question archive HIS 120 Final Exam Part One (30 points each for a total of 60 points): Short Answer
HIS 120 Final Exam Part One (30 points each for a total of 60 points): Short Answer
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HIS 120
Final Exam
Part One (30 points each for a total of 60 points): Short Answer. Choose two of the questions below and respond. Your answer should be about 200 words long and should draw ONLY upon the readings and lectures from this course.
1. In 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first telegraphic message from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, relaying the question, “What hath God wrought?” The answer, we understand now, was a communications and commercial revolution as monumental as the industrial revolution. Describe the 19th and early 20th c. technological and geological developments that, along with the telegraph, served to “shrink” the world and to radically accelerate global exchange. What role did these changes play in the commencement of world war in 1914 and in the scale of its devastation?
2. In January 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called for “self-determination” for all nations and global peace through a League of Nations. Did the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20 achieve these goals? Explain. Choose one of the following nations and describe its response to the Paris settlement: Egypt, India, China, or Korea.
3. The period of global warfare that began in 1914 arguably never ended but instead transformed into a “cold war” in a newly divided Europe, with “hot wars” confined to its former colonies. How did World War Two give rise to this transformation and irrevocably change the nature of war? Describe the organizational and ideological differences between the two “sides” in the “Cold War.” How did Algeria and Vietnam become “proxies” for the conflicts between the East and the West?
Part Two (40 points): Short Essay. Develop the argument below in a clear, intelligible, and persuasive form. Your essay should be about 450-500 words and should use ONLY the materials and lectures assigned in this course.
After two catastrophic world wars, the Western belief in progress was shaken. The growth of global economic inequality, environmental destruction, and nuclear proliferation in the 20th and 21st centuries have only deepened the doubt that the West is a model for the rest of the world to follow. Choose one of the time periods below. Make an argument that the technological, economic, and political events of the period you choose challenges the claim that history is a story of progress.
