SIS 200 STUDY QUESTIONS-3
November 15, 2009
- When and where did the Europeans encounter sugar production for the first time? How did the cultivation of this crop make its way to the new world? Explain why the Europeans were willing to undertake the risks involved in transferring this plant and the factors related to its cultivation over long distances to an entirely new environment in the new world.
- Locate the following places/cities on a map, Explain how they were linked to each other through their direct or indirect participation in slave trade in the eighteenth century. Barbados, Cape Coast Castle, Goa, Gorée, Lisbon, Liverpool, Luanda, Macao Madras, Sao Paulo, São Tomé,. In answering this question make sure to describe at least one commercial relationship that linked each one of these cities with at least one other city on this list.
- What is the main reason that made China such an attractive destination for the Dutch in the seventeenth century and for the British during the age of mercantilism? Explain.
- Write an essay arguing the point of view that in the Dutch rise to European and global hegemony, the power was the primary factor that led to plenty. Write another essay arguing the opposite point that in the rise of the Dutch, it was the plenty that played the primary role and eventually led to power. In each essay try to be as convincing as you can by using specific examples and providing strong evidence.
- Highlight three items or depictions in each of the following paintings that show Netherlands’ links to other parts of the world in the seventeenth century. Explain the significance of these for the global economy at that time.
You can find these on the links page of this website.
Or click on each picture to go to the host site.
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- Provide three different explanations for the origins of the Industrial Revolution: One, by focusing mostly on domestic conditions in Britain and the creativity and foresight of British entrepreneurs; two, by emphasizing the exploitation of the New World, Asia and Africa by Britain; and three, by giving primary importance to the British foreign trade before and during the industrial revolution. Compare the three explanations in terms of their weaknesses and strengths.
- Historians refer to the big jump in incomes and standard of living in Europe that set this continent apart from the rest of the world in the course of the industrial revolution as the “great divergence”. How do Findlay and O’Rourke explain this important development? What are some of the alternative explanations and why do Findlay and O’Rourke think theirs is better?
- Suppose it is the 1830s and you are (a) a peasant in rural England; (b) a poor man in London; (c) a poor woman in London; (d) a small scale entrepreneur in some part of Britain; (e) a large scale commercial farmer in Britain. In each one of these cases explain how the unfolding of the Industrial Revolution would affect you.
- Explain the following statement: “It is one of the great ironies of Napoleon’s attempt to bring all of Europe under French rule that it did not create continental unity, but rather laid the foundations for nineteenth-century nationalist strife.”
- Identify and explain the following chart:
- In one sentence each, identify the individuals, events, or places that are in the following list. In one or two sentences each, explain the importance of the individual, place, or the event for our class: middle passage, poor house, tulipmania, Delft, continental blockade, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Toussaint L’ouverture, Jacobin Republic, factory system, Navigation Laws.
- Compare and contrast global trading networks in 1350, 1750 and 1850. Describe what changed and what remained same and explain the major changes in global trading networks between these two years. (Please note that the question asks you to compare the global trading networks at three points in time).
- The age of revolution was characterized by a growing belief in the value of human beings and their power to understand and affect in positive ways the world that surrounded them. Yet, the very period when the economic, political, and scientific revolutions took hold in Europe and spread elsewhere, coincided with terrible abuses of human dignity and a noticeable increase in the use of not reason but violence in solving political problems around the world. If anything, these conditions have become worse in the following centuries. Would you explain this situation as too much revolution or not enough revolution; too much enlightenment or too little enlightenment?
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SIS 200 STUDY QUESTIONS-2
October 31, 2009
- Demographic changes played an important role during the second half of the fourteenth century in Europe and again when the Europeans first settled in the New World at the turn of the sixteenth century. Describe the causes and nature of the changes in population in each of these periods and places. Explain why the social structures in Europe and in the new world were not more resistant to these pressures when they were faced with them. Do you think a similar exogenous push that could come through H1N1 virus would lead to similar collapse of our society today?
- Adam Smith wrote as follows in 1776: “the discovery of America and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.” Explain why Adam Smith might have reached such a conclusion when he wrote these words. Do you agree with him? Explain your answer.
