CHASING THE BAG
This Italian explorer sailed across the Atlantic in 1492 on a voyage funded by Spain, hoping to reach Asia by traveling west.
Who is Christopher Columbus?
Identify the Portuguese explorer who reached India by sailing around Africa in 1498, opening a direct sea route from Europe to India.
Who is Vasco da Gama?
Potatoes and maize originated in this world region before spreading to other parts of the globe.
What are the Americas?
This economic system encouraged European states to accumulate wealth, increase exports, and use colonies to benefit the mother country
What is mercantilism?
This term describes the forced transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas.
What is the Middle Passage?
Unlike earlier overland trade, this type of route allowed European ships to travel between Europe, Africa, and Asia by sea.
What is a maritime trade route?
Portugal established trading posts along the African coast and in Asia rather than conquering large inland territories. What was one major advantage of this strategy?
It allowed Portugal to control important trade routes and exchange points without needing to conquer and govern large territories.
The transfer of potatoes helped increase food supplies in parts of Europe because potatoes had this important characteristic.
What is the ability to produce large amounts of food in a relatively small area?
Identify the European empire strongly associated with silver mining in the Americas and the use of colonial labor to extract enormous quantities of precious metals.
What was the Spanish Empire?
Name two valuable colonial products whose production in the Americas relied heavily on enslaved labor.
What are sugar and tobacco? Other acceptable answers include coffee, rice, and cotton.
A ruler funds a risky ocean voyage hoping to gain wealth and increase the power of the kingdom. Identify two motivations for supporting the voyage.
What are gaining wealth, spreading Christianity, and increasing national prestige?
Spain sponsored this explorer's 1519 expedition, which eventually completed the first circumnavigation of the world, although the explorer himself died before it finished.
Who is Ferdinand Magellan?
Name one major reason the arrival of Europeans and Afro-Eurasian diseases devastated many Indigenous American communities.
Indigenous Americans had little or no prior exposure to many of these diseases, leaving communities highly vulnerable to epidemics. Warfare, forced labor, and displacement also contributed to population losses. Smallpox.
Under many mercantilist systems, colonies supplied raw materials to the mother country, which could then sell these finished goods.
What is a colonial economic system in which colonies supplied raw materials and served as markets for the mother country's manufactured goods?
Identify one major demographic or social consequence of the forced removal of millions of Africans from their homelands.
Family and community separation, population loss in affected regions, the growth of African diasporic communities, or lasting cultural and social changes.
Explain how competition between European kingdoms encouraged overseas exploration and expansion.
European kingdoms competed for trade routes, valuable resources, territory, and political power. Rulers wanted advantages over their rivals.
Rather than crossing the Atlantic westward to reach Asia, Portuguese explorers developed a route toward Asian trade by sailing around this continent's southern tip.
What is Africa, by rounding the Cape of Good Hope?
Unlike the movement of crops and animals, the movement of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic was forced. How did this forced migration support European colonial economies?
Enslaved Africans were compelled to provide labor on plantations and in other colonial industries, producing valuable goods for export.
Two European countries both established colonies that produced valuable goods for export. Why might controlling colonies have given one country an advantage over its European rivals?
Colonies provided access to valuable resources, markets, and trade routes, allowing a country to increase its wealth and strengthen its economic and political power.
Enslaved Africans resisted the system of slavery in multiple ways. Identify one form of resistance and explain how it challenged slaveholders.
Resistance included revolts, escaping enslavement, sabotaging work, or preserving cultural traditions. These actions challenged slaveholders' control and could disrupt plantation production.
A voyage could fail, but success might provide precious metals, access to trade, and overseas territory. Explain why rulers and investors might still consider it worthwhile.
The potential profits and gains in trade, territory, and national power could outweigh the risk of losing money, ships, and crew.
Spain and Portugal both wanted to expand overseas, but they competed for control of newly reached territories. This 1494 agreement attempted to reduce their conflict by dividing claims to lands outside Europe between them.
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?
A historian argues that the Columbian Exchange created greater connections between continents but did not create equal benefits for everyone. Use one example of a benefit and one example of a harmful consequence to support this argument.
Potatoes and maize increased food supplies in some regions, while smallpox and other diseases caused enormous population losses among Indigenous Americans. This shows that greater global connection produced very different outcomes for different populations.
A colony produces valuable sugar but has little freedom to choose its trading partners. Explain how this arrangement could benefit the mother country while limiting the colony's economic independence.
The mother country could control colonial trade and profit from sugar production, while restrictions limited the colony's freedom to trade with other countries or develop an independent economy.
Explain how the Atlantic slave trade connected European commerce, African societies, and American plantation economies while producing profoundly unequal outcomes.
European merchants and investors profited from shipping and trade, some African states and merchants participated in the slave trade, and American plantation economies relied on enslaved African labor. The system generated wealth for some while causing enormous human suffering, forced migration, and lasting social consequences.