Read the Overview to learn what the TASC Social Studies Test covers.HOW TO USE THIS CHAPTER
Read the Overview to learn what the TASC Social Studies Test covers.
Take the TASC Social Studies Pretest to preview your social studies knowledge and skills.
Study the TASC Social Studies Test Review to refresh your knowledge of TASC test social studies topics.
Take the TASC Social Studies Practice Test to sharpen your skills and get ready for test day.
Overview
Unlike earlier high-school equivalency tests, the TASC test requires you to know some basic social studies content. It is not just a reading test, although you may be asked to read passages related to history, government, and economics.
The TASC Social Studies Test is based on several national sets of social studies standards, which you may review online:
National Standards for History: US and World History http://www.nchs.ucla.edu/Standards/us-history-content-standards http://www.nchs.ucla.edu/Standards/world-history-standards
National Standards for Civics and Government http://new.civiced.org/resources/publications/resource-materials/national-standards-for-civics-and-government
Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics www.councilforeconed.org/resource/voluntary-national-content-standards-in-economics/
National Geography Standards http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/standards/national-geography-standards/?ar_a=1
The core ideas for high-school social studies are as follows:
US HISTORY
1. Explain the political conflict that led to the American Revolution.
2. Describe the causes, effects, and course of westward expansion and the major political issues of the early nineteenth century.
3. Describe the causes, major events, and outcome of the Civil War. Explain the causes, the course, and the effects of Reconstruction in the former Confederacy.
4. Discuss how the United States became a major industrial nation in the late nineteenth century.
5. Analyze and explain how the United States became a world power in the early twentieth century.
6. Explain the causes and effects of the Great Depression. Discuss the US role in World War II.
7. Discuss the social, economic, and cultural issues facing ordinary Americans after World War II ended. Discuss the US role in the Cold War.
8. Understand and discuss the major political, social, and cultural issues facing the United States at the start of the twenty-first century.
WORLD HISTORY
9. Define civilization and describe and locate the earliest human civilizations.
10. Analyze and describe classical Greece and Rome, early Chinese and Indian civilizations, and the major religions of the ancient world.
11. Describe the early patterns of migration, the settlement of Western Europe during the Dark Ages, the establishment of European nation-states and empires, and the founding of Islam in the Middle East.
12. Analyze and describe the causes and effects of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution, identifying key people, ideas, and achievements.
13. Identify the causes and patterns of European colonization in Asia, the Americas, and Africa, and explain the effects of colonization on both sides.
14. Discuss the Age of Revolution in Europe, beginning with the Glorious Revolution and ending with the Bolshevik Revolution. Analyze the influence of the Enlightenment on the Age of Revolution.
15. Discuss and describe major world crises and achievements from 1900 to 1945 in Europe, China, India, and the Arab world. Analyze and describe the two world wars.
16. Analyze the changing relationships among nations from the end of World War II to the present day, including the causes and effects of the Cold War and the rise of global terrorism.
CIVICS AND GOVERNMENT
17. Define politics, civic life, and government.
18. Explain the foundations of the American political system.
19. Connect the form of the US government to the purposes and principles of American democracy.
20. Explain and analyze the US role in world affairs.
21. Describe the role a US citizen plays in the American democracy.
ECONOMICS
22. Explain and apply basic economic principles such as the law of supply and demand.
23. Explain and apply the concepts of microeconomics—the economic decisions made by individuals.
24. Explain and apply the concepts of macroeconomics—the workings of an economy as a whole.
25. Describe the role the government plays in the national economy.
26. Analyze the connection between international trade and foreign policy.
GEOGRAPHY
27. Describe the physical and human characteristics of places.
28. Explain how humans modify the physical environment and how physical systems affect human systems.
29. Understand human migration and the characteristics of human settlements.
30. Read and interpret maps.
31. Define ecosystem and explain how the elements of an ecosystem work together.
You can expect to see questions on the TASC test in any and all of these areas. The new standards for social studies focus on asking you to think critically about history and about political, civic, and economic issues of the real world today—taking into account how these areas are connected to one another. For example:
1. Analyze cause-and-effect relationships in US and world historical events.
2. Read and interpret historical documents, taking into account the author or source.
3. Compare and contrast multiple perspectives on events.
4. Analyze and interpret economic, geographical, and historical data.
5. Use mathematics and computational thinking.
6. Construct arguments and explanations based on evidence.
7. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information.
These practices of critical thinking apply to all social studies areas. They are based on the National Standards for History: Historical Thinking Standards at www.nchs.ucla.edu/Standards/historical-thinking-standards-1/overview.
To perform well on the TASC test, you should recognize the connection between social studies and “real life.” You should understand how historians and economists think and work to solve problems. You may be asked to read historical documents and excerpts, interpret photographs and political cartoons, and apply your analysis of historical events to issues facing people in the present day.
Use the items that follow to preview your knowledge of social studies concepts and skills. Answers appear on page 244.
1. In the first sentence of the speech, President Lincoln quotes from
A. the Declaration of Independence
B. the United States Constitution
C. the Federalist Papers
D. the Emancipation Proclamation
2. President Lincoln gave this speech after the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place in July of 1863. Why was the Battle of Gettysburg considered the turning point of the Civil War?
A. It ended Confederate attempts to invade the North.
B. It was a major victory for the Union army.
C. It led directly to the Confederate surrender at Vicksburg.
D. It gave the Union control of the Mississippi River.
3. What kind of government does President Lincoln describe in the final paragraph of the speech?
A. a democracy
B. an oligarchy
C. a monarchy
D. a dictatorship
4. Until Americans realized that the climate of the Great Plains was ideal for growing wheat, they referred to the region as the Great American Desert. Why was this nickname appropriate?
A. because it was the least populated region of the United States
B. because of its extremely high temperatures
C. because of its low rainfall and lack of trees
D. because wild animals would not live in the region
Look at the chart. Then answer questions 5–8.
This chart shows the checks and balances of power in the three-branch federal government designed by the founders of the United States.
Checks and Balances of Power in the United States Federal Government
5. Which of these is the source of this design for a government based on the separation of powers?
A. the French Enlightenment
B. the Magna Carta
C. the Roman Republic
D. the English Revolution
6. Why were the founders of the United States hesitant to create a strong chief executive?
A. They wanted the judicial branch to hold most of the federal power.
B. They feared that a single all-powerful leader was not compatible with democratic government.
C. They felt that the United States was too large a nation to be effectively governed by one individual.
D. They thought that the states would never be able to agree on who the executive should be.
7. In 1972, a Senate committee investigating criminal activity in the White House asked President Richard Nixon to submit tape-recorded Oval Office conversations as evidence. President Nixon refused on the grounds of executive privilege and appealed his case to the Supreme Court. The Court decided that Nixon must submit the tapes. This is an example of
A. the executive branch checking the power of the legislative branch
B. the legislative branch checking the power of the judicial branch
C. the judicial branch checking the power of the executive branch
D. the judicial branch checking the power of the legislative branch
8. The chart shown previously is called “Checks and Balances of Power in the United States Federal Government.” Which of these best defines a federal government?
A. one in which there are three branches of power and responsibility
B. one in which power is shared by the nation and its member states
C. one in which the people elect leaders and representatives to speak for them
D. one in which the people have a say in how they are governed
9. The Eighteenth Amendment, known as Prohibition, was repealed following intensive lobbying by the hotel industry, women’s groups, and others. Which principle of American democracy is illustrated by the repeal of Prohibition?
A. freedom of the press
B. freedom of individual choice
C. the right to petition the government
D. universal equality under the law
10. The repeal of Prohibition meant that alcoholic beverages could once again be legally bought and sold. What was the main economic reason why the federal government favored repeal?
A. The government would gain revenue from sales taxes on alcoholic beverages.
B. The government would stop spending money on investigating alcohol smuggling.
C. The government could cut back on the number of police in all major cities.
D. The government could put people back to work in the bottling and restaurant industries.
11. All of the following were major results of Prohibition except
A. the formation of citizens’ groups to lobby for repeal of the amendment
B. an increase in the power of organized crime in many major cities
C. a willingness among ordinary Americans to break the law as a matter of routine
D. the crash of the stock market at the end of the 1920s
12. Prohibition was repealed during the Great Depression. Which of these defines an economic depression?
A. Wages, prices, and employment all rise.
B. Wages, prices, and employment all fall.
C. Wages and employment fall while prices rise.
D. Wages and prices fall while employment rises.
13. What advantage did the Confederacy have over the Union at the beginning of the Civil War?
A. It was geographically larger and had a larger population.
B. It had more heavy industry, more factories, and more railroads.
C. It had smarter and more experienced military commanders.
D. It had close economic and political ties to the American West.
14. In the 1970s, the cartel of oil-producing countries called OPEC significantly increased the price of crude oil. Why did nations of the world continue to purchase the crude oil at the higher price?
A. because they felt that the higher prices were reasonable
B. because they could not produce oil for themselves
C. because they were politically allied to the OPEC nations
D. because they planned to start using more nuclear power
15. When the OPEC countries cut their exports of crude oil in the 1970s, many Americans found themselves waiting in long lines at gas stations. This behavior is an example of
A. inflation
B. competition
C. the law of supply and demand
D. a comparison of costs with benefits
16. What was the main economic purpose of federal New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration?
A. to cut prices
B. to cut unemployment
C. to raise wages
D. to raise revenue
17. Up to the time of World War II, Germany (previously Prussia) had been the greatest military power in Europe for nearly 300 years. Which geographical factor is most likely responsible for this long-standing German emphasis on military power?
A. Germany has almost no direct access to the sea.
B. Germany is crisscrossed by several major rivers.
C. Germany can easily be attacked from several directions.
D. Germany has many important natural resources.
18. Why was the defense of West Berlin a special challenge for the United States and its allies during the Cold War?
A. Berlin was located within East Germany.
B. Berlin is not on the coast.
C. Berlin has no major rivers.
D. Berlin is in northern Europe.
19. The heavy north-south black line on the map of Europe represents which of the following?
A. the Western Front
B. the European Common Market
C. the British Empire
D. the Iron Curtain
20. In 1961, the East Germans began construction of the Berlin Wall, which surrounded West Berlin and strictly limited freedom of movement between the two halves of the divided city. What was the main purpose of the Berlin Wall?
A. to keep West Germans out of East Germany
B. to keep East Germans from defecting to the West
C. to prevent East Berliners from traveling in East Germany
D. to establish separate governments in East and West Berlin
This is the end of the TASC Social Studies Pretest.
1. A Review 3. Describe the Causes, Major Events, and Outcome of the Civil War, and Explain the Causes, the Course, and the Effects of Reconstruction in the Former Confederacy (pp. 249–251).
2. A Review 3. Describe the Causes, Major Events, and Outcome of the Civil War, and Explain the Causes, the Course, and the Effects of Reconstruction in the Former Confederacy (pp. 249–251).
3. A Review 17. Define Civic Life, Politics, and Government (pp. 274–275).
4. C Review 27. Describe the Physical and Human Characteristics of Places (pp. 290–292).
5. A Review 18. Explain the Foundations of the American Political System (pp. 275–276).
6. B Review 18. Explain the Foundations of the American Political System (pp. 275–276).
7. C Review 18. Explain the Foundations of the American Political System (pp. 275–276).
8. B Review 18. Explain the Foundations of the American Political System (pp. 275–276).
9. C Review 19. Connect the Form of the US Government to the Purposes and Principles of American Democracy (pp. 277–280).
10. A Review 19. Connect the Form of the US Government to the Purposes and Principles of American Democracy (pp 77–280).
11. D Review 6. Explain the Causes and Effects of the Great Depression, and Discuss the US Role in World War II (pp. 253–254).
12. B Review 22. Explain and Apply Basic Economic Principles Such as the Law of Supply and Demand (pp. 284–285).
13. C Review 3. Describe the Causes, Major Events, and Outcome of the Civil War, and Explain the Causes, the Course, and the Effects of Reconstruction in the Former Confederacy (pp. 249–251).
14. B Review 24. Explain and Apply the Concept of Macroeconomics—the Workings of an Economy as a Whole (pp. 286–287).
15. C Review 22. Explain and Apply Basic Economic Principles Such as the Law of Supply and Demand (pp. 284–285).
16. B Review 6. Explain the Causes and Effects of the Great Depression, and Discuss the US Role in World War II (pp. 253–254).
17. C Review 28. Explain How Humans Modify the Physical Environment and How Physical Systems Affect Human Systems (pp. 292–293).
18. A Review 16. Analyze the Changing Relationships Among Nations from the End of World War II to the Present Day, Including the Causes and Effects of the Cold War and the Rise of Global Terrorism (pp. 271–273).
19. D Review 16. Analyze the Changing Relationships Among Nations from the End of World War II to the Present Day, Including the Causes and Effects of the Cold War and the Rise of Global Terrorism (pp. 271–273).
20. B Review 16. Analyze the Changing Relationships Among Nations from the End of World War II to the Present Day, Including the Causes and Effects of the Cold War and the Rise of Global Terrorism (pp. 271–273).
The pages that follow briefly review the five core subjects of social studies. To learn more about each core area, look online or in the library. Note that in social studies, the five core subjects are interlinked. To understand history, you have to consider geography, economics, and government. Geography and government policy both affect economic choices. To understand why governments work the way they do, it helps to understand their origins in history. As you work through the Review section of this book, you will find that all five of these core areas overlap one another.
Explain the Political Conflict That Led to the American RevolutionKEY TERMS: colonies, Parliament, representation, revolution
The United States of America came into being on July 4, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted. There were two main causes for the colonies’ determination to break away from Great Britain. First, westward colonial expansion had led to the French and Indian War (1756–1763). Second, Britain made a series of hasty postwar decisions that denied Americans their full rights as British subjects.
The Establishment of the British Colonies
Great Britain claimed thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America between 1584 and 1732. By the mid-1700s, the colonists represented a variety of cultures—British, Irish, Dutch, Welsh, Swedish, and German, plus the Africans brought west in the slave trade and the Native Americans. The early immigrants had many different motives: to escape political or religious oppression, to pursue economic opportunity, to escape debt or other personal troubles, and to seek adventure.
Due to geographical distance, the British Parliament delegated its supervision of everyday colonial business and affairs to the individual colonial governors and legislatures. Some of the governors were British, appointed by the king; others were American, locally elected. This system accustomed Americans to having a great deal of say in their own government.
The French and Indian War
The American population soon outgrew the original settlements; westward expansion was the obvious solution. However, the land to the west was not just there for the British colonists to take; both the French and the Native Americans also laid claim to it.
In 1756, rival French and British claims to the Ohio River Valley led to full-scale war. Since the colonies had no armies of their own, Britain and France both sent troops across the Atlantic. Colonial volunteers and Native Americans supplemented these trained fighting forces on both sides; George Washington, then in his twenties, was among the American officers. Fighting in the colonies ended with a British victory in 1761. The 1763 Treaty of Paris granted Britain possession of Canada and all French holdings east of the Mississippi River (except New Orleans).
During and after the war, a rift developed between Britain and its colonies. There were several reasons for this. First, the experienced British troops had snubbed the raw American volunteers, who naturally resented this British arrogance. Second, Britain felt that since the war had been fought partly for the Americans’ benefit, the colonies should help pay the war debt. Third, the colonists had fought bravely and well, thus acquiring pride and confidence in themselves. Fourth, fighting side by side against a common enemy established new bonds among men from different colonies and helped forge a common American identify.
