The world's first printing press was invented in China, several centuries before its independent invention in Europe, but the history of the world is often Eurocentric, and so when we ask the question "Who invented the printing press?" the most common answer is a German named Johannes Gutenberg, who invented his printing press in 1439. The printing press allowed manuscripts to be mass-produced for the first time in European history, allowing a far greater number of people to access literature and education.

From the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century, the Dutch were major players in global trade. To help encourage the spread of wealth and to facilitate risky trading ventures over immense distances, the Dutch pioneered several banking institutions which quickly spread to England and the rest of Western Europe. 

Gunpowder was invented in China during the Song Dynasty, likely in the ninth century. Existing from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, the Song Dynasty was a very innovative society; many inventions are credited to China during this time period. Gunpowder spread slowly westward and was a part of European society by the twelfth or thirteenth century.

The Battle of Nagashino is often considered to be a turning point in Japanese social and military history. It is also often wrongly claimed to be the first time gunpowder was used in a Japanese battle. The correct answer is that it was the first battle in which rotating volleys of fire were used by an organized group of well-trained soldiers under the leadership of the infamous Oba Nobunaga. This revolutionized Japanese society because it changed the rules about who could fight a battle effectively. Suddenly the Samurai, with their lifetime of dedicated training, were less useful than a well-drilled regiment firing in a rotating fashion. The Feudal System would begin to erode as a result, at least until firearms were banned among the peasantry of Japan.

The Monroe Doctrine was issued by the United States’ President James Monroe in 1823. It was issued in response to the wave of South American independence movements that had swept the European powers out of almost all territory in the Western hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine threatened that the United States would intervene on behalf of the Latin American republics if the European powers tried to recapture territory in the Western hemisphere. It is one of the most significant foreign policy tenets in United States history and remains influential to this day.

The Sepoy Mutiny (sometimes called the First War of Indian Independence or the Indian Rebellion of 1857) occurred in Northern India. Much of India at the time was under British control, and the government was generally referred to as the British Raj. It has become common policy to state that the rebellion began when Hindu and Muslim Sepoys (another word for soldiers) were told that the grease used in their rifles was from either pork or beef fat—pork would offend Islamic customs and beef would offend Hindu customs; however, the rebellion was really an outpouring of long-held frustrations and angers. It would eventually be brutally put down by the British and resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Indian civilians.

The Indian caste system has existed for hundreds of years as a means of enforcing social stability and obedience; however, it has often been rather fluid, and rarely has it been uniformly enforced across the whole vast Indian subcontinent. Following the arrival of the British, however, the imperialist government needed a way to further entrench their system of power, so they sought to solidify and normalize the caste system. They placed Brahmans (priests and religious figures) at the top, followed by the Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), then Vaishyas (merchants), and finally Shudras (workers and peasants). Below the established caste system there existed, and indeed still exists, an “untouchable caste” of Dalits.

This question is primarily asking you to identify which of these empires rose to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century, as this was the time period in which Social Darwinism became a factor in European Imperialism. Social Darwinism was a political manipulation of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” biological theory and was used to “justify” conquering and ruling native people under the guise that they were better off being ruled by "fitter" human beings. The only one of these empires that was rising in the second half of the nineteenth century was the German empire. The Roman, Carthaginian, and Greek empires were all in their ascendency in the classical era, and the Spanish empire rose to prominence in the late-Medieval and early-Renaissance eras.

The Platt Amendment was issued following the Spanish-American War in 1901. It effectively gave the American government complete control (albeit temporarily) over the Cuban government and stipulated that American troops would remain in Cuba and that naval bases would be constructed.

Following the arrival of the British in the Indian subcontinent the established elites were generally reinforced in their legitimacy and control of the territory. The British arrived with only a couple of thousand men and were faced with the task of administering a population of tens, if not hundreds, of millions so they rather had little choice but to manipulate the existing forms of power.