Question Types on the AP World History: Modern Exam

Answer: (D) Contextualization and process of elimination help to answer this question. Neither quotation speaks directly to religion or industrialization, making A and B unlikely. While oppression is evident in the first quotation, it is not overtly so in the second, and has nothing to do with social Darwinism in any case, so C is incorrect. In both cases, but in different ways, the impact of social and economic factors on marriage is at stake, and those are what tie the questions together.

Possible answers:

The scholarly debate at stake here is whether the Mughal Empire is best seen as the product of early political modernization—and a departure from earlier regimes ruling India—or as a government that followed older patterns of rulership. Ali promotes the first argument, while Blake, using the label “patrimonial” (in which the state is considered the personal property of a monarchical ruler), takes the second position. The easiest way to answer Part A is to mention the Mughal Empire’s success as a “gunpowder empire,” along with Ottoman Turkey, an adoption of modern technology that buttresses Ali’s thesis. One could also discuss the empire’s elaborate bureaucracy, much of which was in fact kept in place by the British as they extended their colonial reach over India. In favor of Blake’s argument in Part B, one could easily mention how religious policy—especially pertaining to Muslim rulership over India’s Hindu majority—varied widely based on the personal preferences of any given emperor, from Akbar’s remarkable tolerance to Aurangzeb’s extreme Islamic rigidity.

In explaining the differences between the two views, as Part C requires, it might be tempting to point to the two authors’ national differences, one being Indian, the other not. However, the debate does not seem to revolve around this question. Even though one might be able to say that patriotism inclines Ali to favor an argument depicting Mughal India as more modern than Blake appears to think, highlighting this sort of difference in this case runs the risk of stereotyping national viewpoints. (Still, be aware that national perspectives will sometimes affect debates of this type, especially when it comes to Western imperial treatment of other parts of the world, so in some instances it could be worth bringing up.) Perhaps the best way to answer this part of the question would be to point out that Ali seems mostly concerned with the Mughal Empire’s place as a particular stage in India’s long history, while Blake is mainly interested in the Mughal Empire as a political system typical of its era and in comparison with other regimes in Eurasia during a particular time.

During the global wave of decolonization that followed the end of World War II, two political ideologies seemed poised to gain permanent prominence: Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism. Both movements followed the same logic, attempting to empower previously colonized peoples by encouraging a sense of unity based on broad cultural and ethnic identities, rather than on narrow national ones. A key difference, however, is that Pan-Africanism defined itself mainly in terms of opposition to racial and colonial oppression, whereas Pan-Arabism was in a better position to appeal to a common linguistic and religious heritage. In the end, while both achieved certain successes, both proved weaker than the lure of traditional nationalism and fell far short of their original aspirations.

Pan-Africanism had deeper roots than Pan-Arabism, and much of it sprang from the discontent felt by African-descended populations who lived among abusive white majorities or under white colonial rule. These experiences are spoken of by the 1920 “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World” (document 4) and the 1945 poem “In Memoriam,” by Leopold Senghor (document 7). Senghor, from the French colony of Senegal, describes the alienation he feels living in Paris, surrounded by French whites—supposedly his “brothers,” but completely different, and to be feared, with their “faces of stone,” “blue eyes,” and “hard hands.” The contrast between his native landscape and holidays with the streets of Paris and the Catholic Day of All Saints reminds him that he does not belong. As a central figure in the negritude movement, Senghor stressed African identity as a source of strength for all those of African descent living under white rule, no matter where or under which colonial authority. The same viewpoint was expressed even more forcefully by the delegates to the 1920 Convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in New York City. The idea here was that all those of African descent shared a common problem— white oppression, whether in the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, or Africa itself under colonial rule—and a common heritage, and should therefore band together, regardless of language or specific tribal origin. The Convention’s “Declaration” went so far as to nominate an actual president of Africa, and to designate a song about Ethiopia as its anthem.

