3rd Year History main exam- HY310 Europe in the 19th & 20thCentury.

XxMCRxBabyxX wrote: »

Would any of you as 3rd years have tips for a lil 2nd year for HY210 - Early Modern World: Europe & Global Expansion?

Starting to get very stressed here! And have an awful lot on my plate right now!

When it comes to the short terms here is what I suggest:

Type them all down on to a Word Document, and I mean every one of them. Should look like this:

Reformation:

Absolutism:

Thomas Hobbes:

Edict of Nantes:

etc, etc.

Then go through as many as you can and flesh them out. Write what you know to fill in the details. Obviously, it won't be enough. Then filter through the ones you think have a greater chance of coming up. The method I used was this -

4 Periods: Reformation, Exploration, Absolutism and Enlightenment. If we assume, for the sake of balance, that at least 2 out of the 10 to come up will be from each period, then that makes 8 so far out of ten. The remaining two possibilities will be random.

So, IIRC, the 100+ overall terms had roughly 25 in each period. As in, when David Lederer covered Reformations, roughly 25 terms were referred to in the lectures. Pick out those 25, then refine them down by what you THINK are more likely to come up. For example, Transubstantiation is one of those highly probable terms. Another, might be Council of Trent. The obscure ones you can choose to ignore because even if one or two dodgy ones come up, you still have 8 others to choose from.

After doing this method, in roughly 2 hours you should have about 40-50 terms relatively fleshed out. But most importantly, you the fleshed out ones will be the ones you are quite familiar with and have some sort of knowledge about. At this point you can choose to walk away and move on to Section 2 of the paper. 40-50 terms gives you a very strong possibility of getting a good grade in Section 1. But, for the obscure ones, and to give yourself more confidence, try tying terms together. For example:

Lets say you did Transubstantion, but didn't do Council of Trent, and Council came up in the exam. You can twist your answer. YOu can talk about how the Council was a reaction to Luther's teachings, then talk about those teachings, such as lutheran's not believing in transubstantiation, and this being a major difference between catholics and reformists, etc. This can be done to many, many of the terms. Linking them together and drawing upon the information you learned on another one can really help you out, if you get stuck by a term you didnt prepare.

Section 2: Essay.

I found the essay section was in direct relation to the essays you have done during the year. In which case, I did State Building and Machiavelli with regards to Italian principalities. A friend did reformation and brought in erasmus etc. So, decide which book you enjoyed the most or know the most of - The prince, in praise of folly, lt. nun, candide. Then examine what they are dealing with - religion, war, colonialism. Then read around those subjects, lets say colonialism. Read up on Spain, know the monarchs, know the territories they took, know the benefits and gains associated with it. But most importantly, KNOW HOW IT AFFECTED OTHER EUROPEAN STATES.

On that last note, that is probably the best advice I can give. This is a thematic module. It requires you to know the various political, social and economic problems facing European states, but if you can link two states together, compare and contrast problems, or argue that diplomatic problems were a result of tensions and a conflict of interests then you will be hitting high marks. E.g Treaty of Tordesilas, dividing South America between Portugal and Spain by an imaginary line by the Pope, which didnt even consult other European states, etc.

I know, I ranted a lot, but I really enjoyed this module and I hope this helps you out!