracy of Napoleon; universal ideals coexisted with war, dictatorship and the disenfranchisement of women and the poor. Democracy in any full sense was deferred for generations. Yet to judge it a failure understates its legacy: it permanently embedded the principles of citizenship, nationalism, secularism and equality before law; spread these across Europe through the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars; and set the agenda — liberty, equality, fraternity — for two centuries of political struggle. The Revolution thus transformed the framework of modern politics even where it fell short of its own aspirations.

A14. Napoleon — child of the Revolution who reversed it / fused old and new France

Covers: “Napoleon was the child of the Revolution but reversed its aims” (Comment); “How did Napoleon fuse the old France with the new?” (2009, 2012); “Codification of French law was his most enduring achievement” (2022); “Napoleon was not a revolutionary but solidified revolutionary changes and supported Enlightenment ideas” (2020).

Napoleon embodied the Revolution’s central paradox: he was its “child” who both consolidated and betrayed it. He fused the “France of the ancien régime” with the “France of the Revolution” by preserving the Revolution’s social and legal gains while restoring the old order’s authority and hierarchy. From the Revolution he retained equality before the law, the abolition of feudalism, careers open to talent, secularism and peasant land ownership; from the old regime he revived strong central authority, a hereditary court, a nobility of merit (the Legion of Honour), and reconciliation with the Church through the Concordat of 1801. His reforms institutionalised this synthesis: the Napoleonic Code (Code Civil, 1804) — his “most enduring achievement” — codified civil equality, property rights and secular law, and was exported across Europe, outlasting his empire; the Bank of France, the franc, the prefectoral administration, the lycées and the Université created the durable machinery of the modern French state. In this sense “Napoleon was not a revolutionary but solidified the revolutionary changes” — he stabilised rather than originated, ending the chaos of the Revolution while embedding its principles. Yet he simultaneously reversed its political aims: he extinguished liberty and representative government, muzzled the press, used plebiscites to cloak dictatorship, crowned himself Emperor (1804), and restored slavery in the colonies. He thus rescued the Revolution’s social achievements at the cost of its political ideals — fusing old and new France into a centralised, meritocratic but authoritarian state whose legal and administrative legacy endures.

A15. Napoleon’s Continental System and downfall

Covers: “Napoleonic preferential stance embroiling France in continental conflict” (2019); “Napoleon’s economic war with England became his undoing” (20m); “Continental Blockade was a misconceived idea” (10m); “Continental System the greatest blunder, monument of misdirected energy” (2021); “Spanish ulcer ruined Napoleon.”

Unable to defeat Britain at sea after Trafalgar (1805), Napoleon turned to economic warfare — the Continental System (Berlin and Milan Decrees, 1806–07) — aiming to ruin “the nation of shopkeepers” by closing European markets to British trade. It proved a “monument of misdirected energy” and a principal cause of his downfall for several reasons. First, it was economically misconceived: Britain commanded the seas, global markets and colonial trade, and could not be strangled from the Continent; meanwhile the blockade hurt European (and French) economies more than Britain’s, breeding smuggling, shortages and resentment among subject and allied states. Second, enforcing it required endless expansion — to seal the coastline Napoleon had to dominate the entire Continent, “embroiling France in continental conflict.” This drove two fatal commitments. The Peninsular War — the “Spanish ulcer” — began when he tried to enforce the System against Portugal and seize Spain; it became a draining guerrilla war that bled French manpower and prestige and inspired nationalist resistance. The invasion of Russia (1812), provoked when the Tsar abandoned the blockade, destroyed the Grande Armée and shattered the myth of invincibility. Thus the economic war against England, intended to defeat Britain indirectly, instead overextended Napoleon, alienated Europe, and triggered the catastrophes in Spain and Russia that led to Leipzig (1813) and Waterloo (1815). The System’s failure shows the limits of economic coercion against a dominant maritime power, and stands as Napoleon’s greatest strategic blunder.

A16. Why the Industrial Revolution began in England (and was it a “revolution”?)

Covers: “Many reasons why the IR first happened in England” (2021); “course of English industrialisation too long to be a revolution” (2024); “Whoever says Industrial Revolution says cotton”; “Changed England in character and culture”; “Protestantism contributed to the rise of capitalism.”

The Industrial Revolution began in England (c.1760) because of a unique convergence of favourable conditions. Capital accumulated from commerce, banking and the profits of Atlantic and colonial (especially Indian) trade. Agricultural improvement and the enclosure movement raised food output and released labour for industry. England possessed abundant coal and iron in close proximity, and a network of rivers, canals and ports for cheap transport. Political stability, secure property rights and the rule of law after 1688, with no internal customs barriers, created a single national market and encouraged investment and invention (a strong patent system). A culture receptive to science and enterprise — and, on Weber’s thesis, the Protestant ethic of thrift, work and rational accumulation that “contributed substantially to the rise of capitalism” — supplied entrepreneurial energy. Cotton textiles led the way (“whoever says Industrial Revolution, says cotton”): a new, unencumbered industry with elastic colonial demand and supply, it generated the key inventions (spinning jenny, water frame, mule, power loom) and the factory system. Was it truly a “revolution”? Critics argue the process was gradual — spread over a century, uneven across sectors, with handicrafts persisting — so “revolution” overstates its suddenness. Yet the term is justified by the qualitative transformation it produced: self-sustaining growth, the factory and machine age, and above all a change in England’s character and culture — urban, industrial, class-divided and dynamic. It was revolutionary not in speed but in the depth and permanence of the break with the agrarian past.

