Paper 2: World history topic 6 — Causes and effects of Early Modern wars (1500–1750): Causes of conflicts

· Exact syllabus subtopic: Paper 2, World history topic 6: Causes and effects of Early Modern wars (1500–1750), subtopic Causes of conflicts.
· Official syllabus focus: causes of conflict, including ideological and political causes, economic causes, competition for resources, religious causes, and short- and long-term causes.
· Main exam expectation: students must write analytical essays using specific conflicts, not general claims about early modern warfare.
· Regional expectation: IB notes that examination questions may require examples from two different regions of the world. Students should therefore revise at least two wars from different IB regions.
· Suggested examples are not compulsory: the syllabus examples are suggestions only. Teachers may replace them, but essay evidence must still fit the syllabus focus and come from more than one region.
· Cross-regional warning: if a war is cross-regional, use it in one regional context only in a single response; do not count the same war as two regional examples.

What this subtopic is really testing

· This subtopic is about why wars broke out, not mainly how they were fought or what they caused.
· Strong answers explain causation, especially the relationship between long-term pressures and short-term triggers.
· IB expects students to separate causes into categories: political/ideological, economic/resource-based, and religious, while showing that real conflicts usually involved overlapping motives.
· A top essay does not just list causes; it argues which causes were most significant, structural, immediate, or used as justification.
· Good comparisons ask: were wars driven more by state power, dynastic ambition, religious division, trade/resources, or frontier expansion?

The IB cause categories — how to use them in essays

· Ideological causes: use when rulers, states or movements fought because of beliefs about legitimacy, empire, religious mission, dynastic right, state authority, or confessional identity.
· Political causes: use when war grew from succession disputes, centralization, rebellion, imperial rivalry, state expansion, or attempts to weaken a rival power.
· Economic causes: use when conflict was linked to trade, taxation, tribute, control of wealth, commercial routes, or the financial interests of states and elites.
· Competition for resources: use for wars over land, fur, trade routes, ports, tribute zones, agricultural land, or strategically valuable territories.
· Religious causes: use when conflict involved Christian–Muslim rivalry, Protestant–Catholic division, holy war language, conversion, or confessional alliances.
· Short-term causes: the trigger or immediate crisis that turned tension into war.
· Long-term causes: deeper pressures such as dynastic rivalry, state weakness, religious fragmentation, commercial competition, or imperial expansion.

Political and ideological causes: power, legitimacy and state-building

· Thirty Years War (1618–1648), Europe: use as a major example of conflict caused by overlapping political, ideological, and religious tensions inside the Holy Roman Empire.
· Long-term cause: unresolved tension between imperial authority and the autonomy of German princes; this makes the war useful for essays on political causes and state sovereignty.
· Short-term cause: the Defenestration of Prague (1618) triggered the Bohemian Revolt, showing how a local constitutional and religious crisis escalated into a wider war.
· Analytical use: argue that religion helped spark the conflict, but the war became increasingly political as powers such as France and Sweden intervened to limit Habsburg power.
· English Civil War (1642–1651), Europe: use for political and ideological causes linked to the struggle between Crown and Parliament.
· Long-term cause: disputes over royal authority, taxation, religious settlement, and whether the king could govern without Parliament.
· Short-term cause: the breakdown of trust between Charles I and Parliament in the early 1640s, especially over military control and political reform.
· Analytical use: useful for arguing that civil wars often emerge when arguments about government legitimacy become impossible to resolve peacefully.
· Qing conquest of Ming China, Asia and Oceania: use for causes linked to dynastic collapse, state weakness, and political legitimacy.
· Long-term cause: Ming fiscal and military weaknesses, internal rebellions and Manchu expansion created conditions for conquest.
· Analytical use: good for showing that early modern wars could be caused less by religion and more by dynastic replacement and competition for imperial authority.

