Western Civilization I / Unit 10 WC1 0925 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Map of Charlemagne's Empire and the Viking Routes
The idea
The exam's map for this period shows either Charlemagne's empire with its partition lines or the Viking routes, and asks what a region or arrow is. The method for the empire is a core and a rim: the core is Gaul and Germany to the Elbe, the rim is the Lombard kingdom in Italy, the Spanish march, and the Saxon and Avar frontiers. The method for the Vikings is three directions: west to England, Iceland and Newfoundland; south up the Seine and Loire to France; east down Russia's rivers to Byzantium and Baghdad.
In practice
Four questions. A line dividing the empire into three vertical strips: Verdun, eight forty-three, with East Francia on the right becoming Germany. A shaded kingdom in northern Italy inside the empire: the Lombards, taken in seven seventy-three. An arrow from Scandinavia to a river mouth near Paris ending in a shaded duchy: Normandy, nine eleven. An arrow from Sweden down to a city on the Dnieper: the Rus at Kiev. A fifth: an arrow across the open Atlantic to an island and beyond is Iceland and Newfoundland, about one thousand.
Where people slip
The empire's eastern border stops at the Elbe and the Danube, so a map shading Poland or Hungary as Carolingian is wrong, and the Magyars arrive in Hungary only in the tenth century. Check the map's date before naming a people in the east.
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