Cambridge A Level History 9389 — 2019 May/June Paper 3 · Variant 1

1 Read the extract and then answer the question. When economic interests were involved, the government had to respond to conditions in the areas where people wanted to trade or invest. In the middle of the nineteenth century, traders who ran into trouble overseas usually did so in countries like Argentina or the Ottoman Empire whose governments would pay attention to protests from London, and Palmerston’s policy of assertiveness without expansion had suited the situation very well. By the later decades of the century traders were going into less settled areas of Asia and Africa where governments had less control over their people and had no idea what protests from London involved. Passing a law forbidding traders and missionaries from going into such areas would have been difficult, even though the British government could not give them the diplomatic support it would have done in more peaceful areas. So it returned to the seventeenth-century practice of giving charters to trading companies to endow them with some of the powers usually exercised by government. The British North Borneo Company, which wanted to carry on wood-cutting operations in Sabah, was the first organisation to benefit from this revival of the old policy. In the last twenty years of the nineteenth century British involvement in Africa relied heavily on companies with charters, at a time when improvements in medicine, including the use of quinine, and developments in transport and weapons made it much safer to penetrate what had been known as the ‘Dark Continent’. Most of Africa was densely enough populated to mean that authority could only be established by reaching some relationship with local African rulers. Any local ruler who was asked to sign a treaty by a British government official or representative of a chartered company, could tell that people who could assemble armies of hundreds of Africans to carry their belongings as they travelled through the continent must be in the service of a very powerful ruler, with whom it would be sensible to have diplomatic relations. By this stage the palm oil traders concerned about the Niger Coast Protectorate had united as the Royal Niger Company. In 1886 the company was able to build on the Borneo precedent and obtain a charter from Gladstone’s government which allowed it some autonomous power in dealing with states and rulers in the basin of the River Niger. It had a small army, and some boats on the river, so it was a powerful force in local affairs, but it still relied on the British government to handle relations with other European authorities. In Borneo no rival European authorities had disputed the position, but almost everywhere in Africa European countries kept up vague claims in case they might be useful in future. The result was that no company could expect a free hand. The government was unlikely to stop British traders who wanted to go about their business. Giving them charters which saved the government from having to deal directly with local rulers was the easiest way to handle the situation. In 1888 Salisbury’s Conservative government gave the Imperial British East Africa Company a charter to operate in what are now Kenya and Uganda, and in 1889 it gave the British South Africa Company a charter to operate in what are now Zimbabwe and Zambia. The only real interest the British government had in Africa was in Egypt and the Cape Colony, the areas which controlled routes to the East. These three companies were responsible for much the larger part of British expansion in Africa during the years of what has become known as the ‘Scramble’, and they transformed the political map of Africa. What can you learn from this extract about the interpretation and approach of the historian who wrote it? Use the extract and your knowledge of the British Empire to explain your answer. [40]

Mark scheme: Question Answer Marks 1 The Causes and Impact of British Imperialism, c.1850–1939 40 Interpretation/Approach The main interpretation is that the British preferred informal empire, and by the end of the nineteenth century was using charters to trading companies to bring this about. Showing understanding of the Big Message will involve discussion of both these aspects. The extract focuses mainly on the period of ‘new imperialism’ and the ‘Scramble for Africa’. It shows that the British government was happy to encourage trade but wished to avoid direct rule of colonial territories. Expansion into previously uncolonised areas in the later nineteenth century made the old approach to informal empire less tenable, so trading companies were given charters which included some governmental powers. Glossary: the two main areas of interpretation have been (i) on whether imperial policy was determined at the centre (the metropole) or at the periphery (in the territories of the empire). This can involve debates on who was making the decisions at the centre (the ‘official mind’, ‘gentlemanly capitalists’ etc) or at the periphery (the ‘man on the spot’): and (ii) on whether the British Empire was characterised by a preference for formal (i.e. direct rule over annexed territory) or informal (i.e. indirect control mainly through and for commercial interests). What counts is how appropriate the use of this kind of terminology is in relation to the extract, and how effectively the extract can be used to support it.

