A Level World History: International History, 1870-1939 — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions, and they do not replicate the exam’s exact structure, question count or mark tariffs — Cambridge International holds copyright in its own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or Cambridge directly.

Related: International History, 1870–1939 revision notes

---

Section A

1. Name the three topics of the International Option (2027-2029 syllabus). [3]

2. State the treaty year and one named agreement associated with Germany’s international rehabilitation in the mid-1920s. [2]

3. Name the two crises used to illustrate the League of Nations’ failure to keep the peace in the 1930s. [2]

---

Section B

4. A student writes an essay on Germany that discusses only its emergence as a world power up to 1918, without reference to Germany’s later role in the collapse of collective security in the 1930s.

(a) Identify the missed opportunity in this essay, given the option’s own structure. [2] (b) Explain how Germany’s story across Section 7 and Section 9 could be connected in a stronger answer. [3]

5. Explain why the League of Nations’ collective security mechanism, which had limited but real effect in disputes like the Aaland Islands and Upper Silesia in the 1920s, failed so much more visibly in the Manchuria and Abyssinia crises of the 1930s. [5]

6. State two named factors that shaped Britain and France’s policy of appeasement, beyond a simple wish to avoid war. [2]

---

Section C

7. Evaluate the claim that the League of Nations’ failures in the 1930s were caused primarily by weaknesses that were already present, but less consequential, in the 1920s. [8]

8. For each examination series, the rotation of which topic is examined on Paper 1 (Historical Sources, a document question) and which two are examined on Paper 2 (Outline Study, essay questions) is fixed and published well in advance. A candidate uses the published rotation table to identify their series’ Paper 1 topic and revises only that topic in depth, giving the other two topics much lighter coverage. Evaluate this revision strategy. [6]

---

Worked answers

1. Imperialism and the Emergence of World Powers, c.1870–1918 (Section 7); International Relations, 1919–29: Conflict and Cooperation (Section 8); International History, 1929–39: the Rise of Extremism and the Road to War (Section 9). [3]

2. 1925; the Locarno Treaties (or the Dawes Plan, 1924). [2]

3. The Manchuria crisis and the Abyssinia crisis. [2]

4. (a) The essay misses the opportunity to connect Germany’s Section 7 emergence as a world power before 1918 (through industrial and military growth, and its bid for colonial and naval status) to its later role, examined in Section 9, in the collapse of collective security and the drift to war in the 1930s, treating the two as unconnected rather than as one continuous national trajectory examined across two parts of the syllabus. [2] (b) A stronger answer would note that Section 9’s account of German rearmament and expansionism under Hitler only makes full sense against the backdrop of the world-power status and grievances established in Section 7 and reshaped by the post-1918 settlement — presenting Germany’s story as continuous across both topics, rather than as two disconnected sets of facts, demonstrates the kind of synthesis Paper 2’s outline-study essays reward. [3]

5. The League’s underlying mechanisms and structural weaknesses did not fundamentally change between the 1920s and the 1930s, but the scale and severity of the crises it faced did — disputes like the Aaland Islands and Upper Silesia in the 1920s were comparatively contained and involved smaller or less militarily powerful states, allowing the League’s limited mechanisms to have some real effect, whereas Manchuria involved a major power (Japan) acting with military force against China, and Abyssinia involved a major European power (Italy) with strong economic and political ties to League members reluctant to enforce sanctions robustly. The same underlying weaknesses (limited enforcement power, reliance on member states’ willingness to act) were therefore exposed far more visibly once tested against major-power aggression rather than smaller, more containable disputes. [5]

6. Any two of: economic considerations (the cost of rearmament or war); military considerations (Britain and France not yet being militarily prepared); changing relations with the USSR. [2]

7. A strong evaluation notes genuine continuity in the League’s structural weaknesses — its limited enforcement power and dependence on member states’ willingness to act militarily or economically were present throughout both decades, not newly created in the 1930s. However, a balanced answer should also weigh factors specific to the 1930s that go beyond simply exposing pre-existing weaknesses: the Great Depression’s impact on political ideologies and the rise of dictatorships created a genuinely more hostile international environment than existed in the 1920s, and the specific ambitions of Japan, Italy and Germany in the 1930s presented a different order of challenge than the smaller disputes the League had previously managed. A well-reasoned conclusion might argue that pre-existing weaknesses were a necessary but not sufficient explanation — they made the League vulnerable, but the specific scale and coordinated nature of 1930s aggression is what actually caused its failures to become so visible and consequential. [8] (Marks for genuine evaluation weighing continuity of weakness against 1930s-specific factors, rather than asserting one cause alone.)

8. This strategy correctly uses the fact that the rotation is fixed and published, but it puts the depth in the wrong place. The Paper 1 topic is examined through a single two-part Historical Sources question (40 marks), where the credit rests mainly on comparing and evaluating the sources supplied, supported by contextual knowledge of the period. The other two topics are both examined on Paper 2, the Outline Study (60 marks, two two-part essay questions), which rewards detailed historical knowledge used to explain, analyse and reach a judgement — so it is the Paper 2 topics that demand the most detailed, secure knowledge. Giving them only light coverage leaves the candidate weakest on the paper worth more marks (60 marks, against 40 for Paper 1). A better strategy secures thorough, essay-ready knowledge of both Paper 2 topics, and prepares the Paper 1 topic with enough contextual knowledge to interpret and evaluate sources, practising the source-comparison and “how far do the sources support” skills that paper rewards. [6] (Marks for correctly identifying what each paper examines and how, and for reaching a reasoned, qualified recommendation rather than either extreme.)

Official syllabus

Cambridge International AS & A Level History (9489) syllabus for examination in 2027, 2028 and 2029, sections 7-9 (“Subject content — International Option: International history, 1870–1939”) — cambridgeinternational.org — the same syllabus cited by the International History, 1870–1939 study guide and its revision notes. Verified 2026-09-11.