READ THE DOCUMENT
CAUSE & EFFECT
COMPARE THE EMPIRES
CONTINUITY & CHANGE
TRAP ANSWERS
100
“Within one generation of their coming, nine in ten of our people were in the ground, and no sword had touched them.” Name the cause.
What is epidemic disease? — MC TIP: ‘No sword had touched them’ rules out warfare. The answer has to be disease.
100
Because Indigenous populations collapsed, Europeans turned to this source of plantation labor.
What is enslaved Africans? — MC TIP: Labor shortage is the direct cause. Know the chain, not just the fact.
100
Unlike the land empires of Unit 3, these new empires projected power mainly this way.
What is across the oceans by navy and trading post? — MC TIP: Maritime versus land is the organizing compare of 1450 to 1750.
100
Continuity: this remained the main form of labor for most people worldwide in 1750.
What is agricultural labor? — MC TIP: Global trade grew, but most people still farmed. Do not overstate the change.
100
A Unit 4 choice mentioning industrial factories is wrong, because industrialization belongs to this unit.
What is Unit 5? — MC TIP: Date-check first. Factories after 1750, not before.
200
“The mountain gives up its silver; the Indian gives up his year. So it was under the Inca, and so it is now.” Name the system.
What is the mita at Potosí? — MC TIP: The phrase ‘so it was under the Inca’ tells you it is a reused Indigenous system.
200
Because the Ottomans controlled the overland routes, European states sought this.
What is a sea route to Asia? — MC TIP: Blaming the Mongols here is the classic wrong answer. They were long gone.
200
Spain built a territorial empire in the Americas. The Portuguese in Asia built this instead.
What is a network of coastal trading posts? — MC TIP: Trading-post empire. They wanted commerce, not territory, in the Indian Ocean.
200
Change: by 1750 this ocean had become a major artery of world trade for the first time.
What is the Atlantic? — MC TIP: Before 1492 it was a barrier. After, it is the busiest new route in the world.
200
A choice says Europeans conquered the Americas mainly through superior weapons. The stronger answer is this.
What is disease? — MC TIP: Guns mattered. Germs mattered far more. The exam favors disease.
300
“No ship but ours shall carry the sugar, and no loom but ours shall weave the cloth she buys.” Name the policy.
What is mercantilism? — MC TIP: Control both directions of trade. That is the definition in one sentence.
300
Because American silver flowed into Europe and then Asia, this happened to the world economy.
What is it became genuinely global for the first time? — MC TIP: Silver is the connective tissue. Follow it to Manila and China.
300
Name one thing the Spanish encomienda and the Russian serf system had in common.
What is coerced labor tied to land and owed to an elite? — MC TIP: Coerced labor is global in this era, not just Atlantic.
300
Continuity: Indian Ocean commerce kept running on these, even after Europeans arrived.
What are the monsoon winds and existing Asian merchant networks? — MC TIP: Europeans joined a system. They did not create or immediately control it.
300
A choice claims Europeans controlled Indian Ocean trade by 1600. The trap is ignoring this.
What is that Asian merchants and states still dominated it? — MC TIP: The Portuguese were one player among many, and not the biggest.
400
“My father was born in Spain and so commands; I was born here of Spanish blood and so I wait.” Who is speaking?
Who is a creole? — MC TIP: Creole resentment of peninsulares becomes the fuel for Unit 5 revolutions.
400
Because joint-stock companies spread risk across many investors, this became possible.
What is funding voyages too expensive or risky for any single merchant? — MC TIP: A financial innovation making an imperial one possible.
400
Both Japan and China responded to European contact in this way, unlike the Americas.
What is by restricting and tightly controlling it? — MC TIP: Strong states could set the terms. Weakened ones could not.
400
Change: this new social category appeared across Spanish America and had no clear precedent.
What are mixed-ancestry groups such as mestizos and mulattoes? — MC TIP: New populations require new legal categories. Hence the casta system.
400
A choice describes African kingdoms as passive victims of the slave trade. The more accurate answer is this.
What is that some African states actively participated in and profited from it? — MC TIP: Passivity framings are almost always the wrong answer on this exam.
500
“We carried the maize to our fields, and where one family had fed, now three could feed.” Where is this most likely set?
What is Africa or China? — MC TIP: American crops raising Afro-Asian populations is the underrated half of the exchange.
500
Because sugar cultivation was brutal and deadly, plantation owners did this rather than improve conditions.
What is continually import more enslaved laborers? — MC TIP: Sugar colonies imported constantly because mortality was so high. Grim but testable.
500
Name the reason Europeans could dominate the Americas but NOT Asia in this period.
What is disease devastated the Americas while Asian states remained populous, centralized, and militarily strong? — MC TIP: The asymmetry is the answer. Do not credit European superiority alone.
500
Change: by 1750 political and economic momentum in Europe had shifted from the Mediterranean to here.
What is the Atlantic coast (Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, France)? — MC TIP: Italy declines as the Atlantic rises. Good evidence for a shift-of-power question.
500
A stimulus shows Indigenous people adopting Christianity alongside older practices, and a choice calls it total conversion. The CED term is this.
What is syncretism? — MC TIP: Blended, not replaced. ‘Total’ and ‘completely eliminated’ are red-flag words.
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