THE EUROPEAN WORLD, 1500-1750

A recent exam paper for this module can be found at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/exampapers

Model paper
(i) For all candidates:

Time allowed: 3 hours
Answer THREE questions

Answers should NOT include any significant amount of material already presented in ANY long assessed essays.

Candidates should not answer an asterisked question if they have taken the course named after it.

Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the particulars required are entered on each answer book.

1. Do you agree that monarchical power was relatively under-developed in early sixteenth-century Europe?

2. 'The social and economic roles of women remained largely unchanged in this period'. Discuss.

3. How would you characterise relationships between landlords and peasants in sixteenth-century Europe?

*4. To what extent was poverty an urban phenomenon in early modern Europe? (Poverty, Charity and Welfare in Early Modern Europe)

5. To what extent did the late medieval Church meet the needs of the people?

*6. Why did Martin Luther's message have such an impact in German towns? (Germany in the Age of the Reformation)

7. Account for the social appeal of Calvinism in early modern Europe.

8. Compare the attitudes of Protestant and Catholic reformers to popular religious traditions.

9. How far did 'oral' and 'literate' culture interpenetrate one another in this period?

10. Account for regional variations in witchcraft prosecution in this period.

11. Do you agree that European expansion was more significant in ecological than in cultural terms?

12. To what extent did the people of early modern Europe exercise agency in the process of government?

13. 'It is in the nature of empires to over-reach themselves'. Discuss with reference to two or more examples from this period.

14. Was the government of European states becoming more centralised in this period?

15. Assess the relative significance of economic and political factors in the rise and fall of the Dutch Republic.

16. 'If we want to understand early modern Europe we have to start by looking at its armies'. Discuss.

17. What were the social and economic foundations of 'absolutism'?

18. Why was political instability so much more characteristic of England than of France in the seventeenth century?

19. Account for the changing strategic balance in the Baltic in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

20. Who benefited most from the course of social and political change in early modern Europe?