STR History — IB History, mapped.

How it works

From a place on the map to a page of notes

1
Pick a year

Drag the timeline to a snapshot. The globe redraws the empires and states of that moment, coloured by who controlled them.
2
Click a pin

Lit pins are the IB topics of that era. Hover for a preview, click to open the notes. Faint pins take you to their own era.
3
Study actively

Key quotes are highlighted. Click any key term to see why it matters, then test yourself at the end.

Study notes

Featured topics

Paper 1 1990–1998

Rwanda — civil war and genocide

How colonial rule, civil war and a radicalised regime led to the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994 — and why the United Nations and the great powers failed to stop it.

Kigali, Rwanda

Paper 2 1962

The Cuban Missile Crisis

Thirteen days in October 1962 when the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brought the superpowers closer to nuclear war than at any other time.

San Cristóbal, Cuba

Paper 2 1949–1976

Mao's China

How Mao Zedong's Communists won China's civil war, and how Mao used mass campaigns — from land reform to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution — to transform China and keep power.

Beijing, China

Paper 2 1945–1949

The origins of the Cold War

How the wartime alliance of the USA, Britain and the USSR broke down between Yalta and the Berlin Blockade, dividing Europe and Germany into rival blocs.

Berlin, Germany

Paper 1 1933–1940

German and Italian expansion

How Hitler and Mussolini overturned the post-war settlement — from rearmament and Abyssinia to Munich and the invasion of Poland — and why Britain and France appeased them until 1939.

Munich, Germany

Paper 2 1924–1953

Stalin's Soviet Union

How Stalin won the struggle to succeed Lenin, transformed the Soviet economy through forced industrialisation and collectivisation, and ruled through terror and propaganda.

Moscow

The IB History course