R2 The Americas

The Americas is one of the four regions of the HL regional studies. Its twelve studies cover North, Central and South America and the Caribbean from about 750 to 2020: Indigenous societies before European contact, colonial rule and slavery, the independence movements, the US Civil War, the making of modern nations, the Mexican Revolution, the Great Depression, the rise of the United States as a world power, the Cold War, and the politics and social movements of the decades since.

Twelve regional studies

Each regional study is a page of its own. The chart of the twelve studies places them on one time axis.

Most of the studies fall after 1760, and several overlap. The Great Depression, for example, appears as a crisis in its own right and as the background to the rise of Vargas in Brazil and Cárdenas in Mexico. The table of themes groups the studies by what they are mainly about.

Big ideas that run through the region

The rise of the United States runs through almost every study after 1800: from the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the war with Mexico, through the war of 1898 and the interventions in the Caribbean, to the Good Neighbor Policy, the Cold War and the overthrow of Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954. For Canada and Latin America, managing relations with their powerful neighbour was a constant theme, and historians disagree about whether US policy was driven by security, economic interest or ideology.

Race, slavery and citizenship form a second thread. Colonial slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, segregation and the civil rights movement can be read as one long struggle over who belonged to the nation, and Indigenous peoples appear from the societies of 750 through conquest and dispossession to the movements for land and rights after 1945. Independence and new constitutions often changed less for Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans and women than for the elites who led them.

A third thread is the search for stable government and economic growth. New states in Latin America faced civil war, caudillos and dependence on exports; Díaz, Vargas, Perón and the military regimes of the 1960s and 1970s each claimed to offer order and development, while democracy returned across the region in the 1980s. Historians debate how far export-led growth brought development or a lasting dependence on foreign capital and world prices. Perspectives matter throughout: for example, whether the Mexican Revolution was a genuine popular revolution, and how the reputations of Reconstruction and of presidents such as Roosevelt and Reagan have changed over time.

How the regional studies are studied and examined

The regional studies are taken by HL students only; SL students do not study them. Each school chooses one of the four regions (Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, or Europe) and then two of its twelve studies, taught in about 90 hours. They are the part of IB History that builds skill in evaluating historical arguments.

The regional studies are assessed by Paper 3 (2 hours, 30 marks; 35 per cent of the HL grade). There is a separate paper for each region, with two essay questions on each of its twelve studies. Students answer two questions, each from a different study, and each essay is marked out of 15. Every question gives an argument to evaluate and asks "To what extent do you agree …?". The IB's published sample for this region is: "'The Mexican Revolution significantly changed the role of women.' To what extent do you agree with this statement?" Several studies of the Americas cover many countries or movements; questions on these can ask students to answer with reference to one country, society or movement they have studied, so at least one needs to be known in depth.