Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from
1400 Test Bank
Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
Review Questions
Multiple Choice
1. What is history, above all else?
A. a study of only the key people who have influenced the past
B. a path to knowing why we are the way we are*
C. a direct predictor of what will happen in the future
D. a study of how humans have interacted with their environment and climate
Difficulty: Moderate
2. What are two key skills that are developed from studying history?
A. remembering dates and remembering names
B. remembering where things happened and when they happened
C. rote memorization and audience assessment
D. innovative inquiry and creative thinking*
Difficulty: Difficult
3. Which of the following items would be considered a secondary source of information?
A. a map drawn in the 1960s identifying World War II battle sites*
B. a menu from a restaurant
C. song lyrics
D. court transcripts
Difficulty: Easy
4. What is the theory of history that emphasizes studying the deeds and impact of important
leaders to paint an accurate picture of the past?
A. great man theory*
B. great leader theory
C. elite-driven theory
D. progressive history theory
Difficulty: Moderate
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
12/8/2022 2
,OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
5. What belief underlies the field of social history?
A. The study of societies is the only worthwhile method to study history.
B. History is made by all people and not just elites.*
C. Anthropology should be considered a history class.
D. The influence of great men on society is the best way to view historical developments.
Difficulty: Moderate
True/False
6. True or false? The United Nations established a series of universal declarations that
conceived of all people as deserving of human rights and dignity.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy
7. True or false? Sites like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia.com give significant depth to allow for
the critical thinking necessary to produce quality work.
Answer: False
Sites like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia.com do not give significant depth in their descriptions of a
topic.
Difficulty: Moderate
8. True or false? In history, the term causation refers to government policies.
Answer: False
Causation refers to the “why” behind events.
Difficulty: Moderate
9. True or false? The tertiary level of causation includes the results of the historical event.
Answer: False.
The tertiary level is an understanding of the overall cause of the historical event.
Difficulty: Difficult
10. True or false? Michael Sadler and John Thomas Hope argued over whether child labor in
factories was a bad thing.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
3 12/8/2022
,OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
Identification
A. historiography
B. iconography
C. rhetoric
D. great man theory
E. progressive history
11. This is the way words are used or put together in speaking or writing.
Answer: C. rhetoric
Difficulty: Moderate
12. This credits leaders and heroes with triggering history’s pivotal events.
Answer: D. great man theory
Difficulty: Easy
13. This refers to the visual images and symbols used in a work of art.
Answer: B. iconography
Difficulty: Moderate
14. This is how other historians have already interpreted and written about the past.
Answer: A. historiography
Difficulty: Easy
15. This refers to how some have viewed history as a straight line to a specific destination.
Answer: E. progressive history
Difficulty: Difficult
Fill in the Blank
16. A ________ is someone who may reside in only one nation but who self-identifies as part of
the larger world community.
Answer: global citizen
Difficulty: Moderate
17. A ________ means studying events in roughly the order in which they took place.
Answer: chronological approach
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
12/8/2022 4
,OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
Difficulty: Easy
18. In the process we call ________, each additional lens revised the great man story of history,
adding new key players and viewpoints.
Answer: revisionism
Difficulty: Difficult
19. A ________ interpretation of history focuses on viewing history through a lens of class
struggle.
Answer: Marxist
Difficulty: Moderate
20. The ________ is the most immediate reason an event occurred.
Answer: primary cause
Difficulty: Moderate
Short Answer Questions
21. How are people’s names presented in the book?
Sample Answer: The book tries to be true to the essence of world cultures by presenting
people’s names in forms as close as possible to their language of origin. These spelling choices
have been made by experts in their field based on current research.
Difficulty: Easy
22. What are primary sources? What are some examples?
Sample Answer: Primary sources are gateways to the past because they are objects or
documents that come directly from the time period to which they refer. They might be
government documents, menus from restaurants, diaries, letters, musical instruments,
photographs, portraits drawn from life, songs, and so on.
Difficulty: Moderate
23. What are secondary sources? What are some examples?
Sample Answer: Secondary sources are ones written or created after the fact. These might be
books or articles written by historians or other scholars.
Difficulty: Moderate
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
5 12/8/2022
,OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
24. Why do some people remain hidden to history, and how can they be included?
Sample Answer: They remain hidden because few records talk about their lives and
experiences. Historians can use sources like church records, newspapers, and court hearings to
illuminate the lives of the poor and illiterate. Court hearings were one venue in which the
words of people from all backgrounds were recorded as they served as witnesses and as
accused. Mothers and fathers also sought out those who could write letters for them to get
pardons for loved ones convicted of crimes. These kinds of sources shed light on those whose
voices were rarely heard, either while they lived or after they died.
Difficulty: Difficult
25. What happened to Indigenous records in Latin America?
Sample Answer: In the case of Latin America, the historical record was significantly altered
when the Europeans arrived. Believing that much of the writing of Indigenous people that they
found spoke of a religion and culture they meant to replace, the conquerors deliberately
destroyed it.
Difficulty: Difficult
26. What was Romanticism, and how did it change culture?
Sample Answer: The Romantics believed there was greatness in everyday life. Even a small
flower was worthy of a poem, and the plight of a lowly squire was as important as the worries
of the great lord of the manor, for both were essential actors in the human experience. The
advent of Romantic art, poetry, music, and novels paved the way for a broad reexamination of
what was worth knowing and studying.
Difficulty: Moderate
27. What are social constructs?
Sample Answer: These are ideas that have been created and accepted by the people in a
society, such as the concepts of class distinction and gender. Social constructs influence the
ways people think and behave.
