HISTORY 101

Dr. Powers

MAJOR POINTS TO CONSIDER IN STUDYING FOR THE FINAL EXAM

1. What is history? What is history supposed to accomplish? What are the nature and uses of history? What are the major schools of historical thought? Take one school of thought and see how it interprets various "Great Issues."

2. The impact of environment on the development of a civilization. How do surrounding conditions affect the institutions a society develops? What happens when these conditions change? What if old isntitutions try to hold on even after the conditions which facilitated their creation and continuation have changed?

3. Same as Point 2, but for economics instead of environment.

4. Same as Point 2, but for religion instead of environment.

5. What have been the various relationships between sacred and secular authority? What effects have such relationships had on their societies?

6. How should man be governed? What systems of government are best suited for what conditions? What have been the strengths and weaknesses of each system? Can you trace a linear or cyclic path of evolution of government? Why are governments set up the way they are?

7. How have various schools of thought tried to reconcile the conflict between faith and reason?

8. Trace the development of Christianity as an establishment and as a system of belief. Note the major divergent strains along the way. What effect did they have? Explain how Christianity grew so powerful and became a major intellectual force, and the dominant religious force, in Western Civilization.

9. Trace the long-term influence of some of the great philosophical ideas and theories: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Stoicism, etc.

10. Do "great men" make great events or vice versa.

11. To what extent, and in what senses, is the traditional division of Western Civilization into three distinct sub-civilizations (ancient, medieval, modern) a valid one? How clear are the dividing lines among them?

12. Explain how three cultural streams flowed together to create Medieval Western Civilization, and assess the relative significance and contributions of each.

13. Explain how Modern European Civilization differs from Medieval Western Civilization. Show as well how the former is rooted in and flows from the latter.

14. Explain the origins, operations, decline, and effects of feudalism.

15. Describe the rise, zenith, and decline of the Papal Monarchy. Show how it interrelated with other social and political systems during the medieval period.

16. Describe the heritage left to Western Europe by the following:

The Mesopotamians

The Egyptians

The Hebrews

The Persians

The Greeks

The Romans

The Byzantines

Islam

Eastern Europe

External invaders

17. Trace the development of the modern state and the nation-state system.

18. Assess the contention that military developments (especially those beyond the battlefield) have caused developments in other areas, and more than any other factor have thus shaped Western Civilization.

19. What factors, other than those already noted, have motivated the process of historical development. Technology? Class Conflict? Intellectual systems (like the Renaissance)? Etc.

20. Describe the structure, operations, problems, and decline of the Athenian polis and empire.

21. Same as Point 20, but for the Roman Republic.

22. Same as Point 20, but for the Roman Empire.

23. What makes England so distinctive, yet so much an integral part of Western Civlization?

24. Trace the rise, development, and decline of the Holy Roman Empire.

25. Trace the development of today's major European countries through the period under study.

26. Explain and account for Europe's transformation from the world's backwater in the medieval period to its master in the early modern age.

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