What is the chronological sequence of the following events ? 1. First Battle of Panipat 2. Vietnam War 3. French Revolution 4. First Gulf War 5. World War I Select the correct answer using the codes given below :
- (a)1, 5, 3, 2 and 4
- (b)3, 1, 5, 4 and 2
- (c)3, 1, 4, 5 and 2
- (d)1, 3, 5, 2 and 4
Answer
Why
Correct — D, (d) 1, 3, 5, 2 and 4.
Put a date against each event and the sequence settles itself.
Statement 1, the First Battle of Panipat, was fought on 21 April 1526, when Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi and founded Mughal rule in India. Statement 3, the French Revolution, began in 1789, the year of the summoning of the Estates-General and the fall of the Bastille. Statement 5, World War I, ran from 1914 to 1918. Statement 2, the Vietnam War, is conventionally dated from 1955 to the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Statement 4, the First Gulf War, followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and ended with the liberation of Kuwait in February 1991.
So the order is 1526, 1789, 1914–18, 1955–75, 1990–91: statement 1, then 3, then 5, then 2, then 4 — which is the keyed sequence.
The practical method for a chronology item is not to date all five events but to date as few as will separate the options. The earliest event does most of the work here. Two of the four sequences begin with the French Revolution, and anybody who knows that Panipat belongs to the sixteenth century and the Revolution to the eighteenth can set both aside without looking further. Of the two that remain, one places World War I immediately after Panipat and before the French Revolution, which puts the twentieth century ahead of the eighteenth. That leaves the keyed sequence, and the two modern conflicts at the end need never be dated at all — although it is worth knowing that the Vietnam War ended fifteen years before Kuwait was invaded.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)1, 5, 3, 2 and 4 — The sequence 1, 5, 3, 2 and 4 starts correctly with the First Battle of Panipat and then goes wrong at once, placing World War I before the French Revolution — 1914 ahead of 1789. Everything after that is in the right relative order, which is what makes the option worth looking at: it is the sequence a candidate produces by fixing the oldest event, fixing the two most recent, and then guessing at the middle. The pair it gets wrong is the pair the item is really testing, because a candidate who thinks of the French Revolution as ‘modern history’ and of the First World War as ‘the beginning of the twentieth century’ may not have the two ranked against each other in his mind at all. The gap between them is a hundred and twenty-five years.
- (b)3, 1, 5, 4 and 2 — The sequence 3, 1, 5, 4 and 2 makes two errors, and each of them is instructive. It opens with the French Revolution before the First Battle of Panipat, which reverses 1789 and 1526 — a slip that comes from sorting by how ‘modern’ an event feels rather than by date, since the Revolution belongs to the story of modern Europe and Panipat to medieval India. It then ends with the First Gulf War before the Vietnam War, reversing 1990 and 1975. Both errors share a cause: treating world history and Indian history as separate timelines and never laying them side by side. The habit that prevents it is to fix a small set of anchor dates across both — 1526, 1757, 1789, 1857, 1914, 1947 — and to place any new event by the nearest anchor.
- (c)3, 1, 4, 5 and 2 — The sequence 3, 1, 4, 5 and 2 repeats the opening error of putting the French Revolution before Panipat, and then adds a worse one: the First Gulf War is placed third, ahead of both World War I and the Vietnam War. That makes 1990 earlier than 1914 and earlier than 1955. As an ordering it is the least defensible of the four, and its usefulness to a candidate is as a check on method. If two sequences differ only in the position of one event, the item can be settled by dating that event alone; if a sequence disagrees with the others in several places at once, it is usually the throwaway option, and time spent testing it is time taken from the rest of the paper.
Concept
A chronology item asks for an ordering, not for dates, and the two are different tasks. Ordering five events requires only four comparisons, and often fewer, because the printed options rule each other out. The method is: read the options first, find where they disagree, and date only the events at those points of disagreement.
The five events here span the range that general-studies papers draw on, and each is worth knowing on its own account.
The First Battle of Panipat, 21 April 1526, was the defeat of Ibrahim Lodi, the last Sultan of Delhi, by Babur, and it opened Mughal rule in northern India.
The French Revolution began in 1789 and set the vocabulary of modern politics — citizenship, the nation in arms, the rights of man, the written constitution.
World War I, 1914 to 1918, ended four empires and redrew the map of Europe and West Asia; the peace settlements that followed it are the origin of many later disputes.
The Vietnam War, from the mid-1950s to the fall of Saigon in April 1975, was the longest of the Cold War’s hot wars.
