[BLANK-1], led by moderate socialists Alexander Kerensky, ca…

[BLANK-1], led by moderate socialists Alexander Kerensky, came to power in Russia following the February Revolution (or March Revolution, depending on which calendar system is used) that removed the tsar from power. It was comprised of moderate socialists and liberal democrats who ushered in a number of liberal reforms. It established equality for all Russians before the law, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and it legalized strikes and extended property protections. The administration did not, however, confiscate the large feudal properties of the aristocrats and redistribute them and it did not immediately withdraw Russia from WWI. These key errors allowed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky to execute a successful coup in the October Revolution (or February Revolution, depending on which calendar system is used) to overthrow Kerensky.

Part 1 (30%): Instructions: using the word bank provided in…

Part 1 (30%): Instructions: using the word bank provided in Part 1 of this exam, answer each of the fill-in-the-blank questions with the term that fits best. Once an option from the word bank has been used, it will not appear again. Several terms from the word bank will not be used.

A key proponent of liberalism, [BLANK-1] was a Scottish econ…

A key proponent of liberalism, [BLANK-1] was a Scottish economist who founded economic liberalism. His book, The Wealth of Nations (1776) is generally linked to the emergence of capitalism as an economic system. He advocated for a laissez-faire approach to the economy (he argued for few governmental regulations on business but believed that some regulation was essential) and developed the concept of the invisible hand of the market.

​Adam Smith​Alfred Dreyfus​The Ashley Commission​The Bastill…

​Adam Smith​Alfred Dreyfus​The Ashley Commission​The Bastille​The Boxer Rebellion​Caspar David Friedrich​The Civil Constitution of the Clergy​Clock Discipline​The Combination Acts​The Congress of Vienna​The Estates General​The Franco-Prussian War​The Irish Potato Famine​James Watt​Jose Rizal​Louis XVI​Marianne​The Nguyen Dynasty​Nicholas II​Olympe de Gouges​The Opium War​The Paris Commune​The Putting-Out System​The Risorgimento​Separate Spheres​Sergei Witte​The Taiping Rebellion​Toussaint L’Ouverture​The Vendee Rebellion​The Women’s March on Versailles

Scottish inventor, [BLANK-1], was largely responsible for cr…

Scottish inventor, [BLANK-1], was largely responsible for creating the technology that powered the Industrial Revolution. While steam engines had existed as far back as the late seventeenth century, they were wildly inefficient. In 1763, this inventor discovered that adding a separate condenser to the steam engine dramatically improved its efficiency. His improvement made the steam engine a practical success and allowed British industrialists to harness the power of water and steam in order to build machines and factories with levels of productivity that were previously unthinkable.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, Count di Cavour, and Victor Emmanuel all…

Giuseppe Garibaldi, Count di Cavour, and Victor Emmanuel all contributed in their own ways to [BLANK-1], or the process of Italian Unification that was completed in 1871. The northern Italian kingdoms were united under the rule of King Victor Emmanuel by 1860 (thanks to his conservative prime minister, Cavour) and Garibaldi used his Red Shirts and nationalist sentiment to unite southern Italy and Sicily by 1870. In 1871, Rome became capital of the newly united Italian state.

The fate of [BLANK-1], a Jewish captain who was wrongfully a…

The fate of [BLANK-1], a Jewish captain who was wrongfully accused of treason (he was a scapegoat to cover-up the treasonous actions of a higher-ranking officer), fundamentally divided France in two. On the one side, defenders of the innocent captain emphasized France’s role in the Enlightenment and the natural rights of man that arose from the French Revolution. These supporters tended to be from liberal areas in the north and in large cities like Paris. The other side thought this man was guilty and tended to be made up of conservatives from the west, the south, and rural areas. They were strongly influenced by nationalism and backed by the army and the Catholic Church. They felt “in their guts” that he had to be guilty because he was a Jew and that the other implicated officers had to be innocent (despite evidence against them) because they were French, Christian, and part of the military. The ill-fated Jewish captain was publicly degraded and exiled to Devil’s Island in French Guiana from 1894-1899. New evidence and Émile Zola’s famous letter to the president of France, J’accuse! (I accuse you!), helped exonerate this wrongfully convicted man. The real traitors were found out, arrested, and punished, and he was restored to his rank in the army and freed from Devil’s Island. At a ceremony honoring the late Émile Zola, the Jewish captain was shot and wounded by a right-wing extremist in front of tens of thousands of witnesses. In the last in a series of long-standing legal injustices against that man, his attacker was acquitted and never faced consequences for his attempted assassination. This whole affair inspired Zionists, like Theodor Herzl, to seek the creation of a Jewish homeland outside of Europe to escape from the anti-Semitic sentiment. It also inspired politicians like Karl Lueger (the mayor of Vienna) and Adolf Hitler (a young resident of Vienna under Lueger’s mayorship) to use anti-Semitism as a scapegoat for political gain.

One of the early contributing factors to World War I came at…

One of the early contributing factors to World War I came at [BLANK-1] in 1906. As western diplomats met to discuss French control of Morocco, aggressive diplomatic efforts by the Germans came off as bullying and crude. The result of this German fiasco led to an Anglo-French alliance and pushed Britain, France, Russia, and the United States to view Germany as a potential threat to their national security.

Great Britain and China fought [BLANK-1] from 1839-1842 over…

Great Britain and China fought [BLANK-1] from 1839-1842 over limitations on trade and Britain’s desire to get Chinese tea more cheaply by purchasing it with goods other than silver. This led to a drain of silver in China and the Qing government was forced to send Lin Zexu to Guangzhou (the former Port of Canton) and give him nearly limitless authority to address the crisis. Nevertheless, Britain continued importing goods to China against the government’s wishes. Britain sent 42 warships to China, established control of the seas, and shut down Chinese ports, forcing them to negotiate. Unhappy with the concessions of the negotiation, Britain sent a second, larger force, which occupied even more coastal ports, including the largest port in the world: Shanghai. China was forced to concede much of its autonomy with the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), which ended the conflict. The peace agreement left British citizens in China answerable only to British laws, forced China to pay an indemnity, ceded the port of Hong Kong to Britain, and gave Great Britain “most favored nation” trading status. This was a serious restriction of Chinese sovereignty and was one of a long list of issues that signaled the declining power of the Qing Dynasty during the nineteenth century.

In the early years of the Soviet Union and during the Russia…

In the early years of the Soviet Union and during the Russian Civil War, Lenin’s socialist policies had wreaked havoc on the Soviet economy. The country was facing economic disintegration, famine, riots, and rebellion. In 1921, Lenin changed course and established the [BLANK-1] which provided for a free market with state-run capitalism. He allowed peasant producers and artisanal workers to sell their surpluses at free markets (although heavy industry, railroads, and banks remained wholly nationalized). His program attempted to rebuild agriculture and industry. It was successful both financially and politically. It brought rapid recovery to the Soviet Union and by 1926, industrial output surpassed prewar levels, with agricultural production not far behind. Lenin died in 1924, and while the Communist Party continued his proposal for some years, it was cut short when Joseph Stalin came to supreme power in 1927 and replaced Lenin’s model with his own Five-Year Plans.