Modern History — past papers by topic
Every official QCAA exam and examiner report we index, organised by topic and subtopic and labelled with the study design it was written under. Open the official paper, work the question in your own workspace, or bring a tutor into it live.
Papers and examiner reports open on the official QCAA website — they stay official and up to date. Question descriptions below are our own; we never republish exam content. Prefer to be walked through it? Book a tutor →
Official papers & examiner reports, year by year
| Year | Study design | Official paper(s) | Examiner report |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2019 syllabus (v1.2/v2.0) | 2025 cohort subject report is published (Jan 2026), but the individual 2025 external assessment question/response book and marking guide PDFs were not found indexed on qcaa.qld.edu.au at time of research — do not fabricate a URL. Check the subject page's 'Assessment' tab or the QCAA Portal directly for the live link. | Report ↗ |
| 2024 | 2019 syllabus (v1.2/v2.0) | External assessment — Marking guide and sample response ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2023 | 2019 syllabus (v1.2/v2.0) | Question and response book (exam paper) ↗ · Marking guide and sample response ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2022 | 2019 syllabus (v1.2/v2.0) | Question and response book (exam paper) ↗ · Marking guide and sample response ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2021 | 2019 syllabus (v1.2/v2.0) | Question and response book (exam paper) ↗ · Stimulus book ↗ · Marking guide and sample response ↗ | Report ↗ |
| 2020 | 2019 syllabus (v1.2/v2.0) | Question and response book (exam paper) ↗ · Stimulus book ↗ · Marking guide (short response, 59 marks) ↗ | Report ↗ |
METHODOLOGY / LIMITATION: Direct WebFetch to qcaa.qld.edu.au returned HTTP 403 Forbidden on every attempt (both HTML subject pages and PDF downloads) — the QCAA site appears to block this fetch tool. All URLs above were instead sourced from WebSearch results that index qcaa.qld.edu.au directly (exact titles and URLs copied verbatim from Google's crawl of the official site, not fabricated or guessed) — Andrew should do a quick manual click-check on each URL before relying on it for students, since I could not open the PDFs myself to confirm they resolve/haven't moved. One non-QCAA source (exam-insights.com, a third-party exam-prep site) was used only to help enumerate Unit 4's 13 topics and Unit 1's 6 topics by WebFetch, cross-checked against QCAA-sourced search snippets for Units 2/3 — topic wording for Units 2 and 3 subtopics is corroborated across multiple sources but NOT independently verified against the syllabus PDF itself, so treat those two units' subtopic lists as good-but-not-syllabus-exact (Unit 1 and Unit 4 are higher confidence). QUESTIONS: Returned empty by design — I could not actually open/read any exam PDF's page content (all attempts 403'd), so per instructions no per-question index was fabricated. EA STRUCTURE: Modern History's external assessment is a single short-response exam (not "Paper 1/Paper 2") worth 25% of the subject result, examining Unit 4 Topic 2 (the topic not chosen for IA3). It typically comprises a stimulus book + a question-and-response book, marked via a published marking guide. 2020 marks the first real cohort (Units 3/4, hence EA, began 2020 under the 2019 syllabus); no EA exists 2017–2019 for this subject. A newer 2025 v1.4 syllabus exists but only applies to students completing the course in 2026 or later, so it has not yet produced any EA papers — all years listed (2020–2025) sit under the outgoing 2019 syllabus era. PORTAL-LOCKED / GAPS: (1) The 2025 EA question/response book and marking guide were not found indexed publicly at research time — likely just-published and not yet crawled, or genuinely restricted; check qcaa.qld.edu.au directly. (2) The 2024 question-and-response book (actual paper, distinct from its marking guide) was not found separately indexed — QCAA sometimes withholds the prior year's live paper from public release for security/reuse reasons and only publishes it later or keeps it in the teacher portal; confirm before building around it. (3) Confidence is "medium" rather than "high" specifically because I could not visually open a single PDF to confirm content matches its title/filename — recommend a manual spot-check pass before shipping this index to students.
Browse by topic
Pick a topic, open the exact question in the official paper, then work it in your own workspace — or hand the question straight to a live tutor session.
Unit 1: Ideas in the Modern World · question map rolling out
Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1930s
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Age of Enlightenment, 1750s–1789
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Industrial Revolution, 1760s–1890s
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American Revolution, 1763–1783
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French Revolution, 1789–1799
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Age of Imperialism, 1848–1914
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Unit 2: Movements in the Modern World · question map rolling out
Empowerment of First Nations Australians since 1938
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Independence movement in India, 1857–1947
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Workers' movement since the 1860s
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Women's movement since 1893
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May Fourth Movement in China and its aftermath, 1919–1930s
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Independence movement in Algeria, 1945–1962
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Anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, 1948–1991
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African-American civil rights movement since 1954
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Unit 3: National Experiences in the Modern World · question map rolling out
Australia, 1914–1949
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France, 1799–1815
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New Zealand, 1841–1934
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Germany, 1914–1945
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United States of America, 1917–1945
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Soviet Union, 1920s–1945
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Japan since 1931
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China since 1931
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Unit 4: International Experiences in the Modern World · question map rolling out
Australian engagement with Asia since 1945
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Search for collective peace and security since 1815
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Trade and commerce between nations since 1833
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Mass migrations since 1848
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Information Age since 1936
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Genocides and ethnic cleansings since the 1930s
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Nuclear Age since 1945
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Cold War, 1945–1991
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Struggle for peace in the Middle East since 1948
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Cultural globalisation since 1956
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Space exploration since 1957
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Rights and recognition of First Peoples since 1982
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Terrorism, anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism since 1984
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