1500 C.E. to 1900 C.E. - SAT Subject Test in World History

The Leviathan was published in 1651 and was written by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that mankind is inherently selfish and inclined towards aggression and disorder. He purports that there exists a “state of nature” of mankind that is, primarily, the “war of all against all.” In order to prevent mankind from constantly warring with one another, Hobbes argues for an absolute monarch and a rigidly structured social order. Hobbes can be seen as the philosophical opposite of John Locke, who argued that mankind was inherently good and that absolute government corrupted those in power into serving solely their own interests. These two political philosophies have clashed ever since, particularly in Europe, and both remain deeply influential in contemporary political thought.

The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of various European heads of states in 1815 in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. The Congress was focused on two major issues: reordering Europe and protecting the "balance of power," and ensuring the continued legitimacy of the absolutist and constitutional monarchs of Europe.

The 1815 Congress of Vienna took place in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. Its primary concern was establishing what has come to be called "The Concert of Europe." Essentially, this means balancing the territory of all the major European nations to discourage them from engaging in warfare with one another (restoring the balance of power). Its secondary concern was ensuring the continued rule of Europe's absolute and constitutional monarchs and preventing the transition towards Republicanism.

While its true that Thomas Jefferson did write in the Declaration of Independence that all men have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," he was taking his ideas from the earlier writings of John Locke. Locke argued against governmental absolutism and firmly believed in the rights of men to govern themselves. He argued that the only legitimate form of government came from the consent of the people and that all men have a right to life, liberty, and (private) property.

The French Revolution began in 1789. It is widely considered one of the most important events in European history, particularly in the history of European transition from absolutism to constituional monarchy to republicanism; however, like many revolutions, it ended up consuming itself and resulting in a dictatorship.

Shaka, who ruled the Zulu Kingdom from 1816-1828, completely transformed the culture of his people and made the Zulus a formidable foe to British Colonists in South Africa. With an increasing encroachment by both British and Dutch descended white Africans, the Zulus began a campaign against the forces of European nations. Shaka was above all a warrior king, who reorganized his entire society around new regiments of soldiers, and made all aspects of Zulu life serve his military.

During the Atlantic slave trade, most African slaves were sent to either Brazil or to plantations in the Caribbean. The Portuguese did not take slaves back to Portugal but rather to their many plantations in Brazil.

The voortrekkers were descendants of the intial Dutch settlers from the Cape Colony. When British colonization of South Africa began in the 1830s, the voortrekkers moved inland to take the inland agricultural areas. In doing this, they displaced many native Africans, often with the use of considerable force.

The abolition movement began in Britain towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1807, Parliament passed a law banning the slave trade, which made it illegal for any British citizen to buy or kidnap a slave from Africa; however, the institution of slavery remained in effect in some parts of the British Empire. This was ended by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

Shaka the Zulu is one of the most famous and significant African rulers of the nineteenth century. He is often credited with uniting several tribes into the Zulu nation and his military prowess is revered by some historians. His rule was also one of great brutality and relatively short-lived for such a famous king. (He ruled for a little over a decade.) He continues to be influential in African culture to this day, particularly in South Africa.

The introduction of firearms in West Africa contributed to increased conflicts in this period among various tribes and kingdoms, leading to the collapse of larger states, including the greatest West African kingdoms (which had emerged before this period) that still remained. The growing Atlantic slave trade did cause societal collapse both by contributing to these growing conflicts and by taking millions of able-bodied people from Africa. Meanwhile, agriculture was transformed (and the demographic losses due to war and slavery were somewhat offset) by introduction of New World crops like peanuts and manioc.

The British Agricultural Revolution took place between 1700 and 1800. During this time period, the introduction of new technologies meant that far fewer people were needed to work the fields in order to provide enough food for the population. This caused people to move from the countryside to cities in search of work, which in turn provided the raw labor required to drive the Industrial Revolution.

The Norfolk four-course crop rotation system was one of the most important developments of the British Agricultural Revolution. It focused on rotating which crops were grown in soil in order to help the soil retain nutrients and maximize fertility and growing power.

From the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century, the Dutch were major players in global trade. To help encourage the spread of wealth and to facilitate risky trading ventures over immense distances, the Dutch pioneered several banking institutions which quickly spread to England and the rest of Western Europe.

The Monroe Doctrine was issued by the United States’ President James Monroe in 1823. It was issued in response to the wave of South American independence movements that had swept the European powers out of almost all territory in the Western hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine threatened that the United States would intervene on behalf of the Latin American republics if the European powers tried to recapture territory in the Western hemisphere. It is one of the most significant foreign policy tenets in United States history and remains influential to this day.

The Sepoy Mutiny (sometimes called the First War of Indian Independence or the Indian Rebellion of 1857) occurred in Northern India. Much of India at the time was under British control, and the government was generally referred to as the British Raj. It has become common policy to state that the rebellion began when Hindu and Muslim Sepoys (another word for soldiers) were told that the grease used in their rifles was from either pork or beef fat—pork would offend Islamic customs and beef would offend Hindu customs; however, the rebellion was really an outpouring of long-held frustrations and angers. It would eventually be brutally put down by the British and resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Indian civilians.

The Indian caste system has existed for hundreds of years as a means of enforcing social stability and obedience; however, it has often been rather fluid, and rarely has it been uniformly enforced across the whole vast Indian subcontinent. Following the arrival of the British, however, the imperialist government needed a way to further entrench their system of power, so they sought to solidify and normalize the caste system. They placed Brahmans (priests and religious figures) at the top, followed by the Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), then Vaishyas (merchants), and finally Shudras (workers and peasants). Below the established caste system there existed, and indeed still exists, an “untouchable caste” of Dalits.

This question is primarily asking you to identify which of these empires rose to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century, as this was the time period in which Social Darwinism became a factor in European Imperialism. Social Darwinism was a political manipulation of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” biological theory and was used to “justify” conquering and ruling native people under the guise that they were better off being ruled by "fitter" human beings. The only one of these empires that was rising in the second half of the nineteenth century was the German empire. The Roman, Carthaginian, and Greek empires were all in their ascendency in the classical era, and the Spanish empire rose to prominence in the late-Medieval and early-Renaissance eras.

Following the arrival of the British in the Indian subcontinent the established elites were generally reinforced in their legitimacy and control of the territory. The British arrived with only a couple of thousand men and were faced with the task of administering a population of tens, if not hundreds, of millions so they rather had little choice but to manipulate the existing forms of power.