Deck 2: Europeans and Africans Reach the Americas

Question 1

All of the following are true regarding the potato's role in the "Columbian Exchange" EXCEPT the

A) New World sweet potato made its entry into China in the 1500s.
B) potato strengthened Europeans' diet.
C) potato led to population growth.
D) potato vastly increased crop yields per acre.

Answer 1

potato vastly increased crop yields per acre.

Question 2

In his travels through the Gulf of Mexico region, Spanish explorer de Soto

A) failed to conquer the people he encountered.
B) enslaved Indians to serve as pack animals.
C) witnessed the ravages of European diseases on native people.
D) All of the above.

Answer 2

All of the above.

Question 3

A negative image of Native Americans among English settlers

A) justified their claim that natives had disqualified themselves as rightful owners of the land.
B) explained for them the easy conquest of the natives by the Spanish.
C) spurred their desire to civilize and convert the natives to Christianity.
D) resulted from their lack of information about indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Answer 3

justified their claim that natives had disqualified themselves as rightful owners of the land.

Question 4

How many Africans do historians estimate were taken as slaves to the New World?

A) 96 million
B) 9.6 million
C) 1 million
D) 200,000

Question 5

Christopher Columbus believed he had landed in Asia rather than the Western Hemisphere in 1492.

Question 6

Columbus made three other major voyages to the New World between 1494 and 1504.

Question 7

John Calvin's teachings implied that the highest born and most privileged on earth were doomed to burn in hell while the lowest were predestined for salvation.

Question 8

Catholicism was the official state religion of Spain and Portugal during the 1500s.

Question 9

Brazil under Portuguese control became one of the most profitable colonies of the Americas.

Question 10

Thousands of Aztecs in Mexico died from a smallpox epidemic brought by the English in 1520.

Question 11

For nearly a century beginning in 1492, Spain enjoyed a near total domination of the Americas.

Question 12

Although Columbus excited the Spanish court by returning with traces of gold and silver from his voyage of 1492, the actual amount of precious metals in the New World proved to be very disappointing.

Question 13

Unlike the English and French, the Spanish did not rely on forced Indian labor.

Question 14

Probably the most important and valued region of the Spanish Empire in the Americas was the northern borderlands, the present-day Sun Belt of the United States.

Question 15

Of all the people arriving in the New World from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the Africans were by far the most numerous, probably outnumbering Europeans two to one.

Question 16

Sugar production transformed the African slave trade more than any other factor.

Question 17

Since their goal was to deliver alive as many slaves as possible, slave traders provided healthy and fairly comfortable conditions for the Atlantic passage of slaves from Africa to the New World.

Question 18

As many as one in seven Africans died en route to the Americas.

Question 19

Ferdinand and ________ united the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile in Spain when they married in 1469.

Question 20

The first European to sail around the cape of Africa, ________, allowed the Portuguese to eventually colonize the Indian Ocean and as far east as the Spice Islands and Canton by 1513.

Question 21

The ________ captured control of the African gold trade by 1500 from North African Muslims.

Question 22

The doctrines of Calvin were first put into practice in the 1550s in the city-state of ________, which quickly became a haven for refugee Protestant leaders.

Question 23

According to the division of areas of exploration between Spain and Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Portugal received the territory of ________ in the New World.

Question 24

Swine ________, along with cattle, helped to devastate grasslands in Central America in the early 1500s.

Question 25

At the mine of ________ in Bolivia, over 50,000 workers dug silver for the Spanish at elevations of 13,000 feet.

Question 26

European, ________, and Asian peoples met in the Americas as part of the Columbian Exchange.