Final exam challenge

Ten questions of mixed difficulty, covering Canada, Internationalism, National interest, Origins, Ultranationalism in practice. Print it, or work through it on screen — the answer key starts on its own page.

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Final exam challenge

Social Studies 20-1 · maddyhelps.com

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Circle the best answer for each question. Show your work in the space provided.

Self-determination has often proved difficult to apply because
1. a) it applies only to European peoples
2. b) it is forbidden by the UN Charter
3. c) populations are mixed, so any border leaves some group as a minority
4. d) no state supports the principle
Ultranationalist regimes of the 1930s typically justified expansion by claiming
1. a) that borders should be decided by the League of Nations
2. b) that all nations were equal
3. c) that empires were outdated
4. d) the nation needed more territory and had a right to rule inferior peoples
The Reign of Terror is used in this course to illustrate that
1. a) nationalism in the name of the people can be used to justify violence against them
2. b) monarchy is preferable to republics
3. c) revolutions always fail
4. d) France never became a nation
The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s in Quebec involved
1. a) Quebec's separation from Canada
2. b) an armed uprising against the federal government
3. c) rapid secularization and a much larger role for the provincial state
4. d) the end of the French language in Quebec
The Responsibility to Protect holds that
1. a) sovereignty carries a duty to protect one's population, and the world may act if a state fails
2. b) every state must accept refugees
3. c) states may never intervene in another state
4. d) the UN must approve every war
Appeasement in the 1930s refers to
1. a) rearming as fast as possible
2. b) conceding to Hitler's demands in the hope of avoiding another war
3. c) expelling Germany from the League of Nations
4. d) forming alliances against Germany
A country's national interest is
1. a) the same for every country
2. b) whatever the majority of citizens want at any moment
3. c) set by the United Nations
4. d) what its leaders judge to be best for the country as a whole
The Holodomor refers to
1. a) the famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–33, caused largely by Soviet policy
2. b) the Armenian deportations of 1915
3. c) the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany
4. d) the Rwandan genocide of 1994
Napoleon spread nationalism across Europe partly by accident, because
1. a) French occupation provoked national feeling among the peoples he conquered
2. b) he abolished the French army
3. c) he granted independence to every territory he took
4. d) he asked each conquered nation to write a constitution
The argument that Canada is a nation of nations rests on the claim that
1. a) every province is a separate country
2. b) Canada has no national identity at all
3. c) several peoples with their own identities share one state without merging into one nation
4. d) Canadian identity is defined only by citizenship

Answer key · Final exam challenge

Social Studies 20-1 · maddyhelps.com

c) populations are mixed, so any border leaves some group as a minority — Drawing a line around one nation usually traps another inside it. Partition in India and the breakup of Yugoslavia both show how quickly the principle can produce the violence it was meant to prevent.
d) the nation needed more territory and had a right to rule inferior peoples — Lebensraum in Germany and the new Roman Empire in Italy both dressed conquest as national necessity. The step from believing your nation superior to acting on it is the one Related Issue 2 keeps returning to.
a) nationalism in the name of the people can be used to justify violence against them — The same revolution that produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man executed thousands as enemies of the nation. The pattern — defining the nation and then defining people out of it — recurs throughout Related Issue 2.
c) rapid secularization and a much larger role for the provincial state — The Church's role in education and health passed to the province, Hydro-Québec was nationalized, and a modern francophone middle class emerged. It transformed Quebec nationalism from defensive to assertive.
a) sovereignty carries a duty to protect one's population, and the world may act if a state fails — Adopted by the UN in 2005, R2P reframes sovereignty as responsibility rather than immunity. Applying it consistently has proved far harder than agreeing to it.
b) conceding to Hitler's demands in the hope of avoiding another war — The Munich Agreement of 1938 handed over the Sudetenland; Germany took the rest of Czechoslovakia within six months. Memories of the slaughter of 1914–18 made the policy far more understandable at the time than it looks now.
d) what its leaders judge to be best for the country as a whole — It usually covers security, economic prosperity and the promotion of national values. Who defines it, and whose interests get counted, is the argument the whole related issue turns on.
a) the famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–33, caused largely by Soviet policy — Grain requisition quotas and restrictions on movement turned a poor harvest into mass starvation, killing millions. Canada and a number of other states recognise it as a genocide; the question of intent is still debated by historians.
a) French occupation provoked national feeling among the peoples he conquered — He carried revolutionary ideas of citizenship and legal equality with him, and being ruled by foreigners gave Germans, Spaniards and others a sharp reason to define themselves as nations.
c) several peoples with their own identities share one state without merging into one nation — It treats Quebec, Indigenous nations and the wider Canadian community as real and simultaneous. The counter-argument is that a state needs a single shared identity to hold together at all, which is the heart of Related Issue 4.