1. D
Standing armies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were almost always drawn from the ranks of the nobility. There really wasn’t much other choice—the merchant class barely existed, eliminating (C), the lower classes were deemed unteachable (B), and the priests were exempt (A). It wasn’t until later that the middle class began to dominate—and in the case of Napoleon’s army, the military became a tool of social mobility.
2. B
A mercenary army is a group of soldiers who are paid to wage war. They have no emotional, patriotic, religious, or legal reason to fight—their only motivation is financial. In fact, they don’t even have to come from the society that they are fighting for. Mercenary armies were quite popular in Europe at this time, especially the Swiss Guard, who were favored by the French and eventually were hired to guard the pope.
3. C
After the 80 years of conflict with Spain petered to a halt, the Netherlands found themselves religiously divided. The southern portion of the Low Countries stayed Catholic and eventually became the nation of Belgium. The northern portion of the Low Countries became what we call the Netherlands. With a weakened Spanish Empire, an England wracked by civil war, and a France waging ineffectual wars in every direction—this new nation dominated shipping and trade for well over half a century.
4. B
The Habsburgs were one of the most powerful families in Europe for most of the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries. Through marriage, they obtained three pieces of land that were nowhere near one another—Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands—and waged a war on behalf of Catholicism.
5. C
Although the dates of the events in the passage are unknown, the phrase “the coming storm” indicates that it occurs just before the dawning of the 80 years of conflict that has become known as the Dutch Revolt (1568–1648). That span included the immensely deadly Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which left millions dead across Europe for essentially no reason except religion and alliances. Following that, Europe stopped waging wars of religion.
6. B
Lasting nearly 20 years in the middle of the 16th century, the Council of Trent was one of the Catholic Church’s most important ecumenical councils. It was initiated by several popes to investigate the reasons for its declining influence as the central power in Europe. The movement that was undermining the primacy of the Church, of course, was the Protestant Reformation.
7. D
Though the document orders that “bishops be content with modest furniture, and a frugal table and diet,” it’s impossible to forget that the church was in the process of building the biggest, most extravagant monument to itself in its entire history. Constructed over 120 years, the dome was finally completed in 1590, which was 26 years after the Council of Trent. Choices (A) and (C) are irrelevant to the attitude of the document. Choice (B), the lay piety movement, shared the belief in simplicity, even though it was Protestant.
8. C
Tetzel was a German Dominican friar who was tasked with the job of selling indulgences, which remitted a person’s sins. No confession or ablution was required. Martin Luther, (A), attacked Tetzel for abusing church teachings. Choice (D), Galileo, is irrelevant. The trap answer is (B), Pope Leo X, who indeed supported the sale of indulgences, but did not sell them directly.
9. A
While the Council of Trent did agree upon many internal reforms as described in the document, its official external stance toward the Protestants was unbending. The Catholic Church reaffirmed its own teachings about God as being the one, the only, and the true. The other three choices never occurred.
10. D
The Renaissance and subsequent Reformation saw the beginning of the end of the strong political influence that the Catholic Church had wielded in medieval Europe. This occurred for many reasons, including the rise of science, the growth of centralized power under monarchs, and the continuing growth of Protestantism, particularly in the north.
11. B
One glance at the name da Vinci and the date should be enough. Italians in the late 15th century were practically swimming in rediscovered classical texts—the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, the plays of Aristophanes, and many more.
12. D
“Man is the measure of all things,” is a famous statement by classical Greek thinker Protagoras. As one of the Sophists, his relativistic viewpoint perfectly encapsulated the central idea of humanism—that there is no absolute truth except what humans deem to be truth. This was used in the Renaissance as a rejection of the certainties of the medieval Catholic Church.
13. C
Da Vinci’s choice to draw a nude human male, using proportions that had been borrowed from ancient Greek mathematicians, could be seen as an artistic rebellion against the Catholic Church of his day. At that time, church authorities commissioned all the copies of Mother and Child they could find, but little more—and certainly nothing based on the mathematical ideas promoted by long-dead heathens.
