World History MCQs

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The Triple Entente describes the informal understanding between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic and Great Britain. It built upon the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between Paris and London, and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. It formed a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The Triple Entente, unlike the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance itself, was not an alliance of mutual defence.

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Germany’s government was also known as the “Weimar Republic”. The Weimar Republic, officially the German Reich (Deutsches Reich), was the German state from 1918 to 1933. As a term, it is an unofficial historical designation that derives its name from the city of Weimar, where its constituent assembly first took place. The official name of the republic remained the German Reich as it had been during the German Empire because of the German tradition of substates.

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Germany was the location of the “Berlin Wall”. The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Construction of the wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails, and other defences. In 1989, a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries—in Poland and Hungary in particular—caused a chain reaction in East Germany that ultimately resulted in the demise of the Wall. The demolition of the Wall officially began on 13 June 1990 and was completed in November 1991. The “fall of the Berlin Wall” paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.

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Great Britain, France and Russia assisted the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence/Greek Revolution. The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution, was a successful war of independence waged by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1830. The Greeks were later assisted by Great Britain, France and Russia, while the Ottomans were aided by their North African vassals, particularly the eyalet of Egypt. The war led to the formation of modern Greece. The revolution is celebrated by Greeks around the world as independence day on 25 March.

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The Battle of Sakarya, also known as the Battle of the Sangarios, was an important engagement in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), the western front of the Turkish War of Independence. The battle went on for 21 days from August 23 to September 13, 1921, close to the banks of the Sakarya River, which is today in a district of the Ankara Province. It is also known as the Officers’ Battle in Turkey because of the unusually high casualty rate (70–80%) among the officers. The Battle of Sakarya is considered as the turning point of the Turkish War of Independence. This battle leads to the Turkish victory.

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The Modern Greek Enlightenment, also known as “Diafotismos”, “enlightenment,” “illumination”, was the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment. The Greek Enlightenment was given impetus by the Greek predominance in trade and education in the Ottoman Empire. Greek merchants financed a large number of young Greeks to study in universities in Italy and the German states. There they were introduced to the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It was the wealth of the extensive Greek merchant class that provided the material basis for the intellectual revival that was the prominent feature of Greek life in the half-century and more leading to 1821.

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The New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation, or New JEWEL Movement (NJM), was a Marxist–Leninist vanguard party in the Caribbean island nation of Grenada that was led by Maurice Bishop. Established in 1973, the NJM issued its manifesto prior to the granting of Independence to Grenada in 1974. The movement took control of the country with a successful revolution in 1979 and ruled by decree as the People’s Revolutionary Government until 1983. In 1983, Bishop was killed by paramilitaries affiliated with hard-liners in his own party. This led to a military government, which was deposed by the US military in a 1983 invasion.

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The 1954 Guatemalan coup d’etat, code-named Operation PBSuccess, was a covert operation carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.

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Haiti gained independence in 1804 from France. In 1697 France and Spain settled their hostilities on the Hispaniola Island by way of the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, which divided Hispaniola between them. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue, the French equivalent of Santo Domingo, the Spanish colony on Hispaniola. The French set about creating sugar and coffee plantations, worked by vast numbers of slaves imported from Africa, and Saint-Domingue grew to become their richest colonial possession. Inspired by the French Revolution of 1789 and principles of the rights of man, the French settlers and free people of colour pressed for greater political freedom and more civil rights. The slaves, along with free gens de couleur and allies, continued their fight for independence, led by generals Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Petion and Henry Christophe. The rebels finally managed to decisively defeat the French troops at the Battle of Vertières on 18 November 1804, leading the first-ever nation to successfully gain independence through a slave revolt.

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Hungary’s variant of communism policy followed was “Goulash Communism”. Goulash Communism, also commonly called Kadarism or the Hungarian Thaw, refers to the variety of communism in Hungary following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Janos Kadar and the Hungarian People’s Republic imposed policies with the goal to create high-quality living standards for the people of Hungary coupled with economic reforms. These reforms fostered a sense of well-being and relative cultural freedom in Hungary with the reputation of being “the happiest barracks” of the Eastern Bloc during the 1960s to the 1970s. With elements of regulated market economics as well as an improved human rights record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Stalinist principles applied to Hungary in the previous decade.