1. In your opinion, what was the most important motive behind European expansion? Provide evidence (minimum of three items) to support your position.
2. Why did northern European powers enter the competition for the New World land and resources in the 17th century?
3. What role did religion play in the scientific revolution? How did religious belief both stimulate and hinder scientific discovery (give at least 2 examples of each).
4. How did the slave trade shape marriage patterns and family structure in West Africa?
5. What internal factors contributed to the decline of the Islamic empires?
6. How did the Ming officials manage government when emperors were incompetent? How did this ultimately contribute to the Ming’s decline?
7. How did social, economic, ideological, and fiscal problems combine to spark the age of revolution?
8. What is class-consciousness? How did industrialization help produce a new sense among workers of their own social identity?.
9. What explains the near simultaneous eruption of revolution across Europe in 1848? How did revolution in one country help trigger revolution in another? Why did all the revolutions of 1848 fail?
10. Who benefited the most from the economic growth and globalization of the 19th century? Why? What factors contributed to the division of Europe into two hostile blocs prior to WWI?
11. What role did the Western powers play in the Middle East after WWI? How did the Western presence shape Middle Eastern nationalist movements?
12. Why did the Allies win the war? What role did industrial production play in the Allied victory? What other factors were important?
13. How would you explain the pattern of post-Cold War development in Eastern Europe? Why were some states more successful than others? What explains the dominant role of the Israeli/Palestine issue has played in the Middle Eastern politics since 1945?
14. Why do you think women and children remain the most vulnerable populations on the planet?