14. A
As an engineer, and as a student of the rediscovered classic texts that began arriving in Italy in his lifetime, da Vinci was undoubtedly acquainted with the numerical ratios described by classical Greek thinkers. This movement, in fact, was called Neoplatonism, and it was all the rage in his hometown of Florence throughout his life.
15. B
By contrast, Italy still maintained strong connections with the ghosts of the Roman Empire, particularly in the ruins of the aqueducts, arenas, roads, and even private homes. These things were constant reminders to Italians that a different civilization had existed prior to the overwhelming power of the Catholic Church.
1. D
A positive balance of trade—meaning more exports than imports—was deemed essential for a healthy economy. Eliminate choice (C), since it describes the opposite. Eliminate choice (A), because floating exchange rates is a modern innovation. And choice (B) could potentially result in more currency, but waging war against a foreign nation in the 17th century was typically a way to lose currency.
2. B
Colbert tried mightily to support the growth of domestic manufacturing, focusing mostly on production of glass, ceramics, and textiles. In fact, the famous blue-patterned French china that some people still use today is traceable back to his policies. He favored tariffs, so eliminate choice (C). The other choices are irrelevant.
3. A
Sadly, all of Colbert’s attempts to reform the economic system so that it served the state helped Louis XIV pursue a series of expensive and unnecessary foreign wars. These conflicts depleted the royal treasury just as quickly as it could be filled. This resulted in the extension of the system of punishing taxation that would lead to the massive French Revolution a hundred years later.
4. B
The Physiocrats were a short-lived group of 18th-century French economists who believed that the value of land, and specifically the agriculture that grew upon it, was the primary way to measure the wealth of that nation. It made no allowance for the manufacturing of anything, which is maybe why it didn’t last long as a school of thought. Still, Physiocracy was one of the earliest schools of economic thought.
5. C
The purpose of mercantilism, according to Colbert, was to support the state with greater monies. Therefore, the support of the state could be viewed as allied with nationalism, certainly more than liberalism, anarchism, or socialism.
6. C
By describing the ways that the common people had already abandoned the Catholic festivals, and the ways that the Puritans were eliminating names that had been featured under the Catholic Church, the author shows the extent of the desire for Puritans to remake English culture.
7. C
Oliver Cromwell is the first and only Puritan to ever rule England during the Civil Wars period. He refused the title of king, preferring to be called Lord Protector, and wore all black. Choice (A) is the opposite of what really happened: The Puritan clergy were forced into exile when “Bloody Mary” began executing Protestants. Choices (B) and (D) are irrelevant.
8. A
The Palatines were a German Protestant group that fled to England and Ireland at the beginning of the 18th century. The Separatists, Dissenters, and Diggers were all opposed in various ways to the Church of England.
9. C
The translation of an English-language Bible and the printing press that made it available to the masses were the two most practical reasons for the renewed emphasis upon the Bible. Eliminate (A) and (B). Of the remaining two answers, recall that a major portion of the entire Protestant movement was disintermediation—a big word that basically means cutting out the middleman, so that a believer can have a direct relationship with the Holy Spirit. Eliminate (D).
10. D
Bardsley, like all professional historians, was trained to base his conclusions upon original research through primary-source materials. If he did his job correctly, he used all publicly available records to examine the patterns of names in England during this period of its history.
11. B
The Scientific Revolution was the first time in human history in which people decided to collect data and draw general principles from that information. Under the Aristotelian method, which had ruled Europe for two millennia, a person could claim that women had fewer teeth than men, if it suited the person’s premise and assumption. Aristotle did this, famously, and it presumably never occurred to him to open a woman’s mouth to count her teeth.
12. B
The French Revolution was the great levelling of society, remaking the structure of society not on inherited hierarchy but on meritocracy. The publication of the Encyclopedie was a reflection of this great egalitarianism. An entry on potato farming was presented in the same pages, and in the same manner, as an entry on Louis XIV.
