SECOND MIDTERM EXAM

The exam is worth 10% of your final grade (100 points as noted below).

I. Identify and define the significance (15 minutes total, 2 @ 10 points each)
Select two of the following terms, identify it (including an approximate date), and situate it correctly in relation to other important events. Then take special care to EXPLAIN WHY THE TERM IS SIGNIFICANT in the context of the history of modern Western Civilization. Ask yourself: Would history have taken a different course without this event or person? Or: Is this term an example of some important principle that played a role in the later course of history? (Your answer should be yes.) Write down the reason(s) WHY as part of your answer to the ID.

Josef Stalin	Scramble for Africa	Treaty of Versailles
Canton system	Bolsheviks	Russo-Japanese War

II. Essay question: Answer the following question. (50 minutes, 80 points)
Note: in grading these essays, we will be looking for the following:
o. a basic command of facts relating to the origins of the war
a. a thesis statement
b. arguments supporting that thesis
c. use of specific cases or examples in the argument to support the thesis
d. whether counterarguments and counterevidence are addressed.

World War I, which began as a limited war and soon escalated to what was called the "Great War," had both longer-term, structural origins, and short-term causes (such as the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand, the Schlieffen Plan, and escalation due to the alliance system).

• Pick what you consider to be the three most important of the long-term origins of the war (ONLY long-term, NOT short term!), and describe, discuss and illustrate them with concrete examples.
• Then state a thesis in which you rank the relative importance of those three causes. This statement might include a short version of your reasoning: "Xxxxxx was the most important cause of World War I because …. Yyyyy was important, but less so because …."
• Finally, make explicit pro and con arguments that explain why you ranked the causes as you did. Make sure that you use concrete examples as evidence to back up your argument. It is likely that any argument for the primacy of a given cause should include a discussion of why any other long-term cause was less important.
• I would suggest starting by making an outline-three causes as main headings, then a couple of examples, AND several pro and con arguments under each one.

For this ranking, you might find it helpful to think about other possible ways in which those causes/ problems could have been resolved or were resolved in other cases before and after World War I.

III. EXTRA CREDIT Source Interpretation. (up to 5 points)

In September 1917 Lenin wrote:

"But from this capitalist democracy-that is inevitably narrow, and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false to the core-forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly towards 'greater and greater democracy,' as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., toward Communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat …"

Link specific passages of this text to other ideas and texts discussed in this course.
Also, how do specific statements in this text help us to understand the course of the Russian Revolution?