Brevet History-Geography Revision Sheets 2026

Brevet History-Geography — Complete Revision Guide 2026

The History-Geography and Civic Education exam lasts 2 hours (50 points) with three exercises: document analysis in history, document analysis in geography, and a civic education question.

History

Theme 1: Europe and Total Wars (1914-1945)

World War I (1914-1918): trench warfare, Battle of Verdun (1916, ~300,000 dead), Armenian genocide (1915, ~1.2 million victims), Russian revolutions (1917), armistice 11 November 1918. A total war: entire economies mobilised, propaganda, women in factories. Outcome: ~10 million dead, Treaty of Versailles (1919), League of Nations.

Totalitarian regimes: Stalinism in the USSR (collectivisation, Gulag, purges), Fascism in Italy (Mussolini, 1922), Nazism in Germany (Hitler, 1933, NSDAP, antisemitism). Common features: single party, cult of personality, mass propaganda, political terror, suppression of freedoms.

World War II (1939-1945): invasion of Poland (1 September 1939), Fall of France (June 1940, de Gaulle's appeal of 18 June), Operation Barbarossa (1941), Pearl Harbor (1941), D-Day (6 June 1944), German surrender (8 May 1945), Hiroshima/Nagasaki (August 1945). A war of annihilation: ~60 million dead.

The Holocaust (Shoah): systematic extermination of 6 million Jews. Nuremberg Laws (1935), Kristallnacht (1938), Wannsee Conference (1942), extermination camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka). Roma genocide: ~500,000 victims.

France in WWII: Vichy regime (Pétain, collaboration, Vel d'Hiv roundup 1942), Resistance (de Gaulle, Jean Moulin, CNR 1943), Liberation (D-Day, liberation of Paris 25 August 1944).

Theme 2: The World Since 1945

Cold War (1947-1991): bipolar world — West (USA, NATO) vs East (USSR, Warsaw Pact). Key events: Berlin blockade (1948-49), Berlin Wall (1961-1989), Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), fall of the USSR (1991).

Decolonisation: India (1947, Gandhi), Algerian War (1954-1962, FLN, Évian Accords), Bandung Conference (1955), "Year of Africa" (1960).

European integration: ECSC (1951), Treaty of Rome (1957, EEC), Maastricht Treaty (1992, EU), euro (2002), Lisbon Treaty (2007), Brexit (2020). 6 founding members, now 27.

Theme 3: France Reimagined

Women's suffrage (1944), Social Security (1945), Fourth Republic (1946), Fifth Republic (1958, de Gaulle), Veil Act on abortion (1975), parity law (2000).

Geography

Urban areas: 80% of France's 67 million inhabitants live in cities. Metropolisation concentrates activity in large cities. Urban area structure: city centre, suburbs, periurban belt.

Productive spaces: leading EU agricultural producer, industrial reconversion (northern France), technopoles (Sophia Antipolis), service sector in metropolises (La Défense).

Overseas territories: DROM-COM, world's 2nd largest EEZ (11 million km²). Issues: remoteness, natural hazards, biodiversity.

European integration: France is an EU founding member, 2nd EU economy, Schengen area, Common Agricultural Policy.