Topic: western civilization
Paper instructions:
This exam consists of two essay questions. Please write at least 900 words in response to each question.
Use quotation marks and footnotes for any direct quotations from the Chambers text or other assigned readings. You should also use footnotes in cases where you draw substantially upon the wording, organization, or ideas of the texts. In constructing your essays, you will be expected to conform to standard formal writing guidelines: well developed thesis and introductory paragraph; clear and concise body paragraphs with topic sentences; use of evidence from the course materials to support your thesis; and a conclusion that summarizes the main points of your essay.
Be sure to cite at least THREE primary sources for each essay. Primary sources can include assigned Internet sources, boxed texts or images of artifacts, architectural monuments or documents (including drawings) from the textbook regarding the time period in question.
Essay Questions: Write an essay in response to two of the following questions. Be sure to identify at the beginning of each essay which question you are answering
1. Trace the evolving status of European women from the sixteenth to the early twenty-first century. Evaluate the factors that have been leading to their growing emancipation, such as social and economic changes, political action, and medical and scientific discoveries.
2. Explore the changing role of science in society from its breakthrough in the age of absolutism, through its rise in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the triumphs and horrors of science after World War I. Does science provide certainty today in the fashion it did a century ago? If not, why?
3. Trace the spread of the industrial revolution from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. How did industrialism contribute to social, economic, and political change in the modern West? How did it affect the West’s relationship with the non-Western world?
4. Define the engines of change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — e.g., what were the major factors driving the transformation of Europe from the Early Modern Era (since 1500) to the modern world? In your answer, focus on one of the major powers discussed in your text — England, France, Spain, the United Provinces, Sweden — and consider how that state was or was not well-placed to benefit from the forces that were creating a new Europe.
5. How has the role of government, the modern State, evolved since the sixteenth century? To what degree was this evolution driven by the imperatives of aristocratic and dynastic power, bourgeois focus on wealth or lower class notions of social justice?
6. Compare and contrast the way in which Europe was reconfigured following the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, and World Wars I and II. Explore three important similarities and differences following the Treaty of Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna, and the Yalta Agreements. Be sure to defend your choice of factors.
7. The era of the World Wars (1914-1945) may now seem to be an anomaly given that the period between 1814 and 1914 and now 1945 to 2008 have been without major wars. Why was the early twentieth century so unstable compared to the periods before and after it?
8. Modern Western international diplomacy came of age with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, how did it evolve in subsequent centuries? Be sure to consider such factors as the military, industrial, and French Revolutions and rise of modern media. Has diplomacy become more democratic across the centuries?
References
“English Bill of Rights” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1689billofrights.asp); “Domat on Louis XIV” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1687domat.asp); “St. Simon on Louis XIV” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/17stsimon.asp); “Smith-The Wealth of Nations” (public.wsu.edu/~brians/world_civ/worldcivreader/world_civ_reader_2/adam_smith.html); “The Division of Poland” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1795Poland-division.asp).
“The Social Contract” by Rousseau (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/rousseau-soccon.asp); and “On Crimes and Punishments” by Beccaria (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/18beccaria.asp) “John Wilkes on Parliamentary Reform” (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRwilkes.htm); “Burke on American Reconciliation” (http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1751-1775/libertydebate/burk.htm); “Jefferson on Religious Freedom, 1779” (http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/draft1779.htm); “What is the Third Estate” by Abbe Sieyes (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sieyes.asp); “Declaration of Rts of Man and Citizen” (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp); “De Gouges on Women’s Rights” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1791degouge1.asp); “Levee-en-Masse, 1793” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1793levee.asp); “Robespierre – The Cult of the Supreme Being” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/robespierre-supreme.asp); “Robespierre – Justification of the Use of Terror” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/robespierre-terror.asp).
“Imperial Catechism” by Napoleon (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1806catechism-napoleon.asp); “Radcliffe, Powerloom Weaving” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1828looms.asp); “Women Miners” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1842womenminers.asp); “Child Labor, 1832, Pt. 1” (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRsadler.htm); “Child Labor, 1832, Pt. 2” (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRcarpenter.htm); “Child Labor, 1832, Pt. 3” (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRblincoe.htm); “Political Confession, 1820” by Metternich (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1820metternich.asp); “Ricardo on Wages” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/ricardo-wages.asp); “On Liberty” by J.S. Mill, 1859 (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/world_civ/worldcivreader/world_civ_reader_2/mill.html); “Owenite Socialism” (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRowen.htm); “Fourier’s Socialism” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1820fourier.asp); “St. Simon, The Failure of European Liberalism” (http://web.archive.org/web/20010203121700/http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem10/simon3.html).
“Marx and Engels, ‘Communist Manifesto’” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm); “Kropotkin, ‘The Spirit of Revolt’” (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/spiritofrevolt.html); “Mazzini on Nationality” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1852mazzini.asp); “German Unification” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/germanunification.asp); “Darwin, ‘The Origin of Species'” (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/world_civ/worldcivreader/world_civ_reader_2/darwin.html); “Wilberforce’s Critique of Darwin” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1860wilberforce-darwin.asp); “Webb, Fabian Socialism” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1889webb.asp); “Eduard Bernstein on Evolutionary Socialism” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/bernstein-revsoc.asp).
“Ferry on French Colonialism” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1884ferry.asp); “Kipling, ‘The White Man’s Burden'” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.asp); “Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Serbia, July 1914” (http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Austro-Hungarian_Ultimatum_to_Serbia_%28English_translation%29); “Lost Poets of WWI” (http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/); “Wilson, ‘The Fourteen Points'” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1918wilson.asp); and “The Versailles Treaty” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1919versailles.asp).
“Freud, ‘The Interpretation of Dreams” (http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/world_civ/worldcivreader/world_civ_reader_2/freud.html); “Lenin, ‘What is to be Done?'” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1902lenin.asp); “Hitler’s First Antisemitic Writing” (http://www.h-net.org/~german/gtext/kaiserreich/hitler2.html); “Stalin’s Reply to Churchill, 1946” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1946stalin.asp); “The Marshall Plan (1947)” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1947marshallplan1.asp); “De Gaulle, ‘Le Grand Non!'” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1967-degaulle-non-uk.asp); “Khrushchev, ‘Secret Speech’ (1956)” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/krushchev-secret.asp); and “Brezhnev Doctrine, 1968” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1968brezhnev.asp).
