Imagine and describe a day in the life of a craftsman in a medieval French town.
Students are advised to answer this question with the help of their teachers. Following guidelines are given to complete this task:
1. Craftsmen worked under the supervision of guilds. They were skilled persons.
2. Trading guilds controlled and supervised their activities and took great care of their needs.
Compare the conditions of life for a French serf and a Roman slave.
What was the function of medieval monasteries?
Why did knights become a distinct group and when did they decline?
How did long-term changes in population levels affect economy and society in Europe
Describe two features of early feudal society in France.
Look at the diagram showing the positive feedback mechanism on page 13. Can you list the inputs that went into tool making? What were the processes that were strengthened by tool making?
Why do we say that it was not natural fertility and high levels of food production that were the causes of early urbanisation?
What were the features of the lives of the Bedouins in the early seventh century?
Why was trade so significant to the Mongols?
Which elements of Greek and Roman culture were revived in the 14th and 15th centuries ?
Compare the civilization of the Aztecs with that of the Mesopotamians.
How did Britain’s involvement in wars from 1793 to 1815 affect British industries?
Comment on any points of difference between the native peoples of South and North America.
What were the major developments before the Meiji restoration that made it possible for Japan to modernise rapidly?
Humans and mammals such as monkeys and apes have certain similarities in behaviour and anatomy. This indicates that humans possibly evolved from apes. List these resemblances in two columns under the headings of (a) behaviour and (b) anatomy. Are there any differences that you think are noteworthy?
What were the features of the lives of the Bedouins in the early seventh century?
What were the relative advantages of canal and railway transportation?
Keeping the nomadic element of the Mongol and Bedouin societies in mind, how, in your opinion, did their respective historical experiences differ? What explanations would you suggest account for these differences?
Indicate how the supply of raw materials affected the nature of British industrialization.
Which of the following were necessary conditions and which the causes, of early urbanisation, and which would you say were the outcome of the growth of cities:
(a) highly productive agriculture,
(b) water transport,
(c) the lack of metal and stone,
(d) the division of labour,
(e) the use of seals,
(f) the military power of kings that made labour compulsory?
Do you think that Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China were successful in liberating China and laying the basis for its current success?
What were the Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles?
Discuss how daily life was transformed as Japan developed?
How does the following account enlarge upon the character of the Pax Mongolica created by the Mongols by the middle of the thirteenth century? The Franciscan monk, William of Rubruck, was sent by Louis IX of France on an embassy to the great Khan Mongke’s court. He reached Karakorum, the capital of Mongke, in 1254 and came upon a woman from Lorraine (in France) called Paquette, who had been brought from Hungary and was in the service of one of the prince’s wives who was a Nestorian Christian. At the court he came across a Parisian goldsmith named Guillaume Boucher, ‘whose brother dwelt on the Grand Pont in Paris’. This man was first employed by the Queen Sorghaqtani and then by Mongke’s younger brother. Rubruck found that at the great court festivals the Nestorian priests were admitted first, with their regalia, to bless the Grand Khan’s cup, and were followed by the Muslim clergy and Buddhist and Taoist monks.
Write a careful account of how the world appeared different to seventeenth century Europeans.