HISTORY OF THE USA (BBNAN12600)
LECTURE COURSE AND EXAM FOR FIRST- AND SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS
Examiner: Pintér Károly
Availability: during office hours and by email: pinter.karoly@btk.ppke.hu
Homepage: http://www.btk.ppke.hu/karunkrol/intezetek-tanszekek/angol-intezet/oktatoink/pinterkaroly/kurzusok
Form of Exam: Written.
Rules of Exam:
Registration: You have to register both for the course and the exam on NEPTUN. The maximum limit
for each exam day depends on the capacity of the hall(s) the test is written in, therefore it
cannot be modified upwards! If you have not registered in advance or you are beyond the
limit, you will not be examined. It is strictly forbidden to register for more than one day
since these people take places away from others. The make-up exam is reserved for failed
students only. If you decide to take the exam for the first time on that occasion, you
automatically lose the opportunity for a resit and your mark will be final.
Changing or cancelling registration: You are free to change your mind after registration until 12 p.m.
of the day before the exam day. You may only register for places left free on other days; if all
places are occupied, you can only postpone your exam to the day of the make-up exam (see
previous point).
Examination day: All people who have registered should appear by official beginning time.
Latecomers forfeit their right to be examined.
Form and Content of the Exam: The written examination consists of three parts: test questions,
discussion of a historical source text, and summary of a chosen historical essay.
1. The test questions are intended to find out whether the student has acquired the basics of US
history. The questions may include multiple-choice questions, sentence completions, definitions
of events or concepts, matching exercises (dates with events, people with dates, people with
events, concepts with definitions, etc.), background knowledge about famous historical figures,
etc.
2. The list of historical source texts will be provided prior to the exam. Students will be given one
text or an excerpt of it and will be asked several questions about it. You don’t have to translate
any portion of the text but should know what it is about, what historical context it belongs to,
what significance it had in American history, or what significant event(s) it reports about.
3. You have been assigned a volume of historical essays by noted American historians. Please
choose any two of those essays and read them carefully for the exam! You may be required to
summarize the main points and the lessons you have learned from those essays as part of the
exam.
Evaluation of the exam: Students receive one grade for the whole exam text. Pass level is defined as
55 % of the maximum score.
Material of the Exam:
1. Essentials
The following are the most essential events, dates, names and concepts of American history. They will figure
very heavily at the exam, as familiarity with them is taken for granted. In case of dates and concepts, this means
that you should know not just what happened at that time or what the definition of that concept is, but also their
significance, their influence, their symbolic value (if there is any) in US history. In case of persons, you are expected to
be familiar with their overall career, their personal roles in shaping an important period of US history. For a full
preparation, you will need to use other sources than merely the compulsory coursebook. The list of
recommended literature is available from the lecturer.
The list of the essentials is the following:
30 EVENTS AND DATES:
1607: Foundation of Jamestown, Virginia: the earliest English settlement in North America
1620: The journey of the Pilgrims: the foundation of New England
1763: Treaty of Paris, the end of the French and Indian War; Britain’s dominance in North America
1775–1783: The War of Independence against Britain, which ended with another Treaty of Paris
1776: Declaration of Independence
1787: The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
1803: Louisiana Purchase
1820: The Missouri Compromise and its consequences
1846–48: The Mexican War and its consequences
1861: 11 Southern states create the Confederacy: the beginning of the Civil War
1865: The end of the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination
1865–1876: The period of the Reconstruction in the South
1898: The Spanish-American War and its consequences
April 1917–November 1918: The US took part in WWI on the Entente side
1929–1933: The Wall Street Crash triggered the Great Depression
1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated President: the beginning of New Deal
December 7, 1941: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; the US entered WWII
June 6, 1944: D-Day in Normandy, the western front against Germany was opened
May 5, 1945: The surrender of Germany; the end of WWII in Europe
August 6 and 9, 1945: Two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1950–1953: The Korean War
1954: Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas; racial segregation began to collapse
1962: The Cuban missile crisis: the hottest moment of the Cold War
1963: President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas
1965–1975: The Vietnam War
1968: The murder of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy
1973: Ceasefire with North Vietnam, American troops leave Vietnam
1974: President Nixon resigns due to Watergate scandal
1991: The collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War;
The Gulf War; the first clash between the US and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
Sept 11, 2001: Attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington by
Al Quaeda; anti-Islamic wave in the US, followed by the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
and the second War in Iraq
12 PERSONS:
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
Andrew Jackson
Abraham Lincoln
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Lyndon Johnson
Martin Luther King
Richard Nixon
Ronald Reagan
20 CONCEPTS (+ those already listed among
Dates and Events):
Puritans
Thanksgiving
plantation
frontier
Articles of Confederation
Founding Fathers
Bill of Rights
abolitionism
free-soilers
Reconstruction
segregation
melting pot
isolationism
Prohibition
New Deal
Marshall Plan
containment
Vietcong
civil rights movement
affirmative action
2. Historical Source Texts
1. Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)
2. The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution (1791)
3. Abraham Lincoln: First Inaugural Address (1861)
4. The Emancipation Proclamation (1862)
5. Abraham Lincoln: Gettysburg Address (1863)
6. The Reconstruction Amendments (1865–1870)
7. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
8. Woodrow Wilson: Fourteen Points Speech (January 1918)
9. Franklin D. Roosevelt: First Inaugural Address (1933)
10. Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
11. John F. Kennedy: Inaugural Address (1961)
12. Martin Luther King Jr: I Have a Dream (1963)
The texts themselves are contained in a separate text file.
