Meiji Restoration
What year marked the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of imperial rule under Emperor Meiji?
1868
What title did Nicholas II hold, denoting his position as unrestricted autocratic ruler of Russia?
Tsar
What are the four causes of WWI.
Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism
What type of warfare dominated the Western Front?
Trench warfare
What term describes the Meiji style of industrialisation?
State-led/centralised industrialisation (top-down modernisation)
What 1868 document set out the guiding principles of the new Meiji government, including "knowledge shall be sought throughout the world"?
The Charter Oath
What was the name given to the 1905 event where unarmed protesters marching to petition the Tsar were fired on by troops outside the Winter Palace?
Bloody Sunday
What event on in Sarajevo is considered the immediate trigger of WWI? And when was it?
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914
What government measure compelled men to enlist for military service, ending reliance on volunteers? When was it introduced?
Conscription (1916)
Historians often distinguish "defensive" militarism from "offensive" militarism. Which of these relates to Meiji Japan and which relates to Europe in 1914 and why?
Europe: Offensive Militarism
What social class was formally abolished under the Meiji reforms?
Samurai
Who was the mystic who gained influence over the royal family?
Grigori Rasputin
What secret society, linked to the assassin Gavrilo Princip, sought South Slav independence from Austria-Hungary?
The Black Hand
What was DORA and when was it passed?
August 1914
Name the two decisive military defeats that each triggered major domestic revolutionary unrest at home?
The Russo-Japanese War (1904–05, sparking the 1905 Revolution) and Russia's WWI losses (contributing to the 1917 Revolution)
Which European power did Japan defeat in the 1904–05 war that confirmed its arrival as a modern military power?
Russia (the Russo-Japanese War)
What condition affected Tsarevich Alexei?
Haemophilia
What was the main German war strategy?
The Schlieffen Plan
What 1916 battle on the Western Front resulted in over a million casualties with minimal territorial gain?
The Battle of the Somme
What kind of political institution remained weak or heavily restricted in both Meiji Japan and Tsarist Russia?
A genuinely empowered representative parliament (the Diet was limited in Japan; the Duma was limited in Russia)
What slogan captures the Meiji government's core policy goal of building military strength through economic development?
"Fukoku kyōhei" (rich country, strong army)
In what month and year were Nicholas II and his family executed by Bolshevik forces in Ekaterinburg?
July 1918
What were the two main alliances and who was in them?
The Triple Entente: Great Britain, France, and Russia
The Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy
What date marks the armistice that ended fighting on the Western Front?
11 November 1918
What single underlying factor best explains why rapid modernisation strengthened and stabilised Meiji Japan but ultimately destabilised and collapsed late Tsarist Russia?
e.g. pace/scope of reform, degree of elite and popular buy-in, war strain, absence of land/social reform in Russia vs. broader reform in Japan