World History MCQs

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Treaty of Portsmouth ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The treaty was signed on September 5, 1905 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. The treaty was signed by Japanese and Russian diplomats after negotiations from August 6 to August 30. The treaty ended the war that began in 1904. The war was caused by Russian and Japanese expansionism in the Far East. The war contributed to domestic unrest in both countries, which led to the Russian revolution of 1905. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

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Apartheid was a system of racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. The National Party governed South Africa from 1948 until 1994. During this time, South Africa was a partial democracy because non-white people were barred from voting after 1958.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was a British organization that opposed the South African apartheid system. The AAM supported South Africa’s non-white population who were persecuted by the policies of apartheid.
Nelson Mandela was sworn in as President of South Africa in 1994. He was known for his internal resistance to apartheid.

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The BIS was formed in 1930. The main actors in its establishment were the then-Governor of The Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and his German counterpart Hjalmar Schacht, later Adolf Hitler’s finance minister. The Bank was originally intended to facilitate reparation payments imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War. The need for the bank was suggested in 1929 by the Young Committee, and was agreed to in August of that year at a conference at the Hague. A charter for the bank was drafted at the International Bankers Conference at Baden Baden in November. The charter was adopted at a second Hague Conference on January 20, 1930

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Angola was under Portuguese colonization until 1975. Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao reached the Angolan area in 1484. The Angolan War of Independence from 1961-1974 lead to overthrow of Portuguese from Angola.

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Dirty War was the term used by the then military dictatorship of Argentina to denote US-backed state-terrorism for the period from 1976-1983. Under Operation Condor, military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of Argentine Anti Communist Alliance destroyed any political dissidents associated with socialism and left-wing Peronism.

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Armenian Genocide or Armenian Holocaust is the mass murder of 15 lakhs of ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey by the then Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923. The genocide involved physical destruction, deportation and displacement of the civilian population.

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From the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century Portuguese Empire had a colonial presence in Benin. The Portuguese empire was engaged in the massive slave trade with Benin. This continued till the abolition of slavery through the Slave Trade Act, 1807 which weakened Benin’s (previously Dahomey) status. This lead to the emergence of French power in Benin’s soil during the mid-19th century. And finally, due to the anti-colonial stand of Beninese during the later years, France was forced to independence to Benin in 1960.

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“Slave Coast” lies in the Western African Bight of Benin coast of Gulf of Guinea located between Volta River and Lagos Lagoon. This region witnessed massive Atlantic Slave Trade from the early 16t century to the late 19th century. Germans, Danes, French, Portuguese, Swedish and Spanish made all efforts to enforce their supremacy in this coast to get a larger chunk of the slave trade.

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Chile’s economic history is associated with the term “Chicago Boys”. Chicago Boys were a group of Chilean economists of 1970s and 1980s, who were trained at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, USA. They were trained under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. They were taken into various key positions of the Chilean Government from 1970 to 1990 and transformed the Chilean economy to Latin America’s best-performing economy.

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The ancient Mesopotamian  points to the land between the rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Its modern name is Iraq.  The civilization flourished here almost at the same time with the Egyptian civilization.