Board: AQA | Option: 1K | Component: 1 (Breadth Study) | Assessment focus: AO3 (historical interpretations)
About this option
The Making of a Superpower covers the United States from the end of the Civil War to the fall of Saigon, tracing the transformation of a divided nation into the world’s dominant superpower. Students examine Reconstruction and its failure, the Gilded Age, progressive reform, both world wars, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and Vietnam — engaging with a vigorous historiographical tradition on race, power, and America’s self-image. As a Component 1 option, the assessment focus is on engaging with and evaluating historical interpretations.
Key themes
- Reconstruction, 1865–1877: aims, achievements, and the retreat from racial equality
- The Gilded Age: industrialisation, immigration, and the Robber Barons
- Progressivism: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and the reform era
- The First World War and American isolationism
- The New Deal: Roosevelt’s response to the Depression and its legacy
- The Second World War and the emergence of the USA as a superpower
- Cold War America: Truman, Korea, McCarthyism, and the national security state
- The civil rights movement: Brown v Board, Montgomery, Little Rock, and the Civil Rights Acts
- Vietnam: escalation, the antiwar movement, and the limits of American power
What the exam asks
Component 1 is AQA’s breadth study and historical interpretations paper. Questions require students to analyse and evaluate how historians have interpreted key developments across the full chronological range of the option. Strong answers identify what is distinctive about each interpretation, explain what drives the differences between historians’ approaches, and reach a substantiated judgement. The ability to engage with named historians and their arguments — rather than just the events themselves — is what separates the highest mark bands.
Historiography
The major interpretive controversies directly relevant to exam questions include:
- Reconstruction: a revolution betrayed or a flawed vision from the start?
- The New Deal: Keynesian reform, conservative compromise, or political masterstroke?
- The civil rights movement: the role of leadership (King) versus grassroots organisation
- Vietnam: why did the USA lose? Military failure, political failure, or an unwinnable war?
Related packs and cross-board resources
AQA 2J (America: A Nation Divided) covers the Civil War and Reconstruction in depth. AQA 2Q (The American Dream, 1945–1980) covers the postwar core of this option in depth. Edexcel 1F (c1917–96) and WJEC Unit 3, Option 8 cover overlapping chronological ground.
Interpretations pack — now available
The full AO3 Historical Interpretations Pack for this option is now available — see below. It covers all four core historiographical debates with named historians, paired comparison tasks built to AQA mark scheme logic, and provenance analysis prompts, in a downloadable PDF.
£9.99 per pack
