Portugal's empire in the 1500s was made up largely of trading posts along the coasts of Africa and Asia.
Correct Answer
True
True. Rather than conquering large inland territories, Portugal built fortified trading posts from West Africa to India, China, and Japan, along with its colony in Brazil.
Category: Spain and Portugal
Question 2
Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés completed the conquest of Tenochtitlán in 1521.
Correct Answer
True
True. After a siege, Cortés and his Native allies took the city in August 1521. The Spanish built Mexico City on its ruins.
Category: Spanish Conquest
Question 3
When Hernando de Soto explored southeastern North America, he found the region largely uninhabited.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Southeast was home to many Native peoples, and de Soto's expedition fought them, seized food, and spread disease among them. The lands the Spanish explored were already populated and controlled by Native nations.
Category: Spanish Conquest
Question 4
Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Spanish friar who wrote about Spanish abuses of Native peoples.
Correct Answer
True
True. Las Casas gave up his own encomienda and spent decades documenting the cruelty of the conquest and pushing for reforms such as the New Laws of 1542.
Category: Labor and Mercantilism
Question 5
The Black Legend portrayed the Spanish as unusually gentle colonizers.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Black Legend portrayed the Spanish as bloodthirsty conquerors. Rival powers, especially England, used this image to claim their own colonization was more humane, though all European colonizers mistreated Native peoples.
Category: Labor and Mercantilism
Question 6
The discovery of silver at Potosí in the Andes turned it into a boom town in the 1500s.
Correct Answer
True
True. Potosí's enormous silver mine, worked by forced Native labor, sent a flood of silver to Spain on its treasure fleets.
Category: Labor and Mercantilism
Question 7
Under mercantilism, a nation's wealth was measured mainly by how much farmland it owned.
Correct Answer
False
False. Mercantilists measured wealth in gold and silver. Nations tried to gain more of it through conquest, colonies, and trade that exported more than it imported.
Category: Labor and Mercantilism
Question 8
Martin Luther wanted the Mass said only in Latin.
Correct Answer
False
False. Luther objected that many Germans could not understand the Latin Mass, and he favored worship and the Bible in everyday languages.
Category: Protestant Reformation
Question 9
Henry VIII founded the Church of England with the pope as its head.
Correct Answer
False
False. Henry broke with the pope and made himself the head of the Church of England, which allowed him to annul his first marriage.
Category: Protestant Reformation
Question 10
Mary I tried to make Protestantism the official religion of England.
Correct Answer
False
False. Mary I, a daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, tried to restore Catholicism and had many Protestants burned, earning the name Bloody Mary.
Category: Protestant Reformation
Question 11
Many English Puritans migrated to New England in the 1620s and 1630s.
Correct Answer
True
True. Pressure to conform under Charles I led many Puritans to cross the Atlantic, where they founded colonies such as Massachusetts Bay in 1630.
Category: Protestant Reformation
Question 12
The Dutch Republic was formed by northern provinces that declared independence from France.
Correct Answer
False
False. The northern Dutch provinces declared independence from Spain in 1581. Spain did not recognize the Dutch Republic until 1648.
Category: Rivals of Spain
Question 13
The Dutch West India Company was formed to carry on trade in Asia.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Dutch West India Company handled Dutch trade and colonies in the Atlantic world, including New Netherland. Trade in Asia belonged to the separate Dutch East India Company.
Category: Rivals of Spain
Question 14
Henry Hudson explored the river later named for him while working for the Dutch.
Correct Answer
True
True. In 1609 Hudson, employed by the Dutch East India Company and seeking a route to Asia, sailed up the river, and the Dutch then claimed the region as New Netherland.
Category: Rivals of Spain
Question 15
Jamestown, founded in 1607, was the first permanent English settlement in North America.
Correct Answer
True
True. Jamestown survived disease, hunger, and conflict in its early years and became the foundation of the Virginia colony.
Category: Rivals of Spain
Question 16
Horses were carried from the Americas to Europe as part of the exchange that followed 1492.
Correct Answer
False
False. Horses moved the other way, from Europe to the Americas. Spanish horses later transformed life for Native peoples of the Plains.
Category: Columbian Exchange
Question 17
Before contact with Europeans, Native Americans had built up immunity to smallpox.
Correct Answer
False
False. Native Americans had never been exposed to smallpox, so they had no immunity, and epidemics killed enormous numbers and wiped out some communities entirely.
Category: Columbian Exchange
Question 18
Some Iroquois waged mourning wars, taking captives to replace members of their communities who had died.
Correct Answer
True
True. Captives could be adopted into grieving families and given the identity of the dead. These wars intensified as European diseases raised death rates.
Category: Columbian Exchange
Question 19
Caribbean sugar plantations relied on the labor of enslaved Africans.
Correct Answer
True
True. Growing, cutting, and processing sugarcane was grueling work, and planters imported enslaved Africans in huge numbers to do it.
Category: Columbian Exchange
Question 20
Gold and silver from the Americas helped pay for Spain's Golden Age of art and literature.
Correct Answer
True
True. American treasure enriched Spain in the 1500s and 1600s, an era that produced Cervantes's Don Quixote and painters such as El Greco and Velázquez.
Category: Spain and Portugal