The First Gulf War followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and ended in February 1991 with Kuwait’s liberation by a coalition acting under United Nations authority.
This is the first question of the paper’s main section, and the first for which a Hindi version is printed; the ten items before it are in English only. Nothing on the page announces the change of section — there is no part heading anywhere in the booklet — so a candidate notices the boundary only because the questions from here on appear in both languages.
The item is a good opening for a general-studies section because it costs a well-prepared candidate almost no time and cannot be reasoned out at all by an unprepared one. It also sets the pattern for the many list-based questions that follow: a numbered list, then a line inviting the candidate to select the correct answer using the codes given below, then four coded options. About thirty questions on this paper print a numbered list of that kind, so the shape becomes familiar quickly.
One feature of this particular list is that it mixes Indian and world history in a single ordering. That mixing is deliberate and it defeats a candidate who has learned two separate timelines. The events also span nearly five centuries, which makes the item easier than it looks: with gaps of that size, approximate knowledge is enough, and nobody needs to remember that Panipat was fought in April.
Key facts
- First Battle of Panipat: 21 April 1526, Babur’s defeat of Ibrahim Lodi, which began Mughal rule in India.
- French Revolution: began in 1789 with the summoning of the Estates-General and the fall of the Bastille on 14 July.
- World War I: 1914 to 1918.
- Vietnam War: conventionally dated from 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
- First Gulf War: Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and the coalition campaign ended with Kuwait’s liberation in February 1991.
- The stem prints ‘World War I’ with a capital roman numeral, not the digit 1, so the item’s own numbering of the statements is not affected.
Study next
Common traps
- Sorting events by how modern they feel rather than by date. The French Revolution is often placed among twentieth-century events for that reason.
- Keeping Indian and world history as two separate timelines, so that 1526 and 1789 are never compared.
- Dating all five events when two comparisons would have settled the item.
- Confusing the First Gulf War of 1990-91 with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which shifts the last position of the sequence.
Chronology appears on this paper in the standard shape: a numbered list of events, a codes line, and four full orderings. The events are usually far apart in time, so the item rewards a stock of anchor dates rather than precise recall, and it very often mixes Indian with world history in one list to catch a candidate who has prepared them separately. Expect one sequence that is right except for a single transposition — that is the option built for the candidate who knows most of the answer — and one that is wrong in several places and can be discarded on sight. The same design is used elsewhere on this paper for the ordering of economic developments, so the method learned here transfers.
Related PYQs
EPFO_APFC_2016_Q22What is the chronological sequence of the following developments ? 1. Decline in the export of Indian cotton 2. Cotton boom in India 3. Civil War in America Select the correct answer using the codes given below :
- (a) 1, 3 and 2
- (b) 2, 3 and 1
- (c) 1, 2 and 3
- (d) 2, 1 and 3
Answer(b) 2, 3 and 1
The paper’s other chronology item, where three developments have to be ordered and the reasoning is causal rather than by remembered dates.
EPFO_APFC_2016_Q10Arrange the following to form a grammatically correct sentence : 1. Einstein was 2. although a great scientist 3. weak in Arithmetic 4. right from his school days Select the correct answer using the codes given below :
- (a) 4, 1, 3 and 2
- (b) 2, 1, 3 and 4
- (c) 4, 3, 1 and 2
- (d) 2, 3, 1 and 4
Answer(b) 2, 1, 3 and 4
The ordering item in the English block, which uses the same codes-line format for a task of sentence construction rather than of dating.
Practice
- practice — not a real PYQ
What is the chronological sequence of the following events ? 1. Battle of Plassey 2. Third Battle of Panipat 3. Fall of the Bastille 4. Revolt of 1857
- (a)1, 2, 3 and 4
- (b)2, 1, 3 and 4
- (c)1, 3, 2 and 4
- (d)3, 1, 2 and 4
Answer(a) 1, 2, 3 and 4 — Plassey was fought in 1757, the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the Bastille fell in 1789 and the Revolt broke out in 1857. Option (b) reverses the first two, option (c) puts 1789 before 1761, and option (d) moves the French event to the head of the list.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following pairs of events is separated by the longest interval ?
- (a)First Battle of Panipat and the French Revolution
- (b)The French Revolution and World War I
- (c)World War I and the Vietnam War
- (d)The Vietnam War and the First Gulf War
Answer(a) First Battle of Panipat and the French Revolution — 1526 to 1789 is about two hundred and sixty years, against a hundred and twenty-five for the next longest pair. The other three intervals are roughly a century and a quarter, forty years and fifteen years respectively.