​​​ 1. What were the most important sources of unity and division in the Roman Empire from the reign of Diocletian to the reign of Justinian, and why? 2. How did their migrations and invasions change the Germanic peoples themselves and the Roman Empire? 3. What policies did Justinian undertake to try to restore and strengthen the Roman Empire? 4. What developments in the late Roman Empire would support the idea that it is possible for a state to be too large to be well governed and to remain united indefinitely? 5. How and why did the Muslims conquer so many lands in the period 624-750? 6. What are the similarities and differences among the kingdoms that emerged in western Europe, and how did their histories combine and diverge? 7. What were the similarities and the difference in the political organizations of the Islamic, Byzantine and western European societies in the period 600-750? 8. Compare the material resources of the Islamic, Byzantine and western European governments in the period 600-750. To what extent was their ability to get state revenues had an impact in their performance as political units? 9. What forces led to the dissolution —or weakening— of centralized governments in the period 750-1050, and what institutions took their place? 10. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Carolingian institutions of government, warfare, and defense? 11. how were the Byzantine, Islamic and western European economies similar? How did they differ? How did these economies interact? 12. How did the powers and ambitions of castellans compare with those of the dynatoi of Byzantium and of Muslim regional rulers? 13. Compare the effects of the 'barbarian invasions' into the Roman Empire in late antiquity with the effects of the Viking, Muslim, and Magyar invasions into Carolingian Europe. 14. How did the Commercial Revolution affect European economy, politics and religion? What new institutions resulted from the commercial revolution? 15. What were the causes and consequences of the Gregorian reform? In what ways was the movement for church reform a consequence of the commercial revolution? 16. How and why was the First Crusade a success, and how and why was it a failure? How may the First Crusade by understood as a consequence of the Gregorian reform? 17. Which ruler —Alexius Comnenus, William the Conqueror, of Louis VI— was the strongest, which the feeblest, and why? 18. What were the similarities, and what were the differences, between the powers wielded by the Carolingian kings and those wielded by twelfth-century rulers?