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This study guide is designed to inform students about the types of questions that will be asked on the final exam, and about the topics that will be covered.
The exam will focus mainly on the second part of the course (Weeks 6 through 13). It will
cover your notes as well as reading assignments and video lectures for Weeks 6 through 13.
For more information about the pages and sections of the readings that are involved, see
the weekly focus page. However, it will be helpful to know some basic ideas from Weeks 0
through 5 in order to have background material for the essay portion of the exam. See
below for details.
Types of questions:
Identification questions. For each term, you will be asked to state who/what the person or thing was, when the person or thing lived or occurred, and why it is significant in the history of western civilization. A guide for answering identification questions can be found here. It is the same guide that appeared on the weekly assignments page, with one minor modification: You don't have to limit yourself to three sentences in identification questions on the final exam. However, it is possible to answer each of the final exam identification questions quite well in three sentences or less.
| Martin Luther | New Imperialism | nationalism |
| Bolsheviks | French Revolution | Cold War |
| Galileo | Count Cavour | Marshall Plan |
| Descartes | Karl Marx | fascism |
| Scientific Revolution | Social Darwinism | John Locke |
| Industrial Revolution | Archduke Francis Ferdinand | liberalism |
Relative chronology questions. These questions ask you to state the order in which several things occurred. You do not have to give exact dates; you only need to state which thing happened first, which one happened second, which one happened third, etc.
Peloponnesian War 3
death of Socrates 4
Persian War 2
construction of the Hagia Sophia 6
beginning of Islam 7
beginning of Judaism 1
beginning of Christianity 5
| beginning of Industrial Revolution in England | Declaration of the Rights of Man and [the] Citizen | beginning of Scientific Revolution |
| beginning of Social Darwinism | Martin Luther | emancipation of Russian serfs |
| Russian Revolution | beginning of Atlantic Slave Trade | end of colonial rule in India and Pakistan |
| rise of Solidarity (labor union/political party) | end of World War I | Nazis take over German government |
Essay questions. There will be 2 essay questions, each of a different type.
The primary source reading passage will come from "The Declaration of the Rights of Woman" by Olympe de Gouges, found on pages 225-226 of the Course Reader. The exam will include a copy of the passage. The topics you will be asked about will include the following:
----The events that are going on in de Gouges' country at the time
----The document(s) to which de Gouges is responding, and why she is making this response
----Key ideas from the Enlightenment that appear in the Declaration of the Rights of Woman
----The connection (as shown in the Declaration of the Rights of Woman) between these key
Enlightenment ideas and the ideas about nature and science that were developed in the Scientific
Revolution
The event you will be asked about is the achievement of independence by the country of Zambia in 1964. Here is all the additional background information you need (beyond the material on Rhodes in the Course Reader and the Spielvogel textbook); it will be reprinted on the final:
----In the last two decades of the 19th century Cecil Rhodes ran the British South Africa Company, which took over large portions of southern Africa for purposes of mining. Rhodes named one large section of southeastern Africa after himself: it was called Rhodesia, and was divided into two parts, Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia. Until 1923, Rhodesia was governed by the British South Africa Company. In 1923 both parts became official protectorates (colonies) of the country of Great Britain. (In other words, prior to 1923 Rhodesia was not governed by the British government but by a British company.) In 1958, the United National Independence Party formed in Northern Rhodesia, and began to work for independence from Britain and rule by native African peoples. In 1964, the first free elections were held, and Northern Rhodesia became an independent republic that calls itself Zambia.
The questions you will be asked call for you to show how the following things apply to this brief history of Zambian independence.
Industrial Revolution
New Imperialism
Social Darwinism (see the sections on Rhodes in the Spielvogel text and the Course Reader)
economic liberalism/ laissez-faire economic policies in Great Britain
nationalism (British nationalism and then Zambian nationalism)
democracy
Again, if you have any questions, call me at (703) 993-1332, or e-mail me at rcherubi@gmu.edu.