Practice Test 1:

Answers and Explanations

PRACTICE TEST 1 ANSWER KEY

PRACTICE TEST 1: ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS

Section I, Part A: Multiple Choice

1. D

The Glorious Revolution occurred in 1688 when King James II was removed from office by his daughter Mary. One of the reasons for this particular revolution was his growing movement towards religious toleration for all people, including Catholics. As a result, an immediate anti-Catholic bias was instituted across the nation, and Catholics were forbidden from sitting in Parliament for nearly a century. In fact, until the twenty-first century, it was prohibited for an English king to either be Catholic or marry a Catholic.

2. B

In 1790, the French Revolution was barely a year old and had only recently passed out of its first stages. The worst violence was still to come, particularly Robespierre and his Reign of Terror, which saw the execution of nearly seventy thousand citizens and the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more.

3. C

Metternich was the last true conservative leader in European history. His control of the Congress of Vienna, and the stability that ensued, was the last time that any European leader relied upon the power of the people. After the rise of both liberalism and nationalism, the Revolutions of 1848, and particularly the arrival of mass politics, his distrust of the mob went out of style.

4. B

The French Revolution passed through its worst days in 1793 and 1794 with the Reign of Terror. It wasn’t until 1795 that the Directory assumed power with the backing of the military. Even though it only lasted five years, this brought stability to France that it had sorely lacked.

5. A

Conservatism was a philosophy that had held sway for most of the previous three hundred years. Beginning in the 19th century, however, a whole host of other -isms began to take hold, including liberalism, nationalism, socialism, communism, and anarchism. The other three answers, while found in the 18th century, are unrelated to the passage.

6. B

The three nations most deeply involved in the Age of Discovery were Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. (The English were also a minor player at this point, mostly through Francis Drake.) Spain was primarily interested in the Americas, but Portugal was the first to set up a global empire, arriving in South America, Africa, India, China, and even Japan.

7. D

In 1599, like most of Northern Europe, the Dutch had already transformed themselves into a solidly Protestant nation. This, in fact, was the root cause of the Thirty Years’ War, which began about twenty years after the inscription was made. Furthermore, the famous work ethic was always attributed to Protestants, never to Catholics (though they clearly worked as well).

8. D

The phrase seeking unknown lands, and if there is any shorter way to China reveals that Europeans were still seeking a shortcut to China. The trip around the southern horn of Africa could take months. Christopher Colombus had in fact been looking for a western route to China when he came upon the land mass that we now call North America.

9. A

Blaeu’s instruction to [g]o on, O blessed progeny of Neptune, and add new honors to our race, as well as the general go-get-’em attitude towards Dutch exploration, demonstrates his sense of a strong national identity. This prefigures the nationalist movement of the 19th-century that, for example, sparked the revolutions of 1848 and eventually formed modern Germany and Italy.

10. C

The guild system, which dated back to the medieval era, required skilled craftsmen to undertake years of study and apprenticeship in the pursuit of a single tradecraft. The machine revolutions of the Industrial Revolution ignored that long history by automating very complex processes. This phenomenon predates the other three answers.

11. B

Luddites have been misunderstood in the public mind. They were largely composed of skilled laborers who were watching their own jobs being taken by unskilled workers. This was the target of their wrath, and they broke the machines in order to call attention to this inequity.

12. A

Because Napoleon had been unable to conquer England, he placed the English under a strict embargo known as the Continental System. Because of these sanctions, English factory owners couldn’t offer reliable employment to all of their workers. In this harsh economic climate—part of the short-lived Napoleonic Wars—the Luddites, as well as most English laborers, suffered greatly.

13. B

The relaxation of strict social rules regarding public dress, a free press, and smoking is a hallmark of liberal social policies. The final paragraph, which describes the lack of need for bribery, is a sign of a less corrupt, more transparent state, which is a goal that is also aligned with liberalism.

14. B

Promoted by Tsar Alexander II, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1861 abolished serfdom in Russia. This move was intended to promote and encourage the development of private property, free competition, entrepreneurship, and trade.

