The 38th parallel north forms the boundary between which two countries?

The correct answer is B, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Durand Line was agreed in 1893 between British India and the Amir of Afghanistan and is named after Sir Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of the Government of India who negotiated it; after 1947 it became the boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Option A, India and Pakistan, are separated by the Radcliffe Line of 1947 and, in Jammu and Kashmir, by the Line of Control. Option C, India and China, are divided in the eastern sector by the McMahon Line of 1914 and elsewhere hold positions along the Line of Actual Control. Option D, Afghanistan and Iran, share a border that carries no such famous name. India itself has a short border of about 106 kilometres with Afghanistan along Ladakh, which is its shortest land frontier.

The correct answer is C, 1947. The Radcliffe Line was the award of the boundary commissions for Punjab and Bengal, headed by the British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe, and it was published in August 1947 at the time of Partition. Its eastern stretch divided Bengal, so after 1971 the same line became the boundary between India and Bangladesh. Option A, 1893, is the year of the Durand Line between British India and Afghanistan. Option B, 1914, is the year of the Simla Convention at which Sir Henry McMahon drew the McMahon Line. Option D, 1972, is the year of the Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan, under which the Cease Fire Line of 1949 was renamed the Line of Control. Keeping these four years in order, 1893, 1914, 1947 and 1972, answers most questions in this chapter.

The correct answer is A, the Simla Convention of 1914. The Simla Convention brought together representatives of British India, Tibet and China, and the line drawn there by Sir Henry McMahon runs along the crest of the eastern Himalaya; India treats it as the boundary with China in the eastern sector, while China rejects it and claims Arunachal Pradesh. Option B, the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, ended the First World War and dealt with European boundaries, not with the Himalaya. Option C, the Karachi Agreement of 1949, fixed the Cease Fire Line in Jammu and Kashmir after the first India and Pakistan war. Option D, the Panchsheel Agreement of 1954, set out the five principles of peaceful coexistence between India and China but drew no boundary at all, which makes it the most tempting wrong option.

The correct answer is B, the United States and Canada. A long stretch of the border between the United States and Canada, from the Lake of the Woods to the Strait of Georgia, follows the 49th parallel of north latitude, which is why that part of the frontier appears as a perfectly straight line on any map; a boundary drawn in this way is called a geometrical boundary. Option A, the United States and Mexico, are divided in part by the Rio Grande, a river boundary, not by a parallel. Option C, Russia and China, share a long border that follows the Amur and Ussuri rivers in the east. Option D, France and Spain, are divided by the crest of the Pyrenees, a mountain boundary. The parallels worth memorising together are the 17th for Vietnam, the 38th for Korea and the 49th for North America.

The correct answer is B, France. The Maginot Line was a chain of concrete forts and obstacles built by France along its eastern frontier between the two world wars, facing Germany, and named after the French minister of war Andre Maginot. Option A, Germany, built the answering fortification on its own side, the Siegfried Line, so the pair must be learned together and in the right order. Option C, Finland, built the Mannerheim Line across the Karelian Isthmus to hold back the Soviet Union in the Winter War. Option D, Poland, is associated with the Curzon Line proposed after the First World War and with the Oder and Neisse Line fixed after the Second. The trap in this question is to assume that a line is named after the country it defends against rather than the country or minister that built it.