World History Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 13)

The key for this question is 1965. Ghana hosted the OAU’s Second Ordinary Session in Accra from 21 to 26 October 1965. The OAU resolutions thank President Nkrumah for the hospitality. 1963 is wrong because that year the Charter was signed in Addis Ababa. 1964 and 1966 are wrong because the Accra summit was in 1965. Memory hook: signed in 1963, hosted in 1965.

The correct answer is in Beijing, en route to a peace mission in Hanoi. Nkrumah left Ghana for Hanoi on 21 February 1966. When the coup came on 24 February, he was in China. London is wrong because he was not at a Commonwealth summit. Accra is wrong because he was abroad. Cairo is wrong because no source places him there. Memory hook: the coup struck while he was away.

The correct answer is 12 June 1949. Nkrumah launched the Convention People’s Party in Accra on Sunday 12 June 1949, at a rally of over 60,000. 6 March 1957 is wrong because that is independence. 21 March 1952 is wrong because that is when his appointment as prime minister was approved. 1 July 1960 is wrong because that is the republic. Memory hook: CPP 1949, freedom 1957, republic 1960.

The correct answer is Lincoln University. Nkrumah entered Lincoln in Pennsylvania in 1935 and earned his BA there in 1939. Lincoln itself lists him as the first president of Ghana. Harvard, Howard and Columbia are wrong because no source places his undergraduate degree at any of them. Memory hook: Lincoln, 1939.

The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 erased the “Second World”; without it, the three-world framework stopped making sense, and the term fell out of favour through the 1990s.

The Non-Aligned Movement was founded in 1961 at Belgrade, formalizing the solidarity first expressed at the 1955 Bandung Conference.

The Second World meant the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies; the 1955 Bandung Conference, bringing together 29 Asian and African nations, was an early expression of Third World solidarity.

Sauvy modeled the term on France’s pre-revolutionary Third Estate: commoners with real needs, but no political voice, like the unaligned nations he was describing.

French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined “Third World” (Tiers Monde) in 1952, in an article titled “Trois Mondes, Une Planete.”

The United States conducts regular “freedom of navigation” naval operations in the region, asserting international waters remain open.

In 2016, an international tribunal ruled against China’s nine-dash line claim in a case brought by the Philippines, though China rejected the ruling.

China has built artificial islands with military facilities on several reefs, escalating tensions with rival claimant states.

The dispute centres on two island groups, the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands, along with their surrounding waters.

China’s claims rest largely on its historical “nine-dash line,” a boundary asserting sovereignty over most of the sea, dating back to 1940s maps.

Oral history became an important method for people’s history, since many marginalized groups left few written records behind.

Subaltern Studies, a movement originating in South Asia, focused specifically on recovering the voices of groups excluded from elite historical narratives.

Historian E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class became a landmark example of history told “from below.”

The Annales School in France pioneered this shift, emphasizing long-term social and economic structures over individual political events.

Traditional historiography once focused on “meta-narratives,” grand overarching stories centred on kings, wars, and major political events.

Bismarck deliberately excluded Austria from the new German Empire, ensuring Prussia’s dominance over the unified state.

The German Empire was proclaimed in 1871, with the Prussian King crowned as Kaiser, unifying the German states under Prussian dominance.

Prussia fought three deliberate wars, against Denmark, Austria, and France, each strengthening Prussian leadership over the German states.

Bismarck’s approach relied on practical power politics rather than ideology, famously summarized as achieving goals through “blood and iron.”

Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s Chancellor, engineered German unification through a calculated policy known as Realpolitik.