A Level World History: Modern Europe, 1774-1924 — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions. The question numbering and exact source wording below are invented for practice purposes, but the overall structure — one two-part Historical Sources question on four sources on Paper 1, two two-part Outline Study questions on Paper 2 — and the total mark allocations (40 and 60) follow the syllabus’s own published assessment structure. Cambridge International holds copyright in its own papers; use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or Cambridge directly.

Related: Modern Europe 1774-1924 revision notes

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Which topic is on which paper?

The three topics — France, 1774–1814; German unification, 1815–71; and Russia from autocracy to revolution, 1881–1924 — rotate across a published three-year table. Exactly one topic is prescribed for Paper 1 in any given series, and the other two appear on Paper 2. Check the rotation table for your series before deciding which of the question sets below to prioritise.

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Paper 1 style: Historical Sources (one two-part question on four sources, 40 marks)

Candidates answer both parts of the single question set on whichever topic is prescribed for Paper 1 in their series.

Illustrative topic: Russia from autocracy to revolution, 1881–1924

Read all four sources, then answer both parts.

Source A — from a Petrograd factory delegate’s account, written shortly after February 1917: “By the fourth day the queues for bread had become processions. When the Volynsky regiment was ordered to fire on us, the soldiers grounded their rifles and came over to our side. After that, nothing the government said could stop what had already happened in the streets.”

Source B — from a government minister’s report to the Council of Ministers, February 1917: “The disturbances are temporary and concentrated among the least disciplined elements of the capital’s workforce. Reinforcements are being brought up, and I am confident that with firm handling the situation will be under control within days.”

Source C — from the diary of an official at a foreign embassy in Petrograd, March 1917: “For a week the city has had no bread worth the name and no confidence in anyone who governs it. The garrison is made up largely of fresh recruits, many of them peasants who dread being sent to the front. What they refused to do on the Nevsky was less a political decision than the end of a patience that the war had been wearing down for two years.”

Source D — from a history of the revolution written by a former member of a Petrograd workers’ committee, published in 1927: “The soldiers did not make the revolution; the workers did. The strikes began in the factories, the women of the bread queues brought the men out, and by the time the regiments wavered the old order had already lost the streets. The garrison followed the people; it did not lead them.”

(a) Compare what Sources A and B suggest about the state of order in Petrograd in February 1917. [15]

(b) ‘The sources show that the February Revolution succeeded primarily because the army refused to suppress it.’ Read all the sources. How far do the sources support this view? Use all four sources and your own knowledge. [25]

Worked answer

(a) Both sources agree that unrest was under way in Petrograd, but they disagree sharply about its significance and trajectory. Source A, from a participant, presents the unrest as escalating and irreversible — queues becoming “processions” and, decisively, soldiers refusing to fire and joining the crowd, which the source treats as the point after which the outcome was no longer in the government’s control. Source B, from a minister writing for his own superiors, minimises the unrest as “temporary” and confined to “the least disciplined elements,” and expresses confidence that reinforcements and “firm handling” would restore order within days. The two sources’ disagreement is partly about scale and partly about interpretation: Source B may reflect genuine ignorance of the army’s loyalty at the time of writing, official complacency, or a minister’s incentive to reassure superiors rather than alarm them — all of which a strong answer should weigh using provenance, not simply repeat as a factual disagreement. [15]

(b) A strong answer uses all four sources to show how far they support and how far they challenge the claim, and reaches a judgement on the extent of that support. Support: Source A directly supports the claim: it identifies the Volynsky regiment’s refusal to fire as the moment after which the government lost control. Source B supports it indirectly, since the minister’s confidence rests on “reinforcements” and “firm handling”, which assumed a loyal garrison; its failure is what Source A describes. Source C also gives the garrison’s refusal a central place (“What they refused to do on the Nevsky”), but it explains the refusal by recruits’ fear of the front and by war-weariness, so it supports the army’s importance while shifting the cause behind it. Challenge: Source D rejects the claim outright, arguing that strikes and the bread queues had already cost the old order the streets and that “The garrison followed the people; it did not lead them.” Its provenance matters: written in 1927 by a former member of a workers’ committee, it has a clear interest in giving the workers the leading role, which a strong answer should weigh rather than simply repeat. Source C’s account of bread shortages and lost confidence also partly challenges the claim, since it places the army’s refusal inside a wider collapse. Own knowledge should test both sides: previous urban unrest under the Tsarist regime (including 1905) had been contained because troops remained willing to fire on crowds, which supports the decisive role of the army in 1917; but bread and fuel shortages, the discrediting of the autocracy through Rasputin’s influence while Nicholas was at the front, and war-weariness created the conditions in which the garrison wavered. A well-supported judgement should conclude that the sources largely support the army’s refusal as the immediate cause of success (A, B and C), while C and D show that the refusal was itself the product of popular protest and the strains of war, so the claim that the revolution succeeded primarily because of the army is only partly supported. [25] (Marks for accurate use of all four sources with attention to provenance, own knowledge that both supports and qualifies the claim, and a sustained judgement.)