The Road to Revolution
The basic issue at stake between Britain and the colonies was representation in government—having some say in the laws under which one had to live. This principle of the British political system dated all the way back to the Magna Carta, signed by King John in 1215.
To solve the problem of the war debt, Parliament began enforcing colonial trade regulations it had largely ignored for decades. This hurt the Americans economically, but also made them angry because there were no American members of the British Parliament. Americans argued that as long as they were not represented in Parliament, they did not have to obey its laws. Parliament argued that the colonists, like all subjects in distant parts of the British empire, were “virtually represented” and thus did have to obey.
The Stamp Act of 1765 proved to be the last straw. This was a new tax on all paper and stamps throughout the colonies—a true tax, not a trade regulation. The colonists argued that as British subjects, they could not be taxed without their own consent. All colonies responded violently to the Stamp Act, and it was soon repealed. Boycotts of many British imports followed. A boycott on British tea led to the Boston Tea Party—this large-scale destruction of valuable property led Parliament to pass the so-called Intolerable Acts, largely aimed at Massachusetts but affecting all the colonies in principle. This led to the forming of the First Continental Congress and a series of formal and informal protests against Britain and Parliament. In 1775, British soldiers and the colonial militia exchanged gunfire at Concord and Lexington. The Revolutionary War had begun. The Second Continental Congress formally declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, and after seven years of fighting, British troops surrendered at Yorktown in 1783.
For a discussion of the American government, its founding principles, and its Constitution, see the Civics and Government section of this Review.
Describe the Causes, Effects, and Course of Westward Expansion and the Major Political Issues of the Early Nineteenth CenturyKEY TERMS: abolition, Forty-Niner, manifest destiny, reservation, temperance, wagon train
As the US population grew, people pushed westward, settled new territories, formed local governments, and applied for statehood. In 1845, magazine editor John O’Sullivan wrote that it was America’s “manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty.”
The Northwest Ordinance (1787) created the Northwest Territory in the Great Lakes region. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States. The government began offering land grants to Americans willing to settle the West; between 1815 and 1819, the first “Great Migration” saw the building of major roads and large numbers of people moving westward.
Complications
Westward expansion was complicated by two issues: the territorial claims of various Native American tribes, and African chattel slavery. The US government treated the Native Americans as a hostile foreign population, continually making and then breaking treaties with the Native Americans according to whatever best served US interests at a given time. The early nineteenth century saw many all-out battles between Native Americans and US troops. Although various Native American tribes won some key victories, the US military had too great an advantage in both numbers and weapons. In the end, the Native Americans were all forced onto reservations on land that Americans did not want to settle, such as the barren lands of the Oklahoma Territory.
American officials agreed on the Native American question but argued fiercely about the expansion of slavery. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had banned slavery in new territories, but slaveholding states wanted it to spread so that their voting bloc in Congress would be larger. Free states opposed the expansion of slavery because they did not want slave states outvoting them on every political issue. The divide was regional, with all slaveholding states being in the South and all free states in the North and West.
The slaveholding South maintained the advantage during a series of political compromises. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed the expansion of slavery in the new state of Missouri and in areas to the south of it. The Compromise of 1850 allowed California to enter the United States as a free state, but only in exchange for the passage of a new, extremely harsh Fugitive Slave Act.
Between 1830 and 1850, the United States gained control of the Oregon Territory and won the Southwest in a successful war against Mexico. People flowed westward in a steady stream to settle the new territory. When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, California, thousands of young people, nicknamed Forty-Niners because the year was 1849, headed west in search of their fortunes—hence the boom in the California population that led to its application for statehood. In addition to prospectors and miners, entrepreneurs also went west and made fortunes. Levi Strauss, the maker of durable workman’s denim trousers called “blue jeans,” is only one example.
Pioneers had to be tough and enduring to settle the American West. Wagon trains would leave Independence, Missouri, in May and travel as swiftly as possible to cross the mountains before the heavy snowfalls that began in October. Covered wagons offered little protection against stifling summer heat and downpours. Illness was frequent and spread quickly. Pregnant women had to give birth out in the open, as there were no hospitals along the trail; many women died of complications from the birth. Apart from replenishing the stock of fresh water, and shooting game to cook and eat, it was not possible to restock any supplies during the journey.
Agitation for Women’s Rights
During this era, American women had very few civil or political rights. Married women, their personal belongings, and any wages they earned belonged legally to their husbands. Women could not vote, get a college education, work in most professions, or even attend most public events without a male escort. Women rebelled against this situation, rallying around three political causes: temperance, the abolition of slavery, and equality. In the 1820s, the temperance movement—the crusade against the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages—offered large numbers of women leading roles in a public organization for the first time. Society accepted women’s active participation in the temperance movement because drunkenness affected the welfare of the family and was thus clearly a women’s issue. Women also spoke out publicly on the question of the abolition of slavery (again, this was a moral issue and therefore considered an appropriate topic for women).
In 1848, women’s rights activists meeting at Seneca Falls, New York, produced a Declaration of Sentiments arguing forcefully for the equality of women. Its authors echoed language from the Declaration of Independence, pointing out that American women were unrepresented in their own government, just as the colonists had been before the Revolutionary War. By the time of the Civil War, many states had passed laws that granted women certain important civil and legal rights.
Describe the Causes, Major Events, and Outcome of the Civil War, and Explain the Causes, the Course, and the Effects of Reconstruction in the Former ConfederacyKEY TERMS: abolition, Black Codes, Confederacy, Emancipation Proclamation, freedmen, Reconstruction, secede, sectionalism, Three-Fifths Compromise
Background and Causes
The Civil War (1861–1865) was a conflict on many levels—between economic and social systems, geographic regions, political parties, and points of view. The seeds of the war were sown in 1776, when Southern delegates to the Second Continental Congress insisted on deleting a reference to slavery as “cruel war against human nature” from the Declaration of Independence. Northern delegates gave in on the issue because independence from Britain was the primary goal; they believed that the issue of slavery could be resolved later.
Southerners justified slavery on economic and racist grounds. They argued that the Southern cotton crop was crucial to the national economy and that paying wages to a large labor force would cost too much money. They also convinced themselves and continued to teach every generation of their children that Africans were an inferior race fit only for slavery. Abolitionists replied that slaveholding was wrong because liberty was a basic human right. They could also point out that many slaves were in fact the same race as their owners, because free Southern white men fathered thousands of children by African slave women. In addition, abolitionists pointed out that slaveholders had no right to blame slaves for being poor and ignorant when the slaveholders were the ones who denied them wages and education.
In 1787, Congress outlawed the expansion of slavery into the territories. However, the ban was not enforced; both Missouri and Texas entered the Union as slaveholding states. In the US Constitution of 1787, the rules for counting the population to determine how many representatives a state could send to Congress were based on a Three-Fifths Compromise: all free persons were counted, as well as three-fifths of “all other persons” (i.e., enslaved people who were not allowed to play any role in the political process). This created an illogical situation in which white Southerners ended up with more than their due share of representatives. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 ushered in an era of violent sectionalism, in which the Southern region became increasingly divided from the North and West.
At first, Southerners appeared to be gaining the upper hand in the debate. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) allowed the residents of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether to become slave states or free states. In 1855, Missouri “Border Ruffians” stormed into Kansas Territory and illegally voted a pro-slavery legislature into office. In 1857, the US Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford declared that the US government had no power to protect runaway slaves or to ban slavery.
The Dred Scott decision and the harsh Fugitive Slave Act began to turn the tide of public opinion in favor of abolition. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin opened many Northern eyes to the realities of slavery, outselling every book except the Bible in the years leading up to the war. Abolitionist John Brown and his supporters tried unsuccessfully to start an armed slave uprising in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. And in Illinois, a self-educated lawyer named Abraham Lincoln decided to run for national office.
The Election of 1860
Lincoln was the candidate of the Republican Party, formed a few years earlier by men determined to end the spread of slavery. Voting was divided along regional lines, with Lincoln winning a narrow victory. Southern states, certain that Lincoln would insist on abolishing slavery, responded to his election by seceding from the United States and forming a new country called the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy.
The Civil War
The Southerners went to war to defend their economic and social system; they felt that the federal government had no right to dictate to the South. The Northern motives for the war were to restore the Union and to end the spread of slavery.
The Union had the advantage in geographical size, population, wealth, and the factories and heavy industry that could supply the troops. The Confederacy had only one advantage—greatly superior military commanders who won an early series of victories that made the South overconfident. The turning point of the war came when the Confederates lost the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in 1863 and, on the same day, surrendered to Union forces surrounding Vicksburg, Mississippi. The war dragged on for two more years, finally ending in the spring of 1865.
An entire generation died on the battlefield or from wounds, disease, or starvation. Many Southern towns and cities were in ruins. Railroad lines had to be rebuilt and mail service reestablished. Slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation suddenly found themselves unemployed and homeless. The defeated white South cherished a bitter hatred toward the North—an emotion that found immediate expression in the tragic assassination of President Lincoln by emotionally unstable Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Perhaps most daunting of all, the South would have to rebuild its entire society to function and prosper without slave labor.
Reconstruction
After the Union victory, the Republican majority in Congress was eager to reform the old Confederacy along the lines of the North, where all adult men had the right to vote and no one owned another person as property. However, two obstacles stood in the way: President Andrew Johnson and the old guard of the Confederacy.
Congress began the era of Reconstruction by swiftly granting African Americans a number of basic civil and political rights. However, laws could not wipe out deep-seated prejudice, bitterness in defeat, and racism. Johnson had supported the Union during the war, but he blocked congressional attempts to extend African-American rights. For their part, Southern whites were forced to accept the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, but they refused to accept the idea that African Americans were equal to whites. They used terrorist tactics to intimidate the freedmen, defeating Reconstruction reforms on the state level and replacing them with the notorious Black Codes that re-created the climate of racial apartheid that had existed before the war. It would take a century to enforce the three Civil Rights Amendments that were passed between 1865 and 1870.
Discuss How the United States Became a Major Industrial Nation in the Late Nineteenth CenturyKEY TERMS: Bessemer process, cotton gin, labor union, Progressive Party, transcontinental railroad
First Industrial Revolution
The United States underwent two Industrial Revolutions. The first began in 1793, with the invention of the cotton gin. This machine could process as much cotton in one day as 1,000 slaves; Southern planters found that it multiplied their profits tenfold. The invention of the steamboat, which could sail upstream against the current, made it possible to move huge boatloads of cotton north; this made possible a thriving New England textile industry.
The first wave of the US national transportation system included canals, paved roads, and the transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869. The purpose of a national system of transportation was to link the agricultural and industrial regions so that both would benefit as sellers expanded into new territories and found new markets for their goods. For example, the railway boom made possible the cattle boom of the 1870s. Railroads took the cattle north to the slaughterhouses of Chicago. As profits grew, so did the sizes of towns and the movement of settlers.
There were no safety or wage regulations to protect factory workers until after the Civil War. Owners set wages as low as they could, demanded a 60- to 85-hour workweek, and shrugged off unsafe working conditions because the constant flood of new immigrants meant that dissatisfied or injured workers could easily be replaced. Factories exposed workers to high levels of industrial pollution. Machinery was dangerous to operate at the best of times—more so when workers were always exhausted from the long hours. Labor unions and federal regulations to protect the workers finally arrived with the Second Industrial Revolution.
Second Industrial Revolution
This second revolution took place during the post–Civil War era. Instant long-distance communication (telegraph, telephone), a machine that could produce a perfectly printed letter (typewriter), and cheap, steady lamplight with the flick of a switch (the electric lightbulb) made great changes in the way people lived and worked. Before electricity, most people rose and went to bed with the sun; when electricity was perfected, people could work or enjoy themselves in brightly lit rooms all through the night if they wanted to.
The Bessemer process, which made possible the easy and cheap conversion of iron ore into steel, led to a rise in steel production and became the most important factor in the success of the Second Industrial Revolution. Men at the head of heavy industries and large-scale construction companies made fortunes, and American cities became forests of skyscrapers, suspension bridges, and elevated train lines. With the rise of the reform-minded Progressive Party and the creation of labor unions, workers were also in a position to enjoy some of the profits of their labor.
Analyze and Explain How the United States Became a World Power in the Early Twentieth CenturyKEY TERMS: great power, League of Nations, peace conference, protectorate
At the start of the twentieth century, the United States was a wealthy and strong nation, but not a world power. Occupied with internal issues such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, industrialization, and westward expansion, the United States had taken very little active interest in world affairs. In 1900, Western Europe dominated world politics and the world economy. Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the recently unified Germany were the great powers of the world.
Colonization
The United States had several motives for acquiring colonies. The first was to gain trade partners on favorable terms—partners that could supply natural resources the United States could not, such as sugar, rubber, and coffee. The second was to establish naval bases. The third was simply to prove to the world that the United States was a great power—a force other nations would have to reckon with. Between 1898 and 1903, the United States annexed Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines; made Cuba a protectorate; and took control of the construction of the Panama Canal. The United States would retain control of this important trade route for most of the twentieth century.
World War I
World War I—called at the time the “Great War”—marked the United States’ first major entry into world affairs. The war began in 1914 as a territorial conflict among European nations, with the Central Powers (Austria and Germany) on one side and the Entente, or Allied, Powers (Britain, Russia, and France) on the other. By 1916, the United States was supplying money and arms to the Allied Powers; US troops joined the fight in late 1917, and the Central Powers surrendered in November 1918.
Despite its late entry into the war, the United States was treated as an equal partner at the peace conference, marking the first time in history that a non-European nation had played a major role in the peace settlements of a European war. The United States had played a small but crucial role on the battlefield and ended the war in a much stronger military and economic position than the European nations, which had suffered much greater losses. Ironically, President Woodrow Wilson’s dream of the League of Nations—an international organization to settle differences over a conference table, taking up arms only as a last resort—was realized without American participation.
For further details on World War I, see the World History section of this Review.
Explain the Causes and Effects of the Great Depression, and Discuss the US Role in World War IIKEY TERMS: crash, depression, drought, Dust Bowl, dust storms, Hooverville, New Deal, margin buying, Okie, stock market
The Great Depression
The Great Depression began with the crash of the stock market in October 1929. Although the United States had weathered several financial panics since the 1790s, this depression was nicknamed “great” because it was the worst, longest-lasting economic crisis in US history.
The simple cause of the stock market crash was the practice of margin buying, which had become common during the 1920s. Speculators would borrow money and buy stock, and then keep an eye on its value and sell it as soon as its price went up. The large number of speculators meant that share prices were constantly fluctuating, usually upward. This meant a booming market built on an insubstantial foundation of unpaid debt. When buyers lost confidence in the market and began selling their shares, prices dropped and debts fell due. Banks failed because people could not repay their loans. When a bank failed, everyone who had an account with that bank lost all his or her money; there was no mechanism in place to protect account holders from loss. Across the nation, businesses closed and workers were laid off. Landlords evicted tenants who could not pay rent. Millions could not make their mortgage payments and so lost their houses. All social and economic classes were affected.
The failure of businesses and banks coincided with many months of drought in the Great Plains, turning the 50-million-acre breadbasket into the Dust Bowl. The topsoil in this region was a thin layer over hard, dry dirt. With no rain to keep it moist and anchored in place, the thin topsoil blew away during dust storms, and the crops failed. Thousands of small farmers lost everything they had. These Okies (nicknamed for the state of Oklahoma, although they were from several neighboring states as well) migrated westward, hoping for a fresh start in the favorable climate of California. All they found there was hostility, prejudice, and starvation wages.