3. Small questions
The concepts and persons listed below are considered secondary in importance to the essential dates,
persons and concepts. All you are expected to know about these concepts is
- a general definition (What does it mean? What does it refer to?),
- the historical period they belong to and
- their connection to some important historical event or development (Why is it important?).
In case of ’persons, the primary question is
- ’what is he famous for?’ and
- ’In which period did he live? About when was he active?’
All these concepts and persons are connected to one or more of the essential events or periods of
American history, and they are also discussed in some detail in your coursebook. Many of them are also
related to the source texts too, so when you are learning about them, you are also preparing for the main
part of the exam. Take this list as an additional extra help for the exam, not extra work on your part!
Concepts
Jamestown
indentured servants
Mayflower Compact
New Amsterdam
Quakers
The Great Awakening
Proclamation of 1763
Stamp Act
Boston Massacre
Boston Tea Party
First Continental Congress
Lexington and Concord
militia
Second Continental Congress
Saratoga
Yorktown
Marbury vs. Madison –
judicial review
1st Republicans (or
Democratic Republicans)
Federalists
Northwest Ordinances
Second war with Britain
Monroe Doctrine
Indian Removal Act – Trail
of Tears
Democrats
Whigs
Know-Nothings
manifest destiny
independent Texas
cotton gin
states’ rights doctrine
Underground Railroad
2nd Republicans
popular sovereignty
Dred Scott decision
Battle of Gettysburg
Emancipation Proclamation
Gettysburg Address
13th Amendment
14th Amendment
Johnson’s impeachment
Black Codes
Freedmen’s Bureau
Ku Klux Klan
15th Amendment
carpetbaggers and scalawags
grandfather clause
sharecropper
Plessy v. Ferguson –
„separate but equal” decision
California gold rush
transcontinental railroad
Homestead Act
Battle of the Little Big Horn
Wounded Knee Massacre
Model T
assembly line
Ellis Island
Reed-Johnson Immigration
Act
muckrakers
Progressives
the Maine
Dollar Diplomacy
Panama Canal
the Lusitania
Zimmermann telegram
League of Nations
18th Amendment
Hollywood
bootleggers
Black Thursday
alphabet agencies
Social Security Act
TVA
Lend Lease Act
Battle of the Coral Sea
Battle of Midway
Battle of the Bulge
Manhattan Project
Medicare and Medicaid
sit-ins
Black Muslims
Berlin airlift
NATO
Apollo 11
domino theory
détente
Persons
John Winthrop
Roger Williams
William Penn
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Paine
Alexander Hamilton
John Marshall
James Monroe
Eli Whitney
William Lloyd Garrison
Sam Houston
James Polk
Henry Clay
Stephen Douglas
John Brown
Ulysses Grant
William T. Sherman
Jefferson Davis
Robert E. Lee
John Wilkes Booth
Andrew Johnson
Thomas A. Edison
Andrew Carnegie
John D. Rockefeller
William H. Vanderbilt
Henry Ford
Joseph Pulitzer
Theodore Roosevelt
Al Capone
Herbert Hoover
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Harry Truman
Joseph McCarthy
Douglas MacArthur
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Rosa Parks
Neil Armstrong
Henry Kissinger
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush