Simulations
Humanitarian Intervention in South Sudan in 2014 (UNSC)
Set in May 2014. An ongoing civil war means South Sudan faces the threat of mass violence, reprisals, and possibly genocide.
IB History
CFR Education offers a range of free resources that can supplement your IB History curriculum. Browse readings, timelines, videos, and simulations covering the IB curriculum’s prescribed subjects, world history topics, and regional studies.
Prescribed Subjects
- Simulations
Humanitarian Intervention in South Sudan in 2014 (NSC)
Set in May 2014. An ongoing civil war means South Sudan faces the threat of mass violence, reprisals, and possibly genocide.
- Readings
How Do Forces Outside Government Influence Policymaking?
Learn how journalism, social media, public opinion, and lobbies are all a part of American democracy and influence U.S. foreign policy.
- Readings
What Is Peacekeeping?
In this free resource on the successes and failures of peacekeeping, learn about the UN missions tasked with transitioning countries out of war.
- Readings
What Is Fascism?
In this free resource, learn how Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler rose to power and the lessons their political journeys hold for today.
- Readings
Why Did World War II Happen?
In this free resource on World War II, understand the causes of World War II and why these issues drove countries back to battle just two decades after World War I.
- Readings
What Is the UN Security Council?
In this free resource, learn more about the United Nations’ most powerful body working to maintain international peace and security. Explore the security council’s failures and successes, and why the UN Security Council’s veto power is so controversial.
- Readings
South Africa: Why Countries Acquire and Abandon Nuclear Bombs
Why did South Africa give up its nuclear weapons? In this historical case study, learn about the only country in the world to have developed and then dismantled its nuclear program.
Regions
- Simulations
NATO Enlargement in 1994 (NSC)
Set in January 1994. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet states express interest in joining NATO.
- Mini Simulations
Negotiating Ukrainian Security in 1993
How should the United States manage dismantling Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal while safeguarding against renewed conflict in Europe? Explore this historical simulation set in 1993.
- Mini Simulations
The Zimmerman Telegram in 1917
Should the United States take action against Germany? Explore this historical simulation set in 1917.
- Mini Simulations
Response to 9/11
Should the United States strike al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in response to 9/11? Explore this historical simulation set in 2001.
- Mini Simulations
Sovereignty and Neutrality in 1807
Should the United States remain neutral during the war between France and England? Explore this simulation set in 1807.
- Mini Simulations
Explosion of the USS Maine in 1898
How should the United States intervene against Spanish colonial rule in Cuba? Explore this historical simulation set in 1898.
- Mini Simulations
Cuban Immigration in 1980
How should the United States respond to the massive influx of Cuban migrants? Explore this historical simulation set in 1980.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Asia
From the British occupation of India to China’s twenty-first century rise, learn how history and foreign influence have shaped the region.
- Readings
Economics: Sub-Saharan Africa
From mineral extraction to new digital currencies, learn about the region’s most impactful developments.
- Readings
People and Society: Sub-Saharan Africa
Learn how culture, demographics, and social trends shape everyday life in the region.
- Readings
National Politics: Sub-Saharan Africa
From third termism to democratic reform, learn about the issues and trends shaping ten countries today.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Sub-Saharan Africa
From European colonialism to independence movements and beyond, learn how foreign influence and history have shaped the region.
- Readings
Regional Politics: Sub-Saharan Africa
From climate change to Chinese development, learn about ten issues and relationships defining the region.
- Readings
National Politics: Middle East and North Africa
From press freedom to reform, learn about the issues shaping ten countries today.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Middle East and North Africa
From the fall of the Ottoman Empire to U.S. efforts to advance Arab-Israeli partnerships, learn how history and foreign influence have shaped the region.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Europe and Eurasia
From World War I to the War in Ukraine, learn how history and U.S. intervention has shaped the region.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Americas
From colonization to the Cold War, learn about the major historical moments that have shaped the Americas.
World History Topics
- Simulations
Korean War in 1950 (UNSC)
Set in September 1950. Five years after World War II, conflict on the Korean Peninsula threatens the fragile post-war order.
- Mini Simulations
The Zimmerman Telegram in 1917
Should the United States take action against Germany? Explore this historical simulation set in 1917.
- Mini Simulations
Opposing Communism in 1947
How should the United States support Greece in its fight against communist rebels? Explore this simulation set in 1947.
- Mini Simulations
Cuban Immigration in 1980
How should the United States respond to the massive influx of Cuban migrants? Explore this historical simulation set in 1980.
