International Relations Spring Semester, 2021 Exam Number One Your first exam in this course consists of the following essay question (100% of your exam score): Contemporary world politics and international relations have been formed by important historical events, periods, and/or processes. The three major historical events, periods, and/or processes in European and world history discussed in class which were said to have greatly influenced the world in which we live today and the modern practice and study of International Relations are The Thirty Years War and Peace of Westphalia, 1618-1648, the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, 1789-1815, and World War I and the Breakdown of Empires, 1914-1918. In this essay exam you are to respond to the two prompts below based on class lectures and, if possible, the assigned course readings (see below). You may choose to address these two prompts in two separate sections or you may integrate them into a single, holistic essay. First, please describe the major consequences of each of these three major world events, periods, and/or processes as contained in the course handouts and in one to three sentences each, please try to expand on each of these major consequences in one or more of the following ways: (1) put the concept into your own words, (2) find an example of the concept from, or expand on the concept based on, course lecture material, and/or (3) find an example of the concept or expand on it based on material from the assigned readings in the course textbook. Second, make an argument about which of these major world events, in your own opinion, has had the greatest impact on our lives today in the modern world and explain why you think this is the case. In your answer to the argument section of this exam, you may address what the world “looked like” in or through the year 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, and/or how it looks in the year 2021, given the global COVID-19 pandemic the world is currently experiencing. Should you choose to discuss the global Coronavirus pandemic in your answer, you may want to answer the following questions: How can the current global COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on human society/ies be understood with regard to the following concepts from history and international relations: states and state sovereignty, individual rights and liberties, and nations and nationalism? Additionally, or alternately, how might our understanding of these concepts be affected by the global Coronavirus pandemic? Try to incorporate into your answer relevant information from the assigned readings in your course textbook, Essentials of International Relations, by Karen Mingst and Ivan M. Arreguin-Toft, which for this exam include chapter two, pages 20-69, and chapter five, pages 132-138. In this “open exam” format, you are required to provide a page number or numbers for any and all citations you use from the textbook to earn credit for using them. Failure to do so will result in that material not being counted towards your grade on this exam. The more information you make use of and properly cite which contributes to the quality of your essay, the better.