Covers: “Far-reaching social and political consequences — assembly line, urbanisation, urban working class” (2020); “put mobility in place of stability” (1990/2018); “oppressive exploitation jolted the social conscience of England” (10m); “impact on middle-class worldview — Smith, Malthus, Bentham” (2023); “policies of governments facilitated industrialisation in Europe” (2019); “the state was the most important factor in industrialisation of Russia” (2024); “process in other countries differed from England.”

The Industrial Revolution’s social and political consequences were profound. It created two new classes — the industrial bourgeoisie and the urban proletariat — and accelerated urbanisation, factory discipline, and the assembly-line organisation of work. By uprooting people from village and craft and throwing them into mobile labour markets, it “put mobility in the place of stability,” dissolving the fixed agrarian-feudal order and enabling both social ascent and acute insecurity. The early factory system’s oppressive exploitation — child and woman labour, long hours, slums, low wages — “jolted the social conscience of England,” producing the Factory Acts, trade unions, Chartism, and ultimately socialism and Marxism. It also reshaped the middle-class worldview: Adam Smith rationalised free-market capitalism; Malthus warned that population would outstrip subsistence; Bentham’s utilitarianism (“the greatest happiness”) justified reform on rational, secular grounds — together expressing a confident, individualist, market-oriented ethos. On the role of the state, England industrialised largely through private enterprise, but on the Continent the state was decisive in facilitating “catch-up” industrialisation — through tariffs, railways, technical education, banks and direct investment (Germany’s Zollverein and heavy industry; France’s state guidance). In Russia (2024), where private capital and a bourgeoisie were weak, the state was the most important factor — Witte’s policies, state-built railways (Trans-Siberian), foreign loans and protective tariffs forced rapid industrialisation from above. Thus industrialisation’s path varied: market-led in Britain, state-led elsewhere — but everywhere it transformed class structure, politics and society.

A18. The Chartist Movement

Covers: “Chartism failed but seeded the idea of representative democracy for all citizens” (2021); “fulfilled some middle-class demands, ramifications among working class and colonies” (2023); “roots of Chartism are partly political and partly economic” (20m); “review the background; despite failure its demands were met later” (60m).

Chartism (1838–48), Britain’s first independent mass working-class movement, took its name from the People’s Charter with six demands: universal male suffrage, secret ballot, equal electoral districts, payment of MPs, abolition of the property qualification, and annual parliaments. Its roots were “partly political and partly economic.” Politically, the Reform Act of 1832 had enfranchised the middle class but excluded the workers, who felt betrayed and sought direct representation. Economically, distress drove the movement — the hardships of early industrialisation, unemployment, low wages, the trade depression of the late 1830s–40s, and resentment at the New Poor Law (1834) and its workhouses. Chartism thus fused a demand for the vote with a protest against industrial misery. As an immediate movement it failed: its three petitions (1839, 1842, 1848) were rejected by Parliament, its leadership divided between “moral force” and “physical force,” and it collapsed after 1848. Yet it succeeded historically. It established the principle that representative democracy should include all citizens, not merely the propertied, and kept the cause of reform alive. Five of its six demands were eventually achieved — through the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, the secret ballot (1872), payment of MPs (1911) and the abolition of property qualifications — leaving only annual parliaments unrealised. Its “ramifications” spread to the working-class movement, trade unionism and to the colonies’ later democratic aspirations. Chartism therefore exemplifies a movement that lost its battles but won its war: a failure in the short term that seeded modern democracy.

A19. Reform Act of 1832 and peaceful change in Britain

Covers: “First Reform Act (1832) occupies a significant place in constitutional development” (2022); “though reform was inevitable, the Act was open to grave criticism” (20m); “change in Britain came peacefully through democratic process; a functioning democracy through the ballot box” (2013); “free traders’ arguments a mixture of economics, benevolence, idealism and class prejudice” (2019).

The Reform Act of 1832 is a landmark in Britain’s constitutional development because it began the peaceful, gradual extension of democracy that distinguished Britain from revolutionary Continental Europe. It redistributed seats away from “rotten” and “pocket” boroughs to the new industrial towns (Manchester, Birmingham) and extended the franchise to the propertied middle class, recognising the political weight created by the Industrial Revolution. Its significance lies less in its scope than in its principle: it established that the constitution could be reformed by Parliament through the ballot box rather than by revolution, setting the template for the 1867 and 1884 Acts and a “functioning democracy” achieved peacefully. Yet the Act was “open to grave criticism”: it enfranchised only the middle class, excluding the working men who had agitated for it — fuelling the sense of betrayal that produced Chartism; it retained a property qualification and open voting (no secret ballot until 1872); and it left representation still uneven. It was thus a conservative reform that admitted the bourgeoisie to power to prevent revolution, not a democratic settlement. The same pragmatic, middle-class character marked the repeal of the Corn Laws (1846): the free-traders’ case mixed economic hard-headedness (cheaper food, free markets, comparative advantage), social benevolence (cheap bread for the poor), cosmopolitan idealism (free trade as international harmony) and class prejudice (manufacturers against the landed aristocracy). Together, 1832 and 1846 show Britain managing profound change incrementally and peacefully, accommodating new economic interests within the existing constitutional order.