15. A

While Catherine the Great had indeed paid lip service to Enlightenment ideas about equality, she failed to produce any political reforms on the scale of her predecessor Peter the Great. Peter had spent time in the Netherlands, France, and elsewhere in Western Europe, even travelling incognito. As a result, he imported many Western social practices to his country, including the construction of a navy, the introduction of Western dress, and even the mandatory cutting of beards.

16. D

19th-century liberalism found its best expression in John Stuart Mill’s book aptly titled book On Liberty, which argued for the importance of individual civil rights, among other things. The Communist Manifesto reflected the ideas of the Bolshevik Revolution, which arrived much later.

17. D

By the 1930s, the Soviet Union had been established in place of Russia. After the death of the revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin in 1924, the new Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, displayed zero use for liberal policies. Under him, the Soviet state seized land, collectivized agriculture, and murdered millions of Russians by sending them to die in remote gulags.

18. A

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a notorious anti-Semitic fictional document that originated in Russia in the first decade of the twentieth century. It claims to document a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, and as conspirators against all modern states. It has been thoroughly discredited.

19. C

The Republic’s response to the Dreyfus Affair was anything but efficient, since it lasted nearly two decades and went through several different trials, which included both contradictory verdicts for Dreyfus. It culminated in his full pardon, and Dreyfus would go on to serve his country in World War I. Ironically, the French reactionary forces were ultimately weakened by the scandal, since the parliamentary democracy saw that justice was ultimately done, despite the length of time.

20. C

Theodor Herzl began his journalistic career as a supporter of Jewish assimilation into European life, but the injustice of the Dreyfus Affair caused him to change his mind. Shortly afterward, he became the founder of the modern Zionist movement, which called for the establishment of a separatist Jewish state in the biblical homeland of Israel.

21. C

Militarism characterized the period of Europe from roughly 1840 to 1917. During this time, there were relatively few wars—only a few minor ones—while the major nations exploited the fruits of the Industrial Revolution to create new, more deadly weaponry. While it’s true that militarism was closely intertwined with nationalism and imperialism, those ideas weren’t mentioned by Disraeli in this speech.

22. B

Disraeli opens the passage by questioning “the cost of these fleets and garrisons.” Later, at the end of the paragraph, he discusses “the vast expenditure which cannot be accounted for.” This indicates that his primary concern was the spiraling costs of militarism.

23. B

It stands to reason that if Disraeli were publicly pushing back against the massive power of the English military complex, then English society had also been selling the idea of military service to the citizenry as something that was desirable. That in fact was what had been happening. Cheap novels about the derring-do of soldiers were all the rage in the Victorian era, and even the venerable Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a jingoistic poem about the glory of battle, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

24. C

While the increase in national armaments was the primary reason for wars during this era, it was also the primary driver behind the conquest of Africa. Fast boats powered by the steam engine, combined with new rifle technology, made the scramble for Africa happen, since Europeans could penetrate the so-called “dark continent” more easily. The Bolshevik Revolution, however, was largely caused by long-term factors specific to Russia that were unrelated to the buildup of armaments.

25. A

The English navy was by far the largest and most powerful in the world during the 19th century. It was used to secure English trade routes and protect English economic interests in far-flung foreign ports. Prussia (and later Germany), while more overall militaristic by nature, focused primarily upon building an army on land, which was used to great effect during German unification, which occurred a few years after this speech was delivered.

26. C

Europe had been under the thumb of the Catholic Church’s Aristotelian tradition for over a millennium and a half when the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution broke down the church doors. To a modern historian, Bacon’s contribution to the third part of this sea change is what defines his life.

27. A

Bacon’s empiricism is the foundation of the scientific method, which in turn has given birth to our entire modern technological world. In the words of his 19th-century biographer, William Hepworth Dixon, “Bacon’s influence in the modern world is so great that every man who rides in a train, sends a telegram, follows a steam plough, sits in an easy chair, crosses the channel or the Atlantic, eats a good dinner, enjoys a beautiful garden, or undergoes a painless surgical operation, owes him something.”