Map evidence helps students see how a local Bohemian crisis became a wider European conflict. It supports arguments about escalation from regional political-religious tension to international anti-Habsburg war. Source

Economic causes and competition for resources

· Beaver Wars, mid-17th century, the Americas: use as the clearest syllabus-linked example of economic causes and competition for resources.
· Long-term cause: competition over the fur trade, hunting territories, trade access, and alliances involving Indigenous nations and European powers.
· Key groups/states: Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy, neighbouring Indigenous peoples, and French/Dutch/English commercial networks.
· Analytical use: shows that economic causes were not only European state rivalries; they also reshaped Indigenous diplomacy, warfare and territorial control.
· Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire (1591), Africa and the Middle East: use for economic and political motives linked to control over trans-Saharan trade, gold, and imperial expansion.
· Long-term cause: Moroccan interest in wealth and prestige from Songhai-controlled commercial networks.
· Short-term cause: Moroccan military expedition against Songhai power in 1591.
· Analytical use: strong example for arguing that resources and trade routes could make war attractive even across difficult terrain.
· Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–1517), Africa and the Middle East: use for political expansion combined with strategic-economic control over Syria, Egypt, and Red Sea/Mediterranean routes.
· Analytical use: useful for showing how early modern empires fought to control territory, trade, and religious-political prestige at the same time.
· Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), Asia and Oceania: use for expansionist ambition under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, with Korea as a strategic route toward Ming China.
· Analytical use: good for essays on political ambition, imperial expansion, and how strategic geography can become a cause of war.

This map shows the approximate configuration of Indigenous territories around 1648, helping students connect the fur trade, territorial pressure and alliance systems. Use it to support the idea that resource competition could produce prolonged, multi-sided conflict. Source

Religious causes: genuine motive, political language, or justification?

· Thirty Years War (1618–1648), Europe: use for Protestant–Catholic conflict, especially in the early phases involving Bohemia, the Holy Roman Emperor, and German states.
· Analysis: avoid saying the war was “only religious.” It began in a religious-political context, but later intervention by Catholic France against the Catholic Habsburgs proves that political strategy became central.
· Ethiopian–Adal War (1529–1543), Africa and the Middle East: use as a syllabus example where religious identity and regional power overlapped.
· Key actors: the Christian Ethiopian Empire, the Muslim Adal Sultanate, Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, and later Portuguese involvement on the Ethiopian side.
· Analysis: useful for showing how religious conflict could combine with state expansion, frontier politics and foreign involvement.
· Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), Europe: use for religious and political causes: Protestant resistance, opposition to Spanish Habsburg authority, and demands for provincial rights.
· Analysis: effective for essays arguing that religious causes often became powerful when tied to taxation, local privileges, and resentment of centralized imperial rule.
· Pueblo Revolt (1680), the Americas: use for religious and political resistance against Spanish colonial rule.
· Key cause: Spanish suppression of Pueblo religious practices, forced labour pressures and colonial control.
· Analysis: shows that religious causes could be part of anti-colonial resistance, not only wars between states.

The image helps students remember the Ethiopian–Adal War as a conflict involving local religious-political rivalry and foreign involvement. It supports analysis of religion as both a cause and a mobilizing identity. Source

Short-term and long-term causes: how to build causation arguments

· For any war, divide causes into long-term context, medium-term tension, and short-term trigger.
· Thirty Years War: long-term religious division and imperial political tension; short-term Defenestration of Prague (1618).
· English Civil War: long-term disputes over monarchy, Parliament, taxation and religion; short-term breakdown of authority and trust in 1641–1642.
· Ottoman–Mamluk War: long-term Ottoman expansion and rivalry with the Mamluks; short-term campaigns of Selim I in 1516–1517.
· Pueblo Revolt: long-term colonial exploitation and religious suppression; short-term organization of Pueblo resistance under Popé in 1680.
· Beaver Wars: long-term demand for fur and shifting alliances; short-term attacks and territorial pressure in the mid-17th century.
· Exam judgement: long-term causes explain why tension existed, but short-term causes explain why war happened when it did.