A20. Japan’s Meiji transformation and its consequences

Covers: “How Japan industrialised after Meiji; consequences for neighbours”; “1853-1894 witnessed the transformation of Japan” (60m); “How did Japan develop between 1868 and 1894? Did the Meiji Restoration mark a sharp break with the past?” (60m).

The Meiji Restoration (1868) transformed Japan from an isolated feudal society into a modern industrial and military power within a generation. The catalyst was external: Commodore Perry’s “black ships” (1853) forced Japan open, exposing the Tokugawa shogunate’s weakness and the danger of Western domination. Reformers overthrew the shogunate and “restored” the Emperor Meiji, then pursued defensive modernisation under the slogan fukoku kyōhei (“rich country, strong army”). Between 1868 and 1894 they abolished feudalism (ending the daimyō domains and samurai privileges), built a centralised state, adopted a constitution (1889), and created modern conscript army and navy. Industrialisation was state-led: the government built railways, telegraphs, shipyards, mines and model factories, then sold them to favoured zaibatsu conglomerates; it imported foreign experts and technology and sent students abroad. Was it a “sharp break”? In institutions, economy and military it was revolutionary; but there was strong continuity — modernisation was directed by a traditional elite (former samurai), legitimised through the ancient imperial throne and Shinto, and grafted Western means onto Japanese values (wakon yōsai, “Japanese spirit, Western technology”). So the break was real but selective and controlled — modernisation without Westernisation of identity. The consequences for neighbours were grave: a strong, industrial Japan turned imperialist, defeating China in 1894–95 (acquiring Taiwan, dominating Korea) and Russia in 1905, annexing Korea (1910), and later invading Manchuria and China. Japan’s success thus inspired Asian nationalists yet also subjected its neighbours to a new, indigenous imperialism.

A21. Nationalism in Asia and Africa vs European nationalism

Covers: “Nationalism in Asia and Africa differed from European nationalism, which itself had a variety of forms” (10m); “rise of nationalism shattered the empires of modern Europe” (2021).

Nationalism is not a single phenomenon; “European nationalism itself had a variety of forms,” and Asian-African nationalism differed from all of them. Within Europe, nationalism took several shapes: the liberal-civic nationalism of the French Revolution (the nation as a community of equal citizens); the unification nationalism of Italy and Germany (welding fragmented states into one); the cultural-linguistic nationalism of the Romantics (Herder, the Volk); and the separatist nationalism of subject peoples within the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires — which ultimately “shattered the empires of modern Europe” after 1918. Asian and African nationalism differed in crucial ways. First, it was anti-colonial and reactive — directed against foreign European rule rather than at uniting or separating European peoples; it was a struggle for independence and dignity, not merely statehood. Second, it was often mass-based and cross-class, mobilising peasants and workers (as in India under Gandhi), whereas early European nationalism was frequently elite or middle-class. Third, it was frequently fused with anti-racism, religious revival and cultural reassertion against Western claims of superiority, and borrowed selectively from Western ideas (liberalism, socialism) while rejecting Western domination. Fourth, it had to construct nations from colonially-drawn, multi-ethnic territories, making post-independence nation-building far harder. Thus while European nationalism redrew the map of Europe by unification and the break-up of empires, Asian-African nationalism redrew the map of the world through decolonisation — a distinct, emancipatory and more socially inclusive form of the same underlying force.

A22. Comparison of Italian and German unification

Covers: “Comparison between Cavour’s and Bismarck’s achievements — resemblances and dissimilarities” (Comment); “Unification of Italy and Germany — contrast in ways achieved and impact on international politics” (60m).

The unifications of Italy and Germany (both completed 1870–71) reveal “striking resemblances and no less striking dissimilarities.” Resemblances: both were achieved by a strong core state (Piedmont-Sardinia; Prussia) led by a conservative realpolitik statesman (Cavour; Bismarck) who used diplomacy, war and a national monarchy rather than popular revolution. Both exploited the favourable international situation created by the Crimean War (which isolated Austria and Russia), both manipulated alliances and provoked wars (against Austria; against Denmark, Austria and France), and both harnessed but distrusted popular nationalism, channelling it under monarchical, top-down control. Dissimilarities: Italy was economically weak and militarily dependent — it gained Lombardy through French arms, Venetia and Rome only as by-products of Prussia’s wars — so unification was “made by diplomacy” and external help, and the resulting state was poor and divided (North–South). Germany, by contrast, unified through its own decisive military and industrial power (“coal and iron” as well as “blood and iron”), emerging as the strongest state on the Continent. Their impact on international politics therefore diverged sharply: a unified Italy was a second-rank power that altered the balance modestly, whereas a unified, militarised, industrial Germany overturned the European balance of power, ended French predominance, created the Alsace-Lorraine grievance, and set in motion the alliance systems and rivalries that led to the First World War. Thus, similar methods produced very different powers — and Germany’s unification, far more than Italy’s, reshaped the destiny of Europe.

