Part -1:
1) In this period, why did the power and status of the samurai warriors in Japan rise while those of the warrior nobility in Europe declined?
2) How and why did Europe's economic growth begin to surpass that of the Islamic world in the century after the Black Death?
3) Did the economic revival across Eurasia after 1350 benefit the peasant populations of Europe, the Islamic world, and East Asia?
4) How did the process of conversion to Islam differ in Iran, the Ottoman Empire, West Africa, and Southeast Asia during this period?
5) What political and economic changes contributed to the rise of maritime commerce in Asia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries?
6) What social, economic, and technological changes strengthened the power of European monarchs during the century after the Black Death?
7) How and why did the major routes and commodities of trans-Eurasian trade change after the collapse of the Mongol empires in Central Asia?
8) In what ways did the motives for conversion to Islam differ in Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indian Ocean during this era?
Part -2:
1. In what ways was cultural diversity in the Americas related to environmental diversity?
2. Why was it in Mesoamerica and the Andes that large empires emerged in around 1450?
3. What core features characterized Inca life and rule?
4. Compare the Aztec and Inca empires with the Ming (see Chapter 15). What features did they share? What features set them apart?
5. What were the main causes of warfare among native American peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans?
6. What were the main biological and environmental consequences of European expansion into the Atlantic after 1492?
7. What roles did misunderstanding and chance play in the conquests of the Aztecs and Incas? What factors enabled the Spanish to conquer the Aztec and Inca empires?
8. How did Eurasian demand for silver and sugar help bring about the creation of a linked Atlantic world?
9. Why was the discovery of silver in Spanish America so important in the course of world history? How did global demand for silver affect the lives of ordinary people in the Spanish colonies?
10. How did Spanish and Portuguese imperial aims differ from those of the Incas and Aztecs?
11. How would you compare the Spanish conquest of Mexico with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople discussed in Chapter 15?
12. What role did European consumers play in the rise of the American plantation complex?
Part -3:
1. How did ecological diversity in western Africa relate to cultural developments?
2. What tied western Africa to other parts of the world prior to the arrival of Europeans along Atlantic shores?
3. How did the Atlantic slave trade arise, and how was it sustained?
4. How did gender roles differ between the kingdoms of West Africa and those of North America's Eastern Woodlands?
5. How did the Portuguese experience in Africa differ from events in Brazil?
6. How did growing European competition for enslaved Africans alter the nature of enslavement and trade in Africa itself?
7. What environmental, religious, and political factors enabled trading enclaves to flourish in the Indian Ocean basin?
8. How did the rise and fall of India's land empires reflect larger regional trends?
9. How did Europeans insert themselves into the Indian Ocean trading network, and what changes did they bring about?
10. How did Swahili Coast traders link the East African interior to the Indian Ocean basin?
11. In what ways did Indian Ocean trade differ from the contemporary Atlantic slave trade? What role did Africa play in each?
12. How did traditional kingdoms such as Vijayanagara differ from those of the Americas prior to the Spanish conquest?
Part -4:
1. To what degree was religious diversity embraced or rejected in early modern Europe and the greater Mediterranean, and why?
2. How did Christian Europe's gunpowder-fueled empires compare with that of the Ottomans?
3. What accounts for the rise of science and capitalism in early modern western Europe?
4. How did battles for control of the Mediterranean compare with those for control of Indian Ocean trade?
5. What factors explain the rise of the vast Ottoman Empire and its centuries-long endurance?
6. What factors enabled European scientific and political innovations in the early modern period?
7. What factors led to imperial consolidation in Russia and China? Who were the new rulers, and what were the sources of their legitimacy?
8. Why was isolation more common in these empires than overseas engagement, and what were some of the benefits and drawbacks of isolation?
9. In what ways did early modern Asians transform their environments, and why?
10. How did the shift to a silver cash economy transform Chinese government and society?
11. How did self-isolation affect Japan?
12. How did China under the Ming and Qing compare with the other most populous early modern empire, Mughal India?
Part -4:
1. How did the production of silver, gold, and other commodities shape colonial American societies?
2. How and where did northern Europeans insert themselves into territories claimed by Spain and Portugal?
3. How did racial divisions and mixtures compare across the Americas by the mid-eighteenth century?
4. How did sugar production and slavery mold Caribbean societies?
5. How did European relations with native peoples differ in the British and French colonies of North America?
6. How did Spanish America's imperial bureaucracy compare with those of the Ottomans and other "gunpowder empires"?
7. What role did the Scientific Revolution and expanding global contacts play in the cultural and social movement known as the Enlightenment?
8. What were the major ideas of the Enlightenment and their impact?
9. Why did prosperous and poor people alike join revolutions in the Americas and in France?
10. Why were the Atlantic revolutions so influential, even to the present day?
11. What changes emerged from the French Revolution and Napoleon's reign?
12. What are the common challenges that centuries-old empires faced during this period?
13. Why was there so much bloodshed in the various efforts to achieve political and social change?
Part -5:
1. In what ways did the Industrial Revolution change people's work lives and ideas?
2. How did the Industrial Revolution benefit people, and what problems did it create?
3. How and where did industrial production develop, and how did it affect society and politics?
4. What were the main causes of the Industrial Revolution?
5. How did industrialization spread, and what steps did nations and manufacturers take to meet its challenges?
6. How did industrialization affect societies in China, South and West Asia, and Africa?
Part -6:
1. Why did nation-states become so important to people in the nineteenth century?
2. What was the role of war in the rise of the nation-state?
3. What was the role of ordinary people in nation building?
4. Are nation-states still important today, and are there still outsiders inside nations?
Part -7:
1. What are the arguments for and against imperialism?
2. How and why did some local peoples assist imperialists who took over their own countries?
3. Which were the major imperialist powers, and what made them so capable of conquest?
4. How did imperialism change the lives of people in the conquering countries and in the colonies?
5. What motivated the imperialists, and how did they impose their control over other nations?
6. How did imperialism change lives and livelihoods around the world?
7. How are the Industrial Revolution and imperialism connected? How are nation building and imperialism connected?
Part - 8:
1. Why did the Mexican Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, World War I, and the Russian Revolution cause so much change far from the battlefield?
