History · General Awareness

World History

2,990 Questions

World history encompasses major events like the English Civil War, the American Civil War, and the Spanish colonization of Mexico. This hub provides practice questions on treaties, dynasties, and feudal systems. These concepts are essential for general awareness preparation in UPSC and SSC exams.

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World History Questions

Multiple choice
  1. Battle of Wandiwash

  2. Battle of Buxar

  3. Battle of Plassey

  4. Battle of Adyar

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

Battle of Wandiwash 1760— from 1744, the French and English fought a series of battles for supremacy in the Carnatic region. In the third Carnatic war, the British East India Company defeated the French forces at the battle of Wandiwash ending almost a century of conflict over supremacy in India. The battle gave the British trading company a far superior position in India compared to other Europeans.

Multiple choice
  1. Irish history

  2. British Commonwealth

  3. the name of the American Parliament

  4. the history of North America

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

The term 'Congress' was adopted by the Indian National Congress from the history of North America, specifically referring to the American Congress.

Multiple choice

The English government once again gave importance to Cabot because

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

JOHN CABOT

Nobody remembers much about John Cabot, trader and mariner, lost at sea. He lived at the time of Columbus and was a citizen of the city-state of Venice in Italy. He traded in spices and was an expert mariner. Following Columbus, he wanted to find a north-western route to Asia, but he was one up on Columbus in his knowledge of geography. He assumed that it would take a shorter time to reach Asia by a western sea route if he selected higher northern latitudes. In 1496, he set sail from Ireland under English royal sanction, but was forced to return after reaching Iceland. In 1497, he set sail again with a better ship, the Matthew, and ultimately succeeded in reaching Newfoundland. In 1498, he again set sail for America with a fleet of five ships, out of which one returned to harbour under distress. There has been no further news of the remaining four ships and John Cabot was marked as lost at sea. Everybody forgot about him for about a century, until the British remembered that when John Cabot had reached Newfoundland in 1497, he had done so, under a royal grant. The grant had allowed him to claim unknown lands for the English Crown. So, John Cabot, lost at sea, became important again for the English to stake their claims for the New World. Everybody remembers him for the English claims to North America, but we remember him for his brave spirit of exploration.
  1. he was a brave and adventurous man

  2. it realized the importance of his efforts for their country

  3. he had more knowledge than Columbus but was still not so famous

  4. it wanted to lay claims on North America on basis of his discovery

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

It is given in the passage. “So, John Cabot, lost at sea, became important again for the English to stake their claims for the New World.”

