History

History is a fascinating and rigorous intellectual discipline. The nature of the subject allows you to acquire skills that are highly relevant both for the IB Diploma Programme in general and for your future studies at university and beyond. History fosters a sense of inquiry, invites you to engage with multiple perspectives and enables you to formulate your own historical arguments. By studying history you gain a much better understanding of many of the conflicts, developments and achievements that surround us in our globalised world today.

One special feature of the IB History course is its world-history approach: students approach every topic by focusing on and comparing examples from different regions of the world. The course also combines political, economic, social and cultural history, making it an ideal course to foster international understanding and open-mindedness. History allows you to:

• learn about past events and their significance;
• develop an understanding of causes and effects in past, present and future;
• consider and evaluate alternatives;
• discuss and judge from a moral point of view (TOK links are abundant);
• learn to write well-structured and convincing essays;
• learn to use evidence to support your arguments;
• learn about opposing views and form your own opinion.

If you choose History as a Standard Level course, your syllabus could look as follows (specific topics may vary depending on the course coordinator and participants' interests):

• Prescribed subject: Rights and protest – struggles for rights and freedoms in the mid-20th century. Case study 1: the civil rights movement in the US (1954 to the Voting Rights Act of 1965); case study 2: protests against apartheid in South Africa (1948–1964).
• First world-history topic: Independence movements (1800–2000) – the emergence of new states, the origins and rise of independence movements, reasons for their success and the challenges new states faced. Examples: Cuban independence, India and Pakistan, Irish independence.
• Second world-history topic: Emergence and development of democratic states (1848–2000) – the evolution of democratic multi-party states in a global context. Examples: Germany, India and the USA.

If History is chosen as an HL subject, the additional topics are agreed upon by students and teacher before the course starts. The assessment differs slightly, as HL students write a third paper in addition to the two papers. The HL options provide an opportunity for in-depth study of the history of a particular region (Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, or Europe). For example, students could study three aspects of European history: the Renaissance (c. 1400–1600), Absolutism and Enlightenment (1650–1800), and the French Revolution and Napoleon I (1774–1815).

Every History student performs a written Historical Investigation (HI) of 2,200 words on a subject related to the History curriculum. The HI is graded by the teacher who runs the course and contributes 25% to the final grade. The remaining 75% are obtained in the two final exams: Paper 1 (source-based, 1 hour, 30%) consists of four short-answer / structured questions on the prescribed subject; Paper 2 (1 hour 30 minutes, 45%) consists of two essays on the two topics dealt with in the course.