Document 2, an essay from the 1960s by Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, carries the Pan-African vision into the post-World War II era, when many African nations overthrew colonial regimes or were in the process of doing so. Along with Kwame Nkrumah, who won freedom for Ghana from British rule, Nyerere was one of this time period’s most outspoken supporters of Pan-Africanism. (Also like Nkrumah, Nyerere can be viewed in the larger context of “Third World” political leaders such as Sukarno of Indonesia, Nehru of India, and Nasser of Egypt, all of whom sought ways to strengthen their newly liberated countries and keep them free of Western political interference and economic domination.) Nyerere identifies a key “dilemma” of Pan-Africanism: the fact that African independence has to be achieved country by country, after which it is tempting for each country to focus narrowly on its own interests. He argues vehemently that Africa can prosper only if such temptations are overcome in favor of a larger, more cooperative understanding of what it means to be African. The mural pictured in document 5 is a visual representation of this utopian ideal, which seeks to unite a billion people under one inclusive label, bridging all other ethnic or linguistic differences. Neither document, however, sufficiently addresses the huge difficulties involved with uniting peoples as diverse as those in Africa actually are. While politicians like Nyerere and Nkrumah managed to establish transnational organizations like the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), conflict and disunity have tended to greatly outweigh Pan-African unity in the decades since World War II. Differences in language, ethnic and tribal identity, and local culture and religion seem to have proven stronger than abstract ideology.

Documents 1, 6, and 3 all have to do with Pan-Arabism. Gamal Nasser, who had just risen to power in Egypt as a nationalist leader, and would outrage much of the West by establishing Egyptian control over the Suez Canal, ranks with Nyerere as a major political figure in the “Third World” during the 1950s and 1960s. Like the Pan-Africanists, Nasser saw Pan-Arabism as a means to build strength and defy the militarily stronger and more economically prosperous nations of the West. To that end, he even managed to join Egypt to Syria and Iraq in a short-lived United Arab Republic. Much more so than Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism had the potential to foster transnational unity, because most people in the so-called Arab world shared a common language (Arabic), a common history and cultural heritage, and, in most cases, a common religion (Islam). Document 6, a recent newspaper editorial, makes this exact point in calling for a revival of the Pan-Arab ideal in order to preserve Arab identity in the face of westernization. However, the fact that document 6 has to call for Pan-Arabism in 2012 clearly indicates that, even with the advantage of a common tongue and heritage, Pan-Arabism—like Pan-Africanism—yielded few concrete political results. Some of the region’s smallest nations may have fused together as the United Arab Emirates, but this is hardly a political powerhouse. Document 3, a graphic showing the “Arab world,” with each nation linked to its individual flag, does not say anything overtly—but by its very nature speaks to the failure of Pan-Arabism to overcome national differences in favor of a larger regional identity. Like Nkrumah and Nyerere, Nasser failed to cement in place a larger dream of union.

As rich as the current selection of documents is, you should include additional perspectives to shed even more light on this comparison between Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism. While political elites are well represented, the point of view of nonstate actors is not, and there is much historical evidence to show that the concerns of most ordinary people tend to be local or national, and rarely transnational. Even political leaders who theoretically supported Pan-Arabism, like Gaddafi in Libya and Nasser himself, cared more for their own nations’ interest in the end. With respect to Africa, numerous episodes—such as the Biafra War (in which the Igbo minority tried to secede from Nigeria in the late 1960s) and the 1994 genocide committed in Rwanda by the Hutu against their Tutsi neighbors—provide evidence of the real-life difficulties involved with realizing the dream of Pan-African unity. Finally, to contextualize this topic even further, it would be useful to compare it with trends in Asia during this period. There, too, especially in South and Southeast Asia, many nations decolonized, and a number of them tried to form transnational coalitions or alliances. While Pan-Asianism was not attempted to the same degree that Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism were, organizations such as the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) emerged to accomplish at least some of the same things that Pan-Africanists and Pan-Arabists hoped to bring about in their own regions.

The first half of the twentieth century brought immense changes to many parts of the globe. Among these was increased modernization in a number of non-Western regions, including Latin America and the Middle East. Both places faced similar obstacles, such as relative socioeconomic backwardness, heavy influence from outside powers, and limited success in the past with representative government. There were, however, key differences as well. Latin American states, with their generally longer history of independence, tended to be more modern already. Traditional religion was less of a barrier to change in Latin America than in the Middle East, and events like the world wars and the Great Depression affected both areas differently. On the whole, these differences outweighed the similarities, causing Latin America to make more progress toward modernization than the Middle East.