Many Americans blamed the Depression on President Herbert Hoover, who had failed to predict it and seemed not only unable, but unwilling, to resolve it. People who had lost their homes built shantytowns called Hoovervilles in ironic tribute to the president. In the 1932 presidential election, Hoover lost in a landslide to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Roosevelt immediately took action to address the financial crisis. His New Deal programs created millions of jobs and restored the nation’s banks to a sound financial footing. During Roosevelt’s first term, unemployment dropped by about 8 percent. Unsurprisingly, he was reelected in 1936 in the greatest landslide in a hundred years.
World War II
It took World War II to bring the United States out of the Depression and back to prosperity. The military draft and the change to a war production economy combined to put millions of Americans back to work. The United States officially entered the war in December 1941, after Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. America was faced with a two-front war; it joined Britain’s battle against Nazi Germany in Western Europe, and it sent troops to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. The United States was a formidable ally against Germany because of its almost unlimited manpower and its ability to produce an endless flow of military supplies and weapons.
The war in Europe ended in the spring of 1945; Japan held out until the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of August 1945. At the peace conference at Potsdam, Germany, it was clear that the United States and the Soviet Union were the only great powers left in the world. The munitions industry had completely reinvigorated the American economy, American casualties had been minor compared to European losses, and the United States itself was far from the combat zones and physically undamaged. Britain, France, and the other European nations recovered, but would never again be more than second-rate powers.
For further details on World War II, see the World History section of this Review.
Discuss the Social, Economic, and Cultural Issues Facing Ordinary Americans After World War II Ended, and Discuss the US Role in the Cold WarKEY TERMS: Civil Rights Movement, Cold War, nonviolent protest, segregation, sit-ins, suburbs, superpower, women’s movement
The Cold War
The late 1940s ushered in a new era of Cold War between the two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. With their opposing political systems and economic policies, these World War II allies quickly became enemies; throughout the Cold War, each tried to contain the other’s sphere of influence. The war was called “cold” because the two enemies did not actually fire on one another—but from the Asian point of view, the term cold war is a misnomer. When civil wars erupted in Korea and Vietnam, the Soviets backed one side and the United States the other. The Korean War ended in a stalemate, and the Vietnam War in a Communist victory. Apart from these two “hot wars,” the Cold War was largely a standoff between the two powers, punctuated by frequent uprisings in Eastern European nations trying to shake off Soviet control. In 1989, the United States claimed a Cold War victory when Communism collapsed of its own accord, having proved impossible to sustain economically.
For further details on the Cold War, see the World History section of this Review.
The Civil Rights Movement
On the home front, the Civil Rights Movement took root after the war. Americans eager to claim the leadership of the “free world” against Communist foes began to realize that the legal segregation of African Americans in the South seriously undermined that claim. Furthermore, African Americans who had fought for freedom overseas were no longer willing to accept legal restrictions when they returned home. Black students across the South staged a series of sit-ins that ended segregation in many public places. President Harry S Truman ordered the integration of the US military. Martin Luther King, Jr., a clergyman from Georgia, organized and led nonviolent protests throughout the South, in which protesters exercised their First Amendment rights to “peaceably assemble” and thus won public opinion over to their side against white Southern police officers, who responded with violence. By 1964 the Civil Rights Act had been signed into law, ending segregation in law and in fact.
Postwar America
Americans enjoyed an era of prosperity and plenty after the hard times of the Great Depression. The GI Bill of Rights gave veterans the chance to get a college education, buy a house or a farm, attend training school for a particular profession, or start a business. This enabled many to marry, start families, and move to the newly built suburbs. People were buying cars, television sets, and other consumer goods.
The Women’s Movement
During World War II, many women had gone to work in traditionally male jobs (including military service) and proved very capable. Victory in the war brought the men home and sent many working women back to the home. This situation did not last, however, because women were no longer content with the old assumption that they should have no ambitions beyond marriage and children. By the 1960s, more and more women were getting college educations and competing for skilled professional jobs. A proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution failed to pass, but American women made great strides toward social and legal equality during the last decades of the twentieth century.
Understand and Discuss the Major Political and Social Issues Facing the United States at the Start of the Twenty-First CenturyKEY TERMS: hacking, Internet, terrorists
Technology
At the turn of the twenty-first century, a technological revolution swiftly changed the way Americans communicate. The advent of e-mail, cell phones, personal computers, online social networks, and portable Internet access made sweeping changes to society, both at home and on the job. Financial security and personal privacy became major social and legal concerns due to a rise in hacking, the practice of illegally breaking into electronic data systems.
Immigration
A great wave of Latin American immigration to the United States began in the late twentieth century and continued into the twenty-first century. For the first time, American culture began changing to meet the needs of the immigrants, rather than expecting the immigrants to assimilate. One result was a nativist backlash among some groups of non-Hispanic Americans. Immigration had a huge impact on the US economy, as many immigrants (not only Latin Americans) entered the United States illegally and worked without proper documentation.
Religion
In the early twenty-first century, religious faith became an increasingly divisive political issue, with many Republicans advocating a more Christian society and many Democrats advocating a society that treats all faiths equally, or that is secular. Christians pointed to the First Amendment phrase “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].” Non-Christians pointed to the phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Many Americans were unwilling to compromise on this issue. Controversies over abortion rights and the right to legal same-sex marriage were closely linked to religious issues.
Foreign Affairs
Saudi terrorists attacked the United States in 2001, leading to a violent breach in US–Arab relations. US troops attacked the fundamentalist Islamic group Al Qaeda and its local allies in Afghanistan, and in 2003 US forces invaded Iraq and toppled its government. After an occupation marked by violence, the United States withdrew from Iraq in 2011. Fighting continued against Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and in other Arab countries.
China, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan all possess strategic nuclear weapons. Mutual hostility between India and Pakistan, between North and South Korea, and between Israel and its Arab neighbors is of particular concern to US leaders because tension might escalate into nuclear warfare at any time.
CHALLENGE United States History
Briefly explain the importance of each item in the history of the United States. Write one or two sentences.
1. Black Codes
2. the Declaration of Sentiments
3. the Dust Bowl
4. sit-ins
5. the Stamp Act
CHALLENGE ANSWERS
United States History
Your answers should be similar to the following:
1. Black Codes were a series of laws passed in the former Confederate states after the Civil War. These laws overturned Republican reforms and deprived African Americans of most of the civil rights they had gained.
2. The Declaration of Sentiments (1848) used language from the Declaration of Independence to argue that American women were being deprived of important civil, legal, and political rights. The Declaration helped lead to the passage of reform legislation.
3. The Dust Bowl was a nickname given to the Great Plains during the Great Depression, when the area suffered from an extended period of drought and severe dust storms.
4. Sit-ins were peaceful protests staged by young African Americans and other Civil Rights supporters from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. These sit-ins pressured public places like restaurants to change their segregationist policies.
5. The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1763. It taxed paper goods throughout the colonies, leading to widespread violent protests. The Stamp Act increased colonial hostility toward Britain and thus helped cause the American Revolution.
Define Civilization, and Describe and Locate the Earliest Human CivilizationsKEY TERMS: Bronze Age, civilization, temperate
Human Civilization
A civilization is more than a group of people; it represents the next step toward social organization. In a civilization, people organize governments and social classes, establish writing systems, build cities, create works of art, study science and mathematics, and invent new ways of doing things.
To sustain human life, two things are required: a temperate climate and ready sources of food and fresh water. Under the right conditions, this leads to a surplus of food and thus an increase in health, life span, and income. With extra resources and more spare time, people turn to pursuits beyond the hunting and gathering of food—they create civilizations. All the early human civilizations have left written records, scientific discoveries, beautiful art objects, and works of architecture that go well beyond simple shelters from the weather.
Human beings began to organize themselves into civilizations around 3500 BCE (before the Common Era). The Fertile Crescent (present-day Iraq, Syria, and Egypt) was home to the early civilizations. This period of human civilization is called the Bronze Age for the copper-tin alloy people discovered around 3000 BCE. Bronze produced stronger, sturdier tools and weapons than copper did alone.
Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) gave the world its first written language, its first organized religion, the basics of modern mathematics, the wheel (used first for making pottery, then for transportation), and the first literary epic (The Descent of Inanna). The first city-states were created in southern Mesopotamia by a people called the Sumerians. Archaeologists have unearthed many luxury objects at Sumerian sites, including musical instruments, game boards, and jewelry. These artifacts support the conclusion that a wealthy class of Sumerians existed: only the wealthy can purchase luxury items. The objects’ fine quality shows that the Sumerians were skilled artisans. The use of metal in a region where no metal existed proves that the Sumerians traded with other civilizations (probably in the Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan).
The Babylonian Empire came into being around 2000 BCE. Babylonians could plot the fixed stars, follow the course of the sun, and predict lunar eclipses. Their mathematicians were the first to use the number 60 as a base for measuring circles, spheres, and time; we use that system today. Babylonian law codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi, show that in ancient times, people valued the concept of abstract justice and believed in punishing criminals. Another great civilization arose at the same time in the Nile River Valley in Egypt. The Great Pyramids of Egypt prove that the Egyptians were able not only to design monumental buildings, but also to plan and carry out their construction—a remarkable engineering feat in an era with no technology beyond the wheel and the lever. Less is known about the Indus Valley civilization in present-day Pakistan because historians have not yet been able to decipher its written records. However, this civilization did leave behind planned cities with impressive works of architecture and sophisticated drainage systems.
Analyze and Describe Classical Greece and Rome, the Early Chinese and Indian Civilizations, and the Major Religions of the Ancient WorldKEY TERMS: Buddhism, Christianity, democracy, Hinduism, Judaism, patrician, philosophy, plebeian, Silk Road
China
China has existed as a culturally unified entity since at least 1000 BCE; aspects of Chinese culture that may date back even further include the domestication of silkworms, the production of ceramic and jade objects, and the use of chopsticks. The classical Chinese written language, originating well before 1000 BCE, served as an important unifying force in ancient Chinese kingdoms; although different dialects were spoken in different regions, written Chinese was the same everywhere.
The early Chinese settlements were located along the rivers—the highways of the ancient world. China was isolated from the Fertile Crescent not only by distance, but by obstacles such as deserts and mountain ranges. There is no evidence that ancient China and the ancient Near East had any knowledge of one another.
K’ung-Fu-tzu, known in the West as Confucius, became as influential in Chinese thought and culture as Jesus would later become in the West. Born into the minor nobility in the sixth century BCE, Confucius became a teacher and a scholar. Confucius supported the established order of society, in which everyone had a place. If each person knew and kept his place, did his duty, and respected tradition, society would function smoothly. By the same token, personal integrity would guarantee a wise and just use of authority.
Under the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) China achieved a free-market economy, the invention of paper, a universal law code, and a merit-based bureaucracy. This period also saw the establishment of the Silk Road, a major overland trade route from Luoyang in the east all the way to Constantinople and Alexandria in the west. Horses from Iran, luxury objects from Rome, silks from China, spices and cotton from India, and stories and ideas from all cultures were traded along the Silk Road.
India
Geography played a major role in the isolation of ancient India. The Himalayas, which include some of the world’s tallest mountains, blocked access from the north; the other two sides of the triangular peninsula border on the Indian Ocean. This unique geographical location ensured that India could be invaded only from the northwest, through present-day Pakistan.
The Aryans, Eastern Europeans who invaded and settled in Persia and the Indus Valley around 1500 BCE, had a lasting influence on Indian culture. Historians believe that Hinduism is a mix of Indian and Aryan ideas and beliefs. Hinduism links a religious belief in sacrifice with a caste system based on duty to others; it continues to hold sway over present-day India.
Siddhartha Gautama, born into the nobility in 563 BCE, is known to history as the Buddha (the title means “Enlightened One”). The Buddha taught that since all suffering and conflict in the world came from frustrated ambition, passion, or egotism, the elimination of these emotions would lead to contentment and spiritual peace. Buddhism also opposed the caste system. Ironically, Buddhism had its greatest influence in China, not India.
Greece
The beginning of an identifiable Greek culture goes back to 2000 BCE and the arrival of the Achaeans from the present-day Balkan region of southeastern Europe. The peninsular and island culture of Greece meant a close relationship with the sea; trading was done by boat, and the Greek navy became the strongest and best of the era. The Greek idea of abstract philosophy—that people could use their reasoning powers to understand the workings of the universe—is Greece’s most important contribution to the development of Western culture. During the Greek Classical Age (roughly 750–400 BCE), the Greeks created the basis of Western art, architecture, literature, science, philosophy, and government.
At a time when the world was ruled by the principle of the divine right of emperors, some of the Greek city-states featured a new form of government called democracy. This was not democracy as understood today; neither slaves nor free women had many legal rights or freedoms, and only men in positions of power (about 10 percent of the total population) could vote. Still, the government did give some of its citizens some say in the laws they had to live by. This principle of government by the consent of the governed would eventually hold sway throughout the Western world.
The northern Greek kingdom of Macedonia took over the Greek civilization under Philip II and his son and successor Alexander the Great. During the fourth century BCE, Alexander’s wars of conquest spread Greek culture, language, and customs all the way from the Danube River in the west to the Indus River in the east.
Rome
The Roman Empire (500 BCE–476 CE) was the largest and most impressive political achievement of the ancient world. With the aid of its bureaucracy and army, Rome brought all the Western civilizations together into a unified whole that allowed each individual culture to flourish. The phrase “Western Civilization” refers to the Greco-Roman heritage—the history, culture, and understanding of the world common to all Western nations that were part of the Roman Empire or influenced by it.
The key to the Roman Empire’s success and longevity was tolerance. Roman rulers allowed diversity to flourish, requiring only three things: obedience to the Roman law code, payment of taxes, and loyalty to the Roman state. Worship of the Roman gods was mandatory, but the people might also worship any other gods they pleased.
Romans adopted elements of mythology, religion, and culture from the Greeks and the Etruscans (an earlier Italian people). Rome’s most important original achievements were in law, government, and engineering. Latin, the Roman language, would be the common language of all educated Westerners for well over 1,000 years after the empire fell. Rome began as a monarchy, but in 509 BCE a republic was established. Both patricians (aristocrats) and plebeians (commoners) were represented in the Senate, and the plebeians’ representatives had veto power over those of the patricians. By 100 BCE the republic had become a dictatorship, but the institution of the Senate endured.
Christianity
Christianity came into existence under the Roman Empire as a new sect of Judaism, the ancient religion of the Hebrews. Judaism was revolutionary for two things: its followers worshipped only one god instead of many, and its moral code (the Ten Commandments) applied to all people, from monarchs to slaves. This defied the common ancient belief that monarchs were divine and not to be questioned.
Christians and Jews worship the same god, but Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God, the Messiah or Christ (both words mean “anointed one”) whose appearance on earth was foretold in the Hebrew Bible. After Jesus’s execution, his most influential follower, Paul, preached his message of universal love and eternal salvation through the eastern half of the Roman Empire. To make Christianity appeal to his culturally Greek audience, Paul blended Hebrew beliefs with elements of Hellenistic culture and religion, such as the abstract philosophy of the Trinity. Christianity spread rapidly across the Roman Empire and would hold sway throughout Western Europe until the present day.
