(^278) › STEP 5. Build Your Test-Taking Confidence
power within that sphere, giving them almost
total control over their children’s education,
domestic servants, and certain parts of the
household budget.
b) One reason that historians almost always cite for
the emergence of a separate sphere ideology in
the nineteenth century is the competition for jobs
created by the second phase of industrialization.
The initial phases of industrialization,
occurring in the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries, had been labor-intensive,
drawing large numbers of men, women, and
children into the factories and mills. But in the
second half of the nineteenth century, complex
machinery began to make much of that labor
unnecessary, creating unemployment and
intense competition for jobs. Initially men lost
their jobs because women and children were
cheaper labor. Hence, men reacted by creating
a separate sphere ideology that asserted it was
unhealthy and unnatural for women to work
outside the home.
- a) The passage can be identified with develop-
ments in the Cold War because of frequent
references to détente.
The word détente denotes an era of relax-
ing tensions, especially between the United
States and the Soviet Union during the Cold
War. When used by Leonid Brezhnev, general
secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union from
1964 to 1982, détente can only refer to the era
of the Cold War that was characterized by a
number of nuclear test-ban treaties and arms-
limitation talks between the two superpowers,
the Soviet Union and the United States.
b) One reason that explains Brezhnev’s willingness
to cultivate an atmosphere of détente with the
United States during this period is the rethink-
ing of U.S. and Soviet foreign policy that fol-
lowed the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
After this event, which brought the two
superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, a
rethinking of positions occurred in which both
sides acknowledged that more direct and open
communication was necessary to avert such
brushes with disaster in the future. Détente
was essentially an extension of that notion.
Another reason that explains Brezhnev’s will-
ingness to cultivate an atmosphere of détente
with the United States during this period was
the economic strain that the nuclear arms race
put on the Soviet Union.
The constant need to keep its country’s nuclear
arms arsenal more advanced than its opponent’s
made great demands on both the U.S. and the
Soviet economies. The effects of these demands
were felt more acutely in the Soviet Union whose
economy was less productive than that of the
United States. The cost savings gained from
the signing of treaties such as SALT I, SALT II,
and the Helsinki Accords, which limited the
number of nuclear weapons in each superpower’s
arsenal, provided a great incentive for Brezhnev
to cultivate an atmosphere of détente.Section II, Part A: The
Document-Based Question
Strategies
Remember the five steps to a short history essay of
high quality:
Step 1. As you read the documents, decide how
you are going to group them.
Step 2. Compose a thesis that explains why the docu-
ments should be grouped in the way you have chosen.
Step 3. Compose your topic sentences and make
sure they logically present your thesis.
Step 4. Support and illustrate your thesis with spe-
cific examples that contextualize the documents.
Step 5. If you have time, compose a one-paragraph
conclusion that restates your thesis. This question
asks you to compare and contrast views of empire
offered over time. Begin by identifying their simi-
larities and differences (ask what the authors agree
and disagree about) and then see if any trends
develop over time.Outline
A possible outline to the answer for this question
looks like this:
Thesis: The documents illustrate arguments over the
value of colonies to the colonizing nations and illus-
trate a tendency over time for arguments of political
and strategic necessity to replace arguments of eco-
nomic profitability and moral duty.
Topic Sentence A: Documents #1 and #3 both make
arguments that colonies are unnecessary and undesirable27_Bartolini_AnsPrac2_269-280.indd 278 25/04/18 5:56 PM