Skip to main content

← Modern History syllabus

VICModern History

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

22 dot points across 22 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 Cold War crises between 1956 and 1962 bring the superpowers closest to nuclear war?

How did the Cold War extend into Asia between 1949 and 1953, and what were the consequences?

How did the Cold War begin?

Why did the Cold War alternate between crisis and detente?

How did the European empires in Asia and Africa come to an end between 1947 and 1980?

How did decolonisation reshape the post-1945 world?

How did apartheid in South Africa come to an end between 1948 and 1994?

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

Why did the Cold War end peacefully between 1985 and 1991?

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 did the wartime alliance break down into a divided Europe and a global Cold War between 1945 and 1949?

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?

How did the US civil rights movement challenge segregation and change American law and society between 1954 and 1968?

Why did the Vietnam War (1954 to 1975) become a defining Cold War conflict, and why did the United States lose?

Why did the United States lose the Vietnam War?

How did the women's liberation movement change Western societies between 1960 and 1980?