28. D

Brahe, Gilbert, and Kepler were Bacon’s scientific contemporaries—Brahe and Kepler in astronomy, Gilbert in magnetism—but Voltaire lived in the 18th century. Also, he was primarily a writer, unlike Bacon, who served as a statesman, a jurist, and a scientist. However, it is true that Bacon’s belief in a skeptical, methodical approach to data gathering influenced not only Voltaire, but the entire Enlightenment.

29. B

The scientific method, inductive reasoning, and empiricism are all closely intertwined; they make up the intellectual backbone of the scientific, data-driven world that we now inhabit. Deductive reasoning, however, was viewed at the time as a relic of the medieval scholastic age, and was ignored by the new scientists for its lack of close observation of the world.

30. C

The design of the building, and the description of the design, is classic Moorish. The Moors were the group of Muslims from Northern Africa who crossed the Mediterranean and occupied Spain (and Portugal) for hundreds of years, until the Christian rulers of Spain expelled them in the 15th and 16th centuries. Their design is famous for its repeated geometric patterns.

31. D

The Moors had been forced to either leave Spain or convert to Christianity. This was part of Ferdinand and Isabella’s efforts to unite Spain under their own banner, which was Christian. It stands to reason that the Moorish design would therefore be viewed as undesirable during this time period.

32. A

In places like Cordoba, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians had mixed for years, it became difficult to differentiate between the different religious groups. This was especially true among the aristocracy, who took great effort to hide any non-Christian ancestry.

33. B

As the Reconquista (reconquest) proceeded, the Christian rulers of Spain repossessed lands that had been owned by the Moors and handed them over to members of the nobility. This developed into a new feudalistic tradition of haves and have-nots, particularly in the south: a few wealthy landowners employed a enormous number of peasants to service the land.

34. D

Bismarck’s accomplishments were vast. He united most of the German-speaking people—minus Austria—through a combination of shrewd statescraft, maneuvering, outright lies, and powerful but quick wars against neighboring countries. The result was the modern nation of Germany.

35. D

In his quest to unite the German-speaking people, Bismarck instigated a series of wars intended to gain the nationalistic fervor of German-speaking people who lay at the periphery of Prussia. This finally culminated in the Franco-Prussian War, which he began by editing a telegram from Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to make it look like the French had insulted the German people. After six weeks, the war was over, and Kaiser Wilhelm I was crowned German emperor in Versailles.

36. D

National insurance programs of any kind are considered more on the socialist end of the political spectrum, and 19th-century Germany was no exception. Bismarck essentially swiped the legs out from under his socialist opponents by co-opting a few of the ideas that they believed in. However, he refused to institute restrictions on the number of hours that workers could be forced to labor, because he wanted the country to be as productive as possible.

37. B

Always choose the safest possible answer when asked about conclusions. We don’t know if Bismarck was capable of inflicting great cruelty upon his visitors, only that one visitor had the mere impression that his eyes lit up with a threatening gleam. Likewise, it’s quite a stretch to claim that Bismarck alone was able to unite Germany, though he was obviously a principal force in the effort. Clearly, he was no simple man either.

38. A

The Junkers were the ruling class of Prussia—the nobility—and Bismarck himself was part of this class. Therefore, the Junkers largely escaped his roving political eye and oppressive policies, unlike Catholics, socialists, and the media.

39. A

Until the twentieth century, most of European fine art had been either figurative (human figures rendered exactingly) or realistic (fields, still lifes, etc.) or both. That changed in the early years of the century, when artists like Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso began to break that mold. They expressed human figures and objects in a way that bore no resemblance to reality.

40. C

World War I erupted in the same year as the painting was made, 1914, and there still is no event in European history that is comparable in the amount of wrenching change it caused. Wars had typically been rather brief until the arrival of the Great War. Everything about it was new—the length of the engagement, the variety of new weaponry, the shift of the perception of war from valorous to torturous, the sheer number of casualties, the amount of mobilization. The sheer confusion this caused has never been equaled.

