Unit 4: Transoceanic Interconnections
World History · Unit 4 · Paper 2

Transoceanic Interconnections unit test

A test on this unit alone, marked as a percentage and a letter grade — for the test your class is actually sitting, rather than for May. Answer everything, then submit once: seeing the answer to question 3 before attempting question 4 makes the final percentage meaningless.

Each paper is built from this unit’s 36 terms and is the same for everyone, so a teacher can assign “Unit 4, Paper 2” and every student sits the identical test. Multiple choice is marked objectively; the written sections you mark yourself against the model answer and rubric.
Suggested time 30 min 27 points0/17 attempted
1

Virgin of Guadalupe

2

Dutch East India Company (VOC)

3

Mercantilism

4

Syncretism in the Americas

5

Dahomey and Oyo

6

Casta system

7

Demographic distortion in West Africa

8

Firearms on the African leg

9

Atlantic slave trade

10

Exit as the comparison

11

Scale of the Atlantic slave trade

12

Causes of European exploration

Short answer 1. Define or explain: Coerced syncretism

3 pts

Short answer 2. Define or explain: Plantation economy

3 pts

Short answer 3. Define or explain: Caravel and navigational tools

3 pts

Short answer 4. Define or explain: Vasco da Gama

3 pts

Free response

3 pts

SHORT-ANSWER QUESTION. Read the description of the source. Source — Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, written 1542 and published 1552. Las Casas, a Dominican friar who had himself held an encomienda in Hispaniola before renouncing it, catalogues for the Spanish crown the killing, enslavement, and working to death of Indigenous peoples across the Caribbean and Central America. He argues that the Indigenous inhabitants are rational human beings capable of receiving Christianity, that the conquest as conducted is both criminal and a hindrance to conversion, and that the crown is obliged to intervene.

A. Briefly describe one purpose of Las Casas in writing this account.

B. Briefly explain one way the Columbian Exchange transformed the Americas between 1450 and 1750.

C. Briefly explain one way systems of labor in the Americas changed in this period.