"The merchants deposit their silver with a trusted house, receive a paper, and collect the equal value a thousand li away." The practice described is this commercial innovation.
What is a bill of exchange (or credit)? — MC TIP: Stimulus questions describe the BEHAVIOR and expect you to supply the vocabulary.
100
Because overland transport was slow and expensive, Silk Road merchants carried goods with this particular quality.
What is high value and low bulk? — MC TIP: One rule explains silk, porcelain, and spices at once. Cost per pound decides the cargo.
100
Camels, oases, and caravans define this network.
What is the trans-Saharan network? — MC TIP: Match technology to terrain every time.
100
Continuity: this religion kept spreading along both trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes across the whole period.
What is Islam? — MC TIP: Merchants and Sufi missionaries, not armies. The mechanism gets tested too.
100
On any Unit 2 question, "the Columbian Exchange" is automatically wrong, because it does not begin until this year.
What is 1492? — MC TIP: Date-check every choice against the unit's window. Wrong century = wrong answer.
200
"Wherever I traveled in the Sultan's lands I was received by fellow believers, judged under the same law, and heard the same call to prayer." This traveler's easy passage is evidence of the unity of this world.
What is Dar al-Islam? — MC TIP: Shared religion, shared law, shared scholarly language. That combination always points here.
200
Because Indian Ocean ships let wind and water do the work, they could carry this kind of cargo the Silk Roads never could.
What is heavy, bulky, low-value cargo? — MC TIP: Same era, same demand, different physics, different cargo.
200
This is the only one of the three networks whose sailing calendar was set by seasonal winds.
What is the Indian Ocean network? — MC TIP: Predictable winds meant merchants could plan and settle abroad between seasons.
200
Change: Chinese merchants increasingly relied on this in place of hauling coin and bartering.
What is paper money and credit? — MC TIP: Name what replaced what. Be specific about both sides.
200
If a Unit 2 answer choice mentions African slavery on American plantations, it's bait. That belongs to this later unit.
What is Unit 4 (1450 to 1750)? — MC TIP: Slavery EXISTS in Unit 2, trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean. Plantation slavery does not.
300
"The Great Khan has set post stations every twenty-five miles, horses always ready, so his messengers travel with all speed." The primary EFFECT of this system was this.
What is faster communication and safer trade across Eurasia? — MC TIP: The question asks for effect, not description. Restating the quote is not an answer.
300
Because the Mongols secured and protected the routes, this traveled right alongside the merchants.
What is disease (the Black Death)? — MC TIP: Connectivity cuts both ways. Consequences questions want the goods AND the germs.
300
All three networks moved this, not just trade goods.
What is religion (also disease, technology, ideas)? — MC TIP: If a question asks what ALL networks shared, the answer is a process, not a product.
300
Continuity: despite every new sailing technology, this natural factor still dictated when ships could leave port.
What are the monsoon winds? — MC TIP: Technology improved what ships could do. It never freed them from the wind.
300
An answer choice credits Europeans with inventing gunpowder, paper, or the compass. All three actually came from here.
What is China? — MC TIP: Europe adopts in this era. It doesn't originate. Reverse that and you've found the wrong answer.
400
"The ships of Gujarat bring cotton cloth, the ships of China bring porcelain, and all pay the Sultan's duty before they may sell." This port's wealth came from doing this.
What is controlling and taxing trade through the Strait of Malacca? — MC TIP: Chokepoint logic. Malacca, the Swahili coast, and Srivijaya all got rich on location.
400
Because the Black Death killed so many European peasants, the survivors gained this.
What is higher wages and bargaining power? — MC TIP: Scarcity raises the price of labor. This is why serfdom weakens in Western Europe.
400
Arab merchants in East Africa and Chinese merchants in Southeast Asia both formed these, and they are the reason religion and language traveled with the cargo.
What are diasporic merchant communities? — MC TIP: A stimulus about foreign merchants marrying locally and staying permanently is describing this term.
400
Change: after the Mongol sack of 1258, this Abbasid capital collapsed as the intellectual center of the Islamic world.
What is Baghdad? — MC TIP: Cities rise and fall with networks. Baghdad declines while Hangzhou and Timbuktu grow.
400
A stimulus describes a state growing rich on trade it never produced. Name either Malacca or this East African coast.
What are the Swahili city-states? — MC TIP: Middleman is a pattern, not a place. Learn it and you can answer about a port you never studied.
500
"In the year of the great mortality the ships came from the east, and within months the burials outnumbered the hands left to work the fields." This spread was made possible primarily by this.
What is the expansion of trade networks? — MC TIP: Note the labor shortage in the second half. That sets up the next question about rising peasant wages.
500
Because Mali's rulers converted to Islam, they gained this concrete commercial advantage.
What is access to and trust within Muslim trade networks? — MC TIP: Conversion as strategy. Shared faith meant shared law and merchants willing to deal.
500
Name the two forces that together best explain why trade grew across ALL three networks between 1200 and 1450.
What are commercial and transport innovations, plus large stable states securing the routes? — MC TIP: Technology alone isn't enough. Somebody has to make the road safe.
500
Change: this Chinese city swelled into one of the largest urban centers on earth as commerce expanded.
What is Hangzhou? — MC TIP: Urbanization is measurable evidence of trade growth. Watch for it on chart questions.
500
A question asks why Europeans later sought sea routes to Asia. Blaming "the Mongols" is a trap, because by then they were gone and this empire held the overland routes.
What is the Ottoman Empire? — MC TIP: Timeline trap. Mongols fade by the late 1300s. Ottomans take Constantinople in 1453.