UNIVERSITY OF WALES

ABERYSTWYTH

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND WELSH HISTORY

MODULE HY14020: The Making of the American Nation

SPECIMEN PAPER

Time allowed TWO hours.
Answer TWO questions.

 

1.         Sam Adams said that the United States Constitution of 1787 embodied 'a National Government instead of a Federal Union of Sovereign States.'  To what extent was this assessment of the new Constitution correct?

 

2.         What was Alexander Hamilton's economic programme, and why did it provoke so much opposition?

 

3.         In what ways did Andrew Jackson extend the powers of the presidency? 

 

4.         To what extent were plantation slaves able to create a separate community and culture?

 

5.            EITHER  (a) 'Moralistic, fanatical, and essentially misguided in their perception of social and political realities.'  Comment on this view of the abolitionists.

 

            OR            (b) If the abolitionists constituted a minority of the population of the northern states, how could a sectional controversy over slavery lead to civil war?

 

6.         What do you see as the most important features of American industrial development during the late nineteenth century?

 

7.         How far did the American city serve as a 'melting pot' for European immigrants?

 

8.         With what justification might intervention in the First World War be seen as a 'watershed' in the development of United States foreign policy?

 

9.         'The 1920s saw major changes in the social roles and behaviour of American women.'  Discuss.

 

10.       'The greatest psychic shock in the history of the American people.'  Discuss this assessment of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

 

11.       Can you discern any underlying principles in the various policies of the New Deal?

 

12.            EITHER  (a) How far, and with what results, did a strategy of 'containment' guide United States foreign policy after 1945?

 

OR            (b) Account for American involvement in the Vietnam War.

 

13.       Why was there a Red Scare in American domestic politics after 1945?

 

14.       'Black leaders have always been torn between the competing goals of integration and separate development.'  Discuss with reference to the period 1955-1970.