World History MCQs

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The Ancien Regime was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France from the Late Middle Ages of the 15th century until the French Revolution of 1789 which lead to the abolition of hereditary monarchy and of the feudal system of the French nobility in 1792. The late Valois and Bourbon dynasties ruled during the Ancien Regime.

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The War of the First Coalition is the traditional name of wars that several European powers fought between 1792 and 1797 against initially the Kingdom of France and then the French Republic that succeeded it. They were only loosely allied and fought without much apparent coordination or agreement, each power had its eye on a deficient part of France it wanted to appropriate after a French defeat, which never occurred.

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The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), commonly referred as the Nazi Party, was a far-right political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945, that created and supported the ideology of National Socialism. The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although this was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders, and in the 1930s the party’s main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes.

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Germany was the location of the “Beer Hall Putsch”. The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch or the Hitlerputsch or the Hitler–Ludendorff-Putsch, was a failed coup d’etat by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, which took place on 8–9 November 1923. Approximately two thousand Nazis were marching to the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, when they were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazi party members and four police officers. Hitler, who was wounded during the clash, escaped immediate arrest. After two days, he was arrested and charged with treason. The putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the German nation and generated front-page headlines in newspapers around the world. His arrest was followed by a 24-day trial, which was widely publicised and gave him a platform to express his nationalist sentiments to the nation. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison, where he dictated Mein Kampf to his fellow prisoners Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess. On 20 December 1924, having served only nine months, Hitler was released. Once released, Hitler redirected his focus towards obtaining power through legal means rather than revolution or force, and accordingly changed his tactics, further developing Nazi propaganda.

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The Austro-Prussian War or Seven Weeks’ War, also known as the German Civil War or the Unification War or the War of 1866 or the Fraternal War or the Brother’s War, happened as part of the wars of German unification, was a war fought in 1866 between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, with each also being aided by various allies within the German Confederation. Prussia had also allied with the Kingdom of Italy, linking this conflict to the Third Independence War of Italian unification. The Austro-Prussian War was part of the wider rivalry between Austria and Prussia and resulted in Prussian dominance over the German states. The major result of the war was a shift in power among the German states away from Austrian and towards Prussian hegemony. The war also resulted in the Italian annexation of the Austrian province of Venetia.

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The United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) was a political party whose aim was to bring about Ghanaian independence from their British colonial masters after the Second World War. The United Gold Coast Convention appointed its leaders to include Kwame Nkrumah, who was the Secretary-General.

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Iran crisis of 1946 is also known as the “Azerbaijan Crisis”. The Iran crisis of 1946, also known as the Azerbaijan Crisis, was one of the first crises of the Cold War, sparked by the refusal of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union to relinquish occupied Iranian territory, despite repeated assurances. The end of World War II should have resulted at the end of the Allied joint occupation of Iran. Instead, Pro-Soviet Iranians proclaimed the separatist Azerbaijan People’s Government[5] and the Kurdish separatist Republic of Mahabad. The United States pressure on the Soviet Union to withdraw is the earliest evidence of success with the new strategy of Truman Doctrine and containment.

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The NATO played a significant role by intervening in the Kosovo war to end the war in 1999.

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In 1600, approximately one-sixth of India’s land-mass was under cultivation. Now, that figure has gone up to about half. In the colonial period, cultivation expanded rapidly for a variety of reasons. First, the British directly encouraged the production of commercial crops like jute, sugar, wheat and cotton. The demand for these crops increased in nineteenth-century Europe where foodgrains were needed to feed the growing urban population and raw materials were required for industrial production. So, statement 1 is correct. Second, in the early nineteenth century, the colonial state thought that forests were unproductive. They were considered to be wilderness that had to be brought under cultivation so that the land could yield agricultural products and revenue, and enhance the income of the state. So between 1880 and 1920, cultivated area rose by 6.7 million hectares. So, statement 2 is also correct.

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In Russia, the form of government was tyrannical. The Emperor, Czar, enjoyed unbridled power without any constitutional limit on his authority. Thus, statement 1 is correct. In the Revolution of 1905, Czar was forced to grant some concessions. He allowed formation of a parliament called Duma. However, it was soon filled by the cronies of czar and became toothless.It was eventually replaced in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. So, statement 2 is correct. The term ‘Soviet’ means a council- mostly of industrial workers and locally stationed soldiers. During the Bolshevik revolution, local soviets were formed across Russia and these soviets sent delegates to a central Soviet. So, statement 3 is also correct.