I’m working on a history writing question and need a sample draft to help me understand better.

In your five-page double-spaced analytical essay, you will corroborate or refute a significant contention quoted from the textbook (see list below) with a page number reference. The Rise of Western Power by Daly

Present solid arguments and evidence from at least four outside scholarly sources: books and articles with footnotes or endnotes. Cite full bibliographical references.

Significant Contentions in the Textbook

For your Analytical Essay, select one of the following statements taken from the textbook (or select one of your own choice and be sure to quote a specific passage with a page number reference from the textbook). Then, conduct research, reading scholarly books and articles, to either confirm or refute the statement you have selected.

Note: The page numbers will be different in the Second Edition of the textbook.

p.11. Chinese inventions “transformed the world, but not China.”

p. 34. “feudal society marked the triumph of social over state power.”

p. 37. “Unusually in human history,” in medieval and early modern Europe, “labor was given an intrinsic dignity and worth.”

p. 38. Europeans could “act far more effectively, as members of a group,” than could other peoples of the world.

p. 39. “neither the Chinese, nor the Indians, nor the Muslims, nor any other people systematically and extensively used labor-saving devices as much as the medieval and early modern Europeans.”

p. 40. “An autonomous culture of timekeeping controlled by individuals and authorities at every level of society” emerged first and for a long time only in Europe.

p. 46. “European women of the Middle Ages enjoyed high status and extensive legal rights by world historical standards.”

p. 50. “No other civilization expressed itself in such radically different artistic styles in a similar span of time.”

p. 60. Benedictine monks were probably “the first elites in history who did not scorn manual labor.”

p. 60. “Of the great world religions, none has more sophisticated philosophic underpinnings” than Christianity.

p. 80. Beginning in the Middle Ages, “Speculation, questioning, skepticism, and endlessly pushing the bounds of knowledge continued in Christendom but fell off in Muslim lands.

p. 82. “An entirely new—and uniquely Western—mechanism for solidifying kingship were the assemblies of estates, parliaments, diets, and other like bodies that emerged all over Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.”

p. 83. “A balanced political division of spiritual and secular forces never occurred in the other great civilizations.”

p. 87. “Of all the regions of the world during the medieval era, Europe witnessed the most ferocious combat.”

p. 99. The development of infantry-centered armies “empowered the commons in Switzerland, England, and Holland by giving rise to representative institutions.”

p. 103. “European political fragmentation created hothouse conditions for innovation and almost constant warfare.”

p. 139. Europeans “exchanged ideas, traveled, shared inspirations, conversed widely, worked together, and forged collaborative bonds and institutions far more than peoples in other cultures” in the early modern period.

p. 157. Early modern Europeans had “access to a far greater range of printed matter than any other people in history” thanks to the printing revolution.

p. 170. “Never before in human history had a set of doctrines so empowered ordinary people” as did those of the Reformation.

p. 181.The Reformation’s most profound contribution the development of Western Civilization was not religious renewal, but the end of all central authority in Europe.”

p. 192. Ibn al-Shatir and other Muslim thinkers “contributed to a series of extraordinary scientific advancements in early modern Europe but not in the Islamic world.

p. 193. By the mid-1300s, “intellectual ferment, rigorous scholarship, diversity of approaches, and a fever to explore distinguished Europe from all other possible rivals in the world.”

p. 196. Only in medieval and early modern Europe “had the power of numbers and measurement so pervaded the culture, so empowered artisans and professionals, and so increased efficiency and output.”

p. 199. “Muslim scholars and researchers from Persia to Iberia made almost numberless contributions to the advancement of science and learning until the twelfth century and then all but stopped.

p. 211. No compendium of knowledge “even remotely as comprehensive had ever appeared anywhere in the world” as the encyclopedia edited by Denis Diderot (1751–1772).

p. 224. “From at least the sixteenth century, especially in northwestern Europe, people began to marry later than people in other cultures, roughly age 24 for women and 26 for men.”

p. 232. “Once one factors in the costs of administration and defense in the colonies borne by London, the net benefits to society as a whole were minuscule.”

p. 242. In Europe, “political fragmentation made it impossible for any ruler to dominate the continent.”

p. 244. “The Islamic and Chinese societies were far more austere than European societies, with very few intermediary bodies standing between the ruler and the ruled.”

p. 247. St. Thomas Aquinas, a “pillar of Roman Catholic theological thought for hundreds of years defended rebellion against tyranny. One can scarcely imagine such an intellectual position in the other great civilizations.”

p. 278. “Whereas thousands of Europeans visited China for business, exploration, scientific and cultural pursuits, or missionary work in 1500-1800, only two or three hundred Chinese, mostly Christian converts, traveled to Europe, typically to Rome or Naples.”

p. 302. The Homestead Act of 1862 “devolved more land and ultimately more wealth to more ordinary people more quickly than ever before or since in human history.”

p. 334. Europe’s “colonies almost never paid for themselves, enriching only some individuals or companies.”

p. 341. “One can plausibly interpret the rise of the totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century as rebellions against Western values: individual freedom, democracy, political and economic decentralization, the rule of law, and the free and open pursuit of every form of knowledge and self-expression.”

p. 356. The USSR “produced almost no goods or services salable on the international market,” but since “its leadership was ideologically committed to competition for world preeminence, . . . the USSR became oriented above all toward military supremacy.”

p. 370. Americans created “a society with the greatest grassroots social, political, and economic activism in history.”

p. 384. Europeans were the first peoples in history who rejected slavery “root and branch for philosophical and religious reasons.”

p. 399. From roughly 1500 to 1800, “nearly all the world’s most significant technological innovations came from the West.”