Deck 25: Africa and the Africans in the Age of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Question 1

What was the African contribution to the ?Colombian Exchange??

A) Large mammals
B) Tapioca
C) Slaves
D) Manioc

Answer 1

Slaves

Question 2

Which of the following was NOT considered a factor in the development of large kingdoms in Africa?

A) A population expansion that followed the diffusion of iron tools and improved agriculture
B) The collapse of the Christian kingdom in Ethiopia in the face of Muslim advance
C) European demand for slaves
D) The use of firearms

Answer 2

The collapse of the Christian kingdom in Ethiopia in the face of Muslim advance

Question 3

What European nation first established direct contact with black Africa?

A) Spain
B) England
C) Italy
D) Portugal

Answer 3

Portugal

Question 4

Of the early Portuguese trade forts, where was the most important located?

A) El Mina
B) Zambesi
C) Zimbabwe
D) Sokoto

Question 5

Which of the following statements concerning the early Portuguese trade forts is most accurate?

A) The Portuguese trade forts permitted the political control of much of the African interior.
B) Where Portuguese trade forts were established, large European colonies rapidly developed.
C) Most of the forts were established with the agreement or license of local rulers.
D) The Portuguese trade forts were the nodal points for colonial administration on the model of the American colonies.

Question 6

Which of the African kingdoms was most successfully converted to Christianity by Portuguese missionaries?

A) Benin
B) Zimbabwe
C) Sokoto
D) Kongo

Question 7

South of their trade forts along the Gold Coast, the Portuguese established Luanda, which became the basis for the Portuguese colony of

A) Angola.
B) Kongo.
C) Lesotho.
D) Matabele.

Question 8

Which of the following statements concerning the Portuguese presence in east Africa is most accurate?

A) After the 1570s, the Portuguese gained complete control over the east African trade in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
B) Unlike the Portuguese settlements on the coast of western Africa, Mozambique became the basis for a large European colony.
C) Portuguese bases on Mozambique, Mombassa, Sofala, and Kilwa gave them access to the gold trade of east Africa, but they were unable to completely disrupt the Muslim trade with the region.
D) The Portuguese presence in east Africa precipitated the population movement among the Bantu that became the Mfecane.

Question 9

Following the model established by the Portuguese, which of the following was NOT one of the principal patterns of European contact with Africa?

A) A system of fortified trading stations
B) The combination of force and diplomacy including alliances with local leaders
C) The predominance of commercial relations
D) Widespread European colonization

Question 10

Which of the following statements about slavery in Europe before 1450 was most accurate?

A) Europe had never had a tradition of slavery.
B) Slavery had been extensive in the ancient world, but had died out during the Middle Ages in all regions in the West.
C) Slavery had died out in the Middle Ages in most of Europe except along the military frontier between Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean.
D) Slavery was common to Europe in all eras prior to 1450, although it tended to become more dominant during the Middle Ages.

Question 11

The first slaves brought directly to Portugal from Africa arrived in

A) 1441.
B) 1492.
C) 1509.
D) 1557.

Question 12

In what manner did the Portuguese seize most of the slaves that were transported from Africa?

A) They captured them in raids into the African interior.
B) They traded for them with African rulers.
C) As a result of the defeat of most of the African kingdoms, the Portuguese obtained a ready supply of slaves.
D) They purchased them from the Muslim slave traders of the east African trading cities.

Question 13

What development led to an intensification of the Portuguese involvement in the African slave trade?

A) The extension of the agricultural system in Europe
B) The Black Death, which decreased the available supply of labor in Europe
C) The development of sugar plantations on the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Canaries
D) The growth of the Ottoman Empire

Question 14

What is the best estimate of the number of Africans shipped across the Atlantic between 1450 and 1850?

A) Eight million
B) 10 million
C) 12 million
D) 14 million

Question 15

In what century did the Atlantic slave trade reach its zenith in terms of numbers of Africans exported?

A) 15th
B) 16th
C) 17th
D) 18th

Question 16

Which of the following statements concerning the volume of the slave trade to the American colonies is most accurate?

A) The volume of the slave trade dwindled rapidly after the 17th century because the plantation economies of the Americas collapsed.
B) The high volume of the slave trade was a necessity because slave mortality was high and fertility was low, leading to a loss of slave population.
C) The shift from plantation economies to mining economies in which slaves were not utilized rapidly diminished the American demand for slaves.
D) Demand for slaves continued to remain high due to the competing demand for slaves in Europe.

Question 17

What region in the Americas received more slaves than any other between 1550 and 1850?

A) Brazil
B) The southern British colonies of North America
C) Mexico
D) The Caribbean

Question 18

Which of the following statements concerning the shape of the commerce in African slaves is most accurate?

A) The emergence of the Atlantic slave trade caused the immediate end of the older trans-Saharan slave trade in the hands of the Muslims.
B) The Atlantic trade drew its slaves almost exclusively from southern Africa until the 19th century.
C) The African states of the interior actively resisted the slave trade.
D) The Atlantic slave trade drew slaves from across the African continent and its concentration shifted from Senegambia to central and western Africa over time.