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Paper 2 style: Outline Study (two two-part questions, 60 marks)

Paper 2 questions are set on the two topics not prescribed for Paper 1 in your series — check the rotation table, then practise the two question sets below that apply to your series. Each two-part question is worth 30 marks; candidates answer both parts of each question they attempt.

Topic: France, 1774–1814

(a) Explain why there was a revolution in France in 1789. [10]

(b) To what extent did Napoleon consolidate rather than betray the Revolution? [20]

Worked answer

(a) Relevant factors include: the fiscal crisis caused by war debts, particularly from supporting the American Revolution, and a tax system that exempted the privileged; the inequality of the estate system, in which the Third Estate paid the taxes but had no proportionate political voice; Enlightenment ideas of natural rights, popular sovereignty and criticism of absolutism, which gave the grievances of the Third Estate an intellectual and political language; the weakness of Louis XVI’s leadership and his failure to push through reform against noble resistance at the Assembly of Notables. Marks reward explanation of why each factor contributed to revolution, not just naming it, and connections between factors (for example, how the fiscal crisis forced the calling of the Estates-General, where the grievances of the Third Estate came to a head). [10]

(b) Consolidated: the Code Napoléon entrenched equality before the law, secure property rights and the abolition of feudal privilege, and outlasted him across Europe. Careers open to talent — promotion by merit in the army and administration — was a genuine revolutionary principle he sustained. He preserved the land settlement, confirming peasants in possession of church and émigré land, which is why the settlement endured. The Concordat ended the religious civil war on terms favourable to the state. Betrayed: he destroyed political liberty — plebiscites were manipulated, the press censored, and he crowned himself Emperor in 1804, restoring hereditary monarchy in all but name. He created a new imperial nobility, reintroducing the very hierarchy of titles the Revolution had abolished. He reintroduced slavery in the colonies in 1802, reversing the abolition of 1794 — the clearest betrayal of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Code reduced the legal status of women, subordinating wives to husbands. Judgement: he consolidated the Revolution’s social and legal gains while destroying its political ones. The bourgeoisie, who gained security of property and career, had reason to regard him as its heir; republicans and the enslaved people of France’s colonies had reason to see him as its gravedigger. Which verdict one reaches depends on which of the Revolution’s several aims is treated as its essence. [20] (Marks distributed across accurate knowledge of both “consolidated” and “betrayed” evidence, and a sustained, evidenced judgement — a list of points with no final judgement will not access the top band.)

Topic: German unification, 1815–71

(a) Explain why Germany had not been unified by 1862. [10]

(b) ‘German unification was achieved primarily through Bismarck’s diplomacy rather than through Prussian military strength.’ How far do you agree? [20]

Worked answer

(a) Relevant factors include: Austrian rivalry — Austria, as president of the German Confederation, had every interest in blocking Prussian-led unification and preserving its own dominant influence over the German states; particularism — the individual German states, especially the larger ones like Bavaria and Saxony, valued their own sovereignty and were reluctant to be absorbed into a Prussian-dominated union; religious and political division — the largely Protestant north and largely Catholic south did not share a single obvious political centre, and liberal and conservative visions of what a unified Germany should look like (a constitutional, popularly-legitimated union versus a conservative, monarchical one) pulled in different directions, as the failure of the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament had shown. [10]