Multiple choice

He calls “England ten times herself, intoxicatingly unforeign”. He is being

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

An English soldier whose fortunes, for most of the war, were not out of the common, left England and landed in France by the same ports as Falstaff and Henry V on their journey to Agincourt. He disembarked on the quay where Burne-Jones and Morris, walking there in their youth, had vowed themselves to the careers by which they were to tint the mind of educated England for a generation. He first marched up into the line across the country of Dumas’s Three Musketeers, passing the belfry of Bethune and tramping the road to Cambrin, which the son of Athons had ridden to join the staff of Conde. Dulled for a time by the effect of combustion, his hunger for seeing the sights revived in a tent in the park of Versailles, near the Petit Trianon, where countless bunches of mistletoe sat still, like pheasants, on the boughs of trees that had been young with Marie-Antoinette. When convalescent, he sojourned under canvas for two winter months upon the sands where Napoleon had mustered his grand armada of flat-bottomed craft for the projected descent upon England. Restored for a season to his own friends in the line, he was presently sent travelling again, this time by trench fever. He came to his wits, warm and at rest, in a marvellous tent lined with silk and double-walled, the gift of an Indian Prince to an Emperor.  Beneficent and inscrutable powers bore him away to a regal city where Joan of Arc had been burnt and King John had murdered Prince Arthur. When he could walk on a deck, genies carried him down to a quay and put him on board a black ship, to glide for a whole sunny April day down the unwinding coils of a river, so divinely puissant and so fringed with diverse delights to the eye, that a lifetime’s loyalty to our queenly Thames was for some dizzy moments seriously imperiled. Falling early to sleep, the serene infant sleep of health reborn, he awoke to the sound of water lapping quietly under opened potholes—Southampton. Water rippling and shining, fringed with inviolate trees, the unshelled houses gleaming white and red among them: England ten times herself, intoxicatingly unforeign. And the English trains, smooth movers along well-wheeled tracks through cuttings vivacious with the English primrose, to drop the impersonally conducted tourist in a new dwelling-place of wonder, with Plymouth Sound below his window and Drake’s bowling-green above his chimneys.
To charm him next there came a month of guarding on the Firth of Forth, of living in a half-dismantled ancient fort, a fort of Walter Scott, with Edinburgh Castle lifting to the skies above the great smoke in the south, and the first Highland hills to the north-west stretched out pensive in the long midsummer sunsets that always had the gaunt queer lines of the Forth Bridge laid down on them monstrously black; and once the great fleet streaming out in slow procession from its guarded haunt above the bridge, and returning a day or two later, diminished and bringing its wounded, some ships in tow, some with their funnels knocked awry, and moving slowly, as with pain; some with a first-aid dressing of red-painted bedding stuffed into holes in their sides; and then the first leave men coming chuckling ashore at the pier and telling the soldiers off duty how they had knocked Fritz at Jutland; their voices are audible still, and the laughter mingling in the summer night with a plashing of oars and elfish summer lightning while the sentry searchlight, grave, alert and steady on its post, wheels to and fro across the gateway of the Firth.
The spectacle of many battles followed—defeat and victory, always in illustrious places; the Somme with its sultry months of slaughter-house smell and flies and frustration; Arras, petering out in futile attrition after its first wondrous morning of tempest, rain and wasted valour, when the battle, seen from above, wrote itself clear in legible letters of flame on the blackboard of a moonless last hour of night; Messines, where all the British mines, exploding together in the flight’s first moment, shook the little hill from which our soldier looked down upon the fight as if it were a little boat on a choppy sea; and Flanders, Cambrai, St Quentin and all the great days of the three months of triumph.  (from The Right Place by CE Montague)

 

  1. highly passionate about England

  2. highly nostalgic about England

  3. excessively effusive about England

  4. passionately euphoric about England

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Being keenly desirous of returning to something or person for which there is a strong longing. This answers the description.

Multiple choice

What purpose does the writer serve by naming historical figures?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