Difficulty: Difficult
28. What is intellectual history?
Sample Answer: Intellectual history looks at the ideas that drive people to make certain choices
and focuses on philosophical questions and the history of human thought.
Difficulty: Moderate
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
12/8/2022 6
,OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
29. What is historical empathy, and why is it important?
Sample Answer: It is the ability to meet the past on its own terms and without judgment or the
imposition of our own modern-day attitudes. To fully embrace the study of the past, the
student of history must be able to set aside the assumptions of the modern era. Everyone has a
set of biases, generated by the people who influence our lives and the experiences that shape
who we become. Historians must spend the time necessary to investigate these biases and
understand how they affect their interpretations.
Difficulty: Difficult
30. What role does bias play in historians’ work?
Sample Answer: Historians, particularly those trained in recent times, work to eliminate as
much bias as they can, but we cannot wholly disconnect ourselves from our environment and
beliefs. Bias can even sometimes act as a positive force, allowing us to look at the past in new
ways. For example, historians in the 1960s and 1970s began to question their discipline’s
traditional focus on elites and sought out new sources that highlight the lives of more ordinary
people. Driven by a bias in favor of the counterculture and politics of the era, they wanted to
know more about what all people experienced.
Difficulty: Difficult
31. What did Chinua Achebe write about?
Sample Answer: He wrote about the impact of British missionary work in Nigeria. His writing
speaks to both the historic legacy of colonialism and the need for people to see themselves
independently and then in relation to others.
Difficulty: Moderate
32. Select an event in history and evaluate the spark, the surrounding issues, and the overall
process of motivation, referring to the three identified levels of causation.
Sample Answer: The response would need to identify what is believed to be the primary, then
the secondary, and finally the tertiary levels of causation.
Difficulty: Difficult
Long Answer Questions
33. How should a person approach interpreting a source? What are the key questions to ask
about a source?
Sample Answer:
- Understand the author, the audience, the intent, and the context.
- Identify what kind of source it is.
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
7 12/8/2022
,OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 1: Understanding the Past
- Who authored the source, and are they reliable or do they have an agenda?
- What is the historical context of the source? How does it relate to other events?
Difficulty: Easy
34. How might different schools of historical thought approach the study of Latin America from
the period of European conquest through the independence movements of the 1820s?
Sample Answer:
- The progressive historian might explore the growth of democratic legal systems or
people’s increased interest in republican forms of government.
- The intellectual historian might consider the Indigenous literature and philosophy of
the period.
- The social historian would look at, for instance, what conquered people ate, how
they worked, and what they looked for in marriage partners.
- A Marxist historian would examine unfair labor practices and moments of class
conflict like rebellion or riot.
- The gender historian would focus on the role that social constructs of gender played
in the lives of people in the past.
- The postcolonialist historian would highlight why aspects of colonialism, such as
racism and poverty, remain influential after independence.
Difficulty: Difficult
35. Identify how images of the Hagia Sofia reflect the changes in society throughout centuries.
Sample Answer:
- The building’s history began in the Byzantine Christian era with Justinian.
- That Christian society was eliminated by the Muslim efforts to expand their
territories.
- The changes to the Hagia Sofia reflect the beginning of the Muslim influence.
- One can observe how the Hagia Sofia looks and operates today.
Difficulty: Moderate
This file is copyright 2022, Rice University. All Rights Reserved.
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
12/8/2022 8
,OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 2: Exchange in East Asia and the Indian Ocean
OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from
1400 Test Bank
Chapter 2: Exchange in East Asia and the Indian Ocean
Review Questions
Multiple Choice
1. What was the difference in Akbar’s approach as emperor compared to previous ones?
A. He embraced India instead of being oriented toward Central Asia.*
B. He had harsh penalties for those who disobeyed him.
C. He promoted education more than previous emperors.
D. He decided to have only one wife rather than many.
Difficulty: Moderate
2. What place best reflects the blend of Indian and Islamic cultures in the Mughal dynasty?
A. Malacca
B. Taj Mahal*
C. Din-i Ilahi
D. the Sultanate of Gujarat
Difficulty: Easy
3. Who was the rival to Aurangzeb who sought to eliminate Mughal influences in his region?
A. the king of Sitawaka
B. Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur
C. Shah Jahan
D. Shivaji*
Difficulty: Moderate
4. What was the institution through which numerous merchants pooled their money to fund
trading voyages and share profits?
A. factory
B. hedge fund
C. limited liability corporation
D. joint-stock company*
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
1 12/8/2022
, OpenStax World History, Volume 2, from 1400 Test Bank
Chapter 2: Exchange in East Asia and the Indian Ocean
Difficulty: Easy
5. What movement promoted the study of the physical sciences and technology in order to
solve practical problems instead of focusing narrowly on the Confucian classics?
A. Undang
B. hangul
C. Silhak*
D. yangban
Difficulty: Difficult
True/False
6. True or false? Akbar eventually abandoned all recognized religions and created his own
personal cult.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy
7. True or false? As the Mughals grew stronger in the 1700s, the Marathas grew weaker.
Answer: False
The Mughals grew weaker in the 1700s and the Marathas grew stronger.
Difficulty: Easy
8. True or false? Malacca was aided by Chinese protection while it grew to be strong enough
to defend itself.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate
9. True or false? After Portugal’s attempts to Christianize people in the Sultanate of Ternate,
the Muslims in the region began a holy war against the Portuguese.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Difficult
10. True or false? China went to war with Japan in the sixteenth century because Japan invaded
China’s vassal state of Tibet.
Answer: False
China went to war with Japan in the sixteenth century because Japan invaded China’s vassal
state of Korea.
For more free, peer-reviewed, openly licensed resources visit OpenStax.org.
12/8/2022 2