The country of Japan was unified in the late sixteenth century under the Shogunate of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Prior to this unification Japan had been a feudal society with various small states constantly engaged in war and conflict with one another. After unification Japan continued to be a feudal society, although the power of the samurai waned as conflict became less common. Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan was extremely isolationist in nature.

The House of Hapsburg was one of the most influential ruling families in European history. It ruled the Holy Roman Empire from the early fifteenth century until 1740. One of the most powerful rulers in human history, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and Charles I of Spain, was a member of the Hapsburg family.

While the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia for over three hundred consecutive years, naturally had many famous figures, perhaps the most well known and most accomplished of them all was Peter the Great. Peter ruled Russia from 1682 until his death in 1725 and during his time as Russia’s czar (the Russian term for king), he embarked on very ambitious program of transformation, reform, and dynastic consolidation of power. Peter was a great admirer of the many cultural institutions and technological innovations of Western Europe and he was determined to bring these elements into his own country, which was then incredibly backwards and behind the times. So serious was Peter’s desire that, in 1697, he even took a secret trip (in very transparent disguise) all across Western Europe, where he picked up many valuable techniques, especially in regard to warfare and the military. As czar, Peter deliberately copied the French King Louis XIV’s military policies by reforming the Russian army so that its “streltsy” (or garrison guards) were entirely controlled by and loyal only to himself. Just like the Sun King, he also reduced the power of Russia’s nobles; known as the “boyars,” these nobles were extremely resistant to Peter’s administrative changes, but he ruthlessly forced them to comply, on pain of exile, imprisonment, or even execution. The czar treated dissenters and other critics of his regime just as harshly; at one point, he even ordered the arrest, torture, and execution of his own son, Aleksei, whom he suspected of treason. He disliked the outdated structure of Russia’s capital, Moscow, so he had a brand new, modern capital city built, which he named St. Petersburg. Peter also was intensely suspicious of the Russian Orthodox Church, which he saw as a potential rival to his own power base. So, in a move that reminds many historians of the English King Henry VIII, Peter took drastic action to bring the Church under his direct control. He completely remodeled the Church’s power structure by removing the top leader (known as the Patriarch) and instead placing himself at the helm. He created a new organization, the Holy Synod, to run the Church according to his express wishes, most of which were secular in nature rather than religious.

In historical terminology when you see the word “pax” it means “period of relative peace and prosperity.” The Pax Romana refers to the period of relative peace associated with the longevity of the Roman Empire; the Pax Mongolica refers to the growth of global trade and interaction during the short lived Mongol Empire; the Pax Tokugawa refers to the relative peace that descended over Japanese society following the unification of the country by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

When King Henry VIII decided to break from the Catholic Church to form Anglicanism his ministers realized that the immense wealth held in monastic lands across England could be requisitioned by the crown. As a result the English monarch grew immensely wealthy and the authority of the monarch increased significantly as they no longer had to rely exclusively on taxing the nobility and peasantry.

The millet system provided for the legal autonomy of religious communities. The multi-religious Ottoman Empire allowed for religious leaders to provide for the education, taxation, and laws of their own communities. The word millet came from the Arabic word millah, meaning nation.

The Ming Dynasty employed eunuchs in positions of authority, such as leaders of armies and navies and heads of government branches. The primary reason for doing this was the belief that eunuchs would be steadfastly loyal to the imperial regime (due to the fact that eunuchs could not father children and therefore had no-one to pass their successes on to). All of the other answer choices are incorrect - the Ming came after the Mongol rulers of China; they adopted Confucian values; they did not encourage Chinese isolation as much as other ruling dynasties in Chinese history; and they improved China’s agricultural production.

The Ming Dynasty of China came to power in 1368, following the defeat of the Mongols and the Yuan Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty was the last ethnically Han-Chinese dynasty in Chinese history. The Ming are notable for their extensive system of bureaucracy and their use of meritocracy rather than nepotism. They did not, however, have amicable relations with neighboring states. The Ming engaged in a series of territorial conquests that greatly expanded the Chinese Kingdom at the expense of neighboring states.

Akbar the Great is the most famous of the Mughal rulers of the Indian subcontinent. He is most often remembered for his religious tolerance, which allowed him to effectively rule over a Hindu majority empire as an Islamic emperor.

During the reign of Yongle, China conducted a series of naval voyages throughout the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. If history had played out differently, this might have led to a Chinese — instead of European — colonization of the Americas. However, after Yongle’s death, the Ming rulers turned away from exploration and naval colonization and focused on internal matters and the threats presented by nomadic barbarians on their borders.