Working with Documents Exercise: the Age of Exploration

Working with Documents Exercise: The Age of Exploration

In AP Global Studies thus far, you have worked with documents in many ways. You have analyzed primary sources for their content, point of view, and revealing elements; interpreted documents to put yourself in the position of a person in a given time period; and used documents to support your beliefs in DBQ essays. This activity will require you to do all of those things using anywhere from 1 to 11 documents.

1. Textbook: What were the objectives and major accomplishments of the voyages of exploration undertaken by Chinese, Polynesians, and other non-Western peoples?

2. How was the technology of Europeans different from that of Native Americans, Africans, or Asian cultures?

a. Documents I can use:

b. Answer:

3. In this era of long-distance exploration, did Europeans have any special advantages over other cultural regions?

b. Answer:

4. In what ways did Europeans influence regions they explored?

b. Answer: 5. What explains the different nature of Europe’s interactions with Africa, India, and the Americas?

a. Textbook:

b. Additional documents I can use:

c. Answer:

6. How did European exploration and expansion in Africa differ from in the Americas?

b. Answer:

7. Explain the interaction between the eastern and western hemispheres during the Age of Exploration.

b. Answer:

Document 1: A Comparison of the Chinese Junk and European Caravel

Document 2: Africa in Cantino, 1502

Document 3: Bronze figure of Benin ruler atop a horse Document 4: Graph of gold and silver exports from the New World to Spain

Document 5: historical drawing of a scene at the Alamo Document 6: Miguel Leon-Portilla: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico “[After the Spaniards fled Tenochtitlan after La Noche Triste, a great plague broke out here in Tenochtitlan.] It began to spread during [the month of October] and lasted for seventy days, striking everywhere in the city and killing a vast number of our people. Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we were covered with agonizing sores from head to foot. The illness was so dreadful that no one could walk or move. The sick were so utterly helpless, they could only lie on their beds like corpses, unable to move their limbs or even their heads. They could not lie face down or roll from one side to the other. If they did move their bodies, they screamed with pain. A great many died from this plague and many others died of hunger. They could not get to search for food and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their own beds.

… Their looks were ravaged, for wherever a sore broke out, it gouged an ugly pockmark in the skin. And a few of the survivors were left completely blind. The first cases were reported outside of the city. By the time the danger was recognized, the plague was so well established that nothing could halt it and spread to all of the region around Lake Texcoco. Then its virulence diminished considerably, though there were many isolated cases for many months after. The very first victims were stricken during [early September] and the faces of our warriors were not clean and free of sores until [the end of November]. “

Document 7: Graphic demonstrating the Columbian Exchange Document 8: The Log of Christopher Columbus

“They [the Amerindians] brought the bread of niamas [manioc], which are tubers and look like large radishes. These are planted in all their fields and are their staff of life. They make bread from them and boil and roast them, and they taste like chestnuts... These fields are planted mostly with ajes.

The Indians sow little shoots from which small roots grow that look like carrots. They serve this bread by grating and kneading it, then baking it in the fire. They plant a small shoot from the iaIlle root again in another place, and once more it produces four or five of these roots. They are very palatable and taste