Political History - AP World History: Modern

The Warring States Period led to the Establishment of the Qin Dynasty.

The Twelve Tables were the earliest known attempt at establishing a legal system in Ancient Rome in the fifth century BCE.

Under Timur, various Turkic tribes expanded through Central Asia, beginning in the 1360s. The Timurid Empire eventually covered most of the Middle East, including the Fertile Crescent, Persia (Iraq), and parts of modern-day India and Russia.

The Sassanid Empire emerged from the ashes of the Parthian Empire in the third century. It was the last Persian ruling dynasty of Iran before the Muslim conquests of the seventh century. The Sassanid Empire ruled over the vast majority of the territory that would today be recognized as the Middle East for four centuries.

Genghis Khan conquered the Seljuks, a Turkish tribe predominant in Anatolia from the 11th to the 13th centuries, and the Persians in the 13th century.

The Umayyad Caliphate came to power in modern-day Syria in the mid-seventh century and dramatically extended the rule of Islam to include all of North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, and parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Umayyads were immediately succeeded by the Abbasid Caliphate, who took control of the Islamic world in the mid-eighth century and ruled until dissolution in the thirteenth century.

In historical terminology when you see the word “pax” it means “period of relative peace and prosperity.” The Pax Romana refers to the period of relative peace associated with the longevity of the Roman Empire; the Pax Mongolica refers to the growth of global trade and interaction during the short lived Mongol Empire; the Pax Tokugawa refers to the relative peace that descended over Japanese society following the unification of the country by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

When trying to answer this question, it is first useful to know what a nation-state is. A state is a political entity, whereas a nation is a cultural or ethnic identity. So, Basque might be a nation in Spain, but Spain is the state that Basque is within. In Europe throughout the late Medieval period, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, nation-states began to emerge. Nation-states are political bodies unified with a cultural or ethnic identity. They primarily emerged in countries like England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden in the early Renaissance period, and this system of nation-states was then exported around the world as the Western European powers continued to expand their influence. It is now the dominant political entity in the world and its significance has not waned in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries.

The concept of Shari'a Law outlines a list of codes and laws drawn directly from the Qu'ran and the teachings of Mohammed. Because of their religious basis they are an example of a theocracy. Shari'a law still remains a governing force in most Islamic nations.

The Tsars' power largely rested on the support of the Orthodox Church and the military.

The sans-culottes were a social group in revolutionary France.

Certain nomadic groups, such as the Cossacks, were oftentimes allied with the Tsar but they were not indigenous to Central Asia.

Although throughout history, certain Muslim fighters from Chechnya and Dagestan may have fought for the Russian Tsar, they were the exception rather than the rule.

Throughout history merchants from all over the world have traded in Russia, but they were never a main pillar of support for the Russian Tsars.

Over the course of the 16th century, French royal power became increasingly centralized, with the French monarch becoming an absolute monarch.

Although both firearms and longbows decreased the need for mounted knights in full plate armor, the French monarch was adept at raising loyal armies composed of both musketeers and longbow men.

The French Revolution did not occur until the 18th century.

The Viking invasion and sack of Paris occurred in 845, centuries before the 16th century.

Due to the fragmented nature of the Italian region at the time of the Renaissance, every single city-state (with the exceptions of the papal state of Rome and Venice) was governed under despotism. According to this system, the most powerful (aka the richest and most socially-connected) men in each city-state selected a despot to act as the city’s governing figure. This despot was charged with upholding the principle known as “podesta:” the maintenance of strict law and order, by any and all means (judicial, economic, military, political) necessary. Each city-state’s elite circles relied upon the despot’s iron social control so that they could conduct their trade and economic business unimpeded, with as little societal and governmental obstruction as possible. This system of government ensured that while, the elites and despots themselves were quite happy with their lofty positions, the majority of the citizens were resentful, if not openly hostile, and so political conflict became the norm. Before too long, many city-states became hotbeds of political intrigue, as various individuals, powerful or otherwise, vied to influence or remove despots, often through underhanded, even violent, means.

Martin Luther’s posting of his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Church on October 31st, 1517 soon launched him into regional fame. As Luther’s prominence grew and his ideas spread, the popularity of the Protestant Reformation correspondingly increased. Naturally, this attracted the notice of high-level governmental and religious officials, many of whom considered Luther, not to mention the growing number of self-proclaimed Reformation adherents, as a potential threat to the reigning sociopolitical order. These concerns were not just confined to native German princes and rulers, but many other heads of state contemplated making moves against the Reformation as well – these included Pope Leo X, King Francis I of France, and many of the various Italian despots. Fortunately for the Reformation (and Luther himself), a dire political distraction soon occurred – namely, the death of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, in 1519. The Emperor’s death threw the various European heads of state into a mad scramble to appoint a successor, with opposing regional forces backing different candidates. The conflict appeared to be teetering right on the edge of open warfare, especially between France, Spain, and the Papal State, and in the ensuing chaos, no one had time to deal with the Reformation anymore. Consequently, Luther’s ideas were free to continue their spread throughout the German, Switzerland, and Western European cultures – essentially, the Reformation gained valuable time in which to grow unimpeded.

