APUSH Unit 1 Review Questions

Which of the following best describes the impact European colonization had on the Western Hemisphere's native population?

• the native population was highly respected in terms of territorial possessions and religious beliefs
• the Europeans for the most part did not interact with the native population
• Spain was the only European country to successfully create and alliance with the native population
• Native populations were often killed off or driven away by the Europeans

Which of the following shows how Native Americans adapted to an transformed the environment in which they lived?

• the creation of large-scale irrigation works to promote the growing of maize
• the development of highly structured systems of social stratification
• the construction of monuments to nature-based deities
• the organization of self-governing confederacies among disparate tribes

As a result of the Columbian Exchange, the New World gained...

• a significant new source of staple food crops
• an influx of gold and silver capital for the construction of new urban centers
• advanced medical techniques that extended the life-span of Native Americans
• new animals as sources of food and to serve as beasts of burden

European diseases that arrived in the New World were particularly deadly because...

• little medical aid was available so far from European urban centers
• the European conquerors deliberately accelerated the spread of the most deadly strains
• the Native Americans had no natural resistance to these diseases
• the vast devastation of warfare with the Europeans left few to care for the sick

Which of the following served as the initial motivation for Spanish exploration?

• desires to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism
• hopes of establishing permanent colonies for settlement
• the desire to beat out European rivals in the land grab for North America
• the need of new sources of wealth to support the growth of the nation

In the view of the encomienda system, Native Americans were seen primarily as...

• a source of labor
• a group to be protected
• a focus of evangelization
• outcasts to be excluded from Spanish settlement

What aspect of Spanish colonization did missionary Bartolome de Las Casas famously protest?

• the refusal of explorers to tithe on the wealth they discovered
• the lack of missionary zeal among the conquistadors
• the treatment of Native Americans as subhuman and expendable
• the focus of the Spanish Crown on Latin America while neglecting the Reconquista at home

"The gold and silver mined with forced labor in Mexico and what is now Bolivia constituted a windfall that could have been used to develop Spanish agriculture, industry, and commerce. It could have helped the country catch up with northwestern Europe's more developed economies. But Spain [in the 1500s] was in the grip of a tiny ruling class of royalty, Catholic church hierarchy, and landed aristocracy. Two to three per cent of the population owned 97 per cent of the land in Castile, Spain's heartland. The great landowners had no incentive to modernize Spain. They just wanted to raise more sheep and sell more wool. The environmental degradation that overgrazing vast numbers of sheep entailed seems to have bothered the ruling class no more than the cutting of forests for timber to build ships and provide charcoal to smelt domestic Spanish silver ore. And so, what if the wool went to Holland to be manufactured into cloth rather than being processed in Spain itself. Meanwhile, successes in the new World swelled the Spanish monarchy's ambitions in the Old. The bonanza of bullion from the Americas encouraged Spain's rulers to build up the army into Europe's largest military force, setting off an arms race that forced rivals to multiply their armed forces as well...Hegemonic wars against the French, Dutch, and English followed...The most lasting and far-reaching effect of the increase of money in circulation was to set off a long wave of inflation that spread throughout Western Europe. To be sure, deficit spending on unproductive armies, navies, and wars as well as debasement of coinage by monarchs in search of additional royal revenue contributed to the in-up in prices." (A. Kent MacDougall, University of California, Berkeley, March 1992.)Which of the following best describes a central point of A. Kent MacDougall's argument above?

• During the age of exploration and conquest, a growing divide developed in Spain between the Catholic church and the monarchy over the treatment of American Indians
• The large-scale migration of Spanish peasants to the new World left Spain with a scarcity of workers and a depressed economy
• Spanish conquest of the New World led Spain to focus its military and diplomatic efforts toward subduing resistance in the New World and removing itself from the conflicts of Europe
• the successes of Spanish conquest in the New World did not result in a general economic improvement in Spain itself

Prior to European contact, North American Indians were...

• dominated by the Plains Indians, who possessed horses
• dominated by the eastern woodland tribes, who possessed firearms
• dependent on imports of foodstuffs from Mexican tribes for survival
• distinct societies with different economies and lifestyles

The Spanish first moved into the North American southwest in an effort to

• obtain precious metals (like gold and silver)
• establish missions
• impose Spanish culture
• strengthen the security of New Spain