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world history review
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What was the Middle Passage and when did it occur? | The brutal transatlantic voyage (1500s–1800s) in which enslaved Africans were packed into ships under inhumane conditions; mortality rates reached 15–20% from disease and dehydration. |
| What was the Counter Reformation and when did it occur? | The Catholic Church's response to Protestantism (~1545–1648), centered on the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which clarified doctrine, eliminated corruption, and reaffirmed papal authority. |
| What cash crops drove the colonial economy from 1450 to 1750? | Sugar, tobacco, cotton, and indigo dominated plantation economies (1450–1750), fueling enormous demand for enslaved African labor across the Americas. |
| What was the Treaty of Tordesillas and when was it signed? | A 1494 agreement dividing the non-European world between Spain (the Americas) and Portugal (Africa and Asia), legitimizing Iberian dominance over global exploration. |
| What was the Tokugawa Shogunate's alternate attendance policy and when was it enforced? | Sankin-kōtai (~1635–1862) required daimyo to alternate between Edo and their home domains, draining their finances and preventing rebellion against the shogun. |
| What were the main reasons for European exploration beginning around 1450? | After the Ottoman capture of Constantinople (1453) blocked eastern trade routes, Europeans sought oceanic routes to Asia, also driven by Christianity, competition, and new navigation technology. |
| What was Peter the Great's Westernization policy and when did he rule? | Tsar Peter I (ruled 1682–1725) modernized Russia by building St. Petersburg, reforming the military, forcing Western dress on nobles, and reducing the Orthodox Church's political power. |
| What were Zheng He's Indian Ocean voyages and why did China abandon them? | Between 1405–1433, Zheng He led Ming naval expeditions to Southeast Asia, India, and East Africa; China then turned isolationist due to Confucian opposition to trade and the high cost of voyages. |
| Which Chinese inventions most enabled European exploration and when were they transmitted? | The magnetic compass (developed 9th–11th century China) and gunpowder weapons were transmitted to Europe through Arab intermediaries and became critical tools during the Age of Exploration (1400s–1500s). |
| Who was Matteo Ricci and why was he significant? | An Italian Jesuit missionary (1552–1610) who entered China in 1583 and earned imperial court access by adopting Chinese customs and using European science, blending Catholicism with Confucian thought. |
| Why did both China and Europe experience population growth in the 18th century? | During the 1700s, New World crops (potatoes, maize), improved agriculture, and reduced plague outbreaks caused population to surge in both China and Europe. |
| Who were the Janissaries in the Ottoman Empire? | Elite soldiers recruited via devshirme (taking Christian boys from conquered Balkan regions, ~14th–19th century); over time they grew politically powerful and blocked modernization until abolished in 1826. |
| What is capitalism and how did it emerge? | An economic system based on private ownership, free markets, and profit reinvestment; emerged in Western Europe from the 15th–17th centuries through trade, joint-stock companies, and colonial extraction. |
| What was the first successful slave revolt in the Americas? | The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) in Saint-Domingue, led by Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines, was the only successful large-scale slave revolt, resulting in Haitian independence on January 1, 1804. |
| Why did Britain lead the Industrial Revolution beginning in the 1760s? | Britain had abundant coal and iron, a merchant class, colonial markets, patent protections, an agricultural revolution that freed labor, and navigable waterways — all combining from the 1760s–1780s onward. |
| What was the Second Industrial Revolution? | A second phase of industrialization (~1870–1914) centered in Germany and the US, characterized by steel, electricity, petroleum, chemicals, and mass production replacing the earlier steam-and-textile economy. |
| What was Manifest Destiny? | The 19th-century American belief (prominent 1840s–1890s) that the US was divinely destined to expand across all of North America, justifying westward expansion and the displacement of Native Americans. |
| Who were caudillos in Latin American history? | Military strongmen who dominated Latin American politics (~1820s–1900s) after independence, ruling through personal loyalty and force rather than constitutional institutions due to weak post-colonial governments. |
| Who was Simón Bolívar and what did he achieve? | "El Libertador" (1783–1830) led independence movements across Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia (~1810–1825), but died before seeing his dream of a unified Gran Colombia collapse. |
| What were the Meiji Reforms and when did they begin? | Beginning in 1868, Japan rapidly Westernized — adopting industrial technology, a constitutional government (1889), modern military, and railroad infrastructure — successfully avoiding Western colonization. |
| Which group led Latin American independence movements in the early 19th century? | Creoles (American-born people of European descent) led independence movements (~1810–1825), resentful that top colonial offices were reserved for peninsulares born in Spain. |
| What was Social Darwinism? | A late 19th-century ideology (1860s–early 1900s) misapplying Darwin's evolution theory to justify European racial superiority and imperialism, framing colonization as a natural "civilizing mission." |
| What was the Berlin Conference? | A meeting of 14 European powers (November 1884–February 1885) that partitioned Africa with no African representation, accelerating the Scramble for Africa and drawing arbitrary borders that created lasting instability. |
| Who was Miguel Hidalgo and what did he do? | A Catholic priest (1753–1811) who launched Mexico's independence movement on September 16, 1810 with his "Grito de Dolores," rallying peasants against Spain; he was executed in 1811 but is called the father of Mexican independence. |
| Who was Maximilien Robespierre and what was his role in the French Revolution? | A Jacobin leader (1758–1794) who oversaw the Reign of Terror (1793–1794), executing ~17,000 perceived enemies of the revolution before being arrested and guillotined himself in July 1794. |
| What is imperialism and how did 19th-century imperialism differ from earlier colonialism? | Imperialism = extending national power through conquest; the "New Imperialism" (~1870–1914) differed from earlier colonialism by involving direct political annexation of Africa and Asia, not just trade posts. |
