International Baccalaureate History Year 2 (Period 6) Assignments

In this college-level course, students will learn to interpret the past in a scholarly manner and function as historians through exposure to historiography as well as primary and secondary sources from a wide range of perspectives. IB History topics to be studied in year two include twentieth century authoritarian states (Cuba, China, and Germany) and Cold War superpower tensions and rivalries. Content to be covered involves the conditions that facilitated the emergence of authoritarian states in the twentieth century, as well as the methods used by parties and leaders (Castro, Mao, and Hitler) to take and maintain power. Additionally, the impact of the leaders’ policies, both foreign and domestic, will be explored. Students also view the Cold War from an international perspective, which entails case studies of the United States, Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. The Cold War dominated global affairs from the end of the Second World War to the early 1990s. This topic focuses on how superpower rivalries did not remain static but changed according to styles of leadership, strength of ideological beliefs, economic factors, and crises involving client states (such as the Berlin blockade, North Korean invasion of South Korea, and the Cuban Missile Crisis). A major emphasis of the spring semester is a review of year one topics in preparation for the IB History Examination on May 7th (Papers 1 and 2) and May 8th (Paper 3), 2019.