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First Examination

For this examination, you are responsible for all of the readings, lectures, and discussions. In your review of this material, you may wish to give particular attention to the following points:

  1. What patterns of commercial and political organization had developed by the mid sixteenth century in the region from East Africa to Japan? Be sure that you know the specific locations and polities involved.
  2. In what ways does Andre Gunder Frank's interpretation of world history in the period 1400-1800 differ significantly from that characteristic of what he describes as "two centuries of Eurocentric historiography and social theory"?
  3. What were the consequences of Turcoman-Mongol expansion on the patterns of Asian material and information networks?
  4. What factors led to the disruption of the integrated thirteenth-century Afroeurasian economy in the following century? What were the consequences of this disruption for the patterns of Asian economic and political organization? What were the consequences of the disruptions of the fourteenth century for regional economic interaction in the huge zone from East Africa to Japan?
  5. Where were the major "choke-points" of Afroeurasian trade by the late fifteenth century? How do you account for the rise and significance of these "choke-points"?
  6. Where were the principal productive and commercial regions of the Afroeurasian, and after 1500 of the global economy? What role did silver play in the development of this global economy?
  7. In general, how would you characterize the impact on Iberian history of the expansion southward of western Christian warriors from the 10th to the 15th century? What consequences did this expansion have for the Iberian social and cultural environments?
  8. What were the consequences for the social and cultural environments of the Iberian Peninsula of the disruptive circumstances of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries?
  9. Into what significant interactive economic, political, and information networks were Iberian regions integrated in the fifteenth century? What important geographical advantages enhanced Iberians' participation in these spheres of activity?
  10. What were the dynamics of commercial relations between Europe and West Africa? Be specific about the location and nature of the African regions involved.
  11. What factors influenced European consumer demand for non-European products? Be specific about the products involved.
  12. What factors motivated Iberian expansion into the Mediterranean and Atlantic, and ultimately to Asia and the Americas? How did these various factors influence the behavior in these new spheres of activity of the officials and subjects of Iberian monarchs?
  13. What factors increased the likelihood that Castilians and Portuguese would be the first Europeans to establish important interactive networks with the Americas?
  14. How would you compare the major American polities, the Aztec and Inca empires, with the polities of the Iberian Peninsula about 1500? With the major polities of East and South Asia in the same period?
  15. What factors made American peoples vulnerable to territorial conquest by small groups of Iberian warriors when such warriors and their Crown governments were unable to make significant territorial conquests anywhere in Africa or Asia?

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J. B. Owens
All rights reserved.


Revised:  22 September 1999


URL:  http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/reading.11.html