Every society lives somewhere on a spectrum. At one end is peaceful cooperation. At the other is open violence between groups — conflict. Most relationships sit somewhere in the middle, with elements of both.
Historians studying why conflict emerges look for the same four kinds of pressure again and again. None of them causes a war alone. It is usually the way they pile up together that tips a dispute into violence.
- Economic factors — competition over resources, trade routes or land; deep inequality; the burden of reparations after an earlier conflict.
- Political factors — rival ambitions between rulers or states; tangled alliance systems; rising nationalism; the collapse of an old political order.
- Social factors — ethnic or religious division; long-held grievance passed down between generations; populations that have been deliberately mobilised — stirred up — against a rival group.
- Environmental factors — pressure on land and resources, famine, and population growth outstripping what the land can support.
Cause and consequence: This whole micro is about the concept of cause and consequence. Long-term causes build up pressure over years or decades. A short-term trigger — often a single event — is what finally sets the violence off. Good Paper 2 answers separate the two clearly.
Because the thematic study has no fixed examples, you choose which conflicts to study. But Paper 2 §B(b) always asks you to use at least two examples from at least two different IB regions — so build your own toolkit of well-understood conflicts from different parts of the world, and practise comparing them.
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By 1914, Europe had been mostly at peace for decades. Yet it exploded into the deadliest war the continent had ever seen. Why?
Political: alliances and nationalism
Europe's great powers had split into two armed camps — the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) and the Triple Entente (France, Russia, Britain). Each alliance was meant to deter attack, but it meant a small quarrel could drag in every major power at once. Meanwhile nationalist movements in the Balkans wanted independence from Austria-Hungary's empire.
Economic: imperial and industrial rivalry
Germany's rapid industrial growth challenged Britain's economic lead. The powers competed fiercely for colonies, markets and raw materials across Africa and Asia, and for control of trade routes — turning economic rivalry into political tension.
Social and military: militarism
Governments had built huge standing armies and glorified military strength — militarism. Detailed mobilisation plans (like Germany's Schlieffen Plan) meant that once one country began preparing for war, others felt they had to match it immediately, with little room to slow down.
The trigger
On 28 June 1914, a Bosnian-Serb nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war. The alliance system then pulled Russia, Germany, France and Britain in within weeks.
Long-term pressure (alliances, nationalism, rivalry, militarism) + one short-term trigger (Sarajevo) = a local quarrel becomes a world war.
Perspectives: German leaders at the time framed the war as defensive — encirclement by hostile neighbours. Serbian nationalists saw it as a fight for self-determination. Later historians (notably Fritz Fischer in the 1960s) argued Germany bore deliberate responsibility for escalation. Same war, very different perspectives — exactly what the concept of perspectives asks you to notice.
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Now compare a very different conflict: the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in the Africa & the Middle East region. In just 100 days, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans — mostly ethnic Tutsi — were killed.
First World War (Europe, 1914)
- Political — rigid alliance blocs, imperial rivalry between existing great powers
- Economic — competition for colonies, trade and industrial dominance
- Social — militarism and popular nationalism across multiple nations
- Environmental — a minor factor; land pressure was not central
- Trigger — a single assassination (Sarajevo, June 1914)
Rwandan genocide (Africa & Middle East, 1994)
- Political — colonial-era ethnic classification by Belgium hardened Hutu/Tutsi identity into rigid categories; extremist Hutu Power ideology mobilised the state and media (Radio Mille Collines) to plan mass killing
- Economic — Rwanda's economy was collapsing; a 1989–1990s coffee price crash, plus one of the world's highest population densities, meant fierce competition for farmland
- Social — decades of ethnic grievance, propaganda that dehumanised Tutsis as "cockroaches", and ordinary civilians mobilised into killing squads (the Interahamwe)
- Environmental — chronic land shortage and a growing population sharpened local disputes over who farmed what
- Trigger — President Habyarimana's plane was shot down on 6 April 1994, giving extremists the signal to launch the killing
The two conflicts look completely different on the surface — a war between empires versus a genocide within one small country. But both show the same pattern: long-term economic, political, social and environmental pressure builds for years, then a single sudden trigger releases it into violence.
Continuity and change: Rwanda's ethnic categories were not ancient — Belgian colonial rule (from 1916) hardened a flexible social distinction into fixed "races" recorded on identity cards (introduced 1933). That is continuity and change: a colonial-era structure that outlived colonial rule itself and shaped a conflict 80 years later.
Widen your toolkit: You could also compare the Vietnam War (Asia & Oceania) — Cold War ideological rivalry plus nationalist anti-colonial struggle — or the Mexican Revolution (Americas, from 1910) — land inequality and political dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz. Having 3–4 conflicts from different regions ready means you can always find two that fit whatever the exam question asks.