The Age of Revolution: Ideas and Politics, 1650-1800
1. Which of John Locke’s ideas influenced the American and French revolutions?
2. How are Montesquieu’s ideas reflected in the structure of the U.S. government?
3. What were the main concerns of the philosophes of the Enlightenment?
4. The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed what rights for U.S. citizens?
5. What are some of the similarities between the American Revolution and the French Revolution? What are some of the differences?
6. What does the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen have in common with the American Declaration of Independence? What are some differences?
7. In what ways did Napoleon continue the ideals of the French Revolution? In what ways did he reverse the revolution?
8. How did the Congress of Vienna affect political rule in Europe?
9. How did the French Revolution influence the actions of Toussaint L’Ouverture?
10. Who is known as “The Liberator” of South America, and what did he do to earn that nickname?
Industrial Transformation and the Birth of Modern Societies
1. What consequences did the land enclosures have for the population of Britain?
2. What conditions allowed Britain to lead the world in industrializing?
3. How did the steam engine develop, and how did its uses affect industrialization and transportation?
4. In what ways was cloth central to the Industrial Revolution? What other parts of the world besides Britain were affected by British textile production?
5. How did industrialization affect labor (how people worked) in the 18th and 19th centuries?
6. How did industrialization affect the availability of goods in the 18th and 19th century?
7. What did Eli Whitney’s invention have to do with slavery in the U.S. south?
8. When were locomotive trains developed, and what impact did this new technology have on the modern world?
9. The Bessemer converter enabled the production of what useful product? How was that product used?
10. What impact did the Sadler Report on Child Labor have on working conditions in Britain?
Social and Economic Thought in Early Industrial Society
1. What did Adam Smith mean by the “invisible hand” of the market? What does “laissez-faire” mean?
2. What was Thomas Robert Malthus’s concern regarding population? How did his ideas influence British social policy?
3. How did American “robber barons” make their great wealth? Why did they get that nickname? How did they spend some of their millions?
4. What were the beliefs of some of the utopian socialists? How did they act on their beliefs?
5. What were the two social-economic classes that Karl Marx discussed in The Communist Manifesto and other writings? What is the relationship of these classes to each other?
6. What does “the means of production” mean?
7. How is democratic socialism different from utopian socialism? How is democratic socialism different from scientific (Marxist) socialism?
Nationalism across the Globe
1. Why did Mazzini think Italians should unite into a single nation? What vision did he have for the Italian nation?
2. What does realpolitik mean? How did Bismarck practice it to achieve his goal of a united Germany?
3. What happened as a result of the Franco-Prussian War?
4. What competing ideas of the United States as a nation were at the heart of the U.S. Civil War?
5. What, and when, was Reconstruction in the United States?
6. How did the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution change the structure of citizenship in the United States?
7. What was Mexico’s La Reforma? To what extent did these reforms last?
8. Who are the Yaquis? What was their perspective on the Mexican nation?
9. When, why and how did Japan choose to model its society after industrialized countries in the West?
The New Imperialism
1. What role did opium play in the economic and political relationship between Britain and China in the mid-19th century?
2. How did the Boxer Rebellion contribute to the weakening of China’s power?
3. How was the Sepoy Mutiny or Great Rebellion a turning point in Britain’s relationship with India; what changed as a result of the Mutiny/Rebellion?
4. Where is the Suez Canal? Which countries were involved in building it? Who benefitted from the Suez Canal, and how did they benefit?
5. What impact did the Berlin Conference of 1884 have on the peoples of Africa?
6. What territories came under United States control as a direct result of the Spanish-American War?
7. To what extent did U.S. foreign policy change after 1898? To what extent did it follow already established patterns?
The Evolution of Liberalism in 19th Century Society
1. The words “suffrage” and “franchise” both refer to the right to vote in a political system. In what ways did the franchise expand in Europe and the Americas throughout the 19th century?
2. What is John Stuart Mill’s argument for why diversity in society is important for individual liberty?
3. In what ways did women experience discrimination and lesser rights in 19th century U.S., Britain and China? Who were some of the leaders in the struggle for women’s rights?
4. How did the developments in transportation, communication and public electricity change modern life?
5. What is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution? What evidence did he use in developing his theory?
6. How did “Social Darwinists” use Darwin’s ideas to support their beliefs about society?
7. What is germ theory? What impact did this understanding have on modern medicine and public health?
8. By the early 20th century, according to the textbook, the “work of Sigmund Freud [upset ideas of human rationality] as completely as Einstein’s destroyed the notion of a fixed universe” (Finkelstein, 143). What were these ideas, and how did they influence the modern world?
1. Where was the Ottoman Empire? In which country was the Ottoman Empire based? Which present-day countries were under the Ottoman Empire in 1914?
2. What were the two major alliance groups among European powers in 1914, and which countries were in each alliance?
3. What happened to Belgium in August 1914?
4. Where is the Balkan Peninsula? What states were (and are today) considered part of the Balkans?
5. What role did nationalism play in the spark that set off World War I?
6. What is a stalemate? What factors contributed to ending the stalemate in “The Great War”?
7. What were the terms of the Treaty of Versailles? (In other words, what did the treaty say?)
8. How did British and French political strategies concerning the Middle East during the war affect the Middle East after the war?