A23. Stages and personalities of Italian unification

Covers: “Stages of unification 1848-1870” (2023); “Italy transformed from a geographical expression to a nation-state” (20m); “obstacles to Italian unification till 1852; methods of achievement” (60m); “course from 1848, contribution of Mazzini” (60m); Mazzini’s conception of nationality (10m); Garibaldi — “make it by revolution from the South”; “unification of Italy completed the destruction of the European order.”

Before unification, Italy was, in Metternich’s phrase, “merely a geographical expression” — a patchwork of states under Austrian dominance, the Papacy and the Bourbons. The obstacles were formidable: Austrian military control of Lombardy-Venetia, the Pope’s temporal power, regional divisions of language and economy, and the rivalry of the Italian states. The transformation came in stages. The 1848 revolutions — republican risings, Mazzini’s Roman Republic, Piedmont’s war on Austria — failed, but taught the lesson that idealism alone could not expel Austria. Mazzini (“the Heart”) had supplied the ideal — through Young Italy he preached a democratic, republican nation as a moral and spiritual mission; his “conception of nationality was not exclusive” — he envisioned a free Italy within a brotherhood of free nations (“Young Europe”), the recreation of the “moral unity of mankind.” Cavour (“the Brain”) supplied the method: as Piedmont’s PM he modernised its economy and army, won prestige in the Crimean War, secured the French alliance at Plombières, and provoked the war of 1859 that gained Lombardy and (by plebiscite) the central duchies. Garibaldi (“the Sword”) supplied the action — frustrated by diplomacy, he declared he would “make Italy by revolution from the South,” and his Expedition of the Thousand (1860) conquered Sicily and Naples, which he handed to Victor Emmanuel II. The Kingdom of Italy (1861) followed, with Venetia (1866) and Rome (1870) completing it. By replacing Austrian hegemony and Papal temporal power with a new great-ish power, unification indeed helped dismantle the conservative European order of 1815.

A24. Bismarck and German unification — “blood and iron” vs “coal and iron”

Covers: “From Bismarck’s ‘blood and iron’ speech he became the Iron Chancellor” (2020); “Napoleon kindled the national sentiment but German unity was achieved by Bismarck” (60m); “Napoleon was the creator of modern Germany” (Comment); “German unification accomplished solely by Bismarck”; “unification as much a product of coal and iron as of blood and iron” (2024); “after Sedan Europe lost a mistress and gained a master”; “isolation of France was the keystone of Bismarck’s foreign policy” (60m); Treaty of 20 May 1882 (Triple Alliance).

German unification (1864–71) is rightly associated with Bismarck’s “blood and iron” — his 1862 declaration that the great questions would be settled “not by speeches and majority votes… but by iron and blood.” As Prussian chancellor he engineered three wars — against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870–71) — isolating each opponent diplomatically and using Prussia’s military power to forge the German Empire, proclaimed at Versailles in 1871 with Wilhelm I as Kaiser. Hence “the Iron Chancellor.” But unification was not “solely” Bismarck’s work, nor purely military. Napoleon I had “kindled the national sentiment”: by destroying the Holy Roman Empire, consolidating the German states (the Confederation of the Rhine) and provoking nationalist reaction against French occupation, he was “ironically the creator of modern Germany” — the unifying idea preceded Bismarck. Equally, unification was “as much a product of coal and iron as of blood and iron” (2024): the Zollverein customs union and Prussia’s rapid industrialisation — coal, steel, railways — gave it the economic and logistical superiority that made military victory possible, and bound the states together economically before they were united politically. Bismarck supplied the decisive political will and diplomacy; but he built upon Napoleonic-era nationalism and Prussian economic power. After Sedan (1870), “Europe lost a mistress (France) and gained a master (Germany).” Thereafter Bismarck made the isolation of France the keystone of his foreign policy — the Three Emperors’ League, the Dual (1879) and Triple Alliance (May 1882, with Austria-Hungary and Italy) — to keep a vengeful France friendless and preserve the new Germany.

A25. The Eastern Question, Crimean War and Congress of Berlin

Covers: “The Crimean War was the most useless war ever waged” (Comment); “Peace with honour — Beaconsfield after the Congress of Berlin 1878” (Comment); “The Eastern Question has always been an international question” (Elucidate); “Nominally the new Turkey was republican and democratic” (Comment).