At the beginning of this period, both Latin America and the Middle East suffered from social and economic underdevelopment. Wealthy elites, whether colonial, corporate, or royal and aristocratic, benefited from the unbalanced exploitation of a handful of commodities. In Latin America, these included foodstuffs (beef, coffee, bananas, and other fruit) and natural resources such as copper, steel, fertilizer, and, in some countries, oil. Oil was even more central to the economies of the Middle East, just as it is today. This “banana republic” overexploitation of resources discouraged the healthy diversification of economies and kept societies rigidly stratified, with small upper classes dominating large, impoverished majorities. Although some of this changed between 1900 and 1945, it limited modernization throughout the period.

Another similarity is that Latin American and Middle Eastern states tended to be heavily influenced by outside powers, both before and during this half century. Prior to World War I, much of the Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Empire or fell into European spheres of influence—and even though the Ottomans fell after WWI, European spheres of influence grew even larger when the post-WWI mandate system placed much of the Middle East, especially the Ottomans’ former Arab possessions, under French and British custody. Most Latin American states had been free since the wars of independence of the early 1800s, but foreign investors (like America’s United Fruit Company) wielded much power over Latin American governments, and the U.S. government regarded the region as part of its political sphere of influence. The Pan- American Union and even Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy were instruments of U.S. diplomatic interests throughout Latin America. Even when these outside interests did not deliberately oppose modernization (and they often did), it was rarely in their interest to actively support economic diversification, and because dealing with cooperative elite classes was easier than negotiating with elected governments representing a range of popular interests, they did not necessarily support democracy either.

On the other hand, important differences moved Latin America further down the path toward modernization. To begin with, Latin American states, while nonindustrialized by the standards of Western Europe and North America, had undergone more industrialization than most parts of the Middle East. With this kind of foundation to build on, countries like Mexico and Argentina, for example, found it easier to create sizable industrial sectors after WWI. Latin American states also had a tradition of constitutional rule stretching back to the era of Simo'n Bol var in the early 1800s, and while those constitutions were not always perfectly followed, they created a more favorable climate for progress when it came to gender equity, enlarging the middle classes, and reforming electoral systems. Less of this was possible in the Middle East.

Another crucial difference involves the role of religion. Although Catholicism was overwhelmingly central to Latin American culture, and although it tended to exert a conservative influence over public life there, by this point in history it was not nearly as much a barrier to social and economic progress as traditional Islam still was in the Middle East. It is no coincidence that the Middle Eastern states that modernized most were the small handful where energetic westernizing autocrats—most famously Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey and Reza Khan Pahlavi of Persia (Iran)—defied the will of Muslim clerics, secularized their states, industrialized their economies and educational systems and, in Ataturk’s case, gave women the vote. By the early twentieth century, such fierce conflict with institutional religion was far less necessary for Latin America to modernize. In the Middle East, by contrast, it remains a struggle even today to balance modernization with respect for Islamic tradition.

Another comparison to consider is the prevalence of dictatorship in both regions during these years. Whether they were monarchs or autocratic strongmen, authoritarian leaders in both regions were often the agents of modernizing change. In the Middle East, the primary impulse for economic and social modernization was typically the will of determined authoritarians, such as the above-mentioned Ataturk and Pahlavi. Among the Latin American dictators who promoted industrialization and other modernizing changes were the Perons in Argentina and the Vargas government in Brazil. One last point that calls out for attention is the pronounced trend toward authoritarian rule worldwide during this period. A truly contextual view of this topic must take into account the rise of dictatorial or nondemocratic regimes in places like Asia (Japanese militarism during the 1930s, warlords and Chiang Kai-shek in China after the collapse of Sun Yat-sen’s democratic revolution) and Europe (most notably Lenin and Stalin in Russia, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany). As with the regions discussed more directly by this question, dictatorship in these other places arose in some cases due to political and economic crises like the Depression, and in other cases due to pressures brought about by rapid modernization.