2. How did these wars help produce mass culture and society?
3. What role did technology play in these developments?
4. What factors contributed to the wars of the early twentieth century?
5. Why did the Russian Revolution take place, and what changes did it produce in Russian politics and daily life?
6. What were the major outcomes of the peacemaking process and postwar conditions?
7. Consider the empires discussed in Chapter 26. How did they change in the 1920s, and why?
8. How did the mass political movements that emerged during and after the war differ from one another?
Part -9:
1. How did ordinary people react to the Great Depression, and how did their reactions differ from country to country? How are the Great Depression and World War II related historical events?
2. Why were dictators and antidemocratic leaders able to come to power in the 1930s, and how did all countries-autocratic and democratic alike-militarize the masses?
3. How did dictatorships and democracies attempt to mobilize the masses?
4. How did World War II progress on the battlefront and the home front?
5. How did the Germans fight their war of imperial conquest? How and why did they commit the most comprehensive acts of genocide in human history?
6. How did the Allied victory unfold, and what were the causes of that victory?
7. What are the main differences between World War I and World War II?
8. In what specific ways did World Wars I and II affect the African and Asian colonies of the imperial powers?
Part -10:
1. How did the Cold War affect the superpowers and the world beyond them?
2. How did the Cold War shape everyday lives and goals?
3. Why did colonial nationalism revive in the postwar world, and how did decolonization affect society and culture?
4. Why did the model of a welfare state emerge after World War II, and how did this development affect ordinary people?
5. Why was the Cold War waged, and how did it reshape world politics?
6. How did colonized peoples achieve their independence from the imperialist powers after World War II?
7. What were the major elements of recovery in different parts of the world in the decades following World War II?
8. How did the Bandung Conference and its aims represent an alternative to the Cold War division of the globe?
Part -11:
1) the end of the Cold War and the (perhaps temporary) rise of unilateral American "hyperpower" (a term coined by the French to describe US power in the age after the superpowers) ;
2) "globalization" and the massive intensification of trade and transactions across borders (which has enriched some and impoverished many others;
3) the rise of "political Islam" throughout the Muslim world, especially after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the global "jihad" against the Soviets in Afghanistan (1979-89).
4) The continued rise of East Asia within the world economy and particularly the rise of China as an emerging superpower;
5) The "Global War on Terror" (GWOT) waged by the US and its allies on various insurgent groups throughout the world (currently raging in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Somalia, etc.).
And finally 6) the growing awareness that we are facing severe ecological crises in the present that will only become more severe in the future.
Part -12:
1. What were the major postwar advances in technology and science, and why were they important? How did the technological developments of these decades transform social and economic conditions?
2. What were the attitudes of young people toward technology and social change during these years, and how did they reflect the Cold War climate in which these changes occurred?
3. How did the technological developments influence the fall of communist regimes in Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
4. How did the scientific and technological developments of the second half of the twentieth century affect the waging-and the end-of the Cold War?
5. Why did the Cold War order come to an end?
6. How did changes in the global economy affect livelihoods and family life?
7. Why is late-twentieth-century society in many parts of the world described as postindustrial?
8. Why did the economic, scientific, and political developments of the late twentieth century spark so many grassroots protests, and what did those protests achieve?
Part -13:
1. What were the elements of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first century?
2. How did globalization affect lives and livelihoods throughout the world?
3. How did globalization affect local cultures? What trends suggest that globalization has led to a new mixing of cultures?
4. What people do you know whose roots and livelihoods are global?
5. How has globalization affected the distribution of power and wealth throughout the world in the early twenty-first century?
6. How has globalization reshaped national economies and political institutions?
7. Consider Chapter 24. How have livelihoods changed since the era of industrialization, and what factors have caused these changes?
8. Do you consider local or global issues more important to people's lives? Explain your choice.
9. How do you describe your identity-as global, national, local, familial, religious-and why?
Part -14:
1. How did human societies change from 1450 to the present? What were the most important developments affecting those societies?
2. How did one region of the world (Europe & N. America, aka "the West") end up dominating the world from about 1850 to 1950? Why and how did that dominance begin to crumble from 1960 to the present?
3. What role has China played in global history from 1450 to the present? Why was it so important? What role do you see China filling in the twenty-first century?
4. How did the Industrial Revolution change human existence? In what ways did it improve the human condition? What were the costs? What long-term challenges do you think industrial civilization will face?
5. What are the most important lessons you learned from this course about history and about human society? In what ways did this course change your understanding of the world and of your own society?
Part -15:
1) What was the context in which Conrad's Heart of Darkness was written? What was going on in Europe? And in Africa?
2) How does racism develop in Europe? What consequences does it have?
3) How do you explain the extreme violence in colonial Africa?
4) What did Europeans in 1900 think about what we now call "genocide"? How did they explain it and justify it?
4) What are the connections between genocidal ideologies and practices in Africa and those of the Third Reich?
5) Is Lindqvist's analysis of the world of 1900 still relevant today? How and why?