Explorers
Which Venetian explorer’s accounts of his travels to Asia encouraged exploration?
a) Marco Polo
b) Giovanni de Verrazano
c) Giovanni Caboto
d) Christopher Columbus
a) Marco Polo
What tools did navigators use to know where they were and where they were going?
a) hull and caravel
b) astrolabe and magnetic compass
c) hourglass and sextant
d) lateen and knots
b) astrolabe and magnetic compass
What important route did Dias’s discovery lead to?
a) a westward route to the Spice Islands
b) a polar route to the Americas
c) a route to the Indian Ocean
d) a path around South America
c) a route to the Indian Ocean
Where did Vasco da Gama explore?
a) Newfoundland
b) the eastern coast of North America
c) the eastern coast of Africa
d) Caribbean islands
c) the eastern coast of Africa
To travel completely around something (such as Earth), especially by water
Circumnavigate
Who provided leadership for Portuguese exploration in the 1400s?
a) Vasco da Gama
b) Prince Henry the Navigator
c) Bartolomeu Dias
d) Pedro Alvares Cabral
b) Prince Henry the Navigator
What did the Treaty of Tordesillas do?
a) divided the western hemisphere into North and South America
b) legalized the slave trade
c) divided the land in the western hemisphere between Spain and Portugal
d) permitted slavery in the Americas
c) divided the land in the western hemisphere between Spain and Portugal
What landmark was Bartolomeu Dias the first European to reach?
a) Straits of Magellan
b) Northwest Passage
c) Tasmania
d) Cape of Good Hope
d) Cape of Good Hope
Why did Columbus call the people he encountered “Indians”?
a) It was the Spanish word for strangers.
b) They looked like people he had seen in India.
c) That is the name they called themselves.
d) He thought he had reached the East Indies.
d) He thought he had reached the East Indies.
What was the Middle Passage?
a) the journey of enslaved Africans from the market to the plantations where they worked
b) the journey around the Cape of Good Hope on the way to the Indian Ocean
c) the journey through the Straits of Magellan on the way to the Pacific Ocean
d) the journey of enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas
d) the journey of enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas
Which explorer did not visit North America?
a) Ferdinand Magellan
b) Giovanni da Verrazano
c) Jacques Cartier
d) Henry Hudson
a) Ferdinand Magellan
Which trade got France interested in building colonies in the land called New France?
a) slave trade
b) sugar plantations
c) fur trade
d) tobacco industry
c) fur trade
Where did Christopher Columbus make landfall on his first voyage?
a) the East Indies
b) the Bahamas
c) Cape of Good Hope
d) Virginia
b) the Bahamas
What did Henry Hudson accomplish?
a) He sailed up a river into what is now New York State and also found a huge inland sea in Canada.
b) He sailed up the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.
c) He bought Manhattan Island from Native Americans.
d) He found a Northwest Passage across northern Canada.
a) He sailed up a river into what is now New York State and also found a huge inland sea in Canada.
Which North American area did Jacques Cartier claim for France?
a) Louisiana
b) Canada around Montreal
c) the Great Lakes
d) the Mississippi River
b) Canada around Montreal
Who was the first European to sail up the Atlantic coast of the present-day United States?
a) Christopher Columbus
b) Sir Francis Drake
c) Henry Hudson
d) Giovanni da Verrazano
d) Giovanni da Verrazano
What name was given to the system of land and labor grants that the Spaniards set up to
encourage settlers in their newly conquered lands?
a) encomiendas
b) haciendas
c) Tordesillas
d) conquistadores
a) encomiendas
Although Pedro Alvares Cabral set sail for India, where did he accidentally end up reaching first?
a) Brazil
b) the Canary Islands
c) North America
d) Java
a) Brazil
Who was the Spanish missionary who tried to end the enslavement of Indians?
a) Hispaniola
b) Las Casas
c) Pizarro
d) Balboa
b) Las Casas
What was the first English colony in North America?
a) Plymouth
b) Jamestown
c) Roanoke Island
d) Massachusetts Bay
c) Roanoke Island
Who were the first Europeans to reach the Mississippi River?
a) Verrazano and Hudson
b) Sieur and La Salle
c) Marquette and Jolliet
d) Champlain and Cartier
c) Marquette and Jolliet
Which country took over the Spice Trade after Portugal weakened?
a) England
b) France
c) Spain
d) the Netherlands
d) the Netherlands
What body of water did Vasco Núñez de Balboa reach with Francisco Pizarro?
a) the Indian Ocean
b) the Pacific Ocean
c) the Straits of Magellan
d) the Panama Canal
b) the Pacific Ocean
Where are the Straits of Magellan?
a) where the Panama Canal is now
b) at the opening of the Mediterranean Sea
c) near the southern tip of South America
d) between the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway
c) near the southern tip of South America
What was the first permanent English settlement in North America?
a) Jamestown, Virginia
b) Elizabeth, New Jersey
c) Victoria, Canada
d) New Amsterdam, New York
a) Jamestown, Virginia