Deck 13: The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859-1871

Question 1

The nation-state has all of the following characteristics except:

A) the supreme political authority represents the will and feeling of the nation's inhabitants.
B) the people must sense they are members of a community.
C) the nation is usually composed of all persons sharing the same language.
D) outsiders, even if they speak a foreign language, can be an integral part of the nation-state.

Answer 1

outsiders, even if they speak a foreign language, can be an integral part of the nation-state.

Question 2

Before the nation-state became the standard political model around 1860-1870, the characteristic European political organizations were:

A) federal states like Switzerland and the United States.
B) either small states comprising fragments of a nation or large empires made up of diverse peoples.
C) nation-states like France and Britain.
D) city-states and religious-based countries such as the Holy Roman Empire and the papal states.

Answer 2

either small states comprising fragments of a nation or large empires made up of diverse peoples.

Question 3

During the nineteenth century, governments found that they could not effectively rule or develop the full powers of the state except by:

A) creating and maintaining national militias.
B) enlisting a sense of membership and support among their subjects.
C) increasing the power of the head of state or the monarch.
D) increasing the power and authority of the central government.

Answer 3

enlisting a sense of membership and support among their subjects.

Question 4

The chief significance of the Crimean War in the movement toward national consolidation was that it:

A) weakened Austria and Russia.
B) weakened the Ottoman Empire.
C) strengthened Britain.
D) strengthened Austria.

Question 5

Cavour who became the prime minister of Sardinia in 1852:

A) was conservative, even reactionary.
B) followed a strongly anticlerical policy.
C) sympathized greatly with Mazzini.
D) distrusted and disliked parliamentary institutions.

Question 6

The prime minister of Piedmont, Cavour, shared in the new, post-1848 realism, which meant that:

A) he did not idealize war but was willing to make war to unify Italy under the royal family of Savoy.
B) he encouraged Mazzini to conduct a kind of guerrilla warfare in the south of Italy.
C) he developed a master plan to provoke war with Germany after having assured himself of French military support.
D) he discouraged Piedmont from going into the Crimean War.

Question 7

Which of the following is a result of the 1859 defeat of the Austrians at the battles of Magenta and Solferino?

A) Prussia sent an army across the Rhine into France.
B) Austria ceded Venice and Milan to Piedmont.
C) In Italy, revolutionary agitation broke out all over the peninsula.
D) The pope reluctantly agreed to cede the papal state to Piedmont.

Question 8

The 1860 expedition of Garibaldi and his thousand volunteers to southern Italy:

A) proved unable to defeat the professional army of the Two Sicilies.
B) had the strong financial and moral support of the government of Piedmont.
C) was reluctantly supported by the pope.
D) forced Cavour to accept the initiative and press for plebiscites ratifying the unification of Italy.

Question 9

All of the following were major factors in bringing about the unification of Italy except:

A) the army of France.
B) the nationalist writings and activities of Mazzini.
C) the calculating diplomacy of Cavour.
D) the brilliant military leadership of Victor Emmanuel.

Question 10

Which of the following statements is true of Otto von Bismarck?

A) He considered parliamentary bodies ignorant and irresponsible as organs of government.
B) He was a stout German nationalist.
C) He supported liberalism, democracy, and socialism.
D) He advocated, and even felt, a kind of stout Catholic piety.

Question 11

Prussia beat Austria in the Seven Weeks' War for all of the following reasons except:

A) Prussia's superior weaponry, including the needle gun.
B) the imaginative strategies of making use of railroads.
C) Bismarck's military genius.
D) the unprecedented training and precision of the Prussian infantry.

Question 12

Which of the following is a result of the creation of the North German confederation in 1867?

A) It made Italy withdraw from France's borders.
B) It strengthened Austrian archduke Maximilian's imperial throne in Mexico.
C) It greatly expanded Prussia's political influence.
D) It helped most small south German states to become part of a united Italy.

Question 13

Which of the following is a result of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870?

A) The Italians seized Rome.
B) The French strengthened their army in Rome against Prussia.
C) The Russians were forbidden from keeping naval vessels in the Black Sea.
D) The Prussian forces were defeated by France.

Question 14

In the context of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, which of the following incidents provoked Napoleon III to declare war on Prussia?

A) The Hohenzollern family's refusal to let a member of the Prussian royal family to be constitutional king of Spain
B) The king of Prussia's decision to become the head of government in Spain
C) Prince Leopold's acceptance to being constitutional king of Spain
D) The king of Prussia's commitment of not letting any Hohenzollern ever become a candidate for the Spanish throne

Question 15

The consolidation of Germany was primarily the victory of:

A) nationalism over Prussian monarchism.
B) nationalism over democracy.
C) nationalism over liberalism.
D) liberalism and democracy over regionalism and monarchism.

