Board: AQA | Option: 2H | Component: Component 2 (Depth Study) | Assessment Objective: AO3
This option traces France from the last years of the ancien régime through the Revolution, the Terror, the Directory, and the Napoleonic Empire, examining the causes and course of the most transformative political event of the modern era and its European consequences. Students engage with a rich and contested historiography that has divided scholars since the Revolution itself.
What this option covers
- The crisis of the ancien régime: fiscal collapse, aristocratic resistance, and the Estates-General
- 1789: the Tennis Court Oath, the storming of the Bastille, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man
- The constitutional monarchy and its failure: Louis XVI and the road to war
- The Terror 1793–1794: Robespierre, the Committee of Public Safety, and political violence
- The Thermidorean reaction and the Directory 1795–1799
- Napoleon’s rise to power: 18 Brumaire and the Consulate
- The Napoleonic Empire: legal reform, military expansion, and its limits
- The Hundred Days and Napoleon’s legacy
Key historiographical debates
- The causes of the Revolution: Marxist class conflict (Soboul, Lefebvre) vs revisionist rejection (Furet, Cobban)
- The Terror: contingent emergency or inherent in the logic of the Revolution?
- Napoleon: heir of the Revolution or its betrayer?
- The Atlantic Revolution: was France part of a wider democratic movement?
AO3 Interpretation Pack — coming soon
An AO3 Interpretation Pack for AQA 2H is in development. When complete, it will cover the major historiographical debates examined in this option, with named historians, paired comparison tasks built to AQA mark scheme logic, and provenance prompts for every debate. The first debate will be free and open to all.
