Hist 102 UPDATED Exam Questions and
CORRECT Answers
trade routes - Correct Answer- -Waterways, paths, and trails that traders used to move goods
for exchange from one place to another.
-connections between West Europe and East Asia
-many goods flowed through
-East to West
-Europe was in need of many things such as salt, silk, other goods (food, medicine)
-Those spices changed their food
Issues with trade routes - Correct Answer- -distance
-expense (more money)
-dangerous (pirates, bandits, robbers)
mercantilism - Correct Answer- government regulated economic system.
Creation of capitalistic system ( to bypass "the middle man")
You want more goods going out of the country than coming in.
Export over import
Prince Henry of Portugal - Correct Answer- An early 15th century explorer, Henry "the
Navigator" sought to increase the power of Portugal by seeking trade routes to the East by
way of Africa.
established a school that taught sailing, geography, mapmaking, and astronomy
Christopher Columbus - Correct Answer- An Italian navigator who was funded by the
Spanish Government to find a passage to the Far East. He is given credit for discovering the
"New World," even though at his death he believed he had made it to India. He made four
voyages to the "New World." The first sighting of land was on October 12, 1492, and three
,other journies until the time of his death in 1503. An important figure in the history of
Spanish exploration was an Italian from Genoa, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). Like
many knowledgeable Europeans, Columbus was aware that the world was round, but he was
also convinced that the circumference of the earth was smaller than some of his
contemporaries believed. He therefore argued that Asia could easily be reached by sailing due
west instead of eastward around Africa. After his plan was rejected by the Portuguese, he
persuaded Queen Isabella of Castile to finance his exploratory expedition, which left Spain in
early August 1492 and reached land somewhere in the islands of the Bahamas ten weeks later.
For the next few weeks, his three ships explored the coastline of Cuba and the northern
shores of the neighboring island of Hispaniola (his-puhn-YOH-luh or ees-pahn-YAH-luh).
Columbus believed that he had reached Asia and in three subsequent voyages (1493, 1498,
and 1502) sought in vain to find a route through the outer islands to the Asian mainland. In
his four voyages, Columbus reached all the major islands of the Caribbean, which he called
the Indies, as well as Honduras in Central America.
Although Columbus clung for the rest of his life to his belief that he had reached Asia, other
navigators soon realized that he had discovered a new frontier altogether and joined the race
to what Europeans began to call the "New World."
Encomienda - Correct Answer- the system by which Spain first governed its American
colonies. Holders of an encomienda were supposed to protect the Indians as well as use them
as laborers and collect tribute but in practice exploited them.
To produce these goods (gold and silver), colonial authorities initially tried to rely on local
sources of human labor. Spanish policy toward the Indians was a combination of confusion,
misguided paternalism, and cruel exploitation. Confusion arose over the nature of the Indians.
Queen Isabella declared the Indians to be subjects of Castile and instituted the encomienda
system, under which European settlers received grants of land and could collect tribute from
the indigenous peoples and use them as laborers.
conquistadors - Correct Answer- Spanish soldiers and explorers who led military expeditions
in the Americas and captured land for Spain
Early-sixteenth-century Spanish adventurers who conquered Mexico, Central America, and
Peru. (Examples Cortez, Pizarro, Francisco.)
"conquerors." Leaders in the Spanish conquests in the Americas, especially Mexico and Peru,
in the sixteenth century.
Pizarro - Correct Answer- Spanish explorer who conquered the Incas in what is now Peru and
founded the city of Lima (1475-1541).
Between 1531 and 1536, another expedition, led by a hardened and somewhat corrupt soldier,
Francisco Pizarro (1470-1541), destroyed Inka power high in the Peruvian Andes. The
,Spanish conquests were undoubtedly facilitated by the prior arrival of European diseases,
which had decimated the local population. Although it took another three decades before the
western part of Latin America was brought under Spanish control, already by 1535, the
Spanish had created a system of colonial administration that made the New World—at least
in European eyes—an extension of the old.
Cortes - Correct Answer- Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztecs and conquered
Mexico (1485-1547).