Question 16

In the 1871 peace settlement between France and Germany, France:

A) lost the Franche-Comté to Germany.
B) paid a small war indemnity.
C) ceded part of Lorraine and most of Alsace to Germany.
D) agreed to dismantle half its border fortifications.

Question 17

Which of the following is a result of the consolidation of Germany in 1870?

A) The dictums of the Peace of Vienna and the Peace of Westphalia were fulfilled.
B) The German Empire became the strongest state on the continent of Europe.
C) The Germans gained control of the whole German imperial territory from Prussia.
D) The German Empire moved away from the earlier constitution of the North German Confederation.

Question 18

The 1867 compromise that created the Dual Monarchy provided that:

A) the Austrian emperor would rule jointly with the new Hungarian king.
B) a common parliament would pass laws for the whole empire.
C) all nationalities in the empire would receive special rights.
D) joint ministries would handle finances, foreign affairs, and war, but separate Austrian and Hungarian ministries would deal with other matters.

Question 19

The Austro-Hungarian compromise was especially disadvantageous to:

A) the Hungarians.
B) the Slavs.
C) the few Italians remaining in the empire.
D) the Austrians.

Question 20

Educated Russians in the nineteenth century were:

A) estranged from the government.
B) reconciled to the Orthodox Church.
C) bonded with the peasantry.
D) on the whole, supporters of tsarist rule.

Question 21

Emancipation of the Russian serfs in 1861 resulted in:

A) the peasantry obtaining more than three-quarters of the land.
B) the undermining of the gentry's financial position.
C) the peasants' land becoming part of the collective property of the village commune (mir) rather than private property.
D) the distribution of all land in full ownership to the peasants, but in tiny, economically inefficient parcels.

Question 22

Which Russian group resorted to assassination and terrorism in their opposition to Tsar Alexander II and the Russian autocracy?

A) The followers of Karl Marx
B) The dissident nobility
C) Dissident intelligentsia inspired by Bakunin and Nechaiev
D) The peasantry

Question 23

Tsar Alexander II instituted all of the following reforms except:

A) public trials and juries.
B) a nationally elected commission.
C) locally elected provincial and district councils.
D) the professional training of judges and their protection from administrative pressure.

Question 24

The Russian socialist Alexander Herzen believed that the true and natural future of socialism lay in Russia because of:

A) the unprecedented misery of the Russian peasant.
B) the rebellious character of the Russian people.
C) the weakness of capitalism in Russia and the existence of a kind of collectivism already established in the peasant commune.
D) the pervasiveness of socialist ideas among the educated classes.

Question 25

The British and French-especially the upper classes-saw in the breakup of the United States during the Civil War the same advantages they had formerly seen in the breakup of the:

A) Habsburg monarchy.
B) Russian empire.
C) Spanish empire in the Americas.
D) Ottoman empire.

Question 26

The American Civil War:

A) benefited Northern business interests.
B) weakened Northern business interests.
C) destroyed white dominance in the South forever.
D) destroyed the economic dynamism of English-speaking America.

Question 27

Lord Durham's report suggested that:

A) French separatism be encouraged.
B) the two Canadas be reunited.
C) self-government would fail in Canada.
D) Canada remain under the control of the British sovereign.

Question 28

The creation of the Dominion of Canada was significant as the first example in a European colonial empire of:

A) the colonial power granting independence to a colony without any pressure from the colony itself.
B) devolution, or the granting of political liberty by the mother country to the colony.
C) international pressure forcing decolonization.
D) the United States' success in forcing decolonization.

Question 29

Compare and contrast Bismarck's and Cavour's methods of achieving unification.

Question 30

Why did the Italian struggle for unification succeed in 1859 when it had failed so miserably in the period of 1848-1849?

Question 31

How important was Napoleon III as a catalyst for the unification of Italy and Germany? Without his presence, would either of these developments have occurred so quickly?

Question 32

What role did economic factors play in the unification of Italy and Germany?

Question 33

What factors led to the Great Russian reforms of the 1860s and 1870s? Why did these reforms dissatisfy many people?

Question 34

How were separatist movements thwarted in both the U.S. and Canada?

Question 35

How was Italy unified? Compare that process to the formation of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

Question 36

How did Prussian militarism facilitate German unification? Evaluate Bismarck's role in the process of German unification.

Question 37

Why did the movement to create a unified Germany give rise to opposing nationalist groups?

Question 38

From 1871-1914, Europe had fewer separate states than at any other time in its history. Where do you anticipate the conflict would have emerged between states by the end of that period?

Question 39

How did European leaders pursue strategies of centralism in the late nineteenth century? Were such strategies effective in overcoming nationalist tendencies within large states?

Question 40

Why did Garibaldi compromise with Cavour in 1860?

Question 41

What provoked the Franco-Prussian War? How was the conflict resolved?

Question 42

How far-reaching was the Act of Emancipation in transforming Russian society?

Question 43

What did the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantee? How was it primarily used after the American Civil War?