2 Read the extract and then answer the question. The particular development of National Socialist anti-Jewish policy derived from Hitler’s own brand of anti-Semitism, from the bond between Hitler and all levels of German society, from the political and institutional incorporation of anti-Semitism into the Nazi regime and of course, after September 1939, from the evolving war situation. I have defined Hitler’s brand of anti-Jewish hatred as ‘redemptive anti-Semitism’; in other words, beyond the immediate ideological confrontation with liberalism and communism, which in the Nazi leader’s eyes were worldviews invented by Jews and for Jewish interests, Hitler perceived his mission as a kind of crusade to redeem the world by eliminating the Jews. The Nazi leader saw ‘the Jew’ as the principle of evil in Western history and society, and believed that, without a victorious redeeming struggle, the Jew would ultimately dominate the world. Nazi anti-Jewish ideology could be summed up simply: the Jew was a lethal and active threat to all nations, to the Aryan race and to the German Volk. The emphasis is not only on ‘lethal’ but also – and mainly – on ‘active’. While all other groups targeted by the Nazi regime (the mentally ill, ‘asocials’ and homosexuals, ‘inferior’ racial groups including the Gypsies and Slavs) were essentially passive threats, to the Nazis the Jews were the only group that, since its appearance in history, relentlessly plotted and manoeuvred to subdue all of humanity. From the autumn of 1941, Hitler often designated the Jew as the ‘world arsonist’. In fact the flames that the Nazi leader set alight and fanned burned as widely and intensely as they did only because, throughout Europe and beyond, the ideological and cultural context was ready to catch fire. Without Hitler, the fire would not have started; without the context it would not have spread as far as it did. It is this constant interaction between Hitler and the context within which he ranted and acted that must be analysed and interpreted. However, the context was not limited to its German components but penetrated to every corner of Europe. For the Nazi regime, the anti-Jewish crusade also offered a number of pragmatic benefits at a political-institutional level. For a regime dependent on constant mobilisation, the Jew served as the constant mobilising myth. The anti-Jewish drive became ever more extreme along with the radicalising of the regime’s goals, and then with the extension of the war, in which we shall be able to locate the emergence of the ‘Final Solution’. Hitler himself adapted the campaign against the Jew according to tactical goals; but once the first signs of defeat appeared, the Jew became the core of the regime’s propaganda to sustain the Volk in what soon appeared to be a desperate struggle. As a result of the mobilising function of the Jew, many ordinary German soldiers, policemen or civilians mistreated and murdered Jews they encountered. This was not necessarily the result of deeply ingrained and historically unique German anti-Jewish passion; nor was it mainly the result of group dynamics, independent of ideological motivations. It was the Nazi system as a whole that had produced an ‘anti-Jewish culture’, partly rooted in historical German and European Christian anti-Semitism, but also fostered by all the means at the disposal of the regime and propelled to a unique level of hatred, with a direct impact on individual and collective behaviour. What can you learn from this extract about the interpretation and approach of the historian who wrote it? Use the extract and your knowledge of the Holocaust to explain your answer. [40] Section C: Topic 3 The Origins and Development of the Cold War, 1941–1950

Mark scheme: 2 The Holocaust 40 Interpretation/Approach The main interpretation is that Hitler’s own brand of anti-Semitism was the driving force behind the elimination of the Jews, but this operated in a particular context, and the Final Solution emerged from this context. Showing understanding of the Big Message will involve discussion of both these aspects. There are strong intentionalist aspects in this interpretation and with proper development answers based on this could reach L4. However, the writer also stresses a multi-faceted context which brought the Final Solution about – there was an arsonist, but there was also an underbrush to catch fire. A fuller understanding would therefore be demonstrated by showing this to be a synthesis interpretation – only answers arguing this should be placed in L5. Answers arguing that the interpretation is structuralist/functionalist will only be able to reach L3. Glossary: Candidates may use some/all of the following terms: Intentionalism – interpretations which assume that Hitler/the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews from the start. Structuralism - interpretations which argue that it was the nature of the Nazi state that produced genocide. There was no coherent plan but the chaotic competition for Hitler’s approval between different elements of the leadership produced a situation in which genocide could occur. Functionalism is closely related to structuralism. It sees the Holocaust as an unplanned, ad hoc response to wartime developments in Eastern Europe, when Germany conquered areas with large Jewish populations. Candidates may also refer to synthesis interpretations, i.e. interpretations which show characteristics of more than one of the above. What counts is how appropriate the use of this kind of terminology is in relation to the extract, and how effectively the extract can be used to support it.

