What seemingly important factors turn out to be not-so- significant – and vice versa?

please look at all files by writing the essay instead of google informations

questions in section 2 will be relatively limited in scope and will deal with material only covered since the midterm. Do not be surprised if the question prompts in this section include either extracts from a document(s) or an image. Review the approach to interpreting visual and documentary historical evidence in the guidelines posted on Blackboard.

Here are some thoughts about writing essay answers:
 Preparation strategy. Organize your preparation around the key concepts provided on the study sheet. If you prepare yourself to answer an essay question in each of the four areas suggested on that list (and paying attention to the listed sub-parts), you will be prepared to respond adequately to some or all of the questions proposed in each section of the exam.
 Read. Take a deep breath while reading your chosen essay question carefully. Questions may well be multi-part: be sure to respond to each part. Questions may include instructions (“select three of the following regions…”): be sure to follow them.
 Make some notes. Simply to begin pouring out everything you know that has some general relation to your chosen question is not a good strategy for achieving a top answer. Resist the strong temptation to do that. Instead, still breathing deeply, (1) take a couple minutes to brainstorm: jot down the concepts and facts that you want to mention in responding to the question. Next, (2) look over your quick list: in what order do you want to present those elements in responding to the question? Number your list in that order and refer back to it as you write. And, decide: what overall answer to the essay question does your list suggest?
 Structure. Start your essay by giving your overall answer or response to the question. You can do this if you started out with adequate brainstorming (see “Make some notes”, above). If you find you cannot state an overall answer/response to the question, brainstorm a little while longer. Then, use the body of your essay to illustrate/elaborate this overall answer. If refinements to your overall answer occur to you as you write, you can state those refinements in your concluding paragraph.
 Your insights. A top essay answer clearly reflects your insights into the subject matter. These insights may or may not be “original” to you (it is fine to adopt someone else’s good idea), but whatever the source of your insights, your statement of them should reflect your thought-out position on the subject you are addressing. As you prepare in the areas outlined in the study guide, focus on developing these positions. You now have a knowledge-base in world history. Use that knowledge base in developing your positions about world history in our period: why did things develop as they did? What factors were important? What seemingly important factors turn out to be not-so- significant – and vice versa?

 Specifics. As with your responses to the identification questions, and for the same general reasons, it is important that you state your position in response to essay questions in terms of specific evidence from our materials. There are two, opposite, ways to screw this up: (1) statement of “general insights” not tied to specific evidence may be intriguing, but are insubstantial – and probably unclear. If you cannot state your insight in terms of specific evidence, you had better revisit your insight. Be mindful of this as you prepare – make sure you have specific evidence illustrative of each of your positions or insights. (2) Statements of specifics not tied to general insights – these are tedious, and probably disorganized. Do NOT assume that the Reader understands why you are citing a specific piece of evidence! Spell out what you believe the evidence you are presenting signifies. Be explicit: there is little danger that you will be “too clear.”

The key is not to look at it as an intimidating mountain of material that you must master all at once. Using the chapter outlines and key questions in the textbook, consider what major “connective tissues” link the different chapters together. Organize your reading, your review of the notes, and your thinking around those themes. Remember: the most productive thinking and learning in a course like this does not happen when you mentally prepare specific answers to specific questions. Instead, it happens when you become familiar enough with key issues, events, trends, concepts, and individuals (and how they relate to the major and minor themes of the class) that you can use that material to answer any specific question about those major themes.
With that exhortatory paragraph in mind, let’s look at some of what I see as connective themes (there will be some overlap between major themes):
Contact and exchanges between peoples and cultures
Trade and economic relations
Exchange of ideas, germs, foods
Conflict and warfare, exchange of military methods and technologies Exchanges or migrations of populations (voluntary and involuntary)
Political institutions, their challenges and developments
Organizing states over large distances
Relationships between “one” or “few” and “many” – rulers and ruled
The nature of the body politic (subjects of the Emperor? Members of the nation? Citizens of the Republic?)

Economic links and changes
Shaping of the global system of economic exchange
Imperialism, Globalization
Industrial revolution, manufacturing, mechanization, their impact on society Global “haves” and “have-nots” at various periods in history, their relations
Culture, religion, arts and society
Contact and exchanges between societies in thought and religion
“Western” science and technology and their challenges and acceptances in other societies
Enlightenment globally, Socialism globally, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism globally Challenges to the dominant rational Enlightenment paradigm from East and West
Now obviously, this is a big subject and the class has covered a lot of material. Getting a handle on it is a daunting task, if you let the sheer scope of the project get to you. I suggest you divide the course up into elements that are easier to approach one at a time. The best approach I have found over the years has been to work consciously from broad to narrow.
What do I mean by this? Let me give just an example that you could apply with variations. The course has attempted to treat the world and its history as an interrelated system. How could one study how we have seen the world as a system? Let’s start with broad and move to narrow. We have looked at empires or interconnections between parts of the globe and the human societies that inhabited them from the Mongols to the present century. So, we could break the broad idea of the “global system” into narrower parts: The Mongol empire as a “steppe empire” was a starting point; then there were the other, similar and sometimes competing, examples of steppe empires we have mentioned; then the emergence of an ocean- borne trading system; the development of a more comprehensive international system of trade and contact across the oceans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; then the consolidation of a European-dominated imperial global system linked to the industrial revolution; then the century of global conflict that eventually destroyed that imperial system and replaced it with what we know today. You could review your material looking for each of these examples of the “global system” and how they are similar responses to similar challenges, or unique reactions to specific circumstances, seeking points of comparison and contrast.
Something similar could be done with other possible themes such as technology and its impact; exchanges between cultures (goods, foods, germs, ideas), economic changes linked to the way people produce, including mechanization and industrialization and their consequences; the emergence of different political systems and ideologies and their conflicts. In each case you are moving from the more general to the more specific and seeking points of comparison and contrast within the broad themes.

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