2012 Fall Term Final Exam Review Guide, Part I

I. Exam Format (100 points total; 20% of semester grade):

A. Objective question section (25 points; 1 to 2 points each)

True/false and multiple choice questions; covers basic knowledge of all materials studied; review notes from PERSIAN exercises, reading quizzes and lecture notes; closed book and closed notes during exam

B. Person and key term identification section (15 points; 3 points each)

Identify 5 out of 6 persons or terms provided, in 1-2 sentences; see notes in the review calendar below; closed book and closed notes; do not need to know exact dates, but should be able to approximate the time period, e.g., 16th century/early 18th century, the age, e.g., the Renaissance/Enlightenment, location/place, and historical significance.

C. Short answer section (20 points; 10 points each)

Compose a brief answer to two out of three questions provided, in a well organized, compact and coherent paragraph; questions focus on key historical questions, e.g., the analysis of causes, effects, continuities or change; answers should refer to both secondary and primary sources, setting up the crux of the debate as found in the secondary sources from class materials where appropriate, and demonstrating your point with the succinct yet effective use of primary sources; open book, open note; see review calendar below for the options.

D. Essay (40 points)

Compose a well organized, coherent and supported response to one of two essay topics provided:

1. What matters more in the emergence of early modern history: politics/power, socio
economic factors, ideas or biology?

2. What accounts for the rise of parliamentary government and individual rights in early modern Europe?

3. What is the legacy of the French Revolution?

4. What is the legacy of Napoleon? Did Napoleon undermine or preserve the principles of the French Revolution?

5. What happened to the status of European women in the early modern period, and why?

Notes: make sure to frame your response to the question with an overview of the secondary sources that sets up your argument and explains what you plan to demonstrate in the rest of your response; also make sure to use primary sources to effectively show key points, and anticipate possible counter-arguments and forms of evidence; open book and open note.

II. Review Calendar

Week 1 - 1491: The World Before Columbus, August 27-31

*Leading questions: What is modern world history? What does the latest scholarship indicate about the development of the modern world? How has recent research challenged what has been conventionally been understood about what the world looked like before Columbus, in terms of politics, economics, society, religion, culture, science, the arts and entertainment, sports, music, everyday life etc., or how the modern world developed because of Europeans, the Spanish Empire, other European Empires, non-European peoples and empires, Africans, Asians, Americans, women, slaves, pirates, plants, commodities, or even pathogens? How did historical development around this time express continuity or how the world was changing? How does the story of place, e.g., Santa Fe, reveal aspects of modern world history?

Week 2 - When Asia Was the World Economy, September 4-7 (Labor Day, 9/3 - No school)

*Leading questions: How was Asia at the center of the world economy in late medieval times and how were things changing in the early modern period, in the 1400s and 1500s? What did European observers know (or not know) about Asia? How does a closer look at the early modern Asian economies in their "cultural and social practices" illuminate how China actually functioned in economic and political terms? What are the legacies of early modern Asia in the world, e.g, the Fujian trade diaspora?

Identify: Marco Polo, John Mandeville, Genghis Khan, Zheng He, Zhu Di, Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty

Terms: Treasure Fleets, Tribute system, Fujian trade diaspora, early modern Chinese monetary systems

Week 3 - 1493: The Columbian Exchange, September 10-14 (Camping, 9/12-14)

*Leading Questions: What is the "Columbian Exchange"? How does it challenge conventional understandings about how and why the modern era has emerged the way it has? What does the author, Charles Mann, mean by the "Homogenocene" and what is the explanatory power and limitations of this thesis? How does this current research influence assessments of the legacies of Europeans like Columbus, Legazpi, Urdaneta, et al.?

Persons: Cristobal Colon, Hispaniola, Bartolome de Las Casas

Terms: Columbian Exchange, homogenocene, Little Ice Age, Ruddiman's Thesis, Galleon Trade, Encomienda

Short answer questions: how did the Columbian Exchange influence the emergence of Europe, the Americas, and the modern world? How is the history of globalization primarily a biological phenomena?

Week 4 - The Rise of the West, September 18-21 (Rosh Hashanah, 9/17 - No school)

*Leading Questions: Does modern history begin in Europe, or does it? How do historians account for the emergence of European overseas expansion? In what ways was overseas expansion tied to European political and economic developments at home or elsewhere overseas in the 15th and 16th centuries? What consequences flowed from the interactions of Western and non-Western civilizations?

Persons: Prince Henry the Navigator, Gomes Eannes de Azurara, Bernal Diaz del Castillo

Terms: Caravel, entrepot

Short answer questions: How did Europe rise to global power?

Week 5 - Journeys between Early Modern Europe, Asia and the Americas, September 24-28

TAP begins, 9/27; Faculty Inservice, 9/28 & Parents' Open House, 9/29

*Leading questions: Despite its advanced technological state in the medieval modern period, and based on the latest research, what accounts for the inability of China to continue to dominate world affairs in the early modern world? How did the discovery of the world's largest silver deposits influence everyday life, society and politics in the Americas, Europe and Asia? How did the "Columbian Exchange" impact the development of early modern Asia, Europe and the Americas? How did the "Little Ice Age" impact early modern world affairs?

Terms: Woukou, Potosi, The Hakka

Short answer: How did the Chinese switch to silver impact the world? Why early modern China did not rule the waves? How did the Columbian Exchange, especially American food plants, impact China?

Week 6 - Africa in the World, October 1-5

*Leading questions: Why did Europeans turn to Africans for slave labor? How did "chattel slavery" differ from earlier forms of slavery? How did the rise in the use of slave labor impact Africa, and how did the arrival of Africans impact the Americas?

Persons: Aqualtune, Zumbi

Terms: Plasmodium vivax/falciparum, casta system, chattel slavery, Quilombos, Maroon communities

Short answer: How did malaria influence the rise of chattel slavery? How does the latest research on the history of chattel slavery and maroon communities revise what we thought we knew about Africans?

Week 7 - The European Renaissance, October 8-12

*Leading Questions: In what ways was the Renaissance a new development, strikingly different from the preceding Middle Ages? How might the "newness" of these developments be minimized or reinterpreted as an evolutionary continuation of the Middle Ages? How did the Northern Renaissance differ from the Italian Renaissance? What was particularly humanistic about the cultural productions and attitudes of the Renaissance? How were ideas like those found in Machiavelli's The Prince appropriate to the historical realities of his time?

Identify: Petrarch, Vergerio, Christine de Pizan, Machiavelli, Raphael, Jan van Eyck, Hans Holbein, Pieter Bruegel, memento mori, anamorphosis

Terms: Humanism, secularism, Liberal arts

Short answer: How did the Renaissance break from the past? How did the Renaissance continue to be influenced by the European medieval past? How did the ideas and ideals of the Renaissance influence the development of modern Europe?