The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848 · TEST YOURSELF
Age of Revolutions quiz: 8 questions
Try these 8 multiple-choice questions on The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848 for free. After each answer, you can read the explanation.
Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General in 1789, opening the Revolution. Why did he call it?
The crown’s war debts, including those incurred in America, led to a crisis over taxation and representation. The same sequence had appeared in 1775, but here it operated on ten times the scale. Interest absorbed half the royal budget, and a national body was needed to give taxation of the privileged orders legitimacy.
Why did the United States and European powers refuse recognition to independent Haiti and impose embargoes on it?
Haiti’s successful revolution brought isolation. France later made recognition conditional on a 150-million-franc “indemnity”: the payment compensated the enslavers. The principles of the age had met a case in which honoring them was costly, and they failed the test.
Most of Germany has turned tan by 1807. What does that color show?
In 1806 Napoleon dissolved the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire. Some 300 statelets were remade into about 40 satellites, modernized by the Code and garrisoned by France. Their experience also taught a nationalism that would eventually turn against Napoleon.
Napoleon used the Continental System to ban British trade and strangle Britain. What happened instead?
The blockade depended on closing the routes through which British trade could continue. That drew Napoleon into Portugal, Spain, the Papal states and finally Russia. Enforcing the economic war helped set the empire on its course toward destruction.
Fewer than 100,000 effectives returned from the 600,000 men who invaded Russia. What destroyed the Grande Armée?
Victories in battle could not stop the Grande Armée losing men to distance, disease, hunger and desertion. Napoleon preferred the explanation “General Winter.” It also shifted blame away from the man whose plan had failed.
What do the hatched territories that appear after 1815 represent?
The hatching marks restored rule in places such as Bourbon France and Spain and re-partitioned Italy. Treaties put thrones back; bayonets did so where necessary. The Concert of Europe sought to preserve the resulting settlement.
By 1825 Spain had lost its American empire. Which power benefited most from its collapse?
“I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old,” boasted Canning. The former colonies gained political independence, while British loans, cloth and the Royal Navy offshore accompanied a new economic dependence.
Within weeks, the revolutions of 1848 reached nearly every European capital; within a year, they had failed nearly everywhere. What best explains their failure?
The revolutionary coalitions broke apart: workers and liberals fought during the June Days in Paris, Germans opposed Czechs, and Magyars opposed Croats. The old regimes’ armies, unlike those in 1789, did not collapse. From Custoza to Világos in 1848–49, soldiers fired on the revolutions.
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