(b) A strong answer rejects the false choice the question poses and instead explains how Bismarck’s diplomacy and Prussian military strength worked together. Bismarck’s diplomacy created the political conditions for war on favourable terms — isolating Austria diplomatically before 1866 (securing Italian support and Russian and French neutrality), and provoking France into declaring war in 1870 in a way that left France diplomatically isolated and Germany appearing to be the aggrieved party, which helped rally the southern German states to Prussia’s side. But diplomacy alone could not have delivered unification without Prussia’s military capacity to win the resulting wars decisively and quickly — the Prussian army’s success against Austria in 1866 (Sadowa) and France in 1870–71 (Sedan), built on Prussian military reforms, rail-based mobilisation and modern weaponry, converted Bismarck’s diplomatic groundwork into irreversible political outcomes. A well-supported judgement should conclude that diplomacy determined when and against whom Prussia fought and how isolated its opponents were, while military strength determined that Prussia won — the two were interdependent rather than alternative explanations, and treating either alone as sufficient understates the other. [20] (Marks for accurate knowledge of both diplomatic and military factors, explicit engagement with their interaction, and a sustained judgement.)

Topic: Russia from autocracy to revolution, 1881–1924

(a) Explain why Stolypin’s land reforms, launched from 1906, failed to secure long-term support for the Tsarist regime. [10]

(b) ‘The weakness of the Provisional Government was the main reason why the Bolsheviks were able to seize power in October 1917.’ How far do you agree? [20]

Worked answer

(a) Relevant reasons include: the reforms were too slow to change most peasants’ circumstances before the regime collapsed in 1917, so they had not yet produced the stable, land-owning peasantry Stolypin hoped would support the autocracy; they created new divisions within the peasantry, as wealthier peasants (later associated with the term kulak) who left the communes for consolidated private holdings became resented by poorer peasants who remained under communal tenure, rather than uniting the peasantry behind the regime; and Stolypin’s assassination in 1911 removed the reform’s chief political sponsor before it could be carried through consistently, after which support for continuing the reforms at the same pace weakened within the government itself. [10]

(b) The Provisional Government made two fatal errors: it continued the war, so the economic and military grievances that had caused February 1917 persisted, and it postponed land reform until a Constituent Assembly, while peasants were already seizing land on their own initiative. Dual power meant the Provisional Government could not act without the cooperation of the Petrograd Soviet, so it was structurally weak from the outset. Lenin’s April Theses gave the Bolsheviks a simple, uncompromising programme — “Peace, Bread, Land” and “All Power to the Soviets” — which no other major party matched. The Kornilov affair in August was decisive: Kerensky armed the Bolsheviks to defend Petrograd against a perceived military coup, which restored their credibility after the failed July Days and left them armed and organised. Trotsky’s chairmanship of the Petrograd Soviet and the Military Revolutionary Committee then gave the Bolsheviks the organised machinery to take power in Petrograd almost bloodlessly in October. Judgement: a strong answer weighs the Provisional Government’s weakness against Bolshevik strengths rather than listing both — for example, arguing that the government’s failures created the opportunity, but that Lenin’s programme, the recovery after the Kornilov affair and the Military Revolutionary Committee’s organisation were needed to exploit it, so the claim is only partly accepted. [20] (Marks for accurately explained factors on both sides of the claim, rather than a narrative account alone, and a sustained judgement on the view in the question.)

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Where marks are usually lost

• Narrating events chronologically on the (b) parts rather than sustaining a judgement against the specific question set.
• On source questions, repeating what a source says without weighing its provenance (who wrote it, when, and why).
• Treating Napoleon, or Bismarck’s diplomacy and Prussian military strength, as simple either/or questions rather than explaining how the two sides of the argument interact.
• Assuming all three topics could appear on either paper in the same series — check the rotation table, since exactly one topic is fixed for Paper 1 and the other two for Paper 2.

Official syllabus

Cambridge International AS & A Level History (9489) syllabus for examination in 2027, 2028 and 2029, section 1 (“Subject content — European Option: Modern Europe, 1774–1924”) and the assessment overview (Paper 1: Historical Sources, one two-part question, 40 marks; Paper 2: Outline Study, two two-part questions, 60 marks) — cambridgeinternational.org. The part splits above are the syllabus’s own (section 4, Details of the assessment): Paper 1 part (a) 15 marks and part (b) 25; Paper 2 part (a) 10 marks and part (b) 20 in each 30-mark question. The real Paper 1 question prints four sources (at least three written, up to one visual, 600 words in total) and part (b) uses all four; the practice question above follows that pattern with four written sources. Verified 2026-09-11.