IGCSE World History: The Nineteenth Century, 1848-1914 (Cambridge 0470)

This guide covers Core Content Option A: The Nineteenth Century, 1848–1914, for Cambridge IGCSE World History 0470, 2024–2026 series. All candidates study Core content in either Option A or Option B (The Twentieth Century, 1919–1989), each built around six key questions, plus at least one of five named Depth studies.

Where this fits in 0470

Option A is one of two alternative Core content routes through 0470 — a school teaches either Option A or Option B, not both — and it traces the major political shifts of nineteenth-century Europe and beyond, from the revolutions of 1848 through to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Assessment is via Paper 1 (Structured Questions) and Paper 2 (Document Questions), which every candidate takes, plus either Component 3 Coursework or Paper 4.

Syllabus coverage

CAMBRIDGE IGCSE WORLD HISTORY 0470 — CORE CONTENT OPTION A: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 1848–1914

• 1.1 Were the Revolutions of 1848 Important? — the causes, events and consequences of the wave of European revolutions
• 1.2 How Was Italy Unified? — the process and key figures behind Italian unification
• 1.3 How Was Germany Unified? — the process and key figures behind German unification
• 1.4 Why Was There a Civil War in the United States and What Were Its Results? — the causes, course and consequences of the US Civil War
• 1.5 Why, and With What Effects, Did Nations Gain and Expand Their Overseas Empires? — the causes and consequences of nineteenth-century imperial expansion
• 1.6 What Caused the First World War? — the long-term and short-term causes leading to war in 1914

How to approach it

Paper 1 (Structured Questions) draws two of its eight Section A questions from these six Option A key questions (candidates answer two from Section A plus one from Section B on a Depth study), so all six key questions are fair game for Paper 1 revision. Paper 2 (Document Questions) is different: candidates answer one question on a single prescribed topic, chosen by Cambridge from these six key questions, and that prescribed topic changes every exam series. Revising “all of Paper 2” by working through every key question’s sources is not how the paper works — only the officially prescribed topic for your specific exam series appears on Paper 2.

Option A prescribed topics for Paper 2, 2024–2026 series (from the official syllabus):

Series	Prescribed topic
2024 March (India only)	Were the revolutions of 1848 important?
2024 June	What caused the First World War?
2024 November	Why, and with what effects, did nations gain and expand their overseas empires?
2025 March (India only)	Why was there a civil war in the United States and what were its results?
2025 June	How was Germany unified?
2025 November	Why was there a civil war in the United States and what were its results?
2026 March (India only)	Why, and with what effects, did nations gain and expand their overseas empires?
2026 June	Why was there a civil war in the United States and what were its results?
2026 November	How was Italy unified?

Always confirm your own series’ prescribed topic with your teacher or the current syllabus before treating this table as final — Cambridge sets it separately for each series. For “why” questions like 1.6, practise distinguishing long-term causes (structural tensions building over years) from short-term triggers (a specific event) and explaining how they interacted, rather than listing causes without connecting them — this is consistently where the strongest Paper 1 answers separate themselves from merely accurate ones. The two unification questions (1.2 and 1.3) reward comparison: understanding why Italy and Germany followed different paths to unification, despite similar starting conditions, is a common higher-level exam angle. For whichever topic is prescribed for your Paper 2 series, practise with real historical sources on it specifically — judging reliability, usefulness and provenance — rather than relying on content knowledge alone.

The Revolutions of 1848 in outline

1.1 asks candidates to weigh the significance of 1848, and the most useful way in is to understand why the revolutions failed almost as much as why they broke out. Their causes combined rising nationalism, liberal demands for written constitutions and representative government, economic hardship following a run of poor harvests, and the direct example set by the February 1848 revolution in France. Most of the revolutions unravelled within a year or two of breaking out — France’s Second Republic gave way to Louis Napoleon’s rise well before 1852; the Frankfurt Parliament’s constitution collapsed by 1849; Vienna and the Austrian Empire’s uprisings were suppressed by 1849 — though the specific mechanism varied by country rather than following one single script. Common recurring factors across France, the German states and the Austrian Empire include: revolutionary coalitions splitting between moderate liberals wanting constitutional reform and more radical elements wanting deeper social change; property-owning middle classes withdrawing support once revolution threatened property itself; peasant involvement that was often limited and driven more by specific agrarian grievances (such as the desire to abolish remaining feudal dues) than by the liberal-nationalist programme, though this varied by region and was not uniform non-involvement everywhere; and conservative monarchies that — in most (not every) case — retained enough loyal military force to eventually restore the old order, France’s own outcome coming via Louis Napoleon’s political rise and coup rather than a simple military reconquest. The lesson later nationalist leaders drew from this failure shaped the rest of the syllabus: unification in both Italy and Germany would be achieved through diplomacy and deliberate war rather than through parliamentary revolution.

Unification compared

1.2 and 1.3 reward direct comparison of Italy and Germany, since both began the period fragmented and both were unified within roughly a generation, but by different methods and different leadership. Italian unification (1859–70) had to overcome Austrian control of the north, the Papal States physically dividing the peninsula, strong regional loyalties, and poor communications between states; it succeeded through a combination of Cavour’s Piedmontese diplomacy and French alliance, Garibaldi’s military conquest of the south in the Expedition of the Thousand, Mazzini’s earlier nationalist ideology, and Victor Emmanuel II’s role as the eventual king of a unified Italy. German unification (1864–71) instead followed Bismarck’s deliberate three-part method: isolate each opponent diplomatically before fighting; fight a limited war for one defined objective at a time, against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866 and France in 1870–71; and stop once that objective was achieved rather than pursuing total conquest. The Ems Telegram’s role in provoking France into declaring war in 1870 is worth knowing precisely, because it explains why the southern German states joined Prussia against a foreign aggressor rather than resisting annexation, which is why the process ended in a unified German Empire rather than a purely Prussian conquest of its neighbours.

Empire and the coming of war

1.5 and 1.6 connect nineteenth-century imperial expansion to the alliance system that eventually turned a regional crisis into a world war. By the early twentieth century, Europe had divided into the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (1882) and the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia (1907), with Britain’s move away from its earlier policy of “splendid isolation” driven largely by German naval expansion threatening British naval supremacy. When explaining the outbreak of war in 1914, distinguish long-term, underlying causes – militarism such as the Anglo-German dreadnought race, the alliance system itself, nationalism including Slav nationalism in the Balkans and French resentment over Alsace-Lorraine, and imperial rivalry including the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911 – from the short-term trigger, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The strongest answers explain why the July Crisis escalated into general war within weeks rather than months: Germany’s Schlieffen Plan required a rapid defeat of France before Russia’s army could fully mobilise, so once Russia began mobilising, German military timetables left almost no room for diplomacy to intervene.

Official syllabus

Cambridge IGCSE World History 0470 syllabus for 2024, 2025 and 2026 — cambridgeinternational.org.