The Eastern Question — the problem of who would inherit the declining Ottoman Empire (“the sick man of Europe”) and control the strategic Straits, the Balkans and the Near East — was inherently “an international question” because no power would allow another to dominate the spoils. Russia sought access to the Mediterranean and posed as protector of Balkan Christians; Britain and France sought to prop up Turkey to block Russian expansion toward India and the Straits; Austria feared Balkan nationalism. The Crimean War (1853–56) arose directly from this — Britain and France fought alongside Turkey to check Russia. It is called “the most useless war” because it was poorly conceived and atrociously managed (Charge of the Light Brigade, disease, Florence Nightingale’s reforms), settled little permanently, and merely postponed the Eastern Question — yet it had major indirect consequences: it shattered the Concert of Europe, isolated Russia and Austria, and thereby cleared the path for Italian and German unification. The renewed crisis of 1875–78 led to the Congress of Berlin (1878), where Bismarck as “honest broker” revised the Russian-imposed Treaty of San Stefano. Disraeli (Beaconsfield) returned claiming “peace with honour” — Britain checked Russia, gained Cyprus, and reduced “Big Bulgaria”; but the settlement only redistributed Ottoman territory among the powers and frustrated Balkan nationalism, planting grievances that made the Balkans the “powder keg” of 1914. Finally, the Ottoman collapse culminated after WWI in Atatürk’s republic: “nominally republican and democratic,” modern Turkey was in practice an authoritarian, single-party, top-down modernisation — secularising and Westernising, but not yet genuinely liberal-democratic.

A26. Causes and nature of New Imperialism

Covers: “Commercial and industrial interests created a hothouse atmosphere for colonies” (2014); “Colonialism had a twisted logic of its own for commercialization… an artificial and forced process” (2023); “New imperialism was a nationalistic, not an economic phenomenon” (Comment); “Theory of the New Imperialism after 1870” (20m); “What do you understand by imperialism?”

The “New Imperialism” after 1870 — the rapid scramble for Africa and Asia — has rival explanations. The economic interpretation (Hobson, Lenin) holds that “commercial and industrial interests created a hothouse atmosphere” for colonies: the Industrial Revolution generated a hunger for raw materials, captive markets and outlets for surplus capital, intensified by the Long Depression (1873–96) and protectionism, which drove states to seek “sheltered markets.” Lenin called imperialism “the highest stage of capitalism,” the inevitable export of monopoly finance-capital. Yet imperialism “had a twisted logic of its own” — much expansion was “artificial and forced,” not strictly profitable: many colonies cost more than they earned, and territory was often seized for prospective or strategic rather than actual commercial value. This supports the non-economic interpretation — that new imperialism was substantially “nationalistic, not economic”: colonies became symbols of great-power prestige and status, objects of competitive nationalism among Britain, France, Germany and others; strategic considerations (naval bases, the Suez route, buffer zones) drove acquisition; and ideology — Social Darwinism, racial superiority and the missionary “civilising mission” (“the White Man’s Burden”) — supplied motive and justification. The balanced verdict is that imperialism was multi-causal: economic forces created the underlying drive and capacity, but nationalism, strategy and ideology determined its timing, intensity and the scramble’s competitive frenzy. As a concept, imperialism is the extension of one state’s power and dominion over other peoples — economically, politically and culturally — and after 1870 it combined all these motives in an unprecedented global partition.

A27. The Scramble for and Partition of Africa

Covers: “Critique of the partition of Africa 1870-1914, with reference to Germany’s designs” (60m); “Trace the stages in the partition of Africa; effect on international relations” (60m); “Africa chopped into states artificially created by accident of European competition” (2013); “in all the annals of Imperialism, the partition of Africa is a remarkable freak”; “unique features of imperialism in Africa”; “Colonies are like fruits which cling to the tree only till they ripen.”

The Partition of Africa (1870–1914) was a “remarkable freak” of imperial history: in barely three decades, 90% of the continent was carved up among European powers, where before 1870 they had held only coastal footholds. Its stages: early coastal trading posts and the anti-slavery patrols; then competitive penetration triggered by Leopold II’s Congo venture and Franco-British rivalry (Egypt, 1882); the Berlin Conference (1884–85), which laid down the rules (“effective occupation”) and accelerated the rush; and the final scramble for the interior, punctuated by crises (Fashoda 1898, the Moroccan crises). Germany’s designs were significant: a latecomer, Bismarck acquired colonies (German East Africa, South-West Africa, Cameroon, Togo) partly to embarrass France and balance Britain, and Wilhelmine Germany’s later Weltpolitik intensified rivalry. The partition’s defining feature was its artificiality — “Africa was chopped into states by accident of European competition.” Borders were drawn in European chancelleries with “little regard for existing ethnic, cultural and political divisions,” splitting peoples and yoking rivals together — the source of enduring post-colonial instability. Its effect on international relations was to export European rivalries into Africa and heighten great-power tension (Fashoda, Morocco), feeding the pre-1914 atmosphere. The cynical realism of empire is captured in “colonies are like fruits which cling to the tree only till they ripen” — the recognition that colonies would eventually seek independence, as indeed they did after 1945. Africa’s partition thus illustrates imperialism at its most rapid, arbitrary and consequential — economically driven, nationally competitive, and devastating in its lasting human and political legacy.

A28. British imperialism in South Africa

Covers: “British imperialism in South Africa 1867-1902 influenced by capitalist mining of diamonds” (2023); “Trace the growth of British imperialism in South Africa from 1800 to 1907” (10m).