3 Read the extract and then answer the question. Trustful Americans hoped for a general peace, protected and administered by a World Family of Democratic Nations. This hope crumbled slowly in the following months and years. Soviet Russia carried forward her revolutionary programme, first in neighbouring states, then in remoter regions, finally through fifth columns of communists all over the world. Russian power flowed irresistibly into the vacuum left by the collapse of Germany. The USSR clenched its hold on the territorial occupations in eastern Europe. Then it intervened with the force of revolution, syphoned out of Soviet military might, to overturn the principles of real democracy and free and unfettered elections agreed to at Tehran and Yalta. One by one it installed communist governments in the satellite states, and imposed upon them a structure of alliances and political and economic control in the form of ‘co-operation’ and ‘collaboration’ for cultural and economic purposes. In eastern Europe the Comintern reappeared in the shape of the Cominform to implement these Soviet alliances. It invoked the solidarity of the member states in their forthcoming struggle against ‘Anglo-American imperialism’. In northern Europe, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark trembled before the aggressive advances of this revolutionary giant. Meanwhile the Western Allies were demobilising and putting their faith in the United Nations Organisation, with its permanent headquarters in New York as if to flatter the United States and hold it to the purpose of collective security. The United Nations proved to be no more than an international debating society, like the first League of Nations, but more abusive. More and more the Security Council became merely a sounding-board for Russia’s aggressive diplomacy and the Western democracies’ developing resistance. The aggressive antagonism of the USSR within the United Nations made it terrifyingly clear to the western world that no real peace existed, that a far greater totalitarian power had taken the place of Germany, Italy and Japan to menace national independence and democratic liberty and the rights of man. The agreements of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam had invoked democratic principles as the basis of the coming peace. To the Soviet authorities democracy meant communism enforced only in the name of the people, without their free consent, by a dictatorship, with ruthless suppression of the freedoms of speaking, meeting, publishing and voting. Soviet intervention in the satellite states, the increasing preponderance of Russian armed force, and the gradual realisation by the Western nations of the Soviet programme for world revolution, frightened the democracies fringing on the Atlantic. Their heritage of freedom, so recently and valiantly preserved, with Russia’s aid, seemed doomed to another even more formidable trial from their recent ally. The new fear focused first and foremost on the German question. It became all too obvious that the Soviet Union intended to make Germany and its decisive war potential another satellite of Soviet power, a dominating thrust of its revolution into western Europe – to set up a communist Reich as an unchallengeable menace to western democracy. Secretary of State Byrnes tried to neutralise that danger by proposing a four-power treaty (USA, France, Britain and Russia) designed to hold Germany to military impotence for twenty-five, even forty, years, and thus make possible Allied evacuation and a German peace treaty safe for all. But Russia would have none of it. Germany and Austria were all that stood between the Western democracies and the power of the Soviet revolution. What can you learn from this extract about the interpretation and approach of the historian who wrote it? Use the extract and your knowledge of the Cold War to explain your answer. [40]

Mark scheme: 3 The Origins and Development of the Cold War, 1941–1950 40 Interpretation/Approach The main interpretation is that in the post-war period Russia was an aggressive revolutionary state, posing a real threat to the West which was trying to protect the principles of democracy and freedom as the basis for the peace settlement. Showing understanding of the Big Message will involve discussion of both these aspects. This is a traditionalist interpretation. It perceives the Soviet Union as the enemy, and the West as the protector of freedom. Demonstrating complete understanding (i.e. Level 5) will require illustration of both of these aspects. Arguing for a traditional approach on only one of the aspects would be L4. It will be much less plausible to try to argue that the interpretation is post-post-revisionist – there is no focus on Stalin, and the view of the West is too naïve, so L3 maximum. Glossary: Traditional/Orthodox interpretations of the Cold War were generally produced early after WW2. They blame the Soviet Union and Stalin’s expansionism for the Cold War. Revisionist historians challenged this view and shifted more of the focus onto the United States, generally through an economic approach which stressed the alleged aim of the US to establish its economic dominance over Europe. Post-revisionists moved towards a more balanced view in which elements of blame were attached to both sides. Since the opening of the Soviet archives post-1990 there has been a shift to attributing prime responsibility to Stalin – a post-post- revisionist stance which often seems very close to the traditional view. What counts is how appropriate the use of this kind of terminology is in relation to the extract, and how effectively the extract can be used to support it.