Question 19

In what way did the trans-Saharan slave trade differ from that of the Atlantic slave trade?

A) The Atlantic slave trade was carried out almost exclusively by Muslims.
B) The trans-Saharan slave trade was carried out in much greater volume than the Atlantic slave trade.
C) The trans-Saharan slave trade concentrated on women, but the Atlantic slave trade concentrated on young men.
D) The African preference for retaining young male slaves to extend kinship lines implied that primarily women were available to the Atlantic trade, while men converted to Islam were more likely trade objects for the trans-Saharan trade.

Question 20

What was the demographic impact of the slave trade on Africa?

A) The slave trade exported millions, but the loss was made up as a result of the natural prolifacy of the Africans.
B) Population in Africa seems actually to have grown, despite the number of men, women, and children exported to the Americas.
C) The slave trade had the impact of skewing the population of central Africa in favor of a disproportional number of women.
D) As a result of the slave trade, the population of Africa was only one -third of what it would have been without the export of men and women.

Question 21

How did the British organize the shipment of slaves to the Americas?

A) In Britain, unlike elsewhere, the slave trade was carried out by uncontrolled private venture.
B) In Britain, the chartered Royal African Company was granted a monopoly over the shipment of slaves to colonies in the Americas.
C) The British refused to participate in the slave trade and attempted to intercept shipments of slaves to the Americas beginning in the 1660s.
D) The British government directly participated in the slave trade through use of the Royal Navy.

Question 22

The Spanish term for a healthy adult male slave was

A) Indies piece.
B) calderon.
C) servus dei.
D) casa de la contratacio´n.

Question 23

What was the average profitability of the English slave trade in the late 18th century?

A) 5-10 percent
B) 15-20 percent
C) 25-30 percent
D) Over 50 percent

Question 24

How did the profitability of the slave trade compare to that of other contemporary business ventures?

A) The slave trade was less profitable on the whole than other business ventures because of the high costs and risks involved.
B) The slave trade became increasingly dangerous and risky, so that by the 18th century its returns were minimal and most participants were bankrupted.
C) Profits from the slave trade in the 18th century were so lucrative that capital derived from the trade in human beings was used to capitalize the European Industrial Revolution.
D) The slave trade was little more profitable than most business activities of the age and was not a major source for the industrial revolution of Europe.

Question 25

What was the term utilized for the commercial arrangement by which African slaves were shipped to the Americas, sugar and tobacco were carried to Europe, and European manufactured goods were transported to Africa?

A) The ?Colombian Exchange?
B) Mercantilism
C) Triangular trade
D) The ?Atlantic Express?

Question 26

Which of the following statements concerning slavery on the continent of Africa before the arrival of the Europeans is most accurate?

A) Most African societies were egalitarian, that is, most people enjoyed the same social status, and slavery was unknown.
B) Slavery in Africa was restricted to those areas where Islamic influence had introduced the concept in the period after the 7th century.
C) While common elsewhere in Africa, slavery was not common in the forest states of west Africa prior to the coming of the Europeans.
D) Since in many African societies all land was owned by the state of the ?ruler,? the control of slaves was one of the few ways in which individuals or lineages could increase their wealth and status.

Question 27

What was the political impact of the presence of Europeans on the African coast?

A) States were more likely to form in the savanna regions of Africa.
B) Strong centralized states began to form on the coastline in close proximity to the European trade forts.
C) West and central African kingdoms just inland from the forts began to redirect their trade and expand their influence.
D) State formation in Africa took place on the Indian Ocean coast away from the trade routes established by the Europeans.

Question 28

In what way did the European slave trade enable centralizing states to expand more rapidly?

A) Slaves were traded for firearms that allowed expanding states to overpower their neighbors, resulting in more slaves.
B) The Europeans rapidly created military alliances and added their armies to those of their slave-trading allies.
C) The European slave trade weakened the states of central and western Africa, allowing the centralizing states of eastern Africa to expand without competition.
D) The slave trade was restricted to the coasts, leaving the political units of interior Africa free of European interference.

Question 29

Which of the following was a large African state that developed in western Africa during the period of the Atlantic slave trade?

A) Ghana
B) Mali
C) Swazi
D) Asante

Question 30

Under whose rule was unity achieved among the numerous Akan clans of Asante?

A) Usuman Dan Fodio
B) Osei Tutu
C) Shaka
D) Agaja

Question 31

The title given to the supreme civil and religious ruler of the Asante kingdom was

A) bunyoro.
B) swazi.
C) asantehene.
D) kowazi.

Question 32

On the east coast of Africa, the Swahili trading cities

A) were decimated following European naval attacks.
B) fell entirely within the orbit of the Portuguese global trade network.
C) continued their commerce in the Indian Ocean with both the Portuguese and the Ottoman Turks.
D) were unique in Africa because of their refusal to participate in the slave trade.