By the fourth century CE, the Roman Empire had become too large to govern effectively from one city; it split into two halves, with the eastern half eventually breaking away altogether as the Byzantine Empire, governed from Constantinople (founded 330 CE). Disagreements over dogma split the Christian religion; Rome became the seat of Roman Catholicism, while Constantinople became the seat of Eastern Orthodoxy. Rome was culturally Latin, while Constantinople was culturally Greek—another reason for the division. Finally, the Roman Empire was mired in economic troubles and faced serious threats of invasion from the north.
Describe the Early Patterns of Migration, the Settlement of Western Europe During the Dark Ages, the Establishment of European Nation-States and Empires, and the Founding of Islam in the Middle EastKEY TERMS: barbarians, Dark Ages, feudalism, Islam, lord, Magna Carta, medieval, migration, steppes, vassal
Westward Migration
From the 6th millennium BCE, people had inhabited the steppes of Central Asia—bleak grasslands bordered by the Ural Mountains and the Gobi Desert. Small tribes of people roamed the harsh terrain, following the herds on which they depended for milk and meat. By mastering horses and learning to work with iron—they were the first people to make wheels with spokes—the Central Asian tribes became formidable bands of warriors. They spearheaded a great westward migration that ended in the settlement of Europe.
The Settlement of Europe
Peoples from Central Asia migrated into Europe in waves. The Goths established a stronghold around present-day Poland and Hungary; the Huns drove them out between 100 CE and 300 CE. The Goths moved south, defeating the Roman army at Adrianople and achieving official Roman recognition of a Goth state in 382 CE. By 550–600 CE, the Slavs had become the dominant culture in southeastern Europe. In the West, the Germanic tribe of the Franks divided, with the West Franks eventually becoming the French and the East Franks eventually becoming the Germans. The West Franks dominated a mixed culture that included Roman Gauls, Bretons, Belges, Vikings, and a mix of others; the East Franks absorbed Slav elements into their culture. At the same time, the Sueves, Burgundians, and Anglo-Saxons established themselves in present-day Spain, France, and Britain.
The culture of these nomadic migrants was primitive compared to Greco-Roman classical civilization, which is why the Romans referred to all the Northern peoples as “barbarians.” Instead of emphasizing intellectual and artistic achievement or creating sophisticated governments and law codes, the Northern tribes concentrated on pillage and plunder. The Dark Ages were an era of conflict, with the various peoples continually struggling for supremacy.
The period 750–1054 was a time of continual raids on France, Britain, and Eastern Europe by Viking tribes from Scandinavia. In the same period, Vikings traveling through what is now Russia founded the cities of Kiev and Novgorod; the local Muscovy princes would later absorb these states into the expanding Russian empire. After the Christian conversion of Vladimir I in 988, Kiev became culturally more Slavic and Byzantine. To meet the threat of the Viking invaders, the local Slavs began reorganizing themselves along Viking-style political lines; this led to greater social organization and thence to true civilization rather than tribal culture.
Feudalism
The feudal system developed during this early medieval era—not only in Europe, but also in India, China, and Japan. The social contract between classes was based on an oath of loyalty, which people of this era considered legally binding. The monarch provided warriors with vast land grants and noble titles in exchange for their loyal military service. The warrior thus became the lord of a large estate—the ruler of his own small feudal realm, in which he protected and housed his vassals in exchange for their military service, loyalty, and obedience. The “lord” of the estate might even be a lady; very few medieval women were warriors (there were rare exceptions even to this rule, such as Joan of Arc), but some women achieved positions of great power through marriage or widowhood.
The monarch and the lords worked out an uneasy balance of power. The monarch wanted to control the realm and command the obedience of all his subjects, but the lords held so much independent power on their estates that they might easily defy the monarch, even though they agreed that the monarch ruled by divine right. The Magna Carta is an example of what could happen when the lords united against the monarch. King John of England had such a disgraceful record of bad administration and unwise rule that in 1215, his barons forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which specifically stated that even the monarch was not above the law, and laid the foundations for the parliamentary system that England would eventually adopt.
Islam, the religion that would eventually unify the entire Near East, was founded in the early Seventh century in Arabia. Muslims worship the same god as Jews and Christians; Allah is simply the Arabic name for him. Muslims regard Jesus as a great prophet, but secondary to Islam’s founder Muhammad. Islam is based on the Five Pillars: faith, prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca.
By the end of the tenth century, Islam had taken firm hold on a sizable region of the world. Muhammad was not only the founder of a major world religion; he was also an extraordinary political leader who unified all the Arab tribes under one central government for the first time in their history. Muslim armies conquered an empire that was highly diverse, embracing Turkish, Persian, and North African cultural and artistic traditions. The Muslims even penetrated Europe as far as northern Spain; they would remain in power on the Iberian Peninsula for the better part of 800 years.
Africa
The major African civilizations of the first millennium included Nubia, Axum, and the kingdom of Ghana, in addition to Egypt. Foreign invasion, religious conversion, and international trade are the major themes of these civilizations.
Analyze and Describe the Causes and Effects of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution, Identifying Key People, Ideas, and AchievementsKEY TERMS: Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, philosophe, Protestantism, Reformation, Renaissance, Scientific Revolution
The Renaissance
Two important factors made the Renaissance, a cultural movement that began in Italy around 1350, a great turning point in Western history. One was a resurgence of interest in classical philosophy, literature, and art. The second was the questioning of Church teachings, which was encouraged by a sharp rise in literacy—the effect of the development of movable type and the printing press. The Koreans invented movable type; it was modified in Germany and ended up having a much greater effect in the West than in Korea and China. With books readily available, people could read on their own instead of simply trusting what the learned authorities told them.
The Reformation
The religious movement called the Reformation began in 1517, when the founding of the Lutheran Church ended the thousand-year supremacy of Catholicism. By 1600, thousands of Europeans—particularly Northern Europeans—were worshipping in Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican churches. The success of Protestantism (so named because its believers protested against Catholic doctrine) had multiple causes: a growing opinion among some Christians that the Catholic Church was neither all-powerful nor morally above reproach, a rise in secular political power, and the perfection of the printing process. People could now read the Bible (and all other books) for themselves; they no longer had to accept the Church’s interpretation of Scripture.
The Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution was a time of great progress in human understanding of the laws of the universe. This era changed not only what people thought, but more important, how they thought. The discoveries of the Scientific Revolution (such as the moons of Jupiter and the paths of the planets around the sun) were the product of practical experimentation rather than abstract philosophy—conclusions were based on what scientists perceived with their five senses.
The Enlightenment
The philosophes (the French word for philosophers) of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment applied this scientific process of critical thinking to social and political problems. They argued that all people were born free and equal, and that individuals should be able to make their way in the world as reasonable beings with a right to decide how and where they wished to live. Their works encouraged people to believe that they did not have to accept existing conditions and that they could create new institutions to their own liking. In the end, Enlightenment teachings led directly to major revolutions in British North America and in France.
The Industrial Revolution
Later on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Industrial Revolution demonstrated a third way of using the process of observation and experimentation: by applying it to the mechanical challenges of manufacturing and agriculture. New machines appeared with bewildering rapidity, permanently altering the pace of human life and shifting the Western economy from a basis in agriculture to a basis in mass production and consumption. People who had been artisans or rural laborers migrated to big cities to become factory workers.
The Near East
During this period, much of the Near East was controlled by Ottoman Turkish rulers based in Constantinople. Under the Ottomans, the Islamic world reached a zenith of cultural, literary, and artistic achievement—but soon lagged behind the West, partly due to its inability or refusal to embrace new scientific methods. While Europeans devised their first printing press in 1455, the Arab peoples did not acquire this technology until 1727. At a time when a pendulum clock was an ordinary household object in Europe, it was a curiosity and a rare luxury in India. Beginning around the mid-1700s, the Ottoman Empire steadily lost power and influence; the Islamic world would not play a significant power role in international politics again until the 1970s.
Identify the Causes and Patterns of European Colonization in Asia, the Americas, and Africa, and Explain the Effects of Colonization on Both SidesKEY TERMS: colonization, natural resources
At the end of the 1400s, European monarchs began sponsoring voyages of exploration beyond the world they knew. Their purposes were fourfold: trade, conquest and expansion, religious conversion, and curiosity.
Trade
The natural resources of the colonized regions—Asia, Africa, and the Americas—included such non-European items as rice, coffee, sugar, rubber, silk, cotton, gold, diamonds, and spices. West Africa was also the source of slave labor throughout the eighteenth century. Colonization meant that Europeans could set their own prices for what they bought from the colonies and what they sold to them.
Conquest and Expansion
A larger population meant more revenue for the crown in taxes, more income for the churches in tithes, and more soldiers in the army. Therefore, three of the most powerful branches of society—the court, the clergy, and the military—were united in the desire to explore the seas and lands beyond Europe in the hope of establishing colonies, which would make them richer and stronger than their neighbors.
Religious Conversion
The third motive, religious conversion, was a product of the universal Christian belief that it was a Christian’s duty to convert non-Christians and thus save their souls. Any church is stronger with more believers; therefore, the European churches eagerly sent missionaries to Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Curiosity
The last motive, and a very powerful one, was the universal human sense of adventure and curiosity—the drive to find out things that has characterized human beings since the beginning of civilization and is responsible for all scientific discovery and technological achievement.
Empire Building
Nations become empires in two ways—either by swallowing up adjoining land and thus expanding their borders, or by seizing colonies some distance away. Rome, China, India, Russia, and the United States are examples of the first type of empire (the United States would acquire a few offshore colonies at the turn of the twentieth century). Spain, France, Prussia (later Germany), and Britain are examples of the second. Between them, Spain and Portugal colonized all of Central and South America and Mexico, plus nearly one-third of the present-day United States. France colonized Canada, the Great Lakes region, and the Louisiana Territory, which it later sold to the United States. France and Britain fought to control India; in 1850, Britain won the fight and would govern India until after World War II. Britain also sent settlers to colonize Australia and New Zealand. The European powers colonized the entire continent of Africa (except Ethiopia and Liberia), and all the Southeast Asian kingdoms except Siam (present-day Thailand). These colonies could not match the military might of the invaders, so they had to accept foreign rule. The age of colonization ended with World War II for two reasons: the European powers could no longer afford to maintain colonies, and the people living in the colonized countries began to rebel against foreign rule.
Discuss the Age of Revolution in Europe, Beginning with the Glorious Revolution and Ending with the Bolshevik Revolution, and Analyze the Influence of the Enlightenment on the Age of RevolutionKEY TERMS: aristocracy, Bolshevik, conservatism, constitutional monarchy, dictatorship, French Revolution, Glorious Revolution, liberalism, Marxism, nationalism, socialism
Revolution
Between 1689 and 1789, the West saw three major political revolutions—one in England, one in America, and one in France. These three revolutions demonstrated a turning of the tide in the West; they ushered in an era of steady progress toward representative government that would continue into the nineteenth century.
The Glorious Revolution
In Great Britain, fifty years of violent conflict between Parliament and the absolutist monarchy led to the Glorious Revolution. In 1649, following defeat in battle, Charles I was captured by Parliamentary forces and executed for treason; after a brief military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell, Charles’s son Charles II was crowned in 1660. When Charles II died and his unpopular Catholic brother James became king, Parliament rebelled, inviting James’s Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange (in Holland) to rule jointly. James II fled to France and the Glorious Revolution was won without a shot being fired. The English Bill of Rights, passed by Parliament in 1689, ushered in a new era of individual rights and constitutional monarchy.
The French Revolution
The American Revolution of 1776–1783 created the world’s first lasting government whose founding principle (if not reality) was the equality of all the people. The French Revolution of 1789 saw the commoners rebelling against an absolute monarch and an overprivileged aristocracy. Unable to devise a viable republican government to replace the monarchy, France became a military dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte. His attempt to conquer all of Europe united all the other nations against France and ended in his defeat and exile. The French monarchy was restored, but with constitutional limits on the monarch’s power.
Many new political forces came into being in the nineteenth century—liberalism, socialism,nationalism,conservatism, and Marxism. The following table helps explain what each term means.
Political Philosophies of the Nineteenth Century
Examples of constitutional governments in Great Britain, France, and the United States led to loud calls for written constitutions in many European nations. One wave of European revolutions took place in 1830 and another in 1848. In those revolutions, the forces of liberalism, which supported representative government, scored some victories—although conservative governments were still in power in several countries at the end of the century. One of the most conservative was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included a diverse mix of Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, Croats, and Italians. Nationalism—pride in one’s culture and language—made all these groups chafe at living in an empire instead of being independent. The growing strength of nationalism was a major factor in the unification of Italy in 1861 and of Germany in 1871. Nationalism in Ireland made the Irish restive under British rule and led to some reforms in Britain’s Irish policy.
Nationalism also contributed to the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. Throughout the nineteenth century the Ottomans steadily lost territory and influence, until the empire was eliminated altogether after World War I. Other contributing factors included European aggression and the Ottomans’ failure to match European military and technological progress. By the outbreak of World War I, Greece and almost all the Balkan states had won their independence from the Ottoman Empire. In 1923 the empire was transformed into Turkey, a secular Islamic republic. In Russia, a rebellion in 1905 did not succeed in overthrowing the czar, but it did lay the groundwork for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (see the next section).
Discuss and Describe Major World Crises and Achievements from 1900 to 1945 in Europe, China, India, and the Arab World, and Analyze and Describe the Two World WarsKEY TERMS: balance of power, Bolshevik Revolution, Great War, fascist, League of Nations, reparations, totalitarian
The Great War
World War I (called the Great War at the time, because no one anticipated World War II) happened primarily for two reasons. The first was nationalism: nationalist agitation among Serbs and other Slavs in Austria’s Balkan provinces threatened the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and German nationalism had led to a major buildup of the German military during the 1910s. The second reason for going to war was maintaining the European balance of power. The unification of Germany had created a large, strong, powerful nation-state whose ambitions caused grave concern to Britain, Russia, and especially France. Those three countries formed a defensive alliance. Germany allied itself with Austria-Hungary. When a Serb nationalist assassinated an Austrian archduke at Sarajevo in 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia, Russia mobilized to defend the Serbs, and the alliances went into action. Soon Britain, France, and Russia (the “Allies”) were at war with Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire (the “Central Powers”).
The war wrecked the European economy; Russian farmers and workers were hit especially hard. Czar Nicholas II was unable to take control and improve matters. Resentment against the czar led to a popular uprising in 1917, and as a result Nicholas abdicated. After a chaotic power struggle, control of the government passed to the leftist Bolshevik Party (Bolshevik is Russian for “majority”) led by V. I. Lenin. Lenin signed a peace treaty with Germany, withdrew Russian troops from World War I, and began to convert the newly renamed Soviet Union into a communist dictatorship. Britain and France, dismayed by the abrupt withdrawal of a powerful ally, were heartened when the United States joined the war. The tide turned in the Allies’ favor, and Germany agreed to an armistice on November 11, 1918.
At the peace conference, the Allied leaders did three things to restore the balance of power in Europe. First, they partially redrew the map of Europe along nationalist lines, creating new states, expanding others, and breaking up the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Second, after making Germany accept responsibility for the war, they reduced Germany’s strength by ordering the Germans to maintain the German Rhineland as a demilitarized zone, to pay enormous reparations, and to reduce the size of the German army and navy. Third, the Allied leaders created the League of Nations as an international forum for resolving conflicts and maintaining peace.
