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NSW Curriculum
NSW Education Standards Authority

11–12Modern History 11–12 Syllabus

Record of changes
Implementation from 2027
Expand for detailed implementation advice

Content

Year 12

Peace and conflict

Students investigate key features of the history of ONE of the following options in Peace and conflict.

The historical concepts and skills content is to be integrated as appropriate.

  • Conflict in Europe 1935–1945
  • Conflict in the Pacific 1937–1951
  • The Cold War 1945–1991
  • The Arab–Israeli conflict 1948–2000
  • Conflict in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos 1954–1976
  • Conflict in the Gulf 1980–2017
Conflict in the Pacific 1937–1951
Context
  • Japanese foreign policy 1937–1941

  • US and British policies in the Pacific 1937–1941

The outbreak and course of the Pacific War
  • Aims and strategies of the Japanese

  • Reasons for the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the US response

  • Japanese advances 1941–1942

  • Turning points of the war: the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Guadalcanal

  • Strategies used by Allied forces against Japan 1942–1945

Civilians at war
  • The impact of the war on civilians in China and Southeast Asia

  • Collaboration, resistance and the use of slave labour

  • The impact of the war on the home fronts in Japan and Australia

End of the conflict
  • Reasons for the use of the atomic bomb

  • Reasons for the Japanese defeat

  • Allied occupation of Japan to 1951, including the status of the Emperor

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