Question 33

One of the unique features of the east African coast that differed from west Africa was

A) the existence of the slave trade.
B) the establishment of plantations producing cloves using African slave labor.
C) the existence of large European colonies.
D) the widespread appearance of epidemic disease.

Question 34

An example of the acceptance of Nilotic peoples as ruling dynasties among the Bantu was the Luo at

A) Benin.
B) El Mina.
C) Zanzibar.
D) Bunyoro.

Question 35

The Muslim reform movement of the 1770s that swept through the trade networks in Senegambia and the western Sudan was what variant of Islam?

A) Ismaili
B) Fatimid
C) Sufi
D) Nizari

Question 36

Usuman Dan Fodio began a rebellion in what African kingdom in 1804?

A) Hausa
B) Benin
C) Kongo
D) Luanda

Question 37

Usuman Dan Fodio?s rebellion eventually led to the formation of what caliphal state?

A) Lesotho
B) Benin
C) Sokoto
D) Kongo

Question 38

What area of Africa was least affected by the slave trade?

A) The savanna and the Sudan
B) Southern Africa
C) Central and west Africa
D) East Africa

Question 39

In 1652 what group established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope?

A) The British East India Company
B) The Royal African Company
C) The Dutch East India Company
D) The Ottoman Empire

Question 40

In 1818 who assumed leadership in the Zulu chiefdom of the Nguni people of southern Africa?

A) Osei Tutu
B) Agaja
C) Usuman Dan Fodio
D) Shaka

Question 41

What was the impact of the Mfecane?

A) It destroyed the Bantu peoples of eastern Africa
B) As a result, the Portuguese were able to absorb most of the East African Swahili trading cities
C) The Boers were forced out of southern Africa
D) The resulting political disruption sent African groups fleeing before the Zulus into both Portuguese coastal regions and the Boer farms of southern Africa

Question 42

What was the average mortality for slaves shipped to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade?

A) 10-15 percent
B) 18-20 percent
C) 25-40 percent
D) 55-65 percent

Question 43

The slave voyage to the Americas was referred to as the

A) ?Atlantic Mistral.?
B) Ocean Express.
C) ?American Tragedy.?
D) ?Middle Passage.?

Question 44

Why were Africans sought for plantation labor in the Americas?

A) There was no other labor supply available in the Americas.
B) West Africans were already familiar with metallurgy, herding, and intensive agriculture whereas Indians were not.
C) Sugar was a crop native to Africa and exported to the Americas from there.
D) Africans rapidly expanded their population in the Latin American colonies.

Question 45

How were the British colonies of the southern Atlantic coast of North America different from the Latin American colonies?

A) There was no slavery there.
B) Although urban slavery was common, there was no plantation agricultural system on the North American mainland.
C) Manumission of slaves tended to be more common in the British colonies.
D) The British colonies depended less on imported Africans because of the positive rate of growth among the slaves.

Question 46

Which of the following statements concerning slave families is most accurate?

A) Despite enormous difficulties, slaves continued to live in family units.
B) The onerous conditions of slavery and the shortage of women resulted in the creation of artificial clans and extended lineages.
C) Lacking women, men substituted slave ?fraternities? for the more traditional organization.
D) The conditions of slavery destroyed family concepts among Africans in the New World.

Question 47

Which of the following was NOT an African religion transported to the Americas?

A) Obeah
B) Vodun
C) Asantehene
D) Candomble

Question 48

Which of the following statements concerning resistance to slavery is most accurate?

A) Recalcitrance, running away, and direct rebellion were present wherever slaves were employed.
B) Although there was one or two slave rebellions in isolated areas, in general there was no organized resistance to slavery.
C) Resistance to slavery was experienced on the mainland, but the plantation economies of the Caribbean suffered no rebellions.
D) The only consistent location for slave resistance and rebellion was the British colonies of the southern Atlantic coast.

Question 49

Which of the following was a British opponent of the slave trade?

A) John C. Calhoun
B) John Wilkes
C) William Wilberforce
D) William Hanover

Question 50

Which of the following statements concerning the ending of the slave trade is most accurate?

A) In general, the Enlightenment, with its advocacy of free trade, accepted if it did not approve of the slave trade.
B) Leadership in the drive to abolish the slave trade was assumed by France.
C) While it is true that legitimate products began to replace slaves in the European commerce with Africa, it is difficult to demonstrate a link between economic self-interest and the abolition of the slave trade.
D) The end of the Atlantic slave trade in the 19th century led to the end of slavery in Africa itself.

Question 51

What model did the Portuguese establish for the exploitation of Africa?

Question 52

Define the structure of the Atlantic slave trade. Consider the volume of slaves by century, the places to which slaves were shipped, and the origins of slaves within Africa.

Question 53

Why did Europeans participate in the Atlantic slave trade?

Question 54

To what extent was slavery a feature of African society prior to the coming of the Europeans?
How was it intertwined with the development of more centralized states?

Question 55

Evaluate the causes for the end of the Atlantic slave trade.