Give Me Liberty! Foner Study Guide - Chapter 1

As a justification for conquest, many Europeans noted (accurately) that North American Indians prior to the Columbian exchange lacked the technology to manufacture metal tools, machines, or gun powder and also were ___________.

illiterate

Many North American Native Americans developed matrilineal cultures, in which:

kinship and possessions passed down the female side of the family line.

French treatment of Native Americans in New World territories claimed by France can best be described as:

more like a partnership in which Europeans and Indians formed the most enduring alliance between settlers and Native Americans in North America

"Indian freedom" can best be described as the notion that:

mutual obligations and connectedness to community took precedence over individual freedom

The vast majority of the "First Americans," whose descendants numbered in the tens of millions when Columbus arrived, made their way to the so-called New World tens of thousands of years prior to 1492 via:

the Bering land bridge

Representing a very small nation (just a population of 2 million), this country established a far-flung empire during the early seventeenth century and played a key role in international commerce and banking.

the Netherlands

According to Table 1.2 in your textbook, the estimated regional population of the Americas, circa 1500, totaled:

55 million

Match the Spanish explorers with their most famous exploits.

Balboa - first European to "gaze upon" the Pacific Ocean. Ponce de Leon - looking for gold (and maybe the fountain of youth) in Florida. Pizarro- conquered the mighty Inca kingdom Cortes- brought down the Aztec empire

In the end, as European dominance spread over the Western Hemisphere, Portugal could claim only one New World possession, which was:

Brazil

Prior to New York and Philadelphia surpassing this total in the early 1800s, _______________ represented the all-time most populous settled community in what is now the United States (numbering 30,000 inhabitants in 1200 AD).

Cahokia

What did Adam Smith, British author of The Wealth of Nations (1776), call one the "two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind"?

Columbus's "discovery" of America in 1492

The first European power to make serious contact with sub-Saharan Africa was:

Portugal

Christopher Columbus went to his grave incorrectly believing he had discovered a westward route to Asia (not understanding the actual historical significance of his voyages).

True

Off the west coast of West Africa on a series of islands (Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary and Cape Verde Islands), Europeans (the Portuguese) established the fundamentals of:

a plantation economy and the large-scale exploitation of slaves

Spanish missionary Bartolome de Las Casas described the econmienda system (a form of slavery) as:

a series of shocking and "strange cruelties" unjustly perpetrated by "Christians"

In general, pre-Columbian Native American societies understood themselves:

as mostly centered around their immediate social group--a tribe, village, chiefdom, or confederacy.

The most lethal element of the Columbian exchange for Native Americans proved to be:

disease

The accidental "discovery" of the New World was fueled in large part by a strong desire to:

find a less expensive route to market for the riches of Asia and cut out the Muslim middlemen