Syllabus of history class 10 CBSE: chapters, board portions and maps

Syllabus of history class 10 CBSE: chapters and how each is assessed

So for the board exam you prepare four chapters, one of them only in part. The board does not split the 18 marks chapter by chapter, but the two nationalism chapters together make up the biggest share of most papers.

Chapter 1: Rise of Nationalism in Europe

• How the French Revolution gave birth to the idea of a nation; Napoleon's administrative changes
• How nationalism took shape across Europe: the aristocracy and the new middle class, what liberal nationalism stood for
• The age of revolutions from 1830 to 1848, including the Greek struggle and the revolution of the liberals
• The making of Germany and Italy, and the strange case of Britain
• Visualising the nation through female allegories such as Marianne and Germania
• Nationalism and imperialism, and the Balkan problem

Expect questions on the role of Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi and Bismarck, on the Treaty of Vienna, and on reading symbols in paintings. Source based questions often use a short passage from this chapter.

Chapter 2: Nationalism in India

• How the war of 1914 to 1918, the Khilafat issue and Non Cooperation came together
• Differing strands within the movement: towns, peasants in Awadh, tribal people, plantation workers in Assam
• Towards Civil Disobedience: the Simon Commission, the Salt March, how different groups saw the movement and its limits
• The sense of collective belonging: Bharat Mata, folklore, the flag and reinterpreting history

This chapter carries the history map items, so learn the places alongside the events. Long answers on why Gandhiji called off Non Cooperation or why the salt tax was chosen as a symbol are frequent.

Chapters 3 and 5: global world and print culture

Making of a Global World (board part only): the pre modern world, the silk routes that linked distant regions, how foods such as noodles and potatoes travelled, and how conquest, disease and trade shaped the sixteenth century world. The later portions, from the nineteenth century economy through the interwar depression to the post war order, are done through the interdisciplinary project, not the board paper.

Print Culture & the Modern World: early printing in China, Japan and Korea, print in Europe after Gutenberg, the print revolution and its effects, reading mania and new readers such as women, children and workers, the coming of print to India, the debates on religious reform that print made public, new kinds of publication, and censorship under colonial rule.

The Age of Industrialisation stays in your book, but it appears only in school periodic tests.

History map items for the board paper

Two map marks in the Social Science paper come from history, all from Nationalism in India. CBSE's list asks you to locate and label:

• Indian National Congress sessions: Calcutta (September 1920), Nagpur (December 1920) and Madras (1927)
• Champaran in Bihar, for the movement of indigo planters
• Kheda in Gujarat, for the peasant satyagraha
• Ahmedabad in Gujarat, for the cotton mill workers' satyagraha
• Amritsar in Punjab, for the Jallianwala Bagh incident
• Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh, where Non Cooperation was called off
• Dandi in Gujarat, for the start of Civil Disobedience

These are quick marks if you mark each one on a blank outline map several times before the exam. Visually impaired candidates answer alternative questions in place of map work.

What kind of questions come from history

The Social Science paper mixes 1 mark objective items, short answers of 2 and 3 marks, long answers of 5 marks, case based questions of 4 marks and the map question. History usually contributes to every type. Competency based items, such as a source passage followed by questions, are a large part of the paper, so practise reading an unseen extract and answering in your own words.

A four week history revision plan

• Week 1: Nationalism in Europe. Make a timeline from 1789 to 1871 and a one page table of leaders and what they did.
• Week 2: Nationalism in India, along with daily map practice of the eight locations.
• Week 3: Print Culture and the first part of Making of a Global World.
• Week 4: the board's sample papers and their marking schemes, with history questions done under time.

Read the NCERT text closely, including the boxes and picture captions, because source questions often come from them. For full past board papers, use our guide to CBSE class 10 previous year papers; for every other subject, the CBSE class 10 syllabus lists chapters and marks. Thinking of humanities after board exams? the class 12 history syllabus shows what comes next.