The Rise of Fascism
During the 1920s and 1930s, fascist governments arose in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Eastern Europe; by 1937, Japan was also under strict military rule, and Communist forces were on the rise in China. Fascism was a political doctrine that promoted extreme nationalism as a way of achieving national unity and eliminating domestic social and economic strife. In this it differed from Communism, which in theory offered a new social order run by the working class, and fascists and Communists despised each other. In day-to-day practice, however, fascism and Communism often amounted to the same thing—absolute dictatorship of a police state, with only one political party that tolerated no opposition. This system of total government control over individuals’ lives was termed totalitarianism. Social and political conditions of the period gave rise to these dictatorships. The first was the rise of mass political parties. The second was dissension among liberals in government and parliaments, and their helplessness to respond effectively when a massive economic depression struck in the 1930s. The third was the large class of World War I veterans who made an enthusiastic audience for nationalist rhetoric.
World War II
World War II was a war of German aggression—a war fought partly to change the defeat of World War I into a victory and partly to take over Europe as Napoleon had temporarily succeeded in doing at the beginning of the nineteenth century. World War II began in the late 1930s with the German takeover of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, followed by German conquest of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France and an attempted assault on Great Britain. After failing to conquer Britain, Germany launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. Germany and its ally Italy (the “Axis” powers) maintained control of the war until late 1942. Their well-planned invasions succeeded more or less by surprise, the German troops were extremely effective, and Germany and Italy eventually controlled almost all of Europe and a sizable chunk of North Africa.
In the Pacific, Japan had invaded the Manchurian region of China and was seeking further conquests. It joined Germany and Italy in the Axis alliance, and when Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941, Germany also declared war on the United States. Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union then joined in a great alliance to defeat Germany, and their numerical and economic strength eventually turned the tide. Additionally, the distant American factories were well out of danger of being bombed or captured, so the Allied source of tanks and munitions never dried up.
The war is accurately called a “world war” because of the extent of the fighting outside of Europe. After more than three years of fighting in the Pacific, Japan finally conceded defeat after it was attacked with nuclear weapons in 1945.
Analyze the Changing Relationships Among Nations from the End of World War II to the Present Day, Including the Causes and Effects of the Cold War and the Rise of Global TerrorismKEY TERMS: Arab Spring, Berlin Wall, Communist, European Union, Iron Curtain, OPEC, Prague Spring, space race
The End of European Dominance
At the start of the twentieth century, Europe was the world’s most powerful region, controlling many parts of Asia and most of Africa. After 1945, the former European powers had no resources to spare for their colonial empires; all their energies and resources were concentrated on rebuilding. The postwar era therefore saw a wave of independence throughout all of Africa. It was not gained easily, peacefully, or overnight, and in some African nations it led to an era of harsh military rule, corruption, and violent social and political unrest. India also finally broke free from British rule and was divided into two separate states: a Hindu India and an Islamic Pakistan. Millions of Indian Muslims immediately crossed the border into Pakistan, while Pakistani Hindus fled to India.
The Soviet Union
By 1945, the Soviet Union held total political sway over all of Eastern Europe. Puppet Communist governments under the control of Moscow existed in all these small Slavic nations except Yugoslavia, ruled by the fiercely independent Marshall Tito. Germany was divided into two nations, democratic West Germany and Communist East Germany. A political border nicknamed the “Iron Curtain” would exist between Western and Eastern Europe from the late 1940s until 1989. In the divided city of Berlin, the Iron Curtain became an actual concrete wall in 1961; the Berlin Wall would be the most powerful symbol of the Cold War. The Soviet Union did not hesitate to use brute force in suppressing popular uprisings and attempts at reform such as the Prague Spring of 1968.
Soviet Communism proved economically unfeasible, despite major Soviet victories in the “space race” with the United States. Each superpower tried to outdo the other in exploring the universe beyond Earth. After the death of dictator Joseph Stalin and a lengthy period of economic stagnation, a gradual thaw in Soviet policy eventually led to the end of the Cold War, successful political uprisings, and the coming of democratic government to Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall was demolished in 1989, and the Soviet Union broke up into independent republics in 1991.
China Today
Communist one-party rule was established in China in 1949 after a civil war. After several decades of isolation, a certain amount of market free enterprise was reintroduced, and Communist China began rising to world prominence and power. However, the country continues to suffer grave social problems. Chinese citizens do not have unrestricted access to outside information sources, the press is censored, and political dissidence is not tolerated. Tens of thousands of workers earn extremely low wages turning out cheap, low-quality clothing, household items, small appliances, and other export items, which the United States and other nations continue to import because the prices are so low.
The European Union
During the late 1950s, Western European nations began to profit from the experience of their wartime alliance; they realized they were stronger united than they were on their own. A European Economic Community was created, and this led to the formation of the European Union in 1991. EU nations are entirely independent and self-governing, but they share common foreign and security policies, and they cooperate on matters of domestic policy and affairs of international justice. They have had a common currency, the euro, since 1999.
The Arab World
A massive demand for oil in the post–World War II era led to an enormous economic change in the Middle East. As the source of most of the world’s oil, the region leapt into a position of international consequence and great prosperity almost overnight. In 1960, five of the Arab nations created a cartel called the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) with the purpose of regulating oil prices and controlling the supply of oil to the rest of the world. Today, OPEC has twelve member nations including four in Africa and two in South America.
Most Middle Eastern nations are either military dictatorships or monarchies; the press is heavily censored in these countries. In many of these countries, Islamic leaders constantly pressure their governments to enforce Islamic values and practices. Arab nations were outraged at the creation of the state of Israel in the late 1940s, and the situation was worsened when Israel began a long-term occupation of territories with Arab populations during the “Six-Day War” in 1967. In 2011 a series of popular uprisings in Arab countries (dubbed the “Arab Spring”) raised hopes for the creation of democratic governments, but they also opened new conflicts between pro-Western liberals and Islamists.
CHALLENGE World History
CHALLENGE ANSWERS
World History
1. the Fertile Crescent: This region was home to the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilizations.
2. barbarians: In classical Greek and Roman usage, the word barbarian meant “foreigner”; the Greeks thought that non-Greek languages sounded like “bar-bar” or the sounds made by someone who stammers.
3. Feudalism: Feudalism was an early form of the social contract in which persons received privileges and power in exchange for duties and responsibilities such as providing military service in wartime.
4. Nationalism: Patriotism is pride in one’s country of citizenship, but nationalism is pride in one’s identity as a member of a cultural and ethnic group and support for that group’s interests. Nationalism is a force for unity in a homogenous country like France, but it has been a force for rebellion in multinational states like the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
5. Bolshevik or Communist: During the Russian Revolution, the terms Bolshevik and Communist were equivalent.
Define Civic Life, Politics, and GovernmentKEY TERMS: civic life, government, politics
Civic Life
The words civics, civil, civility, city, citizen, and civilization all come from the same root—all have to do with obeying the rules that govern society. These rules are needed because no human society of any size can function smoothly unless everyone agrees to obey the same code of behavior. This is why there are laws, governments, and social customs. Your civic life is the life you lead in public, where your behavior is governed not only by your individual choices but by obedience to rules.
For example, you must appear in court when summoned. You must serve as a juror unless the court grants you an exemption. You must obey traffic laws. You must apply for a passport for foreign travel. You must obey laws that restrict the freedom to purchase alcohol and tobacco products. You may not endanger society. You may not commit libel or slander. You must behave properly in public places, according to social customs and written rules (such as sitting in your assigned seat in the theater or stadium, and obeying “No Smoking” signs). You must obey certain rules in your school or workplace, such as dress codes. The press has freedom to publish only opinions and true facts—it does not have the freedom to publish deliberate lies.
Politics
Police, metropolis, polite, and politics all come from the same Greek root. These words all deal with concepts of human communities and the rules governing behavior. Politics is the process of debate, persuasion, and voting that people use to decide two things: who will represent them in the government and which laws will be passed.
Government
A government is an institution with two purposes: to serve and protect its citizens, and to make and enforce laws. The following table shows the most common forms of government in world history.
Explain the Foundations of the American Political SystemKEY TERMS: amendment, lobby, separation of powers
The American political system is based on several sources. These include the Roman Republic, the Magna Carta, the British parliamentary system, and the ideas of the European Enlightenment. The following table shows which aspects of the American political system came from each of these sources.
Sources of the American Political System
The basic ideas behind the American political system include the following:
A. The law applies equally to all citizens, from the President of the United States on down. All have equal rights; none has special privileges.
This concept was in place from the founding of the country, but it has only gradually become reality; many people argue that the ideal has still not been achieved. Women, African Americans, and Native Americans all had to fight for ordinary civil and political rights. Even today, many would argue that there is one justice system for the rich and another for the poor. Rich people are usually educated, and they know their legal and Constitutional rights; poor people are often uneducated about their rights and are thus more vulnerable to intimidation and unfair treatment by the police and the courts. The justice system has attempted to even the balance with such rulings as Miranda v. Arizona, which states that anyone being arrested must be informed of his rights to remain silent and consult an attorney.
B. Citizens may voice their concerns freely and may criticize the existing administration without fear of retaliation.
The Declaration of Independence states that all governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This means that the government must meet the needs of the people.
This works in practice because the First Amendment guarantees American citizens the right to criticize their government and to “petition for a redress of grievances”—in other words, to try to get the government to change unpopular laws. Citizens can write to or call their representatives, join associations that lobby for change, take part in demonstrations, and of course vote against candidates who don’t agree with their views.
In 1787, this idea was truly revolutionary. At that time in most parts of the world, criticizing one’s government was very dangerous. The least that might happen was censorship of written work; people who spoke out might also be imprisoned, exiled, or even executed for what was considered treason.
C. The political system can be changed to meet changing times.
The Constitution has been amended several times. Amendment to the Constitution is a slow process by design so that any changes to the fundamental laws of the land can only happen after everyone has been given plenty of time for consideration. Altering the national Constitution is a serious business and is treated seriously.
Constitutional amendments have addressed many individual rights and freedoms. For example, they outlawed slavery; extended voting rights to major segments of the population; guaranteed freedom of speech, religion, and of the press; and made certain changes to the electoral process.
Connect the Form of the US Government to the Purposes and Principles of American DemocracyKEY TERMS: all men are created equal, associations, balance, Bill of Rights, checks and balances, citizens, Congress, Constitution, equality, executive, federal republic, impeach, judicial, legislative, liberty, Preamble, press, political parties, republic, representatives, veto, voting rights
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson put into words the great central principle on which the American government is based:
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
A belief in liberty and equality is the most important aspect of the American identity. The United States is a nation of immigrants whose people do not share a common cultural heritage, religious faith, or ethnic identity. Instead, they have the common experience of citizenship in a nation founded on the ideals of equality under the law and liberty for all.
Of course, these were only ideals when the nation was founded—as the authors of the Constitution knew very well. In practice, virtually the entire African population south of Pennsylvania was enslaved, with no civil rights whatsoever. In legal terms, free women were almost as badly off; they could not vote, they had few legal rights, and they were denied many freedoms available to men. Men who did not own a certain amount of property could not vote. Native Americans were not citizens; they were considered foreigners and enemies and were continually pushed farther and farther from their ancestral lands. It is remarkable that Americans were faithful enough to the ideals of equality and freedom that over time, they protested against all these inequities—eventually resolving most of them in large part.
Expansion of Voting Rights in the United States
In 1787, during weeks of debate, the authors of the Constitution designed a government that would uphold the principles of liberty and equality for which the Continental Army had fought a revolution. Every aspect of this government is designed to balance the interests of all the conflicting groups that make up the nation.
The Constitution begins with a Preamble that states the purposes of the American government:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Constitution describes a republic—a government in which the citizens elect representatives to make and enforce the laws. The United States is a federal republic—one in which the national government shares its authority with the state governments. The following is a brief look at the Constitution:
The United States Constitution
As the following chart shows, the Constitution describes a government of three branches—legislative, executive, and judicial.
Branches of the US Government
The framers of the Constitution based their work on the writings of the Baron de Montesquieu, a French philosophe of the Enlightenment who had first suggested such a system in his book The Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu argued that each branch of the government should provide a check on the powers of the other two, to prevent any one arm of the government from gaining too much power. The framers of the Constitution agreed with this view, creating multiple checks and balances in the system:
The president can veto any law passed by Congress and has the sole power to nominate Supreme Court justices.
Congress can override the president’s veto, but it must do so by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses. The Senate must approve presidential nominees to the Supreme Court. Congress can impeach a president or a Supreme Court justice for serious misconduct in office.
The Supreme Court can declare a law unconstitutional. If a president is impeached, the chief justice presides over the proceedings.
Other important checks and balances are built into the US government:
The press, whose freedom to publish is guaranteed in the First Amendment, reports on the activities of the three branches of government, thus keeping the citizens informed. The press can also use its voice to support or oppose government officials and candidates for office.
The citizens have the power to vote leaders into and out of office, to call for the repeal of established laws, and to urge the passage of new laws.
The political parties serve as checks on one another so that no one party can be too powerful for too long. Each party acts as a watchdog on the others, quickly informing the public of mistakes, corruption, or inaccurate statements.
The associations provide powerful voices for citizens who support a particular issue—for example, the American Medical Association (AMA) represents the interests of the medical profession, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) focuses on the constitutional rights of the individual.
Congress is designed to balance several interests. It has two chambers—a House of Representatives and a Senate. Each can check the power of the other:
• All states are represented equally in the Senate—so no one region can overpower the others and large states cannot ignore the interests of small states.
• States are represented in the House according to the total population—so small states cannot ignore the interests of larger ones.
Both the House and the Senate must vote Yes on a bill before it can become a law.
State governments are designed along the same lines as the federal government. Each state has a governor and a lieutenant-governor, who serve as the executives. Each state has a legislature and a state supreme court. Major cities have a mayor, a deputy mayor, and a city council. All the same checks and balances of the federal system also exist in the state and city governments. The great rule of American government is that to pass laws, opposing interests must be balanced—lawmakers must try to represent as many citizens as possible.
Although the Constitution was ratified, many political leaders objected to it because it said almost nothing about the rights of individual citizens. In response, the First Congress of the United States submitted twelve constitutional amendments to the states. Ten of these were ratified in 1791 and are collectively known as the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights
Explain and Analyze the US Role in World AffairsKEY TERMS: communications revolution, isolation, natural resources, world affairs
The United States took very little interest in world affairs until the twentieth century. This changed with the US entry into World War I. Since that time, the United States has been a major world power. Geography, science, and economics have all played a role in the US status among the nations of the world.
Geography and World Affairs
Three geographical factors enabled the United States to maintain independence from world affairs for so long and to keep it powerful: its isolation, its abundance of natural resources, and its vast size.
The United States was geographically far from Europe during the days of European empires. Once it had broken away from Britain and established its own military strength, it was not geographically vulnerable to invasion. On its north and south borders, the United States has friendly neighbors, neither of which is a significant military power. On the east and west lie the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Before the days of air attacks, the vast size of the United States protected it from any conventional attempt at a takeover. No army or navy could be strong enough to attack on both coasts at once—and even if such attacks succeeded, the interior was so vast that it could not easily be conquered. America is so rich in natural resources that the United States could grow or manufacture almost everything it needed. This gave the nation the upper hand in foreign trade.
