Midterm Review

Exam Date: Tuesday, April 5

Do not forget that the date of the examination has been moved to Thursday, April 7. If you are looking for the food for thought on Marxism, go to April 7 on the web site.

Before you study, I strongly encourage you to check out Tips for Exams.

Gallery Topics (10%)

Know the paintings in the galleries. Think about the paintings in the galleries.

Short Essay Questions (30%)

Four of these questions will appear on the examination. You will have to answer one of them.

1) What does John Locke have to do with the origins of nationalism?

2) According to Anthony Smith, what were the Romantic beliefs and assumptions that fostered a belief in the nation?

3) Why did Herder think that every people was just as important as any other? Why was his argument in this respect significant for the development of nationalism?

4) What was the political objective of Sieyes' What is the Third Estate? In other words, what did Sieyes hope to achieve not only by defining the nation, but by defining it in the way he did?

5) In what ways did Sieyes contradict himself in What is the Third Estate?

6) To what extent did the ideas expressed in Robespierre's "Republic of Virtue" speech bear resemblance to Locke's arguments about popular sovereignty?

7) In what ways was Fichte a romantic?

8) If one takes what Crevecoeur had to say at face value, to what extent was American nationalism unique? To what extent did it share certain similarities with certain European ideas?

9) Why did the Revolutions of 1848 fail? Despite their failure, why were these revolutions an important turning point in the history of nationalism?

10) To what extent were the processes overseen by Cavour and Bismarck truly wars of national unification?

11) In what ways did Mill, Renan, and Acton believe that nationalism suffered from important contradictions?

Long Essay Questions (60%)

Two of these questions will appear on the exam. You will have to answer one of them.

1) Which politicians and intellectuals wrote (or spoke) in the romantic tradition of Herder? Which wrote in the Lockean tradition? Using the vocabulary and terms we discussed in the first several weeks of this course, describe these differing traditions or ways of looking at the nation.

2) Nationalism absolutely requires an "Other" to exist. Without an "Other" (a different group upon which are loaded all sorts of undesirable traits) against which to define a national community, there can be no national community. Comment, using as many examples as you can think of from the course.

3) From what you have studied of European developments between 1750 and 1914, to what extent are the modernists right when it comes to the origin of nations?

4) Why was the French Revolution so important in the history of nationalism? To what extent did the rest of the nineteenth century echo with the ideas and examples set forth by that revolution?