Fortunately, not every Western European ruler believed in the necessity of religious conflict – some genuinely believed that every person should be free to practice their chosen religion, while other monarchs endorsed religious toleration out of more pragmatic means (civil unrest was always a threat to a ruler’s continued reign). Monarchs who enforced religious toleration and kept their country out of religiously motivated conflicts were known as “politiques.” The most successful “politique” was Queen Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth took over the country after the death of her half-sister, Mary I, whose violent hatred of Protestantism had led her to institute a brutal repression of all English Protestants. Mary had hundreds of Protestants imprisoned, tortured, and executed, despite the increasingly horrified opposition of her Catholic subjects. These policies earned her the nickname “Bloody Mary.” When Elizabeth came to power, she immediately knew that she had to heal the social strife and wounds that her sister’s repression had caused throughout England, especially since there were grumblings of a potential dynasty change or even a revolt. So, Elizabeth adopted the principles of “politique,” endorsing religious toleration for all English citizens, ending government-sanctioned persecution of Protestants, and thereby strengthening social and political unity.

When Elizabeth I became Queen of England in 1558, she assumed control over a country which, under her sister Mary I’s reign, had been torn apart by brutal anti-Protestant persecution. Elizabeth I knew that if she wanted to make her nation both politically and socially successful, she needed to devise some sort of compromise between England’s Catholic and Protestant citizens. In 1559, Elizabeth I and Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which established the Queen as the ultimate arbiter of religious (as well as all other) matters and discarded all of Mary I’s anti-Protestant laws. Using the Act of Supremacy as her first step, Elizabeth established a climate of religious tolerance. Using her father King Henry VIII’s creation of his own national church, Elizabeth turned the Anglican Church – aka England’s official religion – into a sort of modified Catholic and Protestant mashup. Anglicanism combined Catholic rituals (such as rich church decorations and solemn processions) with more Protestant doctrines, such as those contained in the Common Book of Prayer (the national prayer book). Catholics and Protestants were thus free to worship, publically or privately, as they chose, so long as they didn’t engage in any sort of extremist speech or activity which threatened the nation’s religious balance.

This is a tricky question– in reality, Queen Elizabeth I never married. This was extremely unusual for the time period; because women were seen as the inferior gender, every woman was placed under considerable familial and societal pressure to find a husband and make a good match. As Queen, Elizabeth was under near constant pressure from her advisors and allies to marry, many of whom doubted her intellectual ability – as a woman – to effectively govern. Several of England’s allies also hoped that Elizabeth would choose one of their noblemen as her husband; this move would bring prestige and shared wealth and power to both nations. Many of Elizabeth’s advisors felt the same way; they worried that as a lone Queen without a King beside her, Elizabeth – and by extension her country – would not be taken seriously by foreign powers. But Elizabeth, who was known for her remarkably strong will, insisted that she could govern England perfectly well without a husband, a fact which her prosperous forty-five-year reign definitively proved. Throughout her time as monarch, Elizabeth astutely used the possibility of her marriage as a bargaining tool in her negotiations with other countries. In a truly masterful strategy, she was able to persuade foreign leaders to make favorable alliances with England by holding out the tantalizing prospect of her hand in marriage – an offer which she graciously but swiftly revoked as soon as the ink on the treaties dried.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the power structure of the European continent had begun to settle and coalesce. Five countries would emerge as the dominant players – England, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria (while the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden all fell from power). These top five nations achieved their high status thanks to their military prowess and prosperous economies; a few of these countries also gained in prestige due to their establishment of overseas colonial empires. For the duration of the century, the successive leaders and/or governments of these five nations would engage in near-constant competition against one another. Quite often, these struggles took place through economic means, such as the accumulation of new wealth or the cultivation of new foreign businesses or lands. These rulers also believed that having a strong national military force was absolutely essential (the better to intimidate the opposition), and so they engaged in massive recruitment campaigns and tried to obtain the latest weapons and supplies.

The correct answer is "none of the other answers" because the Roman Empire's system of government did include a Senate, two popular assemblies (comitia centuriata and tributa), magistrates, and censors.

When studying seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, the United Provinces of the Netherlands stand out as completely unique amongst all other countries. What set the Netherlands apart was its governmental structure – unlike most of its European counterparts (which favored monarchy or some similar sort of centralized power), the Netherlands was a republic. This was no accident – generally speaking, the Dutch despised monarchy (which they associated with the Spanish King Phillip II’s brutal invasion of their land) and they didn’t want to give up their independent ways. So, while a central government, called the States General, was established in The Hague, all decisions were made in cooperation with each of the seven provinces, which retained quite a few freedoms. Only in severe times of military distress would the Netherlands ever depart from this system: central authority would temporarily be ceded to a few military commanders but their power was always revoked as soon as the fighting stopped.