An English soldier whose fortunes, for most of the war, were not out of the common, left England and landed in France by the same ports as Falstaff and Henry V on their journey to Agincourt. He disembarked on the quay where Burne-Jones and Morris, walking there in their youth, had vowed themselves to the careers by which they were to tint the mind of educated England for a generation. He first marched up into the line across the country of Dumas’s Three Musketeers, passing the belfry of Bethune and tramping the road to Cambrin, which the son of Athons had ridden to join the staff of Conde. Dulled for a time by the effect of combustion, his hunger for seeing the sights revived in a tent in the park of Versailles, near the Petit Trianon, where countless bunches of mistletoe sat still, like pheasants, on the boughs of trees that had been young with Marie-Antoinette. When convalescent, he sojourned under canvas for two winter months upon the sands where Napoleon had mustered his grand armada of flat-bottomed craft for the projected descent upon England. Restored for a season to his own friends in the line, he was presently sent travelling again, this time by trench fever. He came to his wits, warm and at rest, in a marvellous tent lined with silk and double-walled, the gift of an Indian Prince to an Emperor.  Beneficent and inscrutable powers bore him away to a regal city where Joan of Arc had been burnt and King John had murdered Prince Arthur. When he could walk on a deck, genies carried him down to a quay and put him on board a black ship, to glide for a whole sunny April day down the unwinding coils of a river, so divinely puissant and so fringed with diverse delights to the eye, that a lifetime’s loyalty to our queenly Thames was for some dizzy moments seriously imperiled. Falling early to sleep, the serene infant sleep of health reborn, he awoke to the sound of water lapping quietly under opened potholes—Southampton. Water rippling and shining, fringed with inviolate trees, the unshelled houses gleaming white and red among them: England ten times herself, intoxicatingly unforeign. And the English trains, smooth movers along well-wheeled tracks through cuttings vivacious with the English primrose, to drop the impersonally conducted tourist in a new dwelling-place of wonder, with Plymouth Sound below his window and Drake’s bowling-green above his chimneys.
To charm him next there came a month of guarding on the Firth of Forth, of living in a half-dismantled ancient fort, a fort of Walter Scott, with Edinburgh Castle lifting to the skies above the great smoke in the south, and the first Highland hills to the north-west stretched out pensive in the long midsummer sunsets that always had the gaunt queer lines of the Forth Bridge laid down on them monstrously black; and once the great fleet streaming out in slow procession from its guarded haunt above the bridge, and returning a day or two later, diminished and bringing its wounded, some ships in tow, some with their funnels knocked awry, and moving slowly, as with pain; some with a first-aid dressing of red-painted bedding stuffed into holes in their sides; and then the first leave men coming chuckling ashore at the pier and telling the soldiers off duty how they had knocked Fritz at Jutland; their voices are audible still, and the laughter mingling in the summer night with a plashing of oars and elfish summer lightning while the sentry searchlight, grave, alert and steady on its post, wheels to and fro across the gateway of the Firth.
The spectacle of many battles followed—defeat and victory, always in illustrious places; the Somme with its sultry months of slaughter-house smell and flies and frustration; Arras, petering out in futile attrition after its first wondrous morning of tempest, rain and wasted valour, when the battle, seen from above, wrote itself clear in legible letters of flame on the blackboard of a moonless last hour of night; Messines, where all the British mines, exploding together in the flight’s first moment, shook the little hill from which our soldier looked down upon the fight as if it were a little boat on a choppy sea; and Flanders, Cambrai, St Quentin and all the great days of the three months of triumph.  (from The Right Place by CE Montague)

 

  1. He employs the technique of three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface.

  2. It lends perspective to the whole exercise that is carried out so assiduously.

  3. The journey of the soldier acquires significance when seen in this background.

  4. The writer is able to carry the reader along the lanes and by-lanes of history.

  5. By thus presenting the historical personages he has tried to dramatize history.

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

This is more on the side of the reality. He takes readers through the lanes and by-lanes of history by thus naming historical figures.

