TS4 Popular movements (from 1750 CE onwards)

Popular movements is a thematic study of sustained, organised campaigns by large numbers of ordinary people to bring about, or resist, change, mostly through action outside formal politics. It covers movements from 1750 to the present: campaigns against slavery, for votes for women and for workers' rights, nationalist and anti-colonial movements, civil rights and anti-racist movements, and mass uprisings against authoritarian rulers. The study compares movements from different regions to explain how they arose, how they worked and what difference they made.

Four guiding questions

The study is organised around four guiding questions, each with its own page. The diagram of the guiding questions shows how they follow the life of a popular movement.

The questions are linked. The grievances and ideas that created a movement shaped the methods it chose; the opposition it met decided which methods worked; and its impact is best measured against the aims it set out with.

The core movements

There is no fixed list of movements; any well-evidenced popular movement after 1750 can be studied. The pages follow six core movements from four regions throughout, with shorter examples from many others. The table of the core movements lists them.

Each guiding question develops one movement in more depth: the Indian national movement for why movements emerged, the methods of the US civil rights movement for how they created change, the anti-apartheid movement, which faced every kind of challenge at its most severe, for how they were challenged, and British abolitionism for the impact of movements.

Big ideas that run through the thematic study

Grievances such as oppression, exclusion and poverty were necessary for a movement but not sufficient: most grievances never produced one. Movements emerged when grievances combined with a political opening, resources and organisations, ideas that made the grievance feel both unjust and fixable, and often a trigger such as an act of state violence. Historians disagree about which of these mattered most, for example whether economic decline or moral conviction drove abolitionism.

Movements used a repertoire of methods: petitions, lobbying, elections and court cases; boycotts, civil disobedience and other non-violent action; symbols, songs, newspapers and images; and, in some cases, violence. Which methods worked depended on the opponent. Democracies were open to pressure through law and public opinion; authoritarian and colonial states relied more on force, and violent repression could either crush a movement or win it sympathy, depending on the media, outside powers and the movement's own discipline.

Every movement met opposition from the state and its allies, from violent opponents, from divisions within its own ranks and from traditional ideas in society. Most core movements won a major political change, though some of it proved fragile, as the return of authoritarian rule in Egypt after 2011 shows, and social change was slower and less complete, with the gains shared unequally. Women were central to every movement but often kept from its leadership, and some marginalised groups were left out or harmed. Historians still disagree about how far popular pressure, as against economics, war or the decisions of elites, caused the changes that followed.

How the thematic study is studied and examined

All students, at SL and HL, take one of four thematic studies: Conflict, Innovation and transformation (both from 750 CE), Authoritarian rule and Popular movements (both from 1750). The thematic study takes about 80 teaching hours. Teachers choose the examples, which may include recent ones, and students need examples from at least two of the four regions (Africa and the Middle East; the Americas; Asia and Oceania; Europe). The study builds skill in making connections and comparisons between different examples.

The thematic study is assessed by Paper 2 (1 hour 45 minutes, 25 marks; 40 per cent of the SL grade and 25 per cent of the HL grade), the same paper at SL and HL. Section A sets two questions on the historical concepts, of which students answer one (6 marks) using one example from their thematic study. Section B sets two questions on each thematic study; students choose one and answer both parts. Part A asks students to explain how or why something happened, using one movement (4 marks). Part B is an essay that begins "To what extent …?" and asks for examples from at least two different popular movements in at least two regions (15 marks).