But tensions soon erupted between the Spaniards and the Aztecs, provoked in part by
demands by Cortés that the Aztecs renounce their native beliefs and accept Christianity.
When the Spanish took Moctezuma hostage and began to destroy Aztec religious shrines, the
local population revolted and drove the invaders from the city. Receiving assistance from the
Aztec tribute state of Tlaxcallan, Cortés managed to fight his way back into the city.
Meanwhile, the Aztecs were beginning to suffer the first effects of the diseases brought by the
Europeans, which would eventually wipe out the majority of the local population. In a battle
that to many Aztecs must have seemed to symbolize the dying of the legendary fifth sun, the
Aztecs were finally vanquished. Within months, their magnificent city and its temples,
believed by the conquerors to be the work of Satan, had been destroyed
Cortes, Hernan - Correct Answer- Led expedition of 600 to coast of Mexico in 1519;
conquistador responsible for defeat of Aztec Empire; captured Tenochtitlan
In 1519, Hernando Cortes (1485-1547) landed in Mexico with only 600 men but cleverly
made alliances with local groups that were opposed to Aztec rule, including the people from
Tlaxcala. Although the Aztecs had a much larger fighting force, they fell to the Spanish in a
matter of months. While the alliance with Tlaxcala, and horses and steel (neither of which
had been present in the Americas), contributed to the Spanish victory, disease was arguably
the most important factor. Native Americans lacked immunities to Afro-Eurasian diseases,
such as smallpox and the bubonic plague. These maladies would eventually kill an estimated
90% of the indigenous population.
Atlantic Culture - Correct Answer- Sugar and coffee were two of the most important crops
grown in the Portuguese colony of Brazil.
Although coffee was a major export crop for Brazil, arguably, the most significant
agricultural enterprise introduced to the Americas was sugar cane. It forever altered the
Americas, Africa, and Europe as sugar came to be the most lucrative crop in international
trade. The production of sugar dramatically increased the number of slaves purchased in
Africa and brought to the Americas to do plantation labor. It gave West Africa, the Americas,
and Europe closer economic ties than ever before as the three continents came to rely on one
another for the production, refinement, and consumption of sugar.
, (conquistador) used to torture and use huge dogs to get people to tell where treasures are.
slave trade - Correct Answer- European trade agreement with Africa dealing with slaves
brought from Africa. Integral part of Triangle Trade between the Americas, Africa, and
Europe.
The European exploration of the African coastline had little immediate significance for most
peoples living in the interior of the continent, except for a few who engaged in direct or
indirect trade with the foreigners. But for peoples living on or near the coast, the impact was
often great indeed. As the trade in slaves increased during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries, thousands and then millions of men, women, and even children were
removed from their homes and forcibly exported to plantations in the Western Hemisphere.
African slaves began to be shipped to Brazil and the Caribbean to work on the plantations.
The first were sent from Portugal, but in 1518, a Spanish ship carried the first boatload of
African slaves directly from Africa to the Americas.
Beginning in the sixteenth century, the trade in African slaves to the Americas became a
major source of profit to European merchants. This map traces the routes taken by slave-
trading ships, as well as the territories and ports of call of European powers in the
seventeenth century.
Middle Passage - Correct Answer- the route in between the western ports of Africa to the
Caribbean and southern U.S. that carried the slave trade.
the sea journey undertaken by slave ships from West Africa to the West Indies.
A voyage that brought enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and the
West Indies
the journey of slaves from Africa to the Americas as the middle leg of the triangular trade.
During the next two centuries, the trade in slaves increased by massive proportions (see Map
14.5). An estimated 275,000 enslaved Africans were exported to other countries during the
sixteenth century, more than two-thirds of them to the Americas. The total climbed beyond a
million in the seventeenth century and jumped to 6 million in the eighteenth century, when
the trade spread from West and Central Africa to East Africa. Even during the nineteenth
century, when Great Britain and a number of other European countries attempted to end the
slave trade, nearly 2 million humans were exported. It has been estimated that altogether as
many as 10 million African slaves were transported to the Americas between the early
sixteenth and the late nineteenth centuries. As many as 2 million were exported to other areas
during the same period.