- Readings
How Do Humanitarian Corridors, Cease-Fires, and Pauses Address Violence in Conflict?
When deadly conflict breaks out, what are different ways to respond to a humanitarian crisis, support life-saving relief, and lessen the loss of civilian lives?
- Readings
Seven “Hot Wars” During the Cold War
The United States and the Soviet Union never directly clashed, but the Cold War was far from bloodless.
- Readings
Marriage Equality Around the World
An increasing number of countries recognize same-sex marriage, but discrimination and persecution persist.
- Readings
How Does AI Influence Conflict?
How is the military using AI? Killer robots have long been a fear and fascination of humankind. Explore how weapons that can locate, target, and kill without human involvement shape today’s conflicts and hold the potential to re-shape future conflicts.
- Videos
What the Kyoto Protocol Can Tell Us About How Treaties Are Made Today
In this U.S. foreign policy video, understand the challenges of negotiating treaties and dive into two international climate agreements.
- Readings
National Politics: Asia
From democratic backsliding to reform, learn about the issues and trends shaping ten countries today.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Asia
From the British occupation of India to China’s twenty-first century rise, learn how history and foreign influence have shaped the region.
- Readings
National Politics: Sub-Saharan Africa
From third termism to democratic reform, learn about the issues and trends shaping ten countries today.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Sub-Saharan Africa
From European colonialism to independence movements and beyond, learn how foreign influence and history have shaped the region.
- Readings
National Politics: Middle East and North Africa
From press freedom to reform, learn about the issues shaping ten countries today.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Middle East and North Africa
From the fall of the Ottoman Empire to U.S. efforts to advance Arab-Israeli partnerships, learn how history and foreign influence have shaped the region.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: Europe and Eurasia
From World War I to the War in Ukraine, learn how history and U.S. intervention has shaped the region.
- Readings
National Politics: Europe and Eurasia
From the ongoing migrant crisis to the pros and cons of EU membership, learn about the issues and trends shaping ten countries today.
- Videos
How Do Countries Select Their Foreign Policy Tools?
In this educational video on foreign policy, explore how U.S. relations with Japan have changed over the past century, from Pearl Harbor to a peaceful alliance.
- Videos
What Tools Do Foreign Policy-Makers Have at Their Disposal?
In this foreign policy video, learn how leaders further their countries’ interests with political, economic, and military tools such as diplomacy, trade, and intelligence.
- Readings
What Is Diplomacy?
In this free resource on diplomacy, understand how countries advocate for their national interests through foreign policy.
- Readings
What Is Trade Policy?
In this free resource on trade policy, explore how countries leverage their economic power to advance their foreign policy interests.
- Readings
What Is Armed Force?
In this free resource on military action, learn how countries use violence, or armed force, to influence foreign policy.
- Readings
What Is Peacekeeping?
In this free resource on the successes and failures of peacekeeping, learn about the UN missions tasked with transitioning countries out of war.
- Readings
What Is Arms Control?
In this free resource on arms control agreements, learn how countries try to regulate the world’s most powerful weapons through foreign policy.
- Readings
What Is Deterrence?
In this free resource, explore examples of deterrence from the Cold War to present day to learn how countries dissuade bad behavior with the threat of significant punishment.
- Readings
What Is Intelligence?
From Cold War double agents to Chinese spy balloons, explore how lying and spying inform policymaking in this resource on intelligence.
- Readings
What Is Economic Statecraft?
Learn why China lends billions of dollars abroad each year through its Belt and Road Initiative and the implications of that free resource for recipient countries.
- Videos
What Is Nation-Building?
In this free resource on nation-building, learn why developing political, economic, security, and social institutions across borders is a complex business.
- Readings
What Are Economic Sanctions?
In this free resource on sanctions, learn how countries use punitive economic measures to advance their foreign policy priorities.
- Readings
Social Media: Revolutionizing Communication
Social media has connected people at lightning speeds and upended long-held monopolies on information. But like past innovations, it has also created major societal challenges.
- Videos
How Did the Cold War Stay Cold?
Learn how the world’s superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR), avoided nuclear war.
- Readings
How Did Decolonization Reshape the World?
From India and the Palestinian Territories to Vietnam and Sudan, learn how former colonies sought independence—and how the shadow of colonialism still affects many regions today.
- Readings
How Did Mass Production and Mass Consumption Take Off After World War II?