British involvement in South Africa, from the seizure of the Cape (1806) to the Union of 1910, was transformed by the mineral revolution — strongly supporting the view that imperialism there was “influenced to a large extent by the capitalist mining of diamonds” (and later gold). In the early phase (1800–1860s), British interest was chiefly strategic — the Cape secured the sea route to India — and brought conflict with the Boers, whose Great Trek (1830s) founded the inland republics (Transvaal, Orange Free State) and with the African kingdoms (Xhosa, Zulu). The decisive change came with the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley (1867) and gold on the Witwatersrand (1886). These created enormous capitalist interests — above all Cecil Rhodes and De Beers — that fused business and empire: Rhodes became Cape premier and pursued expansion (Rhodesia) and control of the gold-rich Transvaal. Mining capital demanded a stable, British-controlled labour and political order, driving aggressive policies — the Jameson Raid (1895) and ultimately the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), fought to bring the Boer republics and their gold under British control. The war’s brutality (concentration camps, scorched earth) and its outcome — the Treaty of Vereeniging (1902) and the Union of South Africa (1910) — entrenched British paramountcy and a racial labour order. Thus while strategy explains the early Cape, the capitalist drive of diamond and gold mining is the principal explanation for the intensification of British imperialism in South Africa after 1867 — a textbook case of finance-capital shaping empire, with enduring consequences for the country’s racial and economic structure.

A29. Imperialism in China — humiliation without annexation

Covers: “Treaty of Nanking — basic act in the structure of international relations governing China” (Comment); “Importance of the Opium War in Chinese history” (20m); “Treaty Port System 1840-1860 and Chinese attitudes” (60m); “By 1861 China was fully though grudgingly opened to the Westerner”; “Why 1842-1900 is half a century of humiliation; China’s reaction” (60m); “China divided into spheres of influence”; “Western powers brought China under domination without annexation” (60m).

China between 1842 and 1900 endured a “century of humiliation” in which the Western powers achieved domination without annexation — controlling China’s trade, sovereignty and finances while leaving its territory nominally intact. The decisive rupture was the First Opium War (1839–42) and the Treaty of Nanking (1842), the “basic act” of the new order: it ceded Hong Kong, opened five treaty ports, imposed an indemnity and a fixed low tariff, and (via supplementary treaties) granted extraterritoriality and most-favoured-nation status. This created the Treaty Port System — a network of foreign-controlled enclaves through which the West penetrated China economically and legally. The Second Opium War (1856–60) and the Treaties of Tientsin/Peking widened these privileges, legalised opium, opened more ports and the interior to missionaries, so that “by 1861 China was fully, though grudgingly, opened to the Westerner.” The humiliation deepened with defeat by Japan (1894–95) and the subsequent carving of China into spheres of influence (Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan), checked only by the US “Open Door” policy (1899). Why “without annexation”? Because China was too vast to conquer and partition, and the powers’ mutual rivalry made informal, shared exploitation safer than outright division. China’s reactions evolved: from the Taiping upheaval and the conservative Self-Strengthening Movement (adopting Western arms while preserving Confucian order — which failed), to the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion (1900), and finally to revolutionary nationalism (1911) and Communism. The treaty-port era thus shaped a deep, lasting Chinese resentment of foreign domination that animates its modern nationalism.

A30. Dutch imperialism in Indonesia — the Culture System

Covers: “Critically examine the Culture System in the Dutch East Indies; why was it dismantled?” (60m); “Dutch colonial policy in Indonesia” (30m); “Holland’s systematic exploitation of Indonesia”; “nature of Dutch imperialism in Indonesia” (10m).

The Culture System (Cultuurstelsel, 1830–70) epitomised the exploitative nature of Dutch imperialism in the East Indies (Indonesia). Introduced after costly wars and Dutch financial crisis, it compelled Javanese peasants to devote a fixed portion of their land (and labour) to growing export cash crops — coffee, sugar, indigo, tea — for the colonial government, in lieu of land tax. The produce was delivered to the Dutch Netherlands Trading Company and sold in Europe at huge profit. Its nature was systematic state-organised extraction: it turned Java into a vast plantation for the enrichment of the Netherlands, generating the batig slot (“favourable balance”) that financed Dutch railways and debt — a textbook drain of colonial wealth. Its consequences were severe for Indonesians: distortion of subsistence agriculture, forced labour, and famines (Cirebon, Demak) in the 1840s, even as Holland prospered. Why was it dismantled? Several pressures converged: humanitarian and liberal criticism within the Netherlands — crystallised by Multatuli’s novel Max Havelaar (1860), which exposed colonial abuses; the rise of liberal free-trade ideology that opposed state monopoly and favoured private enterprise and investment; and the system’s own instability (famine, peasant unrest, and the recognition that extreme extraction was unsustainable). It was progressively abolished after the Agrarian Law of 1870, ushering in the Liberal Policy (private plantations) and eventually the “Ethical Policy” (1901) of limited welfare. The Culture System remains a paradigm of how colonial economic policy enriched the metropole while impoverishing and destabilising the colony.

A31. American overseas expansion in Asia

Covers: “Nature of American overseas expansion in Asia and its consequences” (2014).

