2019 (Aug.): NY Regents - Global History & Geography II
By Sara Cowley
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Last updated 39 minutes ago
36 Questions
Base your answers to questions 1 and 2 on the map below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Base your answers to questions 3 and 4 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
... I shall tell you with what we must provide ourselves in order to expel the Spaniards and to found a free government. It is union, obviously; but such union will come about through sensible planning and well-directed actions rather than by divine magic. America stands together because it is abandoned by all other nations. It is isolated in the center of the world. It has no diplomatic relations, nor does it receive any military assistance; instead, America is attacked by Spain, which has more military supplies than any we can possibly acquire through furtive [stealthy] means.When success is not assured, when the state is weak, and when results are distantly seen, all men hesitate; opinion is divided, passions rage, and the enemy fans these passions in order to win an easy victory because of them. As soon as we are strong and under the guidance of a liberal nation which will lend us her protection, we will achieve accord [unity] in cultivating the virtues and talents that lead to glory. Then will we march majestically toward that great prosperity for which South America is destined. Then will those sciences and arts which, born in the East, have enlightened Europe, wing their way to a free Colombia, which will cordially bid them welcome. ...
— Simón Bolívar, “Reply of a South American to a Gentleman of This Island [Jamaica],” September 6, 1815 (adapted)
Base your answers to questions 5 through 7 on the illustration and excerpt below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Base your answers to questions 8 and 9 on the map below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Base your answers to questions 10 and 11 on the poem below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Attack
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun [brownish dark grey]
In the wild purple of the glowering [glaring] sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!
— Siegfried Sassoon, 1918
Base your answers to questions 12 and 13 on the excerpt below and on your knowledge of social studies.
BOMBAY, SUNDAY
The great test has come for “Mahatma” Gandhi, the Indian Nationalist leader, in his efforts to obtain the complete independence of India from British rule. Wading into the sea this morning at Dandi, the lonely village on the Arabian Sea shore, Gandhi and his followers broke the salt monopoly laws and so inaugurated the campaign of mass civil disobedience. There was no interference by the authorities, although a detachment of 150 police officers had been drafted into Dandi and a further force of 400 police was at Jalalpur.
The actual breaking of the salt monopoly law was witnessed by a large crowd who gathered at the seashore. Surrounded by about 100 volunteers—including those who had made the 200-mile march from Ahmedabad,—Gandhi waded into the sea and bathed. Pots were then filled with seawater and boiled or left in the sunshine and the salt residue sprinkled on the ground. Gandhi was hailed by Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, the Indian poetess, as “the lawbreaker.” . . .
— The Manchester Guardian, April 7, 1930
Base your answers to questions 14 and 15 on the maps below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Base your answers to questions 16 and 17 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Excerpt of a Speech Given by Nehru at the Bandung Conference in 1955
... If all the world were to be divided up between these two big blocs what would be the result? The inevitable result would be war. Therefore every step that takes place in reducing that area in the world which may be called the unaligned area is a dangerous step and leads to war. It reduces that objective, that balance, that outlook which other countries without military might can perhaps exercise. ...
— George Kahin, ed., The Asian-African Conference, Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 Cornell University Press, 1956
Base your answers to questions 18 through 20 on the poster below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Mao's cult of personality also went beyond the badges and the Little Red Book. There were propaganda posters inside homes, classrooms, meeting halls, office buildings, and factories. The line beneath Mao's image says: Wishing Chairman Mao a long life.
Base your answers to questions 21 and 22 on the article below and on your knowledge of social studies.
Atatürk's Fashion Police
Turkey’s restrictions on wearing overtly religious-oriented attire are rooted in the founding of the modern, secular Turkish state, when the republic’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, introduced a series of clothing regulations designed to keep religious symbolism out of the civil service. The regulations were part of a sweeping series of reforms that altered virtually every aspect of Turkish life—from the civil code to the alphabet to education to social integration of the sexes.
The Western dress code at that time, though, was aimed at men. The fez—the short, conical, red-felt cap that had been in vogue [fashion] in Turkey since the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II made it part of the official national attire in 1826—was banished. Atatürk himself famously adopted a Panama hat to accent his Western-style gray linen suit, shirt, and tie when he toured the country in the summer of 1925 to sell his new ideas to a deeply conservative population. That autumn, the Hat Law of 1925 was passed, making European-style men’s headwear de rigueur [fashionable] and punishing fez-wearers with lengthy sentences of imprisonment at hard labor, and even a few hangings. . . .
— Roff Smith, “Why Turkey Lifted Its Ban on the Islamic Headscarf,”
National Geographic, October 12, 2013
Base your answers to questions 23 and 24 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
The Costs of Soviet Involvement in Afghanistan
Soviet leaders continue to express frustration over the protracted [drawn out] war in Afghanistan. This was evident at the party congress in February 1986 when General Secretary Gorbachev referred to the war as a “bleeding wound.” Soviet involvement in Afghanistan has led to periodic censure within the United Nations, become a stumbling block to improved Sino-Soviet relations, and complicated Soviet policy toward nations in the nonaligned movement. At home, pockets of social unrest related to Afghanistan, the diversion of energies from pressing economic problems, and dissatisfaction in the political hierarchy over the failure to end the war also probably worry the leadership.
The war has not been a substantial drain on the Soviet economy so far, although the costs of the war have been rising faster than total defense spending. We estimate that from their initial invasion in December 1979 through 1986 the Soviets have spent about 15 billion rubles on the conduct of the war. Of this total, about 3 billion rubles would have been spent over the seven-year period even if the USSR had not occupied Afghanistan. . . .
— “The Costs of Soviet Involvement in Afghanistan,” Central Intelligence Agency, February 1987
Base your answers to questions 25 and 26 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
". . . China is such a powerhouse of low-cost manufacturing that even though the NAFTA accord has given Mexico a leg up with the United States, and even though Mexico is right next door to us, China in 2003 replaced Mexico as the number two exporter to the United States. (Canada remains number one.) Though Mexico still has a strong position in big-ticket exports that are costly to ship, such as cars, auto parts, and refrigerators, China is coming on strong and has already displaced Mexico in areas such as computer parts, electrical components, toys, textiles, sporting goods, and tennis shoes. But what's even worse for Mexico is that China is displacing some Mexican companies in Mexico, where Chinese-made clothing and toys are now showing up on store shelves everywhere. No wonder a Mexican journalist told me about the day he interviewed a Chinese central bank official, who told him something about China's relationship with America that really rattled him: 'First we were afraid of the wolf, then we wanted to dance with the wolf, and now we want to be the wolf.'. . ."
— Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
Base your answers to questions 27 and 28 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
... One of the most important effects on the environment is indirect, and therefore less obvious: Industrial meat production is a key factor behind deforestation of the Amazon and other tropical rain forests. They’re being cleared to create fields to grow the feed needed for all those cows, especially corn and soy, which the cows eat instead of the grass they’d munch on if they were grazing in fields as they used to do. In fact, most of the corn and soy grown today goes to feed cattle, pigs, and chickens, not people. And all that grain requires vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn takes vast quantities of oil—1.2 gallons to create the fertilizer for every bushel. Finally, cutting down rain forests, which are full of carbon-absorbing trees, further exacerbates [worsens] climate change by reducing the planet’s ability to soak up carbon...
— Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times Upfront, January 18, 2010
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