Drill 14 · Multiple Choice · Unit 5: Revolutions
AP World History Unit 5 Drill 14 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Unit 5: Revolutions. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
This drill focuses on how nationalism became a major force shaping states and empires from c. 1750 to c. 1900, driving both independence movements and attempts at national unification. Read the passage carefully, then answer all five questions.
Adapted from a modern historian's analysis of nineteenth-century nationalism.
"Nationalism was among the most powerful and destructive forces of the nineteenth century. At its heart was a deceptively simple idea: that legitimate political authority derives from a people sharing a common identity, language, history, culture, or religion, and that such a people constitutes a 'nation' entitled to self-governance within its own state. This idea was explosive because it simultaneously justified independence movements against multinational empires and provided the ideological fuel for ethnic exclusion and conflict. Where nationalists succeeded, in Greece, in Germany, in Italy, in the Americas; they remade the political map. Where the same logic was applied to diverse empires like the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian, it was a force of dissolution rather than creation. The same idea that united could equally divide."
Question 1. Which of the following best states the historian's central argument about nationalism?
Explanation: D is correct. The historian's closing sentence, "the same idea that united could equally divide", captures the central argument. Nationalism unified Germans and Italians into new nation-states and drove Latin American independence; the same logic applied to diverse Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian subjects was a force of dissolution. The historian explicitly presents nationalism as neither simply progressive nor destructive, but contingent on context. A is wrong, the historian calls nationalism "destructive" and does not argue it consistently produced democracy; it produced both republics and ethnic conflicts. B is wrong, the historian does not attribute nationalism's origins to industrial economic grievances; the passage grounds it in the idea of shared cultural identity and self-governance. C is wrong, the historian explicitly says nationalism was a "force of dissolution" in multinational empires, not a creator of stable new states from those fragments.
Question 2. The historian describes nationalism as capable of simultaneously justifying independence movements and providing "fuel for ethnic exclusion and conflict." This claim would be best supported by evidence of
Explanation: B is correct. The historian's specific claim is that nationalism simultaneously justified liberation and exclusion, not just that it sometimes caused violence. The strongest supporting evidence would be cases that show both dimensions operating together: a movement that secured independence for one group while using the same nationalist logic to exclude minorities, immigrants, or rival communities. This would directly demonstrate the dual nature the historian describes. A is wrong, showing that nationalism led to the Terror would support the "destructive" dimension but not the simultaneous unity-and-division dynamic the historian specifically argues. C is wrong, economic growth data speaks to economic consequences, not to the dual political nature of nationalist ideology. D is wrong, a census showing majority democratic outcomes would actually challenge the historian's argument about destruction and ethnic conflict by suggesting nationalism more often leads to stability.
Question 3. The historian's examples of nationalist success; Greece, Germany, Italy, and the Americas, are best understood in the context of which broader development?
Explanation: C is correct. The AP World History CED identifies the rise and diffusion of Enlightenment thought as the intellectual context that preceded and enabled revolutions and nationalist movements. The idea that legitimate government derives from a people's shared identity and consent, which the historian identifies as nationalism's core claim, is rooted in Enlightenment concepts of natural rights, popular sovereignty, and the social contract developed by philosophers like Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. A is wrong, while cuius regio did establish territorial religious authority, it is about rulers' rights to determine religion, not about peoples' rights to self-governance; the conceptual leap to nationalism requires Enlightenment ideas about popular sovereignty. B is wrong, while industrialization did create new political pressures, the historian grounds nationalism in the idea of shared cultural identity, not economic class grievances; industrialization is a related but distinct development. D is wrong, the Congress of Vienna actually tried to suppress nationalism by restoring conservative monarchies; it did not deliberately create conditions favorable to nationalist movements.
Question 4. The historian argues that nationalism was "a force of dissolution" in multinational empires like the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian. Which historical example best illustrates this dynamic?
Explanation: A is correct. The Balkan nationalist movements are the canonical example of nationalism as a dissolving force within multinational empires. As Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and other Balkan peoples developed national identities and sought independent states, they progressively carved territory away from the Ottoman Empire, a dynamic so severe that the Ottomans were described as "the sick man of Europe." This is precisely what the historian means: the same nationalist logic that unified Germans or Italians was fragmenting the diverse Ottoman Empire into competing ethnic national claims. B is wrong; German unification is the historian's example of nationalism as a unifying force, not a dissolving one; it created a new state from fragments rather than breaking apart an existing one. C is wrong, the Meiji Restoration channeled nationalism into state modernization rather than fragmentation; Japan remained unified and grew stronger. D is wrong; Latin American independence is the historian's example of nationalist-inspired liberation from colonial rule, not the dissolution of a diverse multinational empire from within.
Question 5. Which of the following developments after 1900 most directly continued the pattern the historian describes?
Explanation: D is correct. The post-WWI collapse of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires is the most direct continuation of the historian's argument. The Paris Peace Conference applied Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination, creating new states from imperial fragments, but the same process generated bitter conflicts over disputed territories where ethnic groups were intermingled rather than neatly separated. New nation-states emerged (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the successor states of the Ottoman Empire) while simultaneously producing minority populations who felt excluded, exactly the dual dynamic the historian describes. A is wrong, communism explicitly rejected nationalism in theory, though communist states often harnessed nationalist sentiment in practice; this represents a challenge to rather than continuation of the nationalist pattern. B is wrong, the United Nations represents an institutional attempt to manage nationalist conflicts, not a continuation of nationalism itself. C is wrong, cultural globalization is more often cited as a challenge to rather than continuation of nationalist identity formation.