American overseas expansion in Asia, intensifying in the late nineteenth century, had a distinctive nature — it was driven less by territorial empire than by the pursuit of trade, markets and naval reach, though it also produced outright colonialism. The ideological backdrop was “Manifest Destiny” extended across the Pacific and the navalism of Alfred Thayer Mahan, who argued that national greatness required sea power, bases and markets. The decisive step was the Spanish-American War (1898): victory gave the USA the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, and it annexed Hawaii the same year. Acquiring the Philippines (after a brutal suppression of Filipino independence forces, 1899–1902) made the USA a colonial power in Asia, justified by Kipling-style rhetoric of “civilising” duty. Toward China, however, American policy was commercial rather than territorial — the “Open Door” notes (1899–1900) sought to keep China open to all nations’ trade and to preserve China’s integrity against partition, protecting US access to the vast China market without the costs of a sphere of influence. The consequences were significant: the USA emerged as a Pacific and Asian power, projecting influence from Hawaii to the Philippines to the China coast; it entangled itself in East Asian great-power rivalry, especially with a rising Japan — a tension that would culminate at Pearl Harbor. American expansion thus combined informal economic empire (the Open Door) with selective formal colonialism (the Philippines), establishing the USA as a major actor in Asia and prefiguring its twentieth-century role in the region.

A32. European expansion and the “modernisation” of Africa

Covers: “To what extent did the expansion of European powers in the late 19th century help in the modernization of Africa?” (2014).

European expansion in late-nineteenth-century Africa brought some instruments of modernisation, but at enormous cost and with deeply distorting effects — so its contribution to genuine African development was limited and double-edged. On the positive side, colonial rule introduced railways, roads, ports and telegraphs; modern administration, written law and currencies; Western education and Christian missionary schooling (which produced the later nationalist elite); medicine that curbed some diseases; and the suppression of the slave trade and certain inter-tribal wars. To this extent Africa was drawn into the modern world economy and acquired modern infrastructure and institutions. However, this “modernisation” was incidental to exploitation, not aimed at African welfare. Infrastructure was built to extract raw materials (mines, cash crops) for export to Europe, not to develop integrated African economies — railways ran from mines to ports, not between African regions. Colonialism de-industrialised and distorted local economies, imposed forced labour, land alienation and taxation, entrenched racial hierarchy, and drew artificial borders that fractured societies. It created dependent, mono-cultural “extractive” economies and left Africans politically subordinated and excluded. Modernisation was therefore partial, externally oriented and racially restrictive — modern means deployed for colonial ends. The verdict: European expansion modernised the apparatus of exploitation more than it modernised African society; whatever developmental by-products it left (infrastructure, education, states) were outweighed by the drain of resources, the violence, and the structural underdevelopment that shaped Africa’s troubled post-colonial trajectory.

A33. Migration in the 18th–19th centuries

Covers: “Critically examine the socio-cultural and economic impact of migration in Europe and Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries” (2014).

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed mass migrations that reshaped the demography, economy and culture of Europe, Asia and the wider world, driven by the Industrial Revolution, population growth, colonialism and improved transport (steamships, railways). Several streams stand out: the transatlantic emigration of tens of millions of Europeans to the Americas and Australasia (fleeing poverty, famine — the Irish Famine — and seeking land and work); the transatlantic slave trade (until abolition) and, after it, the “coolie” system of indentured Indian and Chinese labour transported across the British, French and Dutch empires to plantations in the Caribbean, Mauritius, Fiji, South Africa, Malaya and East Africa; and large internal rural-to-urban migration within industrialising Europe and colonial Asia. The economic impact was profound: migration supplied labour for plantations, mines, factories and frontier settlement, integrated a global labour market, generated remittances, and enabled the development of settler economies — while often draining source regions of workers and entrenching coercive labour systems. The socio-cultural impact was equally far-reaching: it created diasporas (the Indian and Chinese overseas communities), spread languages, religions and cultures, produced plural, multi-ethnic societies, and generated lasting tensions over race, identity and assimilation. Critically, much of this migration — especially indentured and slave labour — was coerced or distress-driven, serving colonial-capitalist interests rather than the migrants’ welfare, and its legacy includes both the cosmopolitan diversity of the modern world and enduring inequalities and ethnic conflicts. Migration was thus a central mechanism by which industrial capitalism and empire reorganised global society.

A34. Decolonisation — finished yet unfinished

Covers: “Decolonization has finished… yet somehow it has refused to become history” (2013); “Colonialism deprives a society of its freedom, wealth and its very character” (2013).

The paradox that “decolonisation has finished… yet has refused to become history” captures the gap between formal political independence and substantive emancipation. Formally, decolonisation is complete: between 1945 and the 1960s the European empires dissolved, and dozens of sovereign states emerged across Asia and Africa, admitted to the UN. In that sense it “belongs to the past.” Yet it “refuses to become history” because its legacies persist and continue to shape the present. Politically, colonialism left arbitrary borders, fractured ethnic geographies, weak institutions and authoritarian tendencies, producing chronic instability, secessionism and conflict. Economically, independence often brought not autonomy but neo-colonialism — continued dependence on former rulers through unequal trade, debt, multinational corporations and “extractive” mono-economies — so that the drain of wealth outlived the empire. Most profoundly, colonialism’s deepest injury was cultural: as the quotation says, it “deprives a society not only of its freedom and wealth, but of its very character, leaving its people intellectually and morally disoriented.” Colonial education, language and racial hierarchy bred a psychological subordination and crisis of identity (Fanon’s “colonised mind”) that long survived the lowering of European flags. Decolonisation thus continues as an ongoing struggle — for economic self-reliance, cultural reassertion, the redress of colonial-era injustices, and genuine equality in a world order still marked by former imperial hierarchies. The lowering of flags ended the political empire; the mental, economic and cultural decolonisation it requires remains unfinished — which is why decolonisation remains a living issue rather than closed history.