9. What kinds of tactics did Indians take to push for independence from Britain?
10. What were Sun Yat-sen’s goals for China?
Mass Politics, Mass Societies, and the Expansion of State Power
1. What conditions in Russia allowed for the support of the 1917 revolution?
2. What political, economic and social changes did Lenin and his government make after securing control of Russia?
3. In what ways did Stalin continue the government, economic and social policies of Lenin? In what ways did he change them?
4. How is fascism different from communism?
5. What were Benito Mussolini’s steps to power?
6. What were Adolf Hitler’s steps to power?
7. How did economic conditions contribute to the rise of fascist political parties?
8. How did national feelings regarding the Treaty of Versailles contribute to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler?
9. How did Hitler turn his racial views into policy?
10. What were causes of the Great Depression?
11. What agencies, programs and regulations did Franklin D. Roosevelt establish to rebuild and protect the U.S. economy and society?World War II
1. What did the League of Nations do in response to Hitler’s defiance of the Treaty of Versailles?
2. What was Spain’s civil war about?
3. Where was the Sudetenland? What role did it play in the lead-up to World War II?
What does “appeasement” mean? How is the Munich Agreement an example of
appeasement?
4. What was the significance of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact?
5. By the end of 1940, which countries were under Nazi control?
6. What prompted the United States to enter World War II?
7. What was the “Rape of Nanking”?
8. What did the Nazis do to enact their goal of “racial purity” in Europe?
9. What (and when) was “D-Day”?
10. Which world leaders met at Yalta in 1945, and what did they agree to do?
11. What did the United States do to win the war with Japan?
12. What were the five countries securing permanent seats in the United Nations’
Security Council at the time of the UN’s founding? What are the permanent
Security Council countries today?
13. How did the U.S. deal with Japan after the war?
14. What happened to Germany and its capital, Berlin, after the war?
The Cold War, 1945-1991
1. What did Winston Churchill mean by the “Iron Curtain”? Which countries were on
one side of the “Iron Curtain,” and which countries were on the other side?
2. What was the Truman Doctrine, and how did it establish U.S. foreign policy
regarding communist and socialist movements in other countries?
3. What was the Marshall Plan, and how did it benefit both the United States and
Western Europe?
4. When was NATO formed, who were its members and what was its purpose? What
is the role of NATO today?
5. When was the Warsaw Pact formed, who were its members and what was its
purpose? What is the situation of the Warsaw Pact today?
6. What was the Korean War about, when was it, and why did the U.S. get involved
in the war? How did the war end?
7. What was the Vietnam War about, when was it, and why did the U.S. get
involved in the war? How did the war end?
8. What (and where) was the “Bay of Pigs” incident, and how did it lead to a
near-nuclear showdown between the U.S. and the USSR?
9. What was the policy of détente?
10. What happened in Iran in 1979, and how did it affect the United States?
11. What factors contributed to the dissolving of the Soviet Union?
The End of Empire in Asia and the Middle East
1. When India became independent of Britain’s colonial rule, why was it divided into
the two nations of India and Pakistan? How did the partition affect people there?
2. How were “Third World” countries positioned in terms of colonialism and the Cold
War?
3. How did life in China change under Mao’s leadership?
4. What was China's “Cultural Revolution” (“Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”)?
5. What did Deng Xiaoping mean by “yellow or white, a cat that catches mice is a
good cat”? How did he follow up on this theory when he took over China’s
leadership?
6. How did North Korea and South Korea develop differently after the Korean War?
7. What was the process by which the nation of Israel was created?
8. What was the significance of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez
Canal?
9. When and what were the four major Arab-Israeli wars?
10. What did the Shah of Iran do to push Iranians to revolt against his rule?
11. How did the 1993 Oslo Accords change the political situation of Palestinian
Arabs?
Liberation and Dependency in Africa and Latin America
1. What kind of government did Kwame Nkrumah think would work best for
newly independent African nations? How did he rule Ghana once it won its
freedom from Britain?
2. What were the demands established by the 1945 Manchester Pan-African
Congress? What parallels do you see between this Pan-African Congress and
the one held in Paris in 1919 (see chapter 6)?
3. How have ethnic and religious divisions contributed to political unrest in
Nigeria? How did Nigeria come to be formed as a single political unit in the first
place?
4. How did the Cold War affect African decolonization?
5. What was the system of racial segregation in South Africa? What tactics did
people use to try to end that system?
6. What role did Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe doctrine play in
U.S. relations with Latin America throughout the 20th century?
7. How did the Cold War affect U.S. relations with Latin American countries?
The Contemporary World
1. What impact have developments in cell biology in the last sixty years had in
science and society?
2. What were some of the ways in which legal segregation between white and
black Americans was dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s? Consider both
formal laws and informal social actions.
3. What are some social movements or groups that continue to work to expand
social equality and legal rights? To what degree have they been successful?
4. Who are the Taliban?
5. What happened to Yugoslavia?
6. What is the European Union?
7. What are some free-trade blocs? What does it mean for countries to have
free-trade agreements among each other?
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