← Modern History syllabus

VICModern History

Unit 2: The changing world order (1945 to 2010)

13 dot points across 13 inquiry questions. Click any dot point for a focused answer with worked past exam questions where available.

What challenges defined the world order in the early 21st century, between 2001 and 2010?

What challenges to existing political, social and economic orders emerged in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s?

How did the Cold War begin?

Why did the Cold War alternate between crisis and detente?

How did decolonisation reshape the post-1945 world?

How did the Cold War end, and what new global order emerged in the 1980s and 1990s?

Why did the Soviet Union collapse?

How did the Cold War spread to Asia?

How did the Middle East become a centre of post-1945 conflict?

How has China's rise reshaped the post-Cold War order?

How was the postwar international order constructed between 1945 and 1949, and what were its central features?

How did 9/11 reshape global politics?

Why did the United States lose the Vietnam War?