HST 102: World History II
Midterm Exam II
Friday, April 2, 2021
Spring 2021
Answer anythree of the following essay questions, but no more than one from a section. 2 pm Eastern Standard Time, Friday April 2, 2021. Any responses submitted after 2pm will not be accepted unless justified by health or COVID-19-related conditions. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Section I/Political Revolutions in Europe and the Americas, 1649-1830: The Birth of Political Rights in the Age of Enlightenment
According to John Locke, how do states come into being? What are their purposes? What are the circumstances under which they can be altered, and to what end? In what ways does the agreement of 1689 between King William and Queen Mary, on the one hand, and the English Parliament, on the other, reflect aspects of Locke’s thinking on government?Provide a detailed survey of the philosophical ferment in the Atlantic World during the eighteenth century known as the Enlightenment, focusing on debates over the proper role of the state and its relationship to individuals.What were the relationships between the ideas of the Enlightenment and the political changes that gripped the Atlantic World between 1750 and 1850. Limit your response to a discussion of just one of these revolutions in order to illustrate your points.Is the image of the American War of Independence as a radical revolution painted by Gordon Wood inThe Radicalism of the American Revolution an accurate characterization of the event or did it merely mark a change of administration as other historians have argued?
What were the roots of the French Revolution? Why did Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes characterize the Third Estate as having “within itself all that is necessary for the formation of a complete nation”?Discuss the significance of the French Revolution, including its role or lack thereof in influencing the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution.To what extent did the Bourbon Reforms and the Napoleonic Wars hasten or not hasten the collapse of the Spanish Empire in the Americas? How did loyalists in the Americas fare in their efforts to manage both rebels and the fragmenting Spanish Empire?In what way is Simon Bolivar’s observation that “America is ungovernable” and that “Those who serve a revolution plough the sea” an accurate characterization of why Spanish America remained so unstable for so long after independence?
Section II/The Industrial Revolution: A Global Process, 1700-1914
Why is the answer to the question “What is so revolutionary about industrialization” thought to be important to understand exactly why industrialization is so crucial to the modern world?Provide a detailed and succinct discussion of the scholarly debates about why, how and where industrialization first occurred.How did early industrialization alter the nature of work, family life, and the modern city for workers?In which ways do you see women benefiting from the Industrial Revolution? In which ways do you see them losing out? [Refer to the textbook for answers] Discuss Karl Marx’s theory of human history as well as his critiques of industrial capitalism and liberal democracy.Why did Marx’s prediction that the industrial society emerging in the nineteenth century would collapse when workers rose up to overthrow this new system not occur?How are industrialization, urbanization, and immigration related to one another? [Refer to the textbook for answers]To what degree do you think we can consider the world today as still living in a period of industrial revolution? To what degree do you think that period is past? [Refer to the textbook for answers]
Section III/Nationalism, Imperialism, and Resistance: Competition among Industrial Powers, 1650-1914
Attempts at creating new states in the Age of Revolution raised a fundamental question of stateness: how does one define the territorial and demographic limits of the social contract or “nation,” as state-builders and political philosophers of the era began to call it? Use the ideas of Johann Gottlieb, Ernest Gellner, and Benedict Anderson to address this issue.What was the most important factor determining state formation in Western Eurasia during the nineteenth century? To what extent did rivalries among the European empires play a role in shaping the nature and outcomes of nationalist movements there?How did Ottoman rulers in the Age of Revolution try to accommodate concerns of the era, such as majority-minority relations and equality before the law, without inadvertently damaging regime legitimacy?What were the aims and results of the two meetings that took place at the Schulenburg Palace in Berlin, respectively known as the Berlin Congress (1878) and the Berlin Conference (1884)?What was “new” about the New Imperialism? What were its foundational and operational logics? Include in your discussion additional set of explanation such as imperial actions and ideas in the colonies themselves.In what ways did political and cultural leaders, as well as ordinary people, in the age of the New Imperialism latch onto the ideas of Social Darwinism and the belief in “the exercise of a moral duty to improve the lives of those not fortunate enough to be born in a place where Western Civilization had taken root” in order to explain (and justify) the growing control of European states and economies over the world’s resources during the period?Discuss the debate that occurred in the colonies over the causes and consequences of the New Imperialism. How did the various leaders or scholars engaged in the debate view the New Imperialism?How does King Leopold’s rule in the Congo basin, the region that prompted the Berlin meetings of the mid-1880s, exemplify the gap between the rhetoric of European altruism and the reality of colonial exploitation?In what ways did African leaders such as Menelik II of Ethiopia, Hendrik Witbooi of Namibia, Kinjikitile Ngwale of Tanzania, and the Ghost Dancers of Western North America challenge the imperial claims of the Western powers?How serious was the challenge of anarcho-syndicalist movements to the core of the emerging global political and economic order in the age of the New Imperialism?In what ways did the ideas of Darwin, Freud, and others challenge the Enlightenment optimism that rationality would yield unlimited progress and increasing “civilization”?How does the fate of the passenger pigeon and the American bison, or buffalo, demonstrate the ways in which certain forms of civilizing logic and rational behavior lead to environmental devastation?To what extent, during the era of the New Imperialism, did formally independent states, such as those in the Latin American region, operate under a compromised sovereignty because they depended on external economic and/or military power to act like a state? Did the system (i.e. “neocolonialism”) operate smoothly?
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