Discover how consumer goods have become cheap and ubiquitous in the global era.
- Readings
What Is Fascism?
In this free resource, learn how Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler rose to power and the lessons their political journeys hold for today.
- Readings
What Are the Origins of Communism?
Explore the different ways Marx, Lenin, and Stalin interpreted communism and dive into the history of translating an ideology into policy.
- Videos
How Do Countries Decide Whether to Go to War?
Learn how balances and imbalances of power contributed to World Wars I and II in this historical video.
- Readings
Why Did World War II Happen?
In this free resource on World War II, understand the causes of World War II and why these issues drove countries back to battle just two decades after World War I.
- Readings
Why Did World War I Happen?
In this free resource on World War I, explore the causes and effects of the Great War to understand how the conflict shaped world history.
- Readings
What Is the Enlightenment and How Did It Transform Politics?
Explore how calls for liberty, equality, and individual rights caused revolutions around the world, from the American Revolution to the French and Haitian Revolutions.
- Readings
What Are the Causes and Consequences of Industrialization?
Learn about the Industrial Revolution and how technological innovations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continue to shape society today.
- Readings
How Did Humans Come to Live Longer and Healthier Lives?
From the history of vaccines and medical quarantines to the origin of the World Health Organization, explore how innovations in global health increased human longevity and prepared the world for COVID-19.
- Videos
Why Do We Live in Countries?
How did sovereignty become part of world history? In this educational video, learn why kingdoms turn into countries after the Thirty Years’ War.
- Readings
Understanding Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’
More than twenty years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, challenges remain for Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland long after the conflict ended.
- Readings
Understanding Intrastate Conflict
From civil war to terrorist violence, explore the types, causes, and consequences of conflicts within countries that are increasingly threatening world order.
- Readings
What Is Interstate Conflict?
Bombs and bullets are not always required for countries to come into conflict. From Russia’s war in Ukraine to a U.S. trade war with China, explore the different ways countries come into tension.
- Videos
How Is Conflict Changing?
What is conflict? Explore the reasons why tensions, violence, and war break out and what the consequences are for the world in this video.
- Readings
The Civilian Consequences of Conflict
From World War II to Syria’s civil war, understand the deadly consequences of war and what that means about the changing nature of conflict.
- Readings
Modern History and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Americas
From colonization to the Cold War, learn about the major historical moments that have shaped the Americas.
- Readings
Understanding Revolutions
Explore the powerful political movements that can reshape forms of government.
- Readings
Laws, Norms, and Democratic Backsliding
Are countries less democratic than they used to be? Learn how democratic principles like checks and balances, free elections, and freedom of the press are under threat around the world.
- Readings
What Are Different Types of Government?
Learn about different forms of government—including democracy, authoritarian rule, and monarchy—and how their distinctions aren’t always so clear.
- Readings
Tanks, Sanctions, and Separatists: The Various Challenges to Sovereignty
A government’s authority within its borders gets challenged all the time. Here is how.
- Readings
Understanding the Constructive and Destructive Natures of Nationalism
Nationalism can unify diverse societies. But when taken to extremes, it can also fuel violence, division, and global disorder.
- Readings
How Self-Determination Shaped the Modern World
Learn how the world’s nearly two hundred countries came to be, and whether the map is set in stone.
- Videos
Technology and Development
As Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution and India’s Green Revolution have shown, technological innovation can drive extraordinary development. Explore how digital advancements are further driving progress today.
- Readings
Understanding the Last Fifty Years of Global Development
Has life gotten better for people around the world? Learn how improvements in health, education, and income are measured and explore three countries’ opportunities and challenges with development.
- Videos
What Is Global Health?
We have made advances in global health, but we face challenges from new disease trends—and need funding to treat them.
- Videos
The Lasting Effects of Emigration
When migrants seek work abroad, what does their home country gain and lose? Explore one example of a country shaped by emigration, the Philippines.
- Videos
History of U.S. Immigration Policy
Explore how the United States has responded to migrants throughout history—from the Chinese Exclusion Act to DACA—and how immigration policy influences the society, economy, and politics of a country.
- Readings
Trains, Planes, and Shipping Containers
Three innovations shaped how people and goods move around the world today.
- Videos
What Is Globalization?
Explore examples of globalization to understand the benefits and challenges of our increasingly interconnected world in this video.
- Readings
It Takes a Village to Make Your Medicine
Follow the global supply chain across borders and into your pill bottle.
