More than 20 million Chinese subjects were killed during [BLANK-1] from 1851-1864. This conflict demonstrated the relative weakness of the Qing Dynasty (led by Manchus who had once been great warriors feared by the Chinese) because the government had to turn to the Chinese scholar-official class in order to raise an effective army. Hong Xiuquan, a moral reformer who became interested in Christianity and believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus of Nazareth, started the conflict. His followers destroyed idols and temples, renounced drugs and alcohol, and tried to form a utopian society based on the equalization of landholdings and the equality of men and women. The uprising ended in 1864, with the death of Hong and the capture and execution of his son (who briefly succeeded him), but it was one of a long list of issues that signaled the declining power of the Qing Dynasty during the nineteenth century.
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Russia’s military struggles were evident extremely early in…
Russia’s military struggles were evident extremely early in WWI. Just a few weeks into the war, in August 1914, Russia suffered a humiliating defeat to the Germans at [BLANK-1]. In this conflict, Russia suffered 170,000 casualties compared to only 14,000 for Germany. Germany was thus able to turn the tide of war only three weeks after the initial Russian attack.
Under the terms of [BLANK-1] Germany’s yearly reparations we…
Under the terms of [BLANK-1] Germany’s yearly reparations were reduced and linked to the level of German economic prosperity. Germany also received large loans from the United States in order to pay reparations to France and Great Britain. Those countries then used that money to pay back their own loans to the United States. This circular flow of international payments was complicated and risky, but worked for a while. It thus facilitated a worldwide economic recovery during the late 1920s.
[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 SmithAlfred DreyfusThe Ashley CommissionThe Bastill…
Adam SmithAlfred DreyfusThe Ashley CommissionThe BastilleThe Boxer RebellionCaspar David FriedrichThe Civil Constitution of the ClergyClock DisciplineThe Combination ActsThe Congress of ViennaThe Estates GeneralThe Franco-Prussian WarThe Irish Potato FamineJames WattJose RizalLouis XVIMarianneThe Nguyen DynastyNicholas IIOlympe de GougesThe Opium WarThe Paris CommuneThe Putting-Out SystemThe RisorgimentoSeparate SpheresSergei WitteThe Taiping RebellionToussaint L’OuvertureThe Vendee RebellionThe 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.