Science and World Affairs
The United States led the world in the Second Industrial Revolution—the one that produced the elevator, the typewriter, the telephone, and the electric lightbulb. Emerging from World War II as the richest nation, the United States had great success with scientific and technological advances and took the lead in the communications revolution at the end of the twentieth century. For the past century, the US military has been among not only the world’s largest but also the best-equipped.
Economics and World Affairs
The United States has been a wealthy country since its beginnings, with a much higher standard of living than exists in many parts of the world. Wealthy nations are desirable allies and bad enemies. They can pick and choose their battles and their trading partners.
For a detailed discussion of US involvement in foreign affairs, see the U.S. History section of this Review.
Describe the Role a US Citizen Plays in American DemocracyKEY TERM: citizen
A US citizen may do any or all of the following to participate in the American democracy:
Vote: In the twentieth century, voter turnout in major presidential elections hovered between 50 and 60 percent of the eligible adult population.
Run for office: All government officials are also citizens.
Follow the news: Keep informed—and keep others informed—via word of mouth, the press, and the Internet.
Join an organization: Lobby the government by supporting or joining a powerful association such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Speak out: Sign a petition, call or write to your representatives, publish newspaper articles or books, or take part in a peaceful demonstration.
Serve on a jury: The legal system of the United States requires the participation of citizens. A panel of jurors represents the entire community; jurors listen to evidence on both sides and give a fair and unprejudiced verdict.
Volunteer for a political campaign: Most people who work for political candidates are not paid. Some people volunteer their time because they strongly identify with the positions of a particular candidate. Others have their own political ambitions and want to get a taste of what such a career might be like. Volunteers do a great deal of essential work in political campaigns: making and receiving phone calls, processing donations, speaking to crowds, answering questions, providing transportation, polling potential voters, and so on.
CHALLENGE Civics and Government
Answer the questions that follow. Write one or two sentences for each.
1. What determines the number of congressional representatives for each state?
2. Explain the difference between a dictatorship and a monarchy.
3. What is the purpose of the Bill of Rights?
4. What is the US government’s responsibility to the citizens?
5. How has geography enabled the United States to play a leading role in world affairs?
CHALLENGE ANSWERS
Civics and Government
Your answers should be similar to the following:
1. The state’s total population determines its number of representatives in the House of Representatives. All states have two representatives in the Senate.
2. A dictator is a person who seizes absolute power and holds it with the support of the military. A monarch is a member of a ruling family who inherits his or her title.
3. The Bill of Rights guarantees certain individual rights and privileges of citizens that are not addressed in the main body of the Constitution.
4. The government’s responsibility is to serve and protect the citizens, and to make and enforce the laws. It must try to balance all interests fairly and equally.
5. Geographical isolation and enormous size have protected the United States from invasion. The climate and the presence of many natural resources have led to abundance and wealth.
Explain and Apply Basic Economic Principles Such as the Law of Supply and DemandKEY TERMS: barter, cost, cost-benefit analysis, demand, economics, interest, mortgage, supply, trade
The term economics refers to the continuous exchange of goods, services, and resources necessary in any society of human beings. Far back in prehistory, the first social human beings developed the system of barter and trade that eventually became known as economics.
Here are some of the basic principles of economics.
A. Everything you want to acquire has a cost.
The most basic principle of economics is that you can’t get something for nothing; everything has a cost. You have to give something up to get something. Cost may not be a matter of money or of money alone. It may be computed in money, time, effort, or a combination of those things. Likewise, the things you want may not be material things. They may be intangibles like academic success or excellence in a particular sport.
For example, suppose you have set your heart on becoming a ballet dancer. Classes, ballet shoes and dancewear, transportation to and from ballet school, and medical care for dance-related injuries all cost money. Dance itself takes tremendous physical and mental effort, and dancers have to practice every day. Young dancers have to fit in their training outside of school hours, which means sacrificing other activities like sports. Dancers also risk serious injuries and the possibility of frequent unemployment. Time, money, risk, and effort are all part of the cost of a career in ballet.
B. A cost-benefit analysis can help you decide whether to pay the cost of what you want.
To make the best economic choices, you need to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. This means weighing the cost (what you have to give up) against the benefits (what you will gain). If you want to become a dancer, you have to weigh time, money, effort, physical discomforts, and constant risk of injury (all part of the cost) against the joy of performing, audience applause and cheers, and possible fame and fortune (all part of the benefits).
C. Something that is rare has a higher cost. Something that is abundant has a lower cost.
This principle is also known as the law of supply anddemand. When there is a large supply of an item, supply can satisfy demand, and the price stays low. When the item becomes scarce, demand becomes greater than the available supply, and the price goes up.
You have probably experienced the law of supply and demand when buying airplane tickets. If you book well in advance before most seats are sold, the price is low. If you wait until the last minute, when most seats are gone, the price is much higher. You may also have taken part in live or online auctions. When many people want a particular item, bidding drives up the price. When only a few people want that item, bidding is over quickly at a low price.
D. You can borrow money to buy something, but you must pay back more than the actual sum you borrow.
For a very expensive purchase such as a house, you can arrange to borrow money from a bank. The bank pays the seller in full at the time of purchase, and you repay the bank an agreed amount per month, most often over a period of thirty years. The sum of money you borrow is called a mortgage. The monthly mortgage payments include interest charges based on the total number of years of the loan. The interest represents the cost of borrowing. Early repayment means you pay less overall, because you save the interest charges. The mathematical equation for calculating interest is R × P × T = I (Rate × Principle × Time = Interest). Other expensive purchases that people routinely take out loans for include cars and college educations.
Explain and Apply the Concept of Microeconomics—the Economic Decisions Made by IndividualsKEY TERMS: balanced budget, bankruptcy, boycott, budget, cost-benefit analysis, debt, microeconomics
Microeconomics refers to the economic decisions individuals make. Household budgets are an example of microeconomics. You must budget for your necessary expenses every month: rent or mortgage payment, groceries, utility bills, gasoline and parking or a monthly transit pass, insurance payments, and so on. You can conduct a cost-benefit analysis to decide how best to spend any money that is left over.
Balanced Budget
A balanced budget is one in which your income is equal to or greater than your expenses. If you spend more than your income, you will end up in debt. As explained in the previous section, debtors must pay back not only the principal they owe, but also any interest that has accrued over time. Because the total amount owed continues to grow over time, many people soon find that their debts grow so large they cannot repay them. In extreme cases of debt, individuals can declare bankruptcy.
Boycott
A boycott is a refusal to buy certain products. The decision to boycott is made at the individual level, but a large number of individuals have to participate for the boycott to be effective. When people don’t purchase a product, the law of supply and demand takes effect, and the seller loses profits. People normally boycott products for political reasons rather than high prices. The loss in sales pressures the seller to change his or her policies. For example, concern over unsafe factory working conditions and poverty-level wages in Bangladesh and elsewhere has prompted many Americans to stop buying clothing made in these countries.
Explain and Apply the Concept of Macroeconomics—the Workings of an Economy as a WholeKEY TERMS: deficit, depression, inflation, labor union, macroeconomics, prices, profit, recession, strike, unemployment, wages
An economic system is one of the key elements of human civilizations. For a large human society to function smoothly, people have to agree on a system of government, a law code, and a system of exchange.
Wages, prices, and unemployment are all part of a national economy. Wages refers to the money workers earn. Prices refers to the cost, in money, of consumer goods and services. Unemployment refers to the percentage of workers who are looking for work but do not have a job.
When wages go up, spending goes up. This means an increased demand for goods, so prices go up, too. In this situation, unemployment is usually low. The economy is strong. When wages stay the same or fall, spending goes down. The economy is weak.
The following are three types of bad economic conditions, with their definitions:
Small businesses and larger companies and corporations form the major part of a market-based economy. Companies earn money by selling goods or services. They spend money to pay wages and to purchase supplies and equipment or goods for resale. The purpose of these operations is to earn more money than the company spends. The excess earnings are called profit. The company can save profits; distribute them to owners, workers, or both; or invest them in ways that expand or improve the business. Companies can also borrow money for investment by issuing stocks or bonds. A company may spend more than it earns in profit. The excess spending is called a loss, or a deficit. If a company fails to earn a profit, it can wind up in bankruptcy and it may go out of business.
Negotiations between business owners and workers play an important part in the economy. Because there are hundreds or thousands of workers for every individual owner, the workers have the power of their numbers. This is why workers began to form labor unions whose members agree to act together to obtain better wages, working conditions, and so on. The strike is a strong weapon for workers because when they walk off the job, the factories stop running and the owner earns no profits. Owners have tried to replace striking workers, only to realize this is a highly unpopular move with the general public and that it is difficult to replace skilled workers. Therefore, they usually negotiate with the striking workers until the two sides can come to terms. Major labor strikes began in the United States in the late nineteenth century and they continue to this day.
Describe the Role the Government Plays in the National EconomyKEY TERMS: bond, income tax, revenue, sales tax
Like any large organization, the government has income (called revenue) and expenses. Revenue comes mainly from two sources: payment of taxes and the sale of bonds. Income tax is a percentage of individual or business income paid to the government. Sales tax is a small percentage added to the price of an item or a service.
A bond (sometimes called a savings bond or a war bond) is, in effect, a loan. You pay the government the price of the bond—say, ten dollars. In exchange, you receive a piece of paper marked with that amount, as well as a year and series number. You can cash in your bond at any time; the longer you hold it, the more it will be worth, because the government will pay you interest based on the length of time you’ve held the bond. Suppose you are given a ten-dollar bond as a birthday gift for your first child. When your child graduates from college and needs some cash to put down a security deposit on an apartment, that bond may be worth more than one hundred dollars.
The government uses these sources of revenue to meet its expenses. These include financing the armed forces and paying the salaries of all government workers all the way up to the president of the United States. The federal government also funds education at all levels; runs programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; regulates commerce and enforces safety standards; provides funding for the arts and scientific research; maintains national parks and nature preserves; and helps fund and maintain a national transportation system. State taxes pay for services such as the state police force and bridge and highway maintenance. Local city taxes pay for services such as public schools, garbage collection, the library system, and municipal parks.
The US government manages the national economy by setting tax rates and interest rates and sometimes by passing laws. For example, individuals are required to pay a small percentage of their earnings into Social Security, a government program that provides income to Americans over the age of sixty-seven. In effect, the government ensures by law that all working Americans must save money for their retirement.
State governments also depend on taxes for their revenue. Each state determines what taxes it will assess. For example, Pennsylvania does not charge sales tax on clothing, Delaware does not charge tax on restaurant meals, and Vermont does not charge state income tax.
In a socialist economy, the government owns all business and industry and fixes prices artificially. In a capitalist economy, business and industry are in private hands, and a free market of competition sets wages and prices. A mixed economy is a combination of these two systems. Because Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, believed that capitalism was the soundest economic system, the United States developed as a largely capitalist economy. Most other Western nations have mixed economies.
The US government has repeatedly been called on to arbitrate major labor strikes in business and industry—particularly in industries that affect the entire nation, such as the national transportation system. Before the Progressives came into power in the early 1900s, most strikes were settled on terms favorable to the owners. Beginning with the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, the workers began to gain a share of power.
Analyze the Connection Between International Trade and Foreign PolicyKEY TERMS: colonization, embargo, export, import, natural resources, surplus, trade
A trade is an exchange—something you don’t need for something you want. In international trade, people and businesses export (sell to foreigners) the goods they don’t need and import (buy from foreigners) the goods they want.
Geography is closely connected to international trade. A nation’s geographic location determines its climate and its natural resources. Nations must trade to obtain the natural resources they cannot provide for themselves. Often a nation will have surplus natural resources it can trade away. For example, Great Britain’s climate is perfect for raising sheep—but all wrong for growing tea. The sheep can supply all the wool the British need for their own clothing and textiles, with plenty left over to trade away for the tea they cannot produce.
It is easy to see the connection between international trade and foreign policy. Economics can drive foreign policy, and foreign policy can dictate economic choices. Colonization is one example of how economics can drive foreign policy. When a country acquires a colony, the country controls the trade relationship. The colony must buy whatever the country wants to export, and sell the country whatever it wants to import, at the country’s prices. These facts helped shape a foreign policy of aggressive European colonization from about 1500 to 1945, when colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas provided a number of commodities and resources Europeans could not produce for themselves—coffee, tea, sugar, cotton, spices, potatoes, copper, tin, and many more.
Trading with other independent nations is different from trading with a colony because the bargaining power between the two is more equal. If a nation is your country’s enemy, it may refuse to trade with your country—or it may demand unreasonably high prices for its goods. If an enemy nation is rich in a commodity your country wants to import, your country is under economic pressure to improve political relations with that nation. If nations can become allies, they are much more likely to come to a trade agreement that will please both sides. But sometimes a nation may decide that the best way to obtain natural resources from a neighboring country is through a war of conquest.
A nation that has a political dispute with another country may sometimes employ a tactic called an embargo to apply pressure against its opponent. When your country establishes an embargo against another country, your country does not export to that country and your country do not import that country’s goods. This means finding alternatives to whatever goods that country produces. An example of this occurred during the US Civil War, when for political reasons Britain decided to break off trade relations with the Confederacy. Instead of importing American cotton, Britain imported cotton from India until after the war ended and the Confederacy rejoined the Union.
For further comments on international trade and foreign policy in history, see the US and World History sections of this Review.
CHALLENGE ANSWERS
Economics
Describe the Physical and Human Characteristics of PlacesKEY TERMS: historical atlas, map, place, region
The terms place and region refer to a location on Earth. A place is an individual location—a single country, town, or city. A region is a group of locations—the collective identity of several adjoining countries, states, or provinces. Places and regions may or may not be settled by human beings.
Physical characteristics include the climate, type of soil, crops that grow, natural resources, amount and type of precipitation, direction and strength of the winds, presence or absence of large bodies of water, and species of wild plants and animals.
Human Characteristics
Each place or region is unique because of what people have made of the physical environment they settled in. A place’s human characteristics include answers to the following questions:
What is the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic makeup of the population?
Is it a rural or urban population or a mix of both?
What do people do to earn a living?
What do people do for recreation or relaxation?
Is the landscape largely natural or completely built up with cities and suburbs?
What kind of transportation do people rely on?
What do people produce that makes this place famous (e.g., New York City is famous for its theaters, Detroit for its cars, and New Orleans for its music)?
Different types of maps can show many physical and human characteristics of places and regions. Take for instance an ordinary map of the United States:
This map shows a particular human characteristic—how Americans decided to divide up their country into specific states for political purposes. You might take the same map and shade it to show the different regions: Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest. You might shade the map in different colors to show where different major crops are grown—such as wheat, corn, potatoes, and oranges. You might shade the map to show average temperature, rainfall, or elevation above sea level. You might shade the map to show the proportion of Democratic and Republican voters in each state.
A historical atlas is a book of special kinds of maps that display the physical and human characteristics of places and regions at times in the past. The maps in a historical atlas of the American Revolutionary War, for example, might show the boundaries of the then-existing British colonies, the location of major battles, the deployment of British and American military forces, the routes followed by the armies, and so on.
Explain How Humans Modify the Physical Environment and How Physical Systems Affect Human SystemsKEY TERMS: environment, global warming, green movement, organic
The Physical Environment
The natural environment of a place includes various factors: the climate, type of soil, temperature, elevation above sea level, topography, and so on. Except for those who live in very small groups in a primitive style, human beings have significantly altered every natural environment in which they have settled.