41. B

Einstein’s physics, Joyce’s art, and the use of horrific chemical weaponry all reflected a profound change in European mentality. The old order, the old philosophies, the old traditions—all had changed, and something new and potentially horrifying was rising in its place. What had not changed, of course, was the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which has prided itself on its consistency for two thousand years.

42. B

Once Europe found out that Napoleon had escape from exile in Elba with a ship of hundreds of men, the powers of Russia, Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and England immediately put 150,000 soldiers en route to France. Nonetheless, Napoleon managed to roll towards Paris, gathering supporters along the way. Once there, he reassumed power and sent an army to battle the coalition army at the Battle of Waterloo, but his army was defeated. He surrendered.

43. A

Since Napoleon saw his own fate and the fate of France as one and the same, this “War for national independence” can be interpreted as a battle for his own power. This last gasp of power that he seized is known as the Hundred Days, which was how long it took for him to escape Elba, reassume power, lose to the coalition of European armies, and abdicate again.

44. D

All of Napoleon’s political or military conquests fell apart the moment he left power. However, one lasting piece of influence that he had was through his reform of the French system of laws. The Napoleonic Code, as it’s been come to be known, has been adopted by colonies and nations all over the world.

45. B

England never appealed to the power of the pope to interfere in Napoleon’s plans. It did rely upon its command of the sea to defeat the French at the Battle of Trafalgar. Likewise, England did provide subsidies to European merchants whose trade was affected by Napoleon’s forced embargo of England. And the Duke of Wellington did lead forces in Portugal against the French army.

46. C

While the postal system was physically made possible by steel production, the popularity of letter-writing was only made possible by increased literacy rates. Also, middle-class women experienced more leisure time, not less.

47. A

The telegraph was the most direct competitor with the postal service, since most of Europe was covered in telegraph lines in the second half of the century. The telegraph’s shortcoming, however, was that it could only send short messages. The telephone was a plaything of the elite until the twentieth century, and radio and television didn’t make their appearances until much later.

48. A

Britain’s rail network was the best in Europe, since it was the first country to industrialize, and its steamships were the fastest in the world. Therefore, delivery of letters was fast and reliable. The power stations were certainly important to other parts of English society, but not those two forms of transportation.

49. D

The Scientific Revolution occurred in the 17th century and the Enlightenment in the 18th century. The First Industrial Revolution also occurred in the mid-18th century and included innovations like the spinning jenny and piecework completed in people’s homes.

50. B

The greatest good for the greatest number of people was the rallying cry of great economic thinker Jeremy Bentham, and a postal service is one small example of this philosophy. Much of the focus during this period of English history was upon methods of improving the standard of living for the rapidly growing cities of Great Britain. From a modern perspective, this makes a lot of sense, since the great technological advances of the nineteenth century (and the Industrial Revolution as a whole) had finally made such improvement possible.

51. C

The great educational innovation of the Italian Renaissance was the trivium and quadrivium. In these courses, boys were educated in the grammar, logic, and rhetoric (trivium) and arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (quadrivium). The first part was humanistic, and involved the study of ancient Greek and Latin sources.

52. C

The Italians had only recently rediscovered (in the 15th century) ancient Greek thinkers such as Aristotle. They had found these texts—their own texts—translated into Arabic, preserved by a totally different culture for centuries. Translated back into Latin, these philosophical works were viewed as the new—yet old—backbone of Western thought.

53. C

Economics was never part of the Renaissance curriculum; it only became a popular field of inquiry beginning with the Physiocrats in the late 18th century. The other three answers were all part of the trivium.

54. D

Frequent trade with Arabic cultures brought the Italians into contact with the long-lost philosophical texts of ancient Greece and Rome. Italy had neither a rural nature nor a unified political state. Likewise, the intellectual trade with Northern Europe went the opposite way, with new humanistic ideas moving from Italy northwards.

55. A

Medieval education had been totally dominated by the Catholic Church, and as such, long debates were frequently held on such topics as “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Italian humanists sought to broaden the educational scope by including philosophers that had typically been left out of the Catholic Church’s official curriculum, including Neoplatonism and other more obscure threads of thought.