Multiple choice

This essay is the record of

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

An English soldier whose fortunes, for most of the war, were not out of the common, left England and landed in France by the same ports as Falstaff and Henry V on their journey to Agincourt. He disembarked on the quay where Burne-Jones and Morris, walking there in their youth, had vowed themselves to the careers by which they were to tint the mind of educated England for a generation. He first marched up into the line across the country of Dumas’s Three Musketeers, passing the belfry of Bethune and tramping the road to Cambrin, which the son of Athons had ridden to join the staff of Conde. Dulled for a time by the effect of combustion, his hunger for seeing the sights revived in a tent in the park of Versailles, near the Petit Trianon, where countless bunches of mistletoe sat still, like pheasants, on the boughs of trees that had been young with Marie-Antoinette. When convalescent, he sojourned under canvas for two winter months upon the sands where Napoleon had mustered his grand armada of flat-bottomed craft for the projected descent upon England. Restored for a season to his own friends in the line, he was presently sent travelling again, this time by trench fever. He came to his wits, warm and at rest, in a marvellous tent lined with silk and double-walled, the gift of an Indian Prince to an Emperor.  Beneficent and inscrutable powers bore him away to a regal city where Joan of Arc had been burnt and King John had murdered Prince Arthur. When he could walk on a deck, genies carried him down to a quay and put him on board a black ship, to glide for a whole sunny April day down the unwinding coils of a river, so divinely puissant and so fringed with diverse delights to the eye, that a lifetime’s loyalty to our queenly Thames was for some dizzy moments seriously imperiled. Falling early to sleep, the serene infant sleep of health reborn, he awoke to the sound of water lapping quietly under opened potholes—Southampton. Water rippling and shining, fringed with inviolate trees, the unshelled houses gleaming white and red among them: England ten times herself, intoxicatingly unforeign. And the English trains, smooth movers along well-wheeled tracks through cuttings vivacious with the English primrose, to drop the impersonally conducted tourist in a new dwelling-place of wonder, with Plymouth Sound below his window and Drake’s bowling-green above his chimneys.
To charm him next there came a month of guarding on the Firth of Forth, of living in a half-dismantled ancient fort, a fort of Walter Scott, with Edinburgh Castle lifting to the skies above the great smoke in the south, and the first Highland hills to the north-west stretched out pensive in the long midsummer sunsets that always had the gaunt queer lines of the Forth Bridge laid down on them monstrously black; and once the great fleet streaming out in slow procession from its guarded haunt above the bridge, and returning a day or two later, diminished and bringing its wounded, some ships in tow, some with their funnels knocked awry, and moving slowly, as with pain; some with a first-aid dressing of red-painted bedding stuffed into holes in their sides; and then the first leave men coming chuckling ashore at the pier and telling the soldiers off duty how they had knocked Fritz at Jutland; their voices are audible still, and the laughter mingling in the summer night with a plashing of oars and elfish summer lightning while the sentry searchlight, grave, alert and steady on its post, wheels to and fro across the gateway of the Firth.
The spectacle of many battles followed—defeat and victory, always in illustrious places; the Somme with its sultry months of slaughter-house smell and flies and frustration; Arras, petering out in futile attrition after its first wondrous morning of tempest, rain and wasted valour, when the battle, seen from above, wrote itself clear in legible letters of flame on the blackboard of a moonless last hour of night; Messines, where all the British mines, exploding together in the flight’s first moment, shook the little hill from which our soldier looked down upon the fight as if it were a little boat on a choppy sea; and Flanders, Cambrai, St Quentin and all the great days of the three months of triumph.  (from The Right Place by CE Montague)

 

  1. historical events seen through the eyes of a soldier who cherishes the freedom he has acquired

  2. a detached thoughtful mood showing intimate communion the author held with nature

  3. whimsical wanderings of a soldier into the nothingness and trappings of history

  4. the historical events and personages who dominated the scene and altered the course of history

  5. the significance of an individual soldier in the background of war and devastations caused by wars

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

The essay is the record of historical events seen through the eyes of a soldier who is on convalescence tour to France cherishing his much needed respite from war. This answers it.

Multiple choice
  1. It is probable that France would be allowed to tour England at the beginning of the next year.

  2. France will be allowed to probably tour England at the beginning of the next year.

  3. Its probable that France will be allowed to tour England around the beginning of next year.

  4. It's probable that France will be allowed to tour England in approximately the beginning of next year.

  5. It is probable that France will be allowed to tour England at the beginning of the next year.

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
E Correct answer
Explanation

Correct; removes the tense error by using 'will' to refer to a future tour

Multiple choice
  1. ABECD

  2. EACBD

  3. DECAB

  4. BCDEA

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Northmen are introduced in E. “they ravaged' in A follows E. 'What most checked these ravages' in C follows A. 'Robert the Strong' and his three generations in D naturally follows 'a warrior named Robert the Strong' in C. Hence, EACBD

Multiple choice
  1. Lord Canning

  2. Lord Mountbatten

  3. Lord Dalhousie

  4. Lord Cornwallis

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The Doctrine of Lapse was an annexation policy applied by the British East India Company in India under the Governor-General Lord Dalhousie between 1848 and 1856.