What was the Second Industrial Revolution, and what effects did it have on European economic and social life?What roles did socialist parties and trade unions play in improving conditions for the working classes?
2.Based on Eduard Bernstein’s The Voice of Evolutionary Socialism, how would you define evolutionary socialism? What broader forces in nineteenth-century European society came together to promote this type of political thinking?
3.According to Elizabeth Sanford, what is the proper role of women? What forces in nineteenth-century European society merged to shape Sanford’s understanding of “proper” gender roles? In Ibsen’s play, what challenges does Nora Helmer make to Sanford’s view of the proper role and behavior of wives? Why is her husband so shocked? Why did Ibsen title this play A Doll’s House?
4.What general political trends were evident in the nations ofwestern Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and how did these trends differ from the policies pursued in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia?
5.What developments in science, intellectual affairs, and the arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries “opened the way to a modern consciousness” and how did this consciousness differ from earlier worldviews?
6.What gains did women make in their movement for women’s rights from 1894-1914? How did a new right-wing politics affect the Jews in different parts of Europe? What political problems did Great Britain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia face between 1894 and 1914, and how did they solve them?
7.What methods did Emmeline Pankhurst advocate be used to achieve the right to vote for women? Why did she feel justified in using these methods? Do you think she was justified? Why or why not?
8.What forces in European society came together to intensify anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century? What was the relationship between nationalism and Zionism at this time? Was Herzl’s Zionism simply a reaction to Western anti-Semitism, or did other developments also contribute to his movement?
9.What were the causes of the new imperialism that took place after 1880, and what effects did European and American imperialism have on Africa and Asia?
10.What arguments did Kipling make to justify European expansion in Africa and Asia? How does the selection by Edward Morel challenge or undermine Kipling’s beliefs?
11.Describe the effects of the Meiji Restoration on Japan. Was the period from 1860-1914 beneficial or detrimental to the Japanese? Why or why not?
12.What were the long-range and immediate causes of World War I?
13.How do the telegrams exchanged between William II and Nicholas II reveal why the Europeans foolishly went to war in 1914? What do they tell us about the nature of the relationship between these two monarchs?
14.What do Zweig, Graves, and Limmer reveal about the motivations of people to join and support World War I? Do the excerpts reveal anything about the power of nationalism in Europe in the early twentieth century?
15.What does the excerpt from Erich Maria Remarque reveal about the realities of trench warfare? Would the surviving front-line victims of the war have been able to describe or explain their experiences to those left behind on the home front? What effect would that have on postwar society?
16.What were the causes of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and why did the Bolsheviks prevail in the civil war and gain control of Russia?
17.What were the objectives of the chief participants at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and how closely did the final settlement reflect these objectives?