Section I, Part B: Short Answer

Question 1

a) The overriding goal of the early feminist movement was to earn women the right to vote. This was called the suffrage movement. Other possible answers include better educational opportunities and changes to domestic relations laws (both mentioned in the passage), but suffrage is really the best answer.

b) Various methods used by the feminist movement to reach their goals included gathering signatures for petitions, lobbying politicians, delivering speeches, and applying political pressure. More extreme methods included picketing and hunger strikes.

Question 2

The question is really asking which one of these created the conditions in which the Nazi party could flourish. Since all of these listed aspects could be argued for either side of the question, there is no right answer—students will be scored instead based upon the quality of their insight. Here are a few possible things that could be said.

Question 3

An enlightened despot used the principles of the Enlightenment to rule justly and respect the rights of the citizenry. Classic examples of enlightened despots include Joseph II of Austria, Catherine II of Russia, and Frederick II of Prussia.

a) Joseph II of Austria believed in religious toleration. Frederick II of Prussia granted religious freedom, reduced censorship, improved education, reformed the justice system, and abolished torture. Catherine the Great reformed the Russian law code.

b) Joseph II of Austria sought to reduce the autonomy of Hungarians in his empire. He also unilaterally restricted the power of the Catholic Church. Catherine II of Russia limited religious toleration and gave nobles full control over the serfs.

c) Causes of these changes listed above included exposure to the ideas of the philosophes, the need to justify their absolute power given the movement towards constitutional republics, and the slow change from religion to science.

Question 4

a) Nationalism grew in strength in the 19th century. Good examples to mention include the unification of Germany, the unification of Italy, Napoleon III’s second empire, the industrialization of Russia, the loud agitation from the many ethnic groups inside Austria-Hungary, etc.

b) Nationalism’s biggest change was in its divorce from liberalism. At first nationalists were allies with liberals because love of fatherland and individual civil rights were seen as one and the same. After the Revolutions of 1848, however, it became clear that nationalists were not as interested in liberalism as they once had been. Another possible answer is to describe the way that nationalism replaced the balance of power achieved under the Concert of Europe.

c) Nationalism was without question a major factor in the events that sparked World War I. Without a strong system of interlocking nation-states—some of whom hadn’t existed a few decades earlier—the total war that erupted simply wouldn’t have. The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand could possibly have remained a regional or local conflict in the Balkans.

Section II, Part A: Document-Based Question (DBQ)

The Document-Based Question (DBQ) section begins with a 15-minute reading period. During those 15 minutes, you’ll want to 1) come up with some information not included in the given documents (from your outside knowledge), 2) get an overview of what each document means and the point of view of each author, 3) decide what opinion you’re going to argue, and 4) write an outline of your essay.

The DBQ in Practice Test 1 concerns the issue of the relationship between England and the two countries of Spain and Portugal, respectively, from 1421 to 1721. You should be prepared to discuss how England’s relationship changed over those three centuries, and how it stayed the same. You should also remember the famous PERSIA method of organizing characteristics of any historical time period—Political, Economic, Religious, Social, Intellectual, and Artistic. The first three tend to be more useful than the last three, so try to at least remember PER.

The first thing you want to do, BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE DOCUMENTS, is to brainstorm for a minute or two. Try to list everything you know (from class or leisure reading or informational documentaries) about the issue of England’s historical relationship with the Iberian peninsula. This list will serve as your reference to the outside information you must provide to earn a top grade.

Next, read over the documents. As you read them, take notes in the margins and underline those passages that you are certain you are going to use in your essay. Make note of the opinions and position of the document’s author. If a document helps you remember a piece of outside information, add that outside information to your brainstorming list. If you cannot make sense of a document or if it argues strongly against your position, relax! You do not need to mention every document to score well on the DBQ.

Here is what you might assess in the time you have to look over the documents.

The Documents

Document 1

This excerpt comes from a letter written by King Alfonso of Portugal in 1443 and is addressed to all English merchants. It clearly states that English merchants are friendly and it pleads with all subjects to please allow them safe passage both inside and outside of Portugal.