- In 1532, Francisco Pizarro, representing the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as King Charles I of Spain), captured and killed the Inca Emperor Atahualpa in the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca. What was Pizarro doing so far away from his home? Could the Inca Emperor send his representative to Spain, hold Charles V hostage, and execute him in 1532? How would such an event change the history of the modern world? Explain your answer.
- Describe how silver functioned as the “lifeblood of the circulatory system” in the global economy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Describe the impact of the new world silver on Europe and Asia during this time period. Explain why there was such variation in the way these regions were affected by silver influx.
- Stephanie Smallwood identifies the main stages in the enslavement of Africans as captivity, commodification, social death, and dispersal and argues that slave trade was thoroughly a scientific exercise. Describe what each of these stages refers to and explain how science was involved in them.
- Locate the following cities and places on a map and explain their significance in the development of sugar trade in the seventeenth century Gold Coast, Lisbon, Cyprus, Española, Madeira, Sao Paolo, Barbados, Luanda.
- Identify the following terms, places, and individuals in one sentence each and, in each case, explain their significance for the global networks and relations we have been covering so far: Batavia, Columbian exchange, conquistadores, fidalgos, Great Dying, Macao, Madras, mercantilism, plantations, saltwater slavery, social death, triangular trade, Westphalia, Zheng-He.
- By giving specific examples (with time and place) describe and compare the methods the Portuguese and the Dutch used in establishing their respective areas of influence in Southeast Asia between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Identify and explain the main difference between the approaches of these two European powers as they expanded their power in Southeast Asia.
- By all accounts the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were full of military conflict. The English and the Dutch fought three wars between 1652 and 1674;the British and the French were at war for a total of 64 years between 1689 and 1815. Explain the relationship between these seemingly endless conflicts and the mercantilist policies these states were pursuing during these years.
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SIS 200 STUDY QUESTIONS-1
October 15, 2009
1. Identify the regional economies in Abu-Lughod’s pre-modern world system and describe how each one of them is formed Compare these three regions with each other by identifying some differences among them. Then develop an outline of an essay arguing one of the following two points::
a. These differences result from the functioning of the pre-modern world system
b. Pre-modern world system resulted from the integration of these differences.
2. Explain the ways in which the Venetian state and the Genoese state helped their private capitalists between 1250 and 1350. In answering this question you should identify the separate goals of the states on the one hand and private capitalists on the other and explain how they were able to realize some of these goals by cooperating with each other.
3. Explain and compare the motivations of the Crusaders and Mongols as they expanded into the Middle East and Eastern Europe, respectively. Describe the mechanisms each used in carrying out their expansion and discuss the consequences of their activities for the areas that came under their control.
4. Abu-Lughod mentions Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, and Zeng-He as three travelers who left their homes for long voyages in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and wrote about their experiences. Identify where each one of these travelers came from and describe their occupation. Does this information tell us anything about what role the home-countries/states of these travelers were playing before European hegemony?
5. In several sentences each, give the meanings of the following terms, identify the geographical area where they were important, and explain their significance for the organization of the pre-modern world: feudalism, European hegemony, devsirme, manufacturing guilds, merchant guilds, tribute, serf, Dar al-Islam, Karimi merchants.
6. a). Locate the following cities on a map: Acre, Antwerp, Alexandria, Basra, Beijing, Bruges, Cairo, Canton, Calicut, Constantinople, Genoa, Hangchow, Hormuz, Jerusalem, Lisbon, Malacca, Samarkand, Seville. Troyes, Venice, Zaytun.
b). By using at least five of these cities in each case, show the there major routes that linked Europe with Asia in the pre-modern world.
7. Carefully summarize Abu Lughod’s argument concerning Chinese withdrawal from the economic networks in Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century and the implications of this for the global system before European hegemony. Evaluate her use of evidence in advancing this argument and discuss whether you agree with her main point.
8. One of the major arguments of Janet Abu-Lughod is that several different kinds of activities served to link the different parts of the pre-modern world with each other. Give some examples of these activities and explain how they worked. Abu-Lughod also argues that with the onset of capitalism we have moved to a system where there is one generally accepted principle according to which most people live and work and that is the capitalist market principle. If this is true, how do we explain the growing importance of religion in the twenty-first century as a force that cuts across, unites, and divides people in different parts of the world?