What was one of the major problems faced by post-colonial African nation-states?
They inherited artificial boundaries drawn by Europeans leading to contests between different ethnic groups for control of the new state
Between the two world wars, the former Ottoman territory of Palestine was controlled by which country?
Britain
The form of rapid, state-directed development initiated in many new African nations was called:
Scientific socialism
How did the United States respond to the rise of socialist-leaning governments and revolutionaries in Latin America after 1960?
It gave financial, military and political support to right-wing governments, militias and terrorists.
The tactic (witnessed for example in the Vietnam war) of using low-grade weaponry mixed with knowledge of the local terrain and the use of civilians as shields and support, is called:
Guerilla War
This group was a guerilla Islamist army made up of tribal groups within Afghanistan. They believed they were the warriors of Allah, called to repel the atheistic Soviet Union from invading the country between 1979 and 1989. The United States gave support to them as part of its attempt at blocking the expansion of the Soviet Union.
Mujahedeen
Who was Ho Chi Minh?
The leader of communist North Vietnam, and inspiration behind the South Vietnamese Communist movement.
What was the name given to the loss of European empires in the period 1945 and 1980?
Decolonization
What was the main, distinctive feature of Gandhi's Indian nationalism?
Nonviolent Resistance
In the 1980s many western countries, under the auspices of organization such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, agreed to debt relief for African countries on what condition?
Africa opened up to western trade and investment
What was the main difference between the initial era of Arab nationalism (c. 1945-1970s) led by men like Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the new form of anti-western nationalism which emerged in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979?
The later form was based more firmly on using Islam as a tool to unite people in the Middle East against the west, whereas the former was more about ethnic, not religious, identity.
Kwame Nkrumah was a leading voice in Pan-African nationalism. He became President of the first African colony to gain independence (in 1957) and called for a United States of Africa:
Ghana
The Six Day War (1967) led to this country seizing control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and defeating the surrounding Arab countries. It was seen as a humiliating defeat for Arab nationalism.
Israel
The Arab-Israeli (or Israel-Palestinian) conflict has many dimensions, but at core it is about:
The conflicting demands of Jewish and Arab populations for independent statehood in the same geographical territory
One of the most intense crisis points of the Cold War was triggered when the strongly anti-American dictator Fidel Castro invited the Soviet Union to station nuclear missiles in his country, just off the coast of the United States. This triggered the United States to attempt to stage an invasion to overthrow Castro. Which country?
Cuba
Who was Nelson Mandela?
He protested against apartheid in South Africa, and was thrown in prison. He became President of the country in 1994 after apartheid collapsed.
To rapidly develop infrastructure, many new African nations
Borrowed heavily from western banks
The attempt at translating the religion of Islam into a framework for government, law, and politics—evident in the late twentieth century across the Middle East (e.g. In Iran after 1979)—is known as:
Islamism
The name given to Mao's attempt at purging Chinese youth of all respect for all non-Communist ideas, including tradition and family authority, was called:
The Cultural Revolution