This document clearly shows that the Portuguese king was trying to make nice to the English merchants. Try, however, to look under those words. What was Alfonso’s interest in being nice to England? Well, given his position, and assuming that he was a responsible leader, you can probably guess that trade with England constituted an important part of his country’s income.

Document 2

This document, a part of the Peace of Utrecht, dates from nearly 300 years after Document 1. In it, Queen Anne of England and King Philip V of Spain reaffirm the bond of friendship that had historically united England with Spain. Even if you don’t remember the purpose of the Peace of Utrecht, the fact that it was called a peace means that the two countries had probably just finished some kind of war. So does language such as the ancient bonds of alliance and friendship between the British and Spanish nations should…be renewed.

Document 3

This chart shows the quantity of wine imported from many European countries to England from the years 1696 to 1712. You can see that the total amount imported from Spain and Portugal dwarfs the total amounts imported from the other nations. This should indicate to you the economic nature of the bond between England the Iberian peninsula—if nothing else, the English people depended upon Spanish and Portuguese wine.

Document 4

This portion of the poem, aptly titled “The Spanish Armada,” ends with the words died and stained like scarlet red/with store of Spanish blood. The Spanish Armada, of course, set sail in 1588—the same year that the poem was written—when Spain decided to attack England by sea. It was totally destroyed by England’s superior navy. Even if you didn’t remember the Spanish Armada when brainstorming outside information, this document is your reminder to use it now.

Document 5

This document is our first glance at the religious nature of Spain. The author, a historian writing at the turn of the 18th century, made it clear that Spanish leaders had no choice but to remain Catholic. Phrases such as the obnoxious tenets of Luther or Calvin emphasize this opposition to the Protestant movement of northern Europe.

This document is an important one because it can be used as a springboard to discuss the religious nature of the Thirty Years’ War, which both Spain and England were involved in.

Document 6

This document details how the Portuguese official body granted special rights to Englishman Nicholas Brown with regard to taxes, food, lodging, and other privileges. It demonstrates the length to which the Portuguese were willing to go to guarantee continued good trade with the English.

Document 7

This document is probably the most difficult to decipher, linguistically. In its meandering way, the author—William Stanhope, an Englishman—is writing to another Englishman that the King of Spain really wants to buy Gibraltar from the English and is willing to pay double its worth. This means that the English possessed Gibraltar (the big rock at the southern tip of Spain) in the year 1721. However, Stanhope goes on to say that it is very unfortunate that our hands are tied as to Gibraltar, so as not to take advantage of this immoderate desire—meaning that the English cannot sell it, for some reason.

To use this document in the essay requires a little ingenuity, but one possible way would be to point out that the English ownership of a large piece of land in the south of Spain is evidence of the deep relation that the two countries possess.

Outside Information

We have already discussed more than you could include in a 45-minute essay. Do not worry. You will not be expected to mention all of what we have covered in the section above. You will, however, be expected to include some outside information—that is, information not directly mentioned in the documents. Here are some examples of outside information that you might incorporate in your essay:

Choosing a Thesis Statement

Continuity and change is always a good way to organize your response to an essay like this. In other words, things stayed the same in certain ways, while they changed in other ways. This allows a lot of wiggle room. However, the obvious structure would be a compare and contrast, since those words are literally in the prompt. The obvious answer here is to say that England’s relationship with Spain has been volatile while its relationship with Portugal has been constant.

Planning Your Essay

Unless you read extremely quickly, you probably will not have time to write a detailed outline for your essay during the 15-minute reading period. However, it is worth taking several minutes to jot down a loose structure of your essay because it will actually save you time when you write. First, decide on your thesis and write it down in the test booklet. (There is usually some blank space below the documents.) Then, take a minute or two to brainstorm all the points you might put in your essay. Choose the strongest points and number them in the order you plan to present them. Lastly, note which documents and outside information you plan to use in conjunction with each point. If you organize your essay before you start writing, the actual writing process will go much more smoothly. More importantly, you will not write yourself into a corner, suddenly finding yourself making a point you cannot support or heading toward a weak conclusion (or, worse still, no conclusion at all).