| What were the causes of WWI? | WWI (1914–1918) was caused by Militarism, Alliance systems, Imperialism, and Nationalism (MAIN); the immediate trigger was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. |
| Who made up the Triple Alliance in WWI? | Formed in 1882: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (Italy switched sides in 1915); Germany and Austria-Hungary then fought as the Central Powers with the Ottoman Empire (1914) and Bulgaria (1915). |
| What caused the Great Depression? | Beginning with the U.S. stock market crash of October 1929, the Depression was caused by bank failures, overproduction, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and tight monetary policy, lasting through the late 1930s. |
| What was the policy of appeasement and why did it fail? | Britain and France's 1930s strategy of granting Hitler concessions — culminating in the Munich Agreement (September 1938) — failed because Hitler interpreted each concession as weakness and continued expanding. |
| What was the island hopping strategy in WWII? | A U.S. Pacific strategy (~1942–1945) of capturing key Japanese-held islands while bypassing heavily fortified ones, cutting Japanese supply lines and advancing toward Japan efficiently while minimizing casualties. |
| What is NATO and when was it founded? | The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded April 4, 1949, is a collective defense alliance of Western democracies formed to deter Soviet expansion; an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. |
| What was the Warsaw Pact? | A Soviet-led military alliance of Eastern Bloc nations, formed May 14, 1955 in response to West Germany joining NATO; unlike NATO it was used to suppress member rebellions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). |
| What was the most important of Wilson's 14 Points? | The 14th Point — the League of Nations (proposed January 8, 1918) — was considered most significant; it was included in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles but fatally weakened when the U.S. Senate refused to ratify membership. |
| What was the Marshall Plan? | Announced June 1947 and running 1948–1952, the Marshall Plan provided $13+ billion to rebuild Western European economies, reducing communist appeal and tying Western Europe to American economic and strategic interests. |
| What is the United Nations and when was it founded? | An international peacekeeping organization founded October 24, 1945 to replace the failed League of Nations; its Security Council has five permanent members (US, UK, France, USSR/Russia, China) each with veto power. |
| What was the Iron Curtain? | A term coined by Churchill on March 5, 1946, describing the ideological and physical division between Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe and the democratic West, later made literal by the Berlin Wall (built 1961). |
| What was the Great Leap Forward? | Mao Zedong's 1958–1962 campaign to rapidly industrialize China through forced collectivization and mass steel production; unrealistic quotas and suppressed failure reports caused a famine killing an estimated 15–55 million people. |
| What was the Cultural Revolution? | Mao's 1966–1976 campaign to purge capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society; Red Guards attacked intellectuals, closed schools, and sent millions to labor camps, causing massive social destruction. |
| How did China modernize in the 1950s? | Following the founding of the PRC in October 1949, the 1950s saw Soviet-assisted industrialization, collectivization, literacy campaigns, and infrastructure expansion; the Sino-Soviet split (~1960) left many projects incomplete. |
| What was John Maynard Keynes's economic proposal? | In "The General Theory" (1936), Keynes argued governments should increase public spending during recessions to stimulate demand — even running deficits — rather than cutting spending as classical economics prescribed. |
| What were the Nuremberg Laws? | Antisemitic racial laws passed September 15, 1935 by Nazi Germany that stripped Jews of citizenship, banned marriage with non-Jews, and defined Jewishness by ancestry, providing the legal framework for the Holocaust. |
| What was Kristallnacht? | The "Night of Broken Glass" (November 9–10, 1938), when Nazi mobs destroyed ~7,500 Jewish businesses, burned 1,400+ synagogues, killed ~100 Jews, and sent 30,000 to camps — marking a decisive shift to open state violence. |
| What was Gandhi's philosophy and how did it spread? | Gandhi (1869–1948) developed satyagraha — nonviolent civil disobedience through marches, hunger strikes, and peaceful noncompliance (~1915–1947) — which directly inspired the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and anti-apartheid activists. |
| What was apartheid and when did it exist? | A system of institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa (1948–1994) denying the Black majority basic rights; it ended through sanctions, ANC resistance, and Mandela's election in 1994. |
| What was perestroika and what did it cause? | Gorbachev's "restructuring" economic reform policy (introduced 1986) intended to revitalize the Soviet economy; instead it loosened central control, emboldened nationalist movements, and accelerated the USSR's dissolution in 1991. |
| What was the Truman Doctrine? | Announced March 12, 1947, the Truman Doctrine committed the US to supporting nations resisting communism (beginning with $400M to Greece and Turkey), establishing the foundational Cold War containment policy. |
| What officially began World War II? | Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939; Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, officially beginning WWII in Europe. |
| What was Blitzkrieg? | Germany's "lightning war" strategy (deployed from 1939), combining fast tanks, motorized infantry, and air support to overwhelm defenses before enemies could respond — demonstrated most dramatically by France's fall in six weeks (May–June 1940). |
| What was the Triple Alliance before WWI? | A secret defensive pact signed in 1882 among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, pledging mutual military support; one of two rival alliance blocs whose obligations helped turn a regional crisis into World War I. |
| What was the Triple Entente before WWI? | A looser alignment of France, Britain, and Russia formed through agreements between 1894–1907 (Franco-Russian Alliance, Entente Cordiale, Anglo-Russian Convention); not a single formal treaty, but the core of the Allied Powers in WWI. |
| What were the competing ideologies of the Cold War (~1947–1991)? | The US promoted liberal democracy and free-market capitalism (individual rights, free elections, private enterprise); the USSR promoted Marxist-Leninist communism (state ownership, collective welfare, one-party rule). |
Created by:
syeduvaka
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