II. Essay (I will choose one of the following essays and it will be worth 9 points)

General Guidelines: Remember, the main goals here are three in number: 1) make sure you identify and then utilize at least one of the sources we’re covering in class in your essay (which means in your preparation identifying those sources that would be appropriate for each of the three questions you see below); 2) make certain that you develop an argument or overall point that you want to make for each of the three questions and 3) make sure that you support each of the points you make in the essay with some kind of evidence, whether from the primary source(s) you choose or from another source (like lecture or the textbook). When I grade the essays, I will be measuring performance based on the above three goals.

1. Nationalism will inevitably result in oppression of one group by another in any society within which it takes hold short of strong institutional restraints on its tendencies.  Agree or disagree and explain why.

 
2. Foreign policy experts have said that the period of the Cold War while certainly a tense period in the history of the world was actually a safer world in some respects than the one we now inhabit.  Those who controlled weaponry were better known and fighting often occurred along Communist/anti-Community lines.  Given what you've learned about the Cold War era in Indonesia, South Africa, and Guatemala agree or disagree with this statement.

 
3. Decolonization has had both positive and negative sides to it. On the one hand it is a force that has captured the positive aspirations of groups of people across the globe to develop their own culture and capacities. On the other hand, as we have seen in India and Indonesia, it has also inspired brutal, even inhuman behavior on a massive scale. Write an essay in which you argue either that decolonization has been on balance a positive process or on balance a negative process in the period from 1945 to 1990.