World History MCQs

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Japan was not a part of Marshall Plan. The objective of Marshall Plan was to provide aid to the recipients essentially on a per capita basis, with larger amounts given to major industrial powers, like West Germany, France and Great Britain.

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The Portuguese established outposts in Timor and Maluku islands of Lesser Sunda Islands of Malay Archipelago. Effective European occupation of a small part of present-day East Timor began in 1769 when the city of Dili was founded and the colony of Portuguese Timor declared. For the Portuguese, East Timor remained little more than a neglected trading post until the late nineteenth century, with minimal investment in infrastructure, health, and education. Sandalwood continued to be the main export crop with coffee exports becoming significant in the mid-nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a faltering home economy prompted the Portuguese to extract greater wealth from its colonies, which was met with East Timorese resistance. Following the 1974 Portuguese Revolution, Portugal effectively abandoned its colony in Timor and civil war between East Timorese political parties broke out in 1975. The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) resisted a Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) coup attempt in August 1975, and unilaterally declared independence on 28 November 1975. Fearing a communist state within the Indonesian archipelago, the Indonesian military launched an invasion of East Timor in December 1975. Indonesia declared East Timor its 27th province on 17 July 1976. The UN Security Council opposed the invasion and the territory’s nominal status in the UN remained as “non-self-governing territory under Portuguese administration”.The 1991 Dili Massacre was a turning point for the independence cause and an East Timor solidarity movement grew in Portugal, the Philippines, Australia, and other Western countries. The Santa Cruz Massacre (also known as the Dili Massacre) was the shooting of at least 250 East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators in the Santa Cruz cemetery in the capital, Dili, on 12 November 1991, during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and is part of the East Timorese genocide. Following the resignation of Indonesian president of Suharto, an UN-sponsored agreement between Indonesia and Portugal allowed for an UN-supervised popular referendum in August 1999. A clear vote for independence was met with a punitive campaign of violence by East Timorese pro-integration militia supported by elements of the Indonesian military. With Indonesian permission, an Australian-led multinational peacekeeping force (INTERFET) was deployed until the order was restored. On 25 October 1999, the administration of East Timor was taken over by the UN through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), headed by Sergio Vieira de Mello. The INTERFET deployment ended in February 2000 with the transfer of military command to the UN. On 30 August 2001, the East Timorese voted in their first election organised by the UN to elect members of the Constituent Assembly. On 22 March 2002, the Constituent Assembly approved the Constitution. By May 2002, over 205,000 refugees had returned. On 20 May 2002, the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of East Timor came into force and East Timor was recognised as independent by the UN.

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Egypt gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1922. Local dissatisfaction against Khedivate rule leads to the European invasion. In 1822, the United Kingdom invaded Egypt at the Battle Tell El Kebir and occupied the territory militarily. The Denshawai incident of 1906 turned the sentiment of Egyptian against the Britishers. Finally, the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 overthrew Britishers from Egypt and Egypt declared independent in 1922.

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Provisional Military Government Of Socialist Ethiopia also known as “Derg”, was the government led by a committee of military leaders or military junta from 1974 to 1987. This government was against the monarchy and supported communism as their ideology to rule Ethiopia. The infamous Qey Shibir Massacre of 1977, which was widely known as the Ethiopian Red Terror, was sanctioned by this government to eliminate political opponents.

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The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic which saw a significant improvement in Anglo-French relations. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a thousand years of intermittent conflict between the two states and their predecessors and replaced the modus vivendi that had existed since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 with a more formal agreement. The Entente Cordiale was the culmination of the policy of Théophile Delcassé, France’s foreign minister from 1898, who believed that a Franco-British understanding would give France some security against any German system of alliances in Western Europe. Credit for the success of the negotiation belongs chiefly to Paul Cambon, France’s ambassador, and to the British foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne.

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The period of Nazi Germany, also known as the Third Reich, began with the rise of the Nazi Party to power in 1933 and ended with the defeat of Germany in 1945. The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, came to power through a combination of political maneuvering, propaganda, and repression. Once in power, the Nazis implemented their vision of a totalitarian state based on their ideology of National Socialism, which combined elements of racism, militarism, and anti-Semitism.

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Germany was the location of the “Peaceful Revolution”. The Peaceful Revolution was the process of sociopolitical change that led to the opening of East Germany’s borders with the west, the end of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the transition to a parliamentary democracy, which enabled the reunification of Germany in October 1990. This happened through non-violent initiatives and demonstrations. These events were closely linked to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to abandon Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe as well as the reformist movements that spread through Eastern Bloc countries.

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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 Greek junta or Regime of the Colonels was a series of far-right military juntas that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. On 21 April 1967, a group of colonels overthrew the caretaker government a month before scheduled elections which Georgios Papandreou’s Center Union was favoured to win. The dictatorship was characterised by right-wing cultural policies, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents. An attempt to renew its support in a 1973 referendum on the monarchy and gradual democratisation was ended by another coup by hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis. The junta’s rule ended on 24 July 1974 under the pressure of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, leading to the Metapolitefsi (“regime change”) to democracy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.

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The Massacre of Kalavryta, or the Holocaust of Kalavryta, refers to the near-extermination of the male population and the total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, Greece, by the 117th Jager Division (Wehrmacht) during World War II, on 13 December 1943.