When people find a hospitable climate with a ready source of fresh water, they build shelters for themselves and their animals. They turn over the soil and sow crops. They may fell whole forests to clear land for farming or building. They create systems for irrigation and waste disposal. They build walls and fences to mark property borders.
Large human civilizations go beyond these steps. They build bridges, roads, and cities. Since the beginning of the industrial age, people have been building factories, mines, and railroads. All these human activities alter an environment.
Just as human society changes an environment, the environment affects the choices people make. The climate people live in affects the clothing they wear, the crops they grow, the animals they can raise for food, and the kinds of transportation they use. For example, the Italian peninsula is mountainous with dry, rocky soil. Together with the mild temperatures of the Mediterranean region, this makes the perfect environment for growing grapes. These geographical factors have made Italy a major producer and exporter of wine since the days of ancient Rome.
Geography and Trade
Geographical factors foster networks of economic interdependence. Rivers, canals, and roads link regions and allow them to trade with one another. The impressive system of Roman roads linked all parts of the Roman Empire, fostering a lively mercantile economy. In medieval times, the Silk Road was a major trade route linking Asia and Europe. The Mississippi River linked the northern and southern regions of the United States, so the cotton grown in the South could feed the textile mills in the North and profit both regions.
Geography and Conflict
Geography has always been a major factor in war. Nations develop a foreign policy based in part on how easily they can defend their borders. For example, Germany (formerly Prussia) is in the middle of Europe and has no natural border defenses, such as a high mountain range or an ocean. Its central location meant that it could be invaded from almost any side. Geographical vulnerability made Prussia develop the strongest and most intimidating army in Europe.
Geographical factors can dictate success or failure in war. Distance is one important factor—this was especially true before the invention of airplanes. The farther an army marches from its sources of supply, the greater the risk of defeat. This is why Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia ended in a humiliating retreat; the French army had gone too far from its supply lines. Other geographical factors contributed to the Russian victory. An invading army normally lived off the land, foraging for food while on the march, but the barren Russian plains provided little food for French soldiers or horses. The Russian winter was too severe for the French, who came from a milder climate. These factors made disease, frostbite, and starvation as dangerous to Napoleon’s army as the Russian guns.
The Environment and Industrialization
Human activity did not seriously affect the environment until the early nineteenth century, when large-scale industrialization and the use of fossil fuels began. Industrialization resulted in widespread pollution of air, land, and water on a massive scale. The problem has only grown worse over time; as the twenty-first century begins, it has resulted in global warming. Average temperatures have risen all over the Earth. In response to this serious concern, governments have instituted mandatory recycling programs, planted millions of trees, and worked to cut back on pollution and fuel emissions. However, not all nations participate in these protective measures; some fear damage to their economies if they have to convert factories to cleaner, more environmentally responsible methods of production and waste disposal.
Individuals have responded to global warming in a variety of ways, creating a “green movement.” People recycle used products to reduce the amount of waste. They plant gardens in cities, on vacant land, and on rooftops. Farmers have changed their farming methods to make better use of the soil. Some farmers forgo the use of manufactured pesticides to raise organic crops. It remains to be seen whether the great damage done to the climate can or will be reversed.
Understand Human Migration and the Characteristics of Human SettlementsKEY TERMS: migration
Geography and Migration
Migration is a mass movement of people away from one place and toward another. The basic reason for human migration is to find a better situation. In primitive times, people migrated in search of food or warmer temperatures. When civilization began, new factors came into play: people sought better economic opportunities and greater political or religious liberty. People have also migrated in large numbers in the wake of major wars, to escape the devastation of battle and find safer and more peaceful surroundings.
Major examples of human migration in world and US history include the following:
Human Migrations
The earliest human civilizations arose in the Fertile Crescent, where the abundant fresh water and the warm climate made for a surplus of food. Over the centuries, human beings migrated from this area, eventually settling all the regions of the world that are suitable for human habitation. The least-populated areas are the ones where climate does not provide what human beings need. Large desert regions like the Sahara, frozen tundra like much of eastern Russia and northern Canada, and barren plains like much of central Australia are very sparsely populated.
Peoples who lived near one another in similar environments developed similar languages and cultures. This makes sense because culture is shaped in part by the environment and because the people who lived nearby were usually the only people one got to know; travel was difficult, risky, and slow. Before the nineteenth century, most people lived their entire lives without ever leaving a fairly small area around their home town or city.
For this reason, whole regions of the world tend to have identifiable cultures. Eastern Europe, for example, is culturally and linguistically Slavic. South America is linguistically Spanish and Portuguese and also maintains elements of the early native cultures—Inca, Maya, and Aztec.
Cultural exchanges took place when large groups of people traveled over a great distance. This happened during major migrations or during medieval wars such as the Crusades, when thousands of Western Europeans traveled to the Middle East. An era of global cultural exchange developed with the Age of Exploration beginning in the late 1400s.
Read and Interpret MapsKEY TERMS: climate map, degrees, equator, globe, latitude, longitude, map, minutes, political map, topographical map
Maps and globes are used to show the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earth’s surface. A globe is the most accurate representation because it is the same spherical shape as Earth. However, even the largest globe is scaled down so far in size from the actual Earth that it cannot show much detail. Flat maps distort the actual curvature of the land, but a close-up map of a small area can show much more detail than a globe.
You can locate any place on Earth by plotting its latitude and longitude. When you look at a globe, you will see a crisscross grid of latitude and longitude lines. A location’s latitude gives its distance north or south of the equator. A location’s longitude is an angular measure giving its east-west position on the Earth. Latitude and longitude are measured in degrees (°) and minutes (’). For example, in April 1912 the ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 41° 46’ N, 50° 14’ W. The ship’s radio operators included the latitude and longitude in their distress calls, enabling other ships to come to the rescue and help save several hundred lives.
Maps come in many varieties. A political map shows the names and borders of countries, provinces or states, cities, and towns. A topographical map shows comparative elevation above sea level. A climate map can show which areas receive the most and least annual rainfall and which have the coldest and hottest temperatures.
Define Ecosystem and Explain How the Elements of an Ecosystem Work TogetherKEY TERMS: climate, ecosystem, precipitation
Over the millennia, physical processes have shaped and reshaped Earth’s surface. Today’s continents did not always exist in their current form. Over time, landmasses break away from one another or collide with one another, forming new landmasses. Forces inside Earth cause mountain ranges to rise up, but over time wind and water wear the rocks away. As a result, Earth has a highly varied landscape. Different locations have different landforms and different climates, and they are inhabited by different groups of plants and animals.
The climate of a region encompasses many things: the prevailing winds, temperatures, and the amount and type of precipitation, averaged over time. Climate is affected by geographical factors such as the proximity of mountains or large bodies of fresh or salt water. Climate can change when any of these factors change.
The term ecosystem refers to the ongoing interaction between the land, the climate, and living organisms in a particular location. All the factors work together in a certain way to create a natural system that sustains the organisms that live there. For example, in a forest in a temperate region of North America, trees produce nuts and fruits as part of their reproductive cycle. Small animals and birds survive by eating the nuts and fruits. Wolves and hawks survive by preying on the smaller animals and birds. Other animals survive by eating the insects that live in the soil and on the trees. The remains of dead plants and animals supply nutrients to the soil that nourish plants and trees. The whole system works together to sustain one generation of living things after another.
Human beings are the greatest cause of change in ecosystems. Human beings have cleared massive forests and rainforests, turned diverse ecosystems into farms growing a single crop, built artificial asphalt-and-steel environments such as major cities, pumped or dumped a great variety of poisons into the air and water, and preyed on many forms of wildlife to extinction or near-extinction. On the positive side, human beings are capable of recognizing the dangers in an industrial society and working to offset them.
Define each term.
1. climate
2. ecosystem
3. globe
4. latitude
5. migration
Your answers should closely match the following:
1. The climate of a particular place is the combination of temperatures, winds, and precipitation levels of that place, averaged over time.
2. An ecosystem is the interaction of all the natural elements of a particular location: the land, living organisms, and climate.
3. A globe is a spherical representation of Earth—literally, a spherical world map.
4. Latitude is the measure of how far north or south of the Equator a given place is.
5. Migration is mass human movement away from a place in search of a better place.
47 questions, 70 minutes
The following test is designed to simulate a real TASC Social Studies Test section in terms of question formats, number, and degree of difficulty. To get a good idea of how you will do on the real exam, take this test under actual exam conditions. Complete the test in one session and follow the given time limit. Answers and explanations begin on page 315.
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1. What is the main reason that Great Britain has not been successfully invaded since the Norman Conquest of 1066?
A. Britain is an island nation.
B. Britain does not have an extensive seacoast.
C. Britain’s capital city is not on the ocean.
D. Britain is northwest of continental Europe.
2. During the 1960s and 1970s, the United Farm Workers repeatedly called for Americans to boycott grapes, lettuce, and other produce grown by companies that did not treat migrant workers fairly. How does a boycott put economic pressure on company owners?
A. Workers go on strike, bringing operations to a halt.
B. Workers put in too much overtime, cutting into profits.
C. People buy up the product quickly, driving up the price.
D. People refuse to buy the product, driving down the price.
3. In the United States, people vote by secret ballot. What is the main reason for a secret ballot?
A. to prevent voter fraud
B. to allow for write-in voting
C. to allow voters to change their minds
D. to protect voters from political pressure
4. In 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea. Da Gama returned to Europe with a cargo of Indian pepper, which he sold for sixty times the price it cost him. This is an example of
A. the law of supply and demand
B. inflation
C. deficit spending
D. revenue sharing
5. Which of the following provided a new, much shorter shipping route between Asia and Europe when it opened in 1869?
A. the Canal du Midi
B. the Erie Canal
C. the Panama Canal
D. the Suez Canal
6. How are the people in this photograph participating in the American political system?
A. They are showing support for the president.
B. They are peacefully assembling in protest.
C. They are taking part in an act of civil disobedience.
D. They are leaking government secrets to the press.
7. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1971, lowered the voting age to eighteen. How did this change the role of young people in American democracy?
A. It gave them a voice in selecting the lawmakers who governed them.
B. It required them to fight for their country if drafted.
C. It made them responsible for major foreign-policy decisions.
D. It allowed them to avoid responsibility for the mistakes of their government.
8. In 1964, soon after North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin exchanged fire with United States destroyers, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, allowing President Lyndon Johnson to take “all necessary measures … to prevent further aggression.” In effect, Congress was giving up its constitutional right to
A. override a presidential veto
B. represent the citizens
C. declare war
D. make law
9. Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1970 after Americans learned that President Richard Nixon had used it to justify the bombing of neutral Cambodia. This repeal is an example of
A. the judicial branch checking the power of the legislature
B. the legislative branch checking the power of the executive
C. the executive branch checking the power of the judiciary
D. the people exercising their power to check the legislature
10. World War II ended in 1945. In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American player in the modern history of major-league baseball. In 1948, President Harry S Truman ordered full integration of the United States armed forces. Which aspect of World War II served as a spark to the postwar Civil Rights Movement?
A. the founding of the United Nations
B. the passage of the GI Bill of Rights
C. the entry of thousands of women into the workforce
D. the military service of African-American soldiers
11. In the late nineteenth century, why did many American factory owners insist on the “open shop” principle in hiring workers?
A. to save money on wages
B. to show support for labor unions
C. to bar African Americans from applying for work
D. to bar recent immigrants from applying for work
12. What was the main way in which ideas of the Enlightenment helped bring about the French Revolution?
A. by suggesting that universal education was the best way to reform society
B. by making and publishing important scientific discoveries
C. by criticizing organized religions, particularly the Catholic Church
D. by emphasizing that all people are born free and equal and all have rights
13. Which founding document of the United States had the greatest influence on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?
A. the Federalist Papers
B. the Bill of Rights
C. the Articles of Confederation
D. the Declaration of Independence
14. Before the Revolution, France had a powerless legislative body called the Estates-General. Members represented the three estates, or ranks, of French citizens, as shown in the following table.
Ever since the Revolution, people have referred to the press as “the Fourth Estate.” Which of these best explains why people think of the press as a branch of a democratic government?
A. The press keeps the citizens informed about their government’s actions.
B. The press depends on the goodwill of the government to publish.
C. Members of the press are government employees.
D. Members of the press are ordinary voting citizens.
15. In prerevolutionary France, members of the First and Second Estates were exempt from taxes. The Third Estate carried the entire tax burden. Why did many members of the First Estate (the clergy) support the Third Estate’s calls for reform?
A. Their religious convictions made them support reform.
B. They were intimidated by the military.
C. Their economic situation was no better than that of the commoners.
D. They felt that they had to vote with the aristocracy.
16. Why is a strike an effective way for workers to achieve improvements in wages and working conditions?
A. because a strike throws hundreds of people out of work
B. because a strike enables business owners to hire new workers
C. because a strike makes people sympathize with business owners
D. because a strike shuts down a business and harms the owner financially
17. During World War II, the United States Marines worked their way north toward Japan, taking over one Pacific island at a time. How did the United States use the geography to its own advantage?
A. The United States gained valuable natural resources on the islands.
B. The United States needed the islands to house prisoners of war.
C. The United States used the small islands for supply bases.
D. The United States tested the atomic bomb on the islands.
18. Which factor helped bring about Japan’s defeat in the war?
A. its great distance from its allies
B. its lack of natural energy resources
C. the repeated failure of its rice crop
D. its vulnerability to invasion from the sea
19. Why did President Harry S Truman decide to use atomic weapons against Japan in 1945?
A. to free the Philippines from Japanese occupation
B. to prevent Japan from invading the United States
C. to bring about an immediate Japanese surrender
D. to convince the Germans to surrender in Europe
20. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan closed its borders, refusing all but the most minimal contact with foreigners from the early 1600s to the mid-1800s. Which factor best explains how this was possible?
A. Japan is a small nation.
B. Japan is an island nation.
C. Japan is in East Asia.
D. Japan is north of the tropics.
21. In the early Middle Ages, Constantinople was the capital city of the Byzantine Empire and also one of the largest cities in the world. Which factor helps explain Constantinople’s tremendous economic success?
A. Its artists were strongly influenced by Persian styles.
B. Its diverse population represented a variety of cultures.
C. It is located at the juncture of Europe and Asia.
D. It was the headquarters of a powerful army.
22. After World War II, national governments in Western Europe took over and ran many major businesses, such as banks, power companies, and automobile manufacturers. This kind of government control of industry is usually associated with the political system called
A. conservatism
B. liberalism
C. socialism
D. capitalism
23. In the “Great Migration” that began around 1915 and continued through the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved from the South to the Northeast and Midwest. Why did they migrate?
A. to find well-paying industrial jobs
B. to attend college
C. to enlist in the military
D. to become farmers in rural areas
24. In his engraving of the Boston Massacre of 1770, how did artist Paul Revere misuse the principle of a free press?
A. He depicted an event at which he was not actually present.
B. He made up an event that did not actually take place.
C. He drew a biased and inaccurate picture of what really happened.
D. He himself staged the event to make it come out a certain way.
25. Several British soldiers (“redcoats”) were arrested after the Boston Massacre. Outspoken patriot John Adams agreed to defend them—a decision that was very unpopular among his fellow Bostonians. Which basic democratic principle was involved in Adams’s decision?