A35. “Balban” questions — a note of caution

Covers: “Critically examine the ‘blood and iron’ policy of Balban” (2017, 10m).

Caution / clarification for the aspirant: In the question bank, two items mention “Balban” in connection with a “blood and iron” policy. This is a deliberate trap / typo conflation. “Blood and iron” (Blut und Eisen) is Bismarck’s doctrine for the unification of Germany (see model answers A22 and A24) — it has nothing to do with the Delhi Sultanate. Separately, Ghiyas-ud-din Balban (r. 1266–87) of the Delhi Sultanate did pursue a famous “blood and iron” policy of his own — a ruthless, centralising policy to restore the prestige and authority of the Sultanate: crushing the Mewati rebels and recalcitrant nobles (the Chahalgani/“the Forty”), adopting Persian court ceremonial (sijda and paibos), the theory of kingship as the “shadow of God” (Zill-i-Ilahi), and a strong standing army and spy system. But this is Medieval Indian History, not World History, and would be answered under that section. For the World History paper, “blood and iron” should always be linked to Bismarck and German unification. Do not confuse the two in the exam — read such questions carefully and answer the one actually relevant to the paper.

UPSC GS Paper-I — WORLD HISTORY

Complete Mains Notes, Mind-Maps, Timeline, Revision Summaries & Model Answers

PART 1 — TOPIC-WISE NOTES

TOPIC 1 — THE ENLIGHTENMENT (THE AGE OF REASON)

Context & Meaning

Sources / Roots

Key Thinkers & Ideas

Religious dimension

Effects on Society

Exam angle

TOPIC 2 — THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Meaning

Why Britain First? (very frequent question)

Key inventions

Spread / variants (UPSC 2019, 2024)

Social & Political Consequences (UPSC 2020)

Effect on society (balance sheet)

TOPIC 3 — POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES: CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM

A. CAPITALISM

B. SOCIALISM

C. COMMUNISM

Effects on society (comparative)

TOPIC 4 — THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR

A. American Revolution (1775–83)

B. The US Constitution (1787)

C. American Civil War (1861–65)

TOPIC 5 — THE FRENCH REVOLUTION & NAPOLEON

A. Causes of the French Revolution (1789)

B. Course (key milestones)

C. Significance

D. Napoleon Bonaparte

TOPIC 6 — RISE OF NATIONALISM & UNIFICATION OF ITALY AND GERMANY

A. Background

B. Unification of Italy (Risorgimento, 1859–70)

C. Unification of Germany (1864–71)

D. Other nationalisms

TOPIC 7 — COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM & DECOLONISATION

A. Concepts

B. Causes of “New Imperialism” (post-1870) — the big question

C. Case studies

D. Effects of colonialism

E. Decolonisation (post-1945)

TOPIC 8 — FIRST WORLD WAR (1914–18) & ITS AFTERMATH

Causes (MAIN + spark)

Course (in brief)

Peace Settlement — Paris 1919 (Redrawal of Boundaries)

Verdict & effects

TOPIC 9 — RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1917) & RISE OF THE USSR

Causes

The Two Revolutions of 1917

Consolidation

Significance

TOPIC 10 — THE INTERWAR YEARS: FASCISM, NAZISM, DEPRESSION, LEAGUE

Great Depression (1929)

Fascism (Italy) & Nazism (Germany) — “forms and effect on society”

League of Nations — why it failed

TOPIC 11 — THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1939–45)

Causes

Course (brief)

Consequences (huge)

TOPIC 12 — THE COLD WAR & DECOLONISATION ERA (1945–91)

Nature & origins

Key phases & events

End of the Cold War

Decolonisation & the Third World

TOPIC 13 — REDRAWAL OF NATIONAL BOUNDARIES (SYNTHESIS)

PART 2 — MIND-MAPS (TEXT / OUTLINE FORMAT)

Mind-Map 1 — ENLIGHTENMENT

Mind-Map 2 — INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Mind-Map 3 — CAPITALISM / SOCIALISM / COMMUNISM

Mind-Map 4 — AMERICAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR

Mind-Map 5 — FRENCH REVOLUTION & NAPOLEON

Mind-Map 6 — NATIONALISM & UNIFICATIONS

Mind-Map 7 — IMPERIALISM & DECOLONISATION

Mind-Map 8 — WORLD WARS & BOUNDARIES

PART 3 — MASTER TIMELINE OF MODERN WORLD HISTORY

PART 4 — LAST-MINUTE REVISION SUMMARIES

PART 5 — MODEL ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION BANK

A1. Nature of the Enlightenment — “What was enlightened about it?”

A2. Rousseau’s political philosophy