UPSC CSEWorld History
World History for UPSC CSE
18th century onwards — Industrial Revolution to decolonisation and the Cold War, entirely new content beyond Prelims.
📊 Moderate-yield and entirely new relative to Prelims — no factual base to build on, so foundational coverage matters more here
How toppers play this section
World History has zero Prelims overlap, which means candidates often under-invest here relative to its guaranteed 1–2 questions a year — the highest-leverage approach is building solid coverage of a compact set of pivotal events (the two World Wars, decolonisation, the major political philosophies) with genuine cause-and-effect understanding, rather than broad but shallow date-memorisation.
Chapters
Built to the UPSC CSE blueprint — notes, shortcuts, solved PYQ-style examples and practice in every chapter.
Topic-wise weightage in UPSC CSE
Expected question counts from previous-year paper analyses. Topics with an arrow already have a full chapter.
| Topic | Prelims Q | Mains Q | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| World history: revolutions, world wars, and decolonisation | ~15 | Medium |
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