13. A
Recall the intellectual sea change that had occurred the previous century. The Scientific Revolution was so called because it had shaken off the dead-end deductive arguments that had slowed down European advancement. Instead, scientists adopted empirical thinking, or inductive reasoning, in which information is gathered first with the express purpose of drawing general principles. Today, we know this as the scientific method.
14. C
Descartes was the odd duck in the Enlightenment. Unlike virtually every other figure of the time period, he stuck by the practice of using general principles to arrive at specific principles, also known as deductive reasoning (or rationalism). This system of abstract thought, unsullied by any real-world data, caused him to mentally doubt everything, including his own existence. This is how he came to his most famous realization: “I think; therefore, I am.”
1. C
Patents are official requests for ownership of a new mechanical idea. As such, this list of patents indicates that at least some portion of the English society believed that such inventions were useful, or at least profitable.
2. A
Be careful on this question. There is very little we can say about what the reader thinks when he or she reads the source, but you do know for sure that the reference to petticoats reflects the restrictive clothing of the era. The other answer choices go too far and are unsupported.
3. D
Nowhere does this passage mention or even allude to the liberal arts. Make sure not to choose answers that are unsupported by the passage. However, because this is a NOT question, the unsupported answer is the correct choice. Merchants (A), entrepreneurs (B), and increasing bureaucracy (C) were all hallmarks of the day.
4. C
A tradition of peasant farming had been present in every country in Europe for thousands of years. It was not unique to England the way the other three answers were, and those three traits were the foundation upon which the Industrial Revolution was built.
5. B
Charles Dickens once called the factories of the early 19th century “dark satanic mills.” Having worked in a shoe polish factory to save his family from starvation while his father was in debtor’s prison, he was well acquainted with the dark side of child labor. Many of Dickens’s books, from Hard Times to Great Expectations, treat this theme.
6. C
It’s true that child labor existed both before and after the early years of the Industrial Revolution, and many people have depended upon it to save their families, or to teach children the value of discipline. However, it’s difficult to defend abnormally long hours or inhumane conditions.
7. B
Contracts weren’t a problem during the early years of the Industrial Revolution—the problem, actually, was the lack of contracts. Many employees would routinely arrive at the factory to find it closed, or would be dismissed with zero notice.
8. C
The Corn Laws were a set of laws enacted between 1815 and 1846 that imposed taxes and tariffs on imported grain, which benefitted domestic producers. However, this kept the cost of bread high, which caused the working poor to suffer.
9. A
Choices (C) and (D) are far out of scope. The trap answer is (B), because the Enlightenment did feature people attempting to make their cultures more rational. However, this didn’t often result in altruism, but instead self-interest. Adam Smith famously wrote that individuals who pursued their own interests may benefit society more than individuals who pursued actions intended to benefit society.
10. D
In the northern kingdom of Sardinia, King Victor Emmanuel and his prime minister, Cavour, used complicated schemes to turn European countries against one another to achieve their nationalistic aims. In the southern Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Garibaldi led a charge of primarily young people, known as the red shirts, to unify the Italian peninsula.
11. B
In northern Italy, Count di Cavour used French support to provoke a war with Austria, which controlled portions of northeastern Italy that he wanted to nationalize. In Germany, Bismarck used two different wars, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, to build a sense of unity among the fragmented German-speaking city-states that he was attempting to bring into Prussia’s fold.
12. C
Garibaldi was a passionate and inspiring revolutionary, but he wasn’t wise in the ways of high-level cutthroat European diplomacy. (His previous job had been a high school math teacher in Uruguay, where he led a different rebellion, using the same red shirts that he later brought to Italy.) Cavour played him like a fiddle, sending Sardinian forces to Rome to intercept his forces, since an attack on the papal states would provoke war with France. He then engineered a plebiscite in which the people of the south agreed to join Sardinia.
13. D
The romantic nationalist movement of the 19th century put much greater emphasis upon the shared literature, music, language, culture, and ethnicity than it did upon shared religion. For example, at the time of German unification in 1871, there existed both Roman Catholics and Protestants within the country’s boundaries. The Jewish community in Germany was given complete emancipation and equal rights in that same year.
