A Level World History: International History, 1870-1945 — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, in the style and at the standard of the examination. They are not reproduced past-paper questions — 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, 1870–1945 revision notes

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Section A

1. Name the four topics of the International Option. [4]

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]

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Section B

4. A student writes an essay on Japan that discusses only its rise as a world power up to 1919, without reference to its later turn to military dictatorship.

(a) Identify the missed opportunity in this essay, given the option’s own structure. [2] (b) Explain how the two phases of Japan’s story 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]

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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. A candidate revising for Paper 1 and Paper 2 decides to concentrate their revision on only two of the option’s four topics, believing these are most likely to be examined. Evaluate this revision strategy. [6]

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Worked answers

1. Empire and the Emergence of World Powers, 1870–1919; The League of Nations and International Relations in the 1920s; The League of Nations and International Relations in the 1930s; China and Japan, 1912–45. [4]

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 Japan’s 3.1 emergence as a world power (through modernisation, military victories, and its 1902 treaty with Britain) to its later 3.4 domestic turn toward military dictatorship, 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 3.4’s examination of Japan’s turn to military dictatorship explicitly starts from its 1919 international status, which is the very point where 3.1’s account of Japan’s rise as a world power effectively ends — presenting Japan’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 is a risky strategy, because Paper 1 and Paper 2 draw on the same four topics but rotate which topics are examined via document question versus outline study from year to year, meaning the specific combination of topics examined in any given series is not fixed or fully predictable in advance. Concentrating revision on only two of the four topics risks leaving a candidate unprepared if the actual paper draws more heavily on the two topics they chose not to prioritise; a safer strategy is to secure a working knowledge of all four topics, even if some receive more detailed revision than others, since being able to attempt every question with reasonable knowledge is generally a stronger position than being extremely well prepared for only some of what could be asked. [6] (Marks for correctly explaining the topic-rotation risk and reaching a reasoned recommendation.)

Official syllabus

Cambridge International AS & A Level History (9489) syllabus for examination in 2026, section 3 (“Subject content — International Option: International history, 1870–1945”) — the same specification cited by the International History, 1870–1945 study guide and its revision notes. Verified 2026-09-02.