History Question

Pick 4 of the 7 question. Each question’s answer must be half a page. Two questions per page.

1. What were the key features of the new spirit that came to be called the Renaissance? What were the medieval roots of the Renaissance? In what ways did this cultural movement break away from medieval ideas, and how much of this had to do with new technologies?
2. Christianity has been continuously reformed throughout its long history. Why did the Protestant Reformation represent such a definite break with Roman Catholicism, and do you think the break was inevitable? Explain your conclusions.
3. To what extent did the European voyages of expansion and conquest of the (late fifteenth and) sixteenth centuries inaugurate an era of global history? Did this era represent the birth of “globalization”? Explain why or why not.
4. Turning again to these European voyages, what long-term political, economic and demographic circumstances drove the expansion of European influence into the Atlantic world, and what were the consequences of this expansion?
5. What possible connection could be made between the intellectual development of scientific thinking in the seventeenth century and the Reformation of the sixteenth century? Was the new science incompatible with religious faith? (You can have another shot at this)
6. What accounts for the success of absolutism in some parts of Europe and its failure in others?
7. Compare the Enlightenment as an intellectual movement to the Protestant Reformation as an intellectual movement. How are they similar and how are they different?