suggestions for my soviet/peruvian EE topic please?

[apenny2612]

Hi everyone ive been thinnking about me EE topic for history, i was going to write about the soviet union and how its policies counter-attacked using the question:

In what ways were soviet policies in Europe counter-productive and damaging to the left wing regime in the East?

however , i was told that the IB likes it when go go local with your topic, is this true? i was also thinking n writting about "The war of the pacific", a conflict between Chile, Bolivia and Peru in the 1870-80s, maybe here i could investigate about the war as one of discrimnation and racism, specially from Chile both of her enemies, what do you suggest i do?

im on the 1st year of my IB

[ak18]

Well for your first topic, you'd have to be more specific about what policies you are aiming to talk about. policies could range from economic to foreign. Well the IB likes it in general if IB students take a topic that isn't done too often. I know that the Cold War/Soviets and WWII are overdone topics.

I like your second topic better. You should try and research more about it and see if you can come up with a more concrete question.

good luck

[Emmi]

Agreed with the above poster, the second topic sounds like a much more interesting topic than an overdone Cold War topic. And chances are when you submit it, there will be hundreds of people who wrote their history EE on the Cold War, but you'll probably be the only one with a topic on the War of the Pacific (and when graders have no knowledge of your topic, they can't point out "oh they didn't analyze this enough or this is wrong" and your chances of scoring well are much higher).

[historiana]

There is considerable merit in your first question, if it interests you, and if you'd like to pursue it further and clarify it somewhat - to which leftist regimes in the East are you referring? I find that, on this site, students worry too much about whether or not a subject is overdone, rather than thinking about how to do it and whether or not it is a manageable topic.

While the Guerra del Pacifico may be exotic, if it doesn't interest you very much than you will have a difficult time focusing on the subject and doing adequate research, which brings up another point: how many good sources can you find on it that will show different sides of the issues? I think that it's also a good subject, but you need to ensure that you can find enough information - and not simply from textbooks and Wikipedia. The main problem with many EEs is that they lack the scholarly articles and texts that show detailed research.

And, you can't necessarily count on the EE examiner not having knowledge of your subject. The EE can go anywhere and you may have the good fortune of the essay going to an examiner who is an expert on the Guerra del Pacifico, at which point they could micro-correct it and point out every little flaw.