World History MCQs

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The USSR finally collapsed in 1991. On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was replaced by the Russian tricolor. Mikhail Gorbachev also resigned his post as President of the Soviet Union.

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The term ‘Washington consensus’ originally referred to a set of policy advice on liberal economic reform being addressed by the Washington-based institutions to Latin America. Nowadays is often used interchangeably with the phrase American ‘neo-liberal policies’.

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Leapfrogging which is also known as island hopping, was a military strategy employed during World War II by the Allies in the Pacific War against Japan and the Axis powers.

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The Bourbon Restoration was the period of French history from 1814 to 1830 following the first fall of Napoleon in 1814 and his final defeat in the Hundred Days War in 1815, until the July Revolution of 1830. The brothers of the executed Louis XVI, namely Louis XVIII and Charles X, came to power and reigned in a highly conservative fashion. Exiled supporters of the monarchy returned to France. They were nonetheless unable to reverse most of the changes made by the French Revolution and Napoleon. At the Congress of Vienna, they were treated respectfully but had to give up nearly all the territorial gains made since 1789.

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The War of 1870, also known as the Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, was a conflict between the Second French Empire (and later, the Third French Republic) and the German states of the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871, the conflict was caused primarily by France’s determination to restore its dominant position in continental Europe, which it had lost following Prussia’s crushing victory over Austria in 1866.

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Belle Epoque or La Belle Epoque is the term used to define a period of French history from 1880 to 1914 until the outbreak of World War I. This marked the era of the French Third Republic. This period was characterized by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations.

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Filiki Eteria or Society of Friends was a secret organization founded in 1814 in Odessa, whose purpose was to overthrow the Ottoman rule of Greece and establish an independent Greek state. Society members were mainly young Phanariot Greeks from Constantinople and the Russian Empire, local political and military leaders from the Greek mainland and islands, as well as several Orthodox Christian leaders from other nations that were under the Hellenic influence, such as Kara?or?e from Serbia Tudor Vladimirescu from Romania, and Arvanite military commanders. One of its leaders was the prominent Phanariote Prince Alexander Ypsilantis. The Society initiated the Greek War of Independence in the spring of 1821.

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The Massacre of Kondomari was an execution of male civilians from the village of Kondomari in Crete, Greece, by an ad hoc firing squad consisting of German paratroopers on 2 June 1941 during World War II. The shooting was the first of a series of reprisals in Crete. It was orchestrated by Generaloberst Kurt Student, in retaliation for the participation of Cretans in the Battle of Crete which had ended with the surrender of the island two days earlier. The massacre was photographed by Franz-Peter Weixler, a German army war propaganda correspondent, whose negatives were discovered 39 years later in the Federal German archives by a Greek journalist.

Notes:
In his foreign policy, Hitler acquired quick successes. He pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan, ‘One people, One empire, and One leader’. He then went on to wrest German-speaking Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled up the entire country later under the Munich Pact. In all of this he had the unspoken support of England, which had considered the Versailles verdict too harsh. So, option ‘a’ is the correct answer.

Notes:
The British needed forests in order to build ships and railways. The British were worried that the use of forests by local people and the reckless felling of trees by traders would destroy forests. So, they decided to invite a German expert, Dietrich Brandis, for advice, and made him the first Inspector General of Forests in India. So, statement 1 is correct. Dietrich Brandis set up the Indian Forest Service in 1864 and helped formulate the Indian Forest Act of 1865. The Imperial Forest Research Institute was set up at Dehradun in 1906. The system they taught here was called ‘scientific forestry’.In scientific forestry, natural forests which had lots of different types of trees were cut down. In their place, one type of tree was planted in straight rows. Forest officials surveyed the forests, estimated the area under different types of trees, and made working plans for forest management. They planned how much of the plantation area to cut every year. The area cut was then to be replanted so that it was ready to be cut again in some years. So, statement 2 is correct.