Compact evidence bank: suggested syllabus examples and how to use them

· Thirty Years War (1618–1648), Europe — demonstrates religious, political, and ideological causes. Use to argue that causes can shift over time from confessional conflict to balance-of-power politics.
· English Civil War (1642–1651), Europe — demonstrates political legitimacy, religious division, and conflict over taxation and royal power. Use for civil war causation and ideology of authority.
· Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), Europe — demonstrates the mix of religious resistance, political autonomy, and opposition to imperial taxation. Use for comparing revolt against centralized rule.
· Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–1517), Africa and the Middle East — demonstrates imperial expansion, control of strategic territory and political-religious prestige. Use for state rivalry and resource/route control.
· Moroccan invasion of Songhai (1591), Africa and the Middle East — demonstrates economic causes linked to gold and trans-Saharan trade. Use for resource competition beyond Europe.
· Ethiopian–Adal War (1529–1543), Africa and the Middle East — demonstrates religious and political causes with foreign involvement. Use for comparing religious conflict outside Europe.
· Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), Asia and Oceania — demonstrates political ambition, strategic geography and expansionist leadership. Use for causes driven by ruler ambition and regional strategy.
· Beaver Wars, mid-17th century, the Americas — demonstrates economic causes and competition for resources, especially the fur trade. Use for Indigenous-European alliance networks and resource conflict.

This map shows the routes of the Japanese invasions of Korea and helps students understand Korea’s strategic role between Japan and Ming China. It supports causation arguments about expansionist ambition and geography. Source

Comparison: how to compare causes across regions

· Europe vs Africa/Middle East: European examples such as the Thirty Years War and Dutch War of Independence often combine religious division with disputes over state authority. African/Middle Eastern examples such as the Ottoman–Mamluk War and Moroccan invasion of Songhai often foreground imperial expansion, trade, and strategic territory.
· Europe vs the Americas: the English Civil War focuses on internal constitutional authority, while the Beaver Wars and Pueblo Revolt show causes linked to colonial pressure, resources, and Indigenous resistance.
· Asia/Oceania vs Europe: the Japanese invasions of Korea can be compared with the Thirty Years War to show the difference between ruler-led external expansion and multi-state escalation from internal religious-political crisis.
· Religious causation comparison: compare the Ethiopian–Adal War with the Thirty Years War. Both involved religion, but neither should be reduced to religion alone; both also involved political power, alliances and territorial control.
· Economic causation comparison: compare the Beaver Wars with the Moroccan invasion of Songhai. Both involved resource competition, but one was centred on fur trade networks in the Americas, the other on gold/trans-Saharan trade and imperial ambition in Africa.
· Judgement line: the strongest comparison usually argues that political causes were most common, while religious and economic motives shaped the form and intensity of particular conflicts.

Building IB-style causal paragraphs

· Start with a causal claim: “A major long-term cause of the conflict was…”
· Add precise evidence: named war, date, actor, policy, region or trigger.
· Explain causation: show how the factor created tension, mobilized support or made compromise difficult.
· Weigh significance: compare with another cause using phrases such as “more immediate than,” “less fundamental than,” “provided justification rather than the root cause,” or “turned tension into open war.”
· Link to the question: end by using the command term, for example “therefore political causes were more significant than religious causes in explaining the outbreak.”

Broad IB-style question angles to prepare

· Evaluate the importance of religious causes in the outbreak of two Early Modern wars.
· Compare and contrast the causes of two Early Modern wars from different regions.
· Discuss the role of economic causes and competition for resources in causing Early Modern conflicts.
· To what extent were Early Modern wars caused by political and ideological factors?
· Examine the relationship between short-term and long-term causes in two wars.
· Assess whether rulers’ ambitions were more important than structural pressures in causing conflict.

Exam traps and common mistakes

· Do not write a narrative of the war. For this subtopic, the focus is causes of conflicts, not battles, tactics or outcomes.
· Do not treat suggested examples as compulsory. They are useful, but the essay must fit the syllabus categories and regional requirements.
· Do not claim a war was caused by religion alone if political or economic causes were also central, especially for the Thirty Years War or Dutch War of Independence.
· Do not ignore short-term vs long-term causes. IB rewards essays that explain why war broke out when it did.
· Do not compare examples from the same region if the question asks for two different regions.
· Do not use a cross-regional war twice in the same answer as if it counted for two regions.

This supports the Ottoman–Mamluk War as an example of early modern imperial expansion. It helps students connect political ambition, strategic territory and control of Egypt/Syria to causation. Source