For this assignment, you are no longer a mere student of world history. Today you have become the leader of an entire nation in the early 20th century. This nation bears your name. Whether your title is president, emperor, czar, prime minister, or another supreme title, you must take the reigns and take decisive action. The decisions you make have the power to change the lives of the people in your nation, and around the world, for better or worse.
As you envision your created country, you will need a full understanding of what makes up a nation—including its people, its history, its governance, and its goals for the future. In addition, you will need to understand the complex state of world affairs at this time in history. Will nations discussed in this week’s readings be your allies or your foes? Given a chess game analogy, how will you keep your king safe and which countries will be your pawns?
For this week’s Assignment, you will create your nation, and build it to prosper within the context of an early 20th century world.
To prepare for this Assignment:
- Envision your own country called YOUR-NAME-HERE-land.
- Review Chapter 3 (pp. 32–40) and Chapter 5 (pp. 55–68) in this week’s Resources to more clearly understand the realities of the world in which you will create your country.
- Consider what life was like for the average person in Europe, Russia, or North or South America during that time. Is life in your created country similar or different?
- Consider the political policies countries were pursuing at this time in history and the struggles they were facing. How about in your created country?
- Reflect on how countries felt about each other, and the alliances they were building. Which would be your created country’s allies and its foes?
The assignment:
- Compose a 2-page essay in which you do the following:
- Describe what kinds of political policies your created country (again named YOUR-NAME-HERE-land) would hold and why, and decide which other countries you would align yourself with and why. Be sure to consider the consequences of the political policies, alliances, and interconnectivity of European, Russian, and North and South American countries in the early part of the 20th century.