A. the redcoats’ right to a fair trial by jury
B. the redcoats’ right to be tried by a military court
C. the redcoats’ right to be tried in their own country
D. the redcoats’ right to immunity from prosecution
26. At the time of the Boston Massacre, the colonists were boycotting many British goods, such as tea, to avoid paying the taxes on these goods. Why did Britain continue to assess taxes on the goods it exported to the colonies?
A. to lower unemployment in the British Empire
B. to raise revenue for the British treasury
C. to prevent a rise in prices
D. to encourage consumer spending
27. The political cartoon refers to the Embargo Act of 1807, signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson. Which of these best describes an embargo?
A. a tax on imports into the United States
B. a ban on exports to specified countries
C. a law establishing free trade among the states
D. a law establishing international free trade
28. Why was the Embargo Act of 1807 so unpopular?
A. It reduced the profits of American manufacturers and farmers.
B. It set the states against each other in economic competition.
C. It allowed the slave trade to continue unchecked.
D. It encouraged people to buy American-made products.
29. President Jefferson originally hoped the Embargo Act would eliminate contact between United States and British ships on the high seas. He wanted to avoid this contact because the British navy practiced impressment. Impressment means that the British
A. held up American ships and stole their cargoes
B. fired on American ships and killed most of their crews
C. kidnapped American sailors and forced them into military service
D. bribed American captains to sell their cargoes at low prices
30. What was the main reason for the “permanent armaments industry” and the “defense establishment” to which President Eisenhower refers?
A. World War II
B. the Cold War
C. the Korean War
D. the Vietnam War
31. At the time of President Eisenhower’s speech, the most powerful enemy of the United States was the Soviet Union. What was the reason for this?
A. The two countries had been political enemies for many decades.
B. The two countries had fought on opposite sides during World War II.
C. The two countries both wanted to take control of Western Europe.
D. The two countries lived according to opposing economic and political principles.
32. In 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis. Which factor made Cuba an important strategic ally for the Soviet Union?
A. its location
B. its size
C. its climate
D. its culture
33. President Eisenhower states that citizens must guard against the possible “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex on government. How can citizens do this?
A. by keeping informed about governmental affairs
B. by voting against increases in defense spending
C. by trying to overthrow the government
D. by refusing to serve in the military when drafted
34. When World War II broke out in Europe, what made many Americans think that the United States could safely stay out of the conflict?
A. They knew that America’s army had always been the strongest in the world.
B. They were told that United States scientists were building an atomic bomb.
C. They believed that the Atlantic Ocean was wide enough to offer protection.
D. They thought that Britain and France would win the war quickly and easily.
35. The United States Congress has two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the Senate, all states are represented equally. In the House, the states are represented according to their population. Why did the authors of the Constitution design this type of legislature?
A. to balance the interests of the states and the people
B. to give large states more power than small ones
C. to make sure that the people could outvote the states
D. to make sure that no state could block legislation
36. During the Ming dynasty, China sent ships on a tour of the Eastern Hemisphere. The ships returned with edible plants never seen before in China, including pineapples, potatoes, and tomatoes. Which of these best explains why these new crops led to good annual harvests?
A. The new crops grew better in China’s cold climate than in their native hot climate.
B. Chinese farmers rotated the new and old crops, allowing the soil to rest and recuperate.
C. The new crops added variety to the Chinese diet and cuisine.
D. The new crops had come from many different countries and cultures.
Read the list in the box. Then answer questions 37–39.
To find a water route to the Pacific Ocean
To establish friendly relations with Indian tribes
To gather samples of plants and animals
To map the territory
To keep detailed notes of the journey
37. To whom did President Thomas Jefferson give the list of tasks shown?
A. the Donner party
B. the Forty-Niners
C. the Union Pacific Railroad
D. the Lewis and Clark expedition
38. What economic motive did the United States government have for seeking a water route across the continent?
A. A water route would permit safe and efficient transport of goods by boat.
B. A water route would enable people to settle the country more quickly.
C. A water route would reduce the possibility of encountering hostile Native American tribes.
D. A water route would remove obstacles to immigration.
39. What was the greatest potential hazard faced by the people who undertook the tasks?
A. They might have to fight off unfriendly Native American tribes.
B. They might have to defend themselves against French troops.
C. They would have to navigate treacherous ocean currents.
D. They would have to travel through barren desert territory.
40. Britain expended financial, human, and military resources to conquer and govern its colonies. In return, Britain gained new markets for its exports and bought the colonies’ natural resources at good prices. Britain’s decision to conquer colonies like India and Egypt is an example of
A. cost-benefit analysis
B. deficit spending
C. balancing a budget
D. microeconomics
41. The label PROTECTION on the goose in the cartoon refers to a tariff. What does a tariff do?
A. raises workers’ wages, benefiting the workers
B. freezes prices, benefiting consumers
C. adds a tax to imports, raising their prices
D. eliminates taxes on imports, lowering their prices
42. Why would workers be inclined to support tariffs?
A. Tariffs increase demand for American-made goods.
B. Tariffs lower prices on American-made goods.
C. Tariffs promote free trade among all nations.
D. Tariffs create hostile relations with other nations.
43. Why would free trade lower the American worker’s wage, as the cartoon suggests?
A. Free trade would encourage Americans to spend more and save less.
B. Free trade would raise wages in other nations.
C. Free trade would lower the demand for American-made goods.
D. Free trade would reduce American exports to other nations.
44. Article I, Section 3 of the United States Constitution states that senators will serve six-year terms, with an election year scheduled every two years. Senators are divided into three groups as evenly as possible, so that only one-third of the seats are up for election in any given year. What is the reason for this rule?
A. It ensures that the majority of the Senate will always be experienced legislators.
B. It prevents any individual senator from serving more than one term.
C. It eliminates the possibility of political corruption within the Senate.
D. It discourages voter bias in favor of incumbent candidates for the Senate.
45. The Winter Olympic Games, in which athletes compete in skating, skiing, hockey, bobsled, and other winter sports, are held every four years. Nations all over the world bid for the right to hold the Winter Olympics. For a nation to succeed in its bid, which geographical feature must be present?
A. a large lake
B. mountains
C. a major river
D. flat plains
46. Cities of the world aggressively bid against one another for the privilege of hosting the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, in spite of the high cost in money, time, effort, and disruption of normal routines. What is the main benefit a city expects to gain from hosting the Olympics?
A. an influx of new residents, as people who come to see the Games will move to the city permanently
B. new public facilities and buildings that can be used for other purposes after the Games are over
C. an enhanced reputation as a great international center of culture and the arts
D. cash profits from meals, souvenirs, and lodging purchased by Olympic spectators
47. Philadelphia was the site of the First and Second Continental Congresses and the original capital city of the United States. Which of the following made Philadelphia the logical choice to host the national government?
A. its central location in the colonies
B. its year-round temperate climate
C. its large, ethnically varied population
D. its booming local economy
This is the end of the TASC Social Studies Practice Test.
1. A Until the invention of the airplane in the twentieth century, armies carried on wars in Europe by marching over the border into enemy territory. In this era of land wars, islands like Britain could be attacked only by sea. The English Channel to the south and the North Sea to the east constituted a safety zone between Britain and any potential European attacker.
2. D When you boycott a product, you refuse to buy it. If a large number of people boycott a product, demand goes down; when the demand goes down, the price goes down.
3. D In the early years of American politics, ballots were not secret; each candidate had a ballot of a different color, which made it easy for political bosses to keep track of who voted for whom. If you did not vote for the right candidate, you might be attacked or your business destroyed. Secret ballots removed any possibility of political pressure on individual voters.
4. A Pepper was plentiful and therefore cheap in India—but Europeans could not produce it for themselves. They had to import it. Since the supply was small, the demand and therefore the price was high.
5. D The Suez Canal provided a direct waterway across Egypt from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. This meant that European ships bound for Asia no longer had to sail all the way around Africa.
6. B Citizens who protest government policy are speaking freely, assembling peaceably, and petitioning the government for a redress of their grievances—all First Amendment rights. They are expressing direct popular opposition to a government policy in the hope that the government will take their opinions into account.
7. A When the Vietnam War began, men as young as eighteen could be drafted and sent overseas into combat. Young people argued that if they were old enough to be sent to their death at age eighteen, they were old enough to vote for the leaders who decided on such actions. The right to vote is a basic principle of democratic government.
8. C The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was so broadly phrased that a president could easily interpret it to mean he could order an attack without waiting for Congress to declare war—if he thought the attack would lead swiftly to surrender and peace.
9. B Congress is the legislative branch of the government. The legislature repealed its resolution to check the power of the president, who is the head of the executive branch.
10. D African-American soldiers helped fight for freedom and liberty in Europe. When they returned home, many were willing to challenge the restrictions of legal racial segregation.
11. A A closed shop is one that will hire only union workers; an open shop will hire nonunion workers. Since union workers earn more money and receive greater benefits, factory owners generally prefer an open shop.
12. D One basic idea of the Enlightenment was that people are born equal, and therefore it is wrong to give them social and economic privileges on the basis of birth. People should have the right to rise in the world according to merit, not birth.
13. B The ten amendments in the Bill of Rights contain language very similar to several articles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man—freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from imprisonment without cause, and so on.
14. A The United States was the first nation in the world to establish in law the principle of a free press. The press checks the power of the government by reporting on its activities and decisions, so that citizens can make informed choices.
15. C The majority of the French clergy were poor; they supported reform because in spite of the tax exemption, they suffered as much as the Third Estate from food shortages, high prices, and so on.
16. D The workers’ strike is an effective weapon because it shuts down the operation of a business. Business owners want to settle strikes quickly so that they can once again begin to make profits.
17. C During war, fighting forces need bases stocked with supplies, hospitals, and so on. The farther a military force gets from its sources of supply, the greater its chances of losing important battles. Therefore, it is important to establish bases near the fighting.
18. B Japan had to import all the oil it needed to fuel its ships and planes and to power its factories. The United States cut the supply lines between Japan in the north and its fuel sources in the south.
19. C Only an extreme measure like an atomic bomb would convince the Japanese to surrender immediately and thus avoid the need for an invasion of Japan that would likely cost the lives of thousands of United States soldiers and sailors.
20. B All islands, by definition, are physically isolated; no one can interfere with their control over their own borders except by a full-scale attack. Japan did not open its borders until it was forced to do so by the “gunboat diplomacy” of the Western powers, especially the United States.
21. C Constantinople is on the Black Sea, just across the Bosphorus Strait from the Asian mainland. This location made the city a natural place for westbound Asian merchants and eastbound European merchants to meet, trade, buy, and sell.
22. C Following the end of World War II, Western European voters elected many social democratic governments. These governments took control of many important industries, promising to manage them to the benefit of their workers and of the nation as a whole. This kind of government control of industry is usually associated with the political system called socialism. Many economic policies from that era remain in effect in Western Europe today.
23. A The main reason for the Great Migration was economic. The advent of World War I created thousands of factory and industrial jobs in the United States. Many African Americans also wanted to escape the legal segregation they faced in the South, but they encountered de facto segregation when they reached the Northeast and Midwest.
24. C The Boston Massacre was actually a small-scale street fight in which a few idle colonists were taunting and bullying a few British soldiers (“redcoats”) on sentry duty. Tension erupted into violence when the colonists began throwing stones and the redcoats fired a few shots. Revere’s engraving distorts the facts to make the redcoats look like brutal aggressors firing without cause on defenseless civilians.
25. A The right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers has been a basic principle of the British justice system since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. The colonists followed the British tradition of making this right a central principle of their government.
26. B The British treasury needed revenue from taxes to pay off continuing war debts and other obligations.
27. B An embargo is a ban on trade. The Embargo Act of 1807, banning trade with Britain and France, stopped most United States exports.
28. A Unable to export their cash crops or their products, the farmers, traders, and manufacturers saw their profits drop to about one-fifth of the pre-1807 levels.
29. C Impressment—forcing crew members of merchant ships into military service—was a common practice in the early nineteenth century. In that era, many British navy officers still considered American sailors to be mere rebels against Great Britain.
30. B World War II and the Korean War were long over by 1961, and only a very small number of “military advisors” were serving in Vietnam. The Cold War and the great buildup of nuclear weapons was responsible for the drastic increase in United States defense spending.
31. D The United States was a democratic republic with a largely capitalist economy, while the Soviet Union was a one-party dictatorship with a Communist economy.
32. A Cuba is only 90 miles off the United States coast and was therefore ideally positioned as a Soviet military base.
33. A Eisenhower spoke of an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” meaning it was up to the citizens to keep themselves informed about governmental affairs. People should not just accept that there was a great need for high defense spending; they should keep aware of what was going on in the world so that they could exercise the constitutional right to oppose their own government if it proposed an unjustified war.
34. C Before World War II and especially before the advent of long-range bomber aircraft, Americans believed that the United States could safely ignore problems elsewhere in the world because of the protection afforded by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
35. A The composition of the Senate and the House was designed as another feature of a system of checks and balances. The people are represented proportionally in the House, while the states are represented equally in the Senate.
36. B Crops draw certain minerals and nutrients from the soil. When farmers grow the same crops year after year, the soil runs out of those minerals; a poor harvest is the result. A new crop planted in the same soil will thrive because it draws on the minerals that the soil has been able to store up. This is why farmers rotate their crops.
37. D The Lewis and Clark expedition set out from St. Louis to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and the lands that lay between it and the Pacific Ocean.
38. A Until the invention of the railroad and later the automobile, a water route was the quickest, safest, and most efficient way to transport quantities of goods.
39. A The United States formally acquired the Louisiana Territory six months after Lewis and Clark set out. There were no French troops in the territory at that time, but there were numerous Native American tribes, some of whom might be hostile. Luckily for Lewis and Clark, the presence of the Native American guide Sacagawea in the expedition party guaranteed friendly relations between the explorers and the Native Americans they met along the way. Since the explorers traveled along rivers in fertile country, the expedition was not likely to run out of provisions. Also, their route did not involve any navigation on the ocean.
40. A Cost-benefit analysis means weighing what something will cost you against what you will gain. Britain decided that the economic benefits of acquiring a colonial empire were greater than the cost.
41. C A tariff is a tax or duty imposed on imported goods. The tariff makes the price of the imported good higher.
42. A Tariffs would encourage Americans to buy American-made goods rather than imports, because the American-made goods would have lower prices. The high demand for products from American factories would give American workers job security.
43. C Free trade means trade without import duties or tariffs. Without those tariffs, imported goods might cost the same or less than American-made goods. That would cause the demand for American-made goods to drop, meaning that fewer workers would be needed to produce them.
44. A Because the Senate’s power of making laws is so important to the nation, the authors of the Constitution ensured that at all times, two-thirds of the senators would have legislative experience. They also hoped that the senators would benefit from working with many of the same colleagues for a longer amount of time than if all their terms expired at once.
45. B Downhill skiing and ski-jumping events can be held only where there are mountains present. These events cannot be staged indoors.
46. D The main benefit to a city holding a major international event is in money. The city hopes that the enormous expense of holding the Games will pay off because people will come from all over the world and they will all spend money. The city also hopes to be featured as an attractive destination for tourists, thus adding long-term gains in the money those tourists will spend on their visits.
47. A It made sense to choose a central location as a gathering place for leaders from all the colonies and later all the states. This meant that each person would have to travel the least possible distance in an era when long-distance travel was slow, uncomfortable, and risky.
