Western Civilization II / Unit 19 WC2 1816 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Drill 2: The Table of Ranks
The idea
The second question asks what best describes Peter the Great's Table of Ranks, and offers court protocol for nobles, a service nobility based on merit, a government restructured on Swedish lines, peasant conscripts, and universal taxation. The course owns the answer at entry 0215: in seventeen twenty-two Peter ranked every civil and military post in fourteen grades, and a man rose by service through them, commoners gaining nobility at a set grade, so that rank followed merit and office, not birth. The distractors are all things Peter did or that other courts did. Protocol is Versailles, Louis XIV's method of taming nobles by ceremony. Swedish lines describes Peter's administrative colleges, a real reform but not this one. Peasant conscripts filled his new army, again real, again not the Table. Universal taxation is his poll tax. The answer is the service nobility, and entry 0215 says the Table's name came from the witness, since the anchor describes the reform without naming it.
In practice
Fourteen grades, rank by service; the distractors are Peter's other reforms and Louis's court.
Where people slip
Every distractor but the first is true of Peter, so the question tests the name, not the reign. Read 0220 for what the exam's answer assumes.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
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