Applying the four concepts to authoritarian rule
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Flip to reveal answersWhat are the four historical concepts tested throughout IB History (and directly in Paper 2 §A)?
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Question
What are the four historical concepts tested throughout IB History (and directly in Paper 2 §A)?
Answer
Cause and consequence; continuity and change; perspectives; significance.
Question
Cause and consequence
Answer
The concept asking *why* events happened — causes/consequences are multiple, interrelated, and result from the interplay of actors and conditions; outcomes are never inevitable.
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Continuity and change
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The concept asking *what* changed and what stayed the same — continuity and change happen at the same time, and can be rapid/transformative or slow long-term trends.
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Perspectives (as an IB History concept)
Answer
Different groups — participants, observers, and those looking back — hold diverse views on the same event; not all are equally valid, and historians test claims against evidence.
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Significance (as an IB History concept)
Answer
A judgement, constructed through choices about what to include/exclude, based on evidence and values; something can be significant for its power/impact or for what it reveals.
Question
Nazi Germany's rise (1933) — cause and consequence example
Answer
Long-term cause: Treaty of Versailles resentment and Weimar's weak coalitions. Short-term trigger: the Great Depression (1929). Actor: Hitler's use of Article 48 emergency powers.
Question
Perón's Argentina (from 1946) — cause and consequence example
Answer
Long-term cause: decades of oligarchic rule excluding workers. Short-term trigger: the 1943 military coup. Actor: Perón built support as Labour Secretary before winning election.
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Mao's China — continuity and change example
Answer
Change: rapid collectivization of farmland from 1949, intensified in the Great Leap Forward (1958). Continuity: long-standing deference to centralized authority persisted underneath.
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Great Leap Forward — perspectives example
Answer
Official Communist Party accounts claimed record harvests; peasant survivors and later demographic research documented mass famine — showing how propaganda control shaped differing perspectives.
Question
How do you compare significance across Nazi Germany and Perón's Argentina?
Answer
Nazi Germany: significant for scale of power/impact (WWII, Holocaust, reshaped international law). Perón's Argentina: significant for what it reveals — a populist-authoritarian pattern later seen across Latin America.
Question
What must a Paper 2 §A [6] concept answer include?
Answer
Name the concept explicitly, briefly define it, then analyse it using ONE specific, well-chosen example from your thematic study.
Question
What must a Paper 2 §B(b) [15] essay include that §A does not?
Answer
At least TWO examples from at least TWO different regions, explicitly compared, building to a clear substantiated judgement — omitting this is self-penalizing.
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Topic 8.5 hub
Concepts and Paper 2 exam skills
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