14. B
The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 had been expressions of pure liberalism—the desire of the people for more individual freedoms. Nationalists, on the other hand, were often willing to jettison those freedoms if it meant creating unity.
1. C
While the other answer choices were certainly major causes of World War I, it was the system of defensive alliances that this cartoon best describes. On one hand were defensive agreements between Russia and Serbia, Russia and France, and England and Belgium. On the other side were agreements between Germany and Austria-Hungary. All were triggered by the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
2. C
The correct answer (C) is quite the opposite of what occurred. World War I stressed a defensive strategy, which was in contrast to the 19th-century military strategy of all offense. This strategy led to the arrival of trenches, in which soldiers sat for months at a time. Some of the worst battles in the history of the war, such as the Battle of the Somme, were fought over just a few miles of land, with almost no movement.
3. D
The practice of nobles marrying other nobles from other nations certainly had been typical throughout European history. However, this practice had been dying out in the 19th century, since the power of the aristocracy had been greatly weakened by the growing power of the middle class, representative democracy, and mass politics. By the start of the 20th century, and World War I, the aristocracy were no longer driving many European states.
4. D
Some historians have characterized World War I and World War II as essentially the same war. There’s some truth in that, since the same hypernationalistic drive to create a perfect Aryan race at all costs (exhibited by Hitler) was present in Germany prior to World War I as well, but to an obviously lesser degree. Choice (A) is a trap answer, since the number of widows and orphans was a result of the war, not a cause to enter it.
5. A
Germany wasn’t excluded permanently from the League of Nations. It entered in 1926, soon after it was allowed to stop paying reparations. It withdrew from the League in 1933. The other three answer choices were all famously punitive conditions of the Treaty of Versailles.
6. D
Poland had ceased to exist as a state more than a hundred years earlier, when Russia, Prussia, and Austria had carved it into three parts. Polish national pride was fierce, however, and the country was reestablished following World War I. It is very logical that an aristocrat widely known as a princess of Poland would hold resentment against the same Russian ruling family that occupied her homeland.
7. B
The Bolshevik Revolution, also known as the October Revolution, occurred in the winter of 1917–18. It stands as the most radical change in the history of the country. The only other event that could compare would be the fall of the Soviet system that the Bolsheviks set into motion.
8. A
Princess Radziwill referred to “relying upon Siberia,” which can be taken to mean sending political prisoners to die at wintery work camps. This had long been a favorite practice of the Romanov dynasty, and unfortunately the Communists continued the practice on a much grander scale. Joseph Stalin set up a system of forced-labor camps, called gulags (an acronym for the government department that controlled it). Estimates range that from 2 million to 17 million people passed through the system.
9. C
While the people grew fed up with Nicholas II’s alternating weakness and pretensions at autocracy, he did accomplish one thing that made the people happy—he signed the October Manifesto. A response to the Russian Revolution of 1905, this manifesto established a parliament, the Duma, and promised to enact many civil rights. Granted, Nicholas signed the manifesto only after his chief general threatened to shoot himself in the head if he didn’t.
10. C
The date mentioned in the passage is significant. 1960 was more than 20 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and more than midway through Franco’s dictatorship. It can be concluded that the general state of society after two decades is attributable to the policies of the Franco regime.
11. B
A waste of labor is one of those things that can be measured by modern economists. They love to analyze the productivity of nations over time, and comparing that productivity to the number of workers over time will provide a valuable snapshot of whether there is indeed a “waste of labor.”
12. A
This question is alluding to the Spanish Civil War. On one side of the war were the Republicans, which were a coalition of leftist types who had triumphed electorally in 1931. On the other side were the Nationalists, centered in Madrid and led by Franco, who rested on the far right. The Nationalists won (with assistance from nationalists in other countries) and led Spain for approximately the next 35 years.
13. B
Spain never officially entered World War II. However, Franco had slight involvement in the war here and there. He supported Axis powers with some troops as a “thank you” for the support they showed him during the Spanish Civil War. At the same time, however, he posted troops in the Pyrenees to prevent German troops from entering Spain.