The bad news about this particular DBQ is that there isn’t much room for interpretation. It’s clear from the documents that England’s relationship with Portugal was based on stable economic trade. It’s also clear that its relationship with Spain, on the other hand, began with stable trade but then devolved into several conflicts over religion and politics.

Of course, this rigidity could be viewed as good news too. The most obvious way to organize this essay would be to open with a brief examination of Portugal, then follow with a full examination of the more problematic Spain. Your grouping of documents might look like this:

Portugal

Document 1

Document 3

Document 6

Spain

Document 2

Document 3

Document 4

Document 5

Document 7

Within those groups, you have choices about ordering. One way to order them would be chronologically. (The documents are not often in chronological order, so you’d have to arrange them first.) This option is good for students who have the ability to briefly outline of the full relationship of England and Spain. The order would look like this:

Portugal:

Document 1 (1443)

Document 6 (1448)

Document 3 (1712)

Spain:

Document 4 (1588)

Document 5 (1618-1648) The document is about the Thirty Years’ War; remember that 1799 is outside of the scope of the prompt.

Document 3 (1712)

Document 2 (1713)

Document 7 (1721)

The other way to order these documents would be by category. Using the PERSIA categories, you could divide the paragraphs into political, economic, and other categories. (Those three are a pretty standard way to order evidence for most historical essays.) This of course would mix both Portugal and Spain together, so this would be better suited for a compare-and-contrast thesis statement. Here’s what that could look like:

Economic

Document 1—economic, political

Document 3—economic

Document 3—economic

Political

Document 6—political

Document 2—political

Document 7—political

Other

Document 4—literature

Document 5—religious

There are other ways to organize, but these are the most obvious two—and with only 45 minutes to write, it’s often better to go the obvious route. Once you choose one of these structures, go down your list of outside information and think of ways to integrate each one into the essay. It won’t always be possible but every outside idea you can add will lend weight to your essay, as long as it can be fitted into your thesis statement. Remember that an obvious, desperate stretch will only hurt your score. However, history is by nature intricate and the readers of your exam want to see that you respect the intrinsic complexity behind many historical events.

Section II, Part B: Long Essay

Because you only have 40 minutes to plan and write this essay, you will not have time to work out an elaborate argument. That’s okay; nobody is expecting you to read two questions, choose one, remember all pertinent facts about your subject, formulate a brilliant thesis, and then write a perfect essay. Here is what you should do. First, choose your question; brainstorm for two or three minutes, and edit your brainstorm ideas. Then, number those points you are going to include in your essay in the order you plan to present them, just as we did for the DBQ. Last, think of a simple thesis statement that allows you to discuss the points your essay will make.

Question 2—Individualism in the Italian Renaissance (Option 1)

Question 2: Evaluate the ways in which the modern notion of individualism was born on the Italian peninsula during the period from 1400 to 1550.

About the Structure of Your Essay

The nature of the Italian Renaissance is wide ranging, but one of its signal accomplishments is that it takes humanism a step further—towards the belief that individual humans are capable of great accomplishments. The more communal, group-oriented society and mentality of the Middle Ages was being replaced by a belief in the potential of the individual to make great achievements. One easy way to brainstorm is to divide into categories such as art, literature, science, and religion. Here are some points that you could mention in your essay:

Question 3—Individualism in the Italian Renaissance (Option 1)

Question 3: Outline the factors that led to England’s role as the leader of the industrialization of Europe during the period 1760 to 1840.

About the Structure of Your Essay

This essay is essentially asking you to outline the causes of the Industrial Revolution in England. There is certainly no shortage of material, and with basic preparation this should be fairly easy to knock out of the ballpark. Your only challenge will be how to organize the material, since there are so many options. As in the DBQ, you could arrange your points chronologically. You could divide the essay into the First Industrial Revolution and the Second Industrial Revolution. You could arrange the points according to agriculture, technology, etc. You could use PERSIA (though that might be difficult, since most of the points will be economic). Or you could get away with no obvious arrangement at all—as long as the paragraphs are well argued, a laundry list of various causes could serve you well. Here are a few ideas to get you started: