Reference no: EM133686905

Questions:

1. Explain the factors which resulted in China's decline in the nineteenth century, focusing both upon events within China as well as Western ambitions and technologies.
2. Discuss some of the challenges China faced in adapting to Western and modern institutions and approaches before the 1911 revolution.
3. Compare the land empire of China with Japanese imperial aspirations by 1905.
4. Explore the relative differences between Japan and China in the mid nineteenth century and how this affected their different responses to Western ideologies and imperialism.
5. What do you think the Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Russo-Japanese War tell us about the political, military, and economic issues that would continue to dominate East Asia throughout the twentieth century?
6. How were relations between the European Powers prior to World War One? Did colonialism shape relations? Why was Germany such a problem prior to World War One? What actions did Germany take that led to the instability in the international order? Did Kaiser Wilhelm play any role? What was Kaiser Wilhelm's "Blank Check?" How did the French, Russians, and the British get sucked into what should have been a minor affair in the Balkans?
7. Why did Germany want the war to spread throughout the globe? Why did Britain hope to contain the war to Europe? Name at least three areas across the globe where the war spread (prior to US involvement) and give supporting details as to Who? What? When? Why? How? and Where?
8. Why was Austro-Hungary a burden for Germany to be allied with? What was tearing Austro-Hungary apart? What was the war like in Eastern Europe and the Balkans? Was it particularly nasty? Why? Did ethnicity play any factor in the nature of the war in the East? Does the World War One in Eastern Europe surprise you?
9. What did the Germans call the opening day of the Amiens Offensive? Which allied nation planned and executed the Amiens Offensive? What did the Germans realize after Amiens? What had become impossible for Germany to achieve?The Germans not only lost on the battlefield in 1918. What were some of the other key "battles" they lost? What did Ludendorff and Hindenburg do, along with Kaiser Wilhelm, when they realized the war was lost? What happened to the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires that would forever shape events leading to World War Two and the rest of the 20th Century?
10. Why was the Wiemar Republic doomed to failure after signing the Armistice and the treaty of Versaille?
11. What was convened in Paris in 1919? How many nations participated? Who was not invited? Name the Big Four? What clause did the Germans object too in the Treaty of Versailles? Why did the Allies insist upon the clause? Why did Wilson fully support it? (The film will tell you he was a liberal but that term is not the same as it is today, as both Republicans and Democrats could be liberal progressives at this time). Funny too, as the British and the French are normally blamed for reparations but in the end who insisted upon them?
12. Wilson set the bar so high with his 14 Points was it inevitable that the Paris Peace talks failed to meet expectations? Did the failure of the United States to ratify the terms of the treaty inevitably contribute to the coming of World War Two? (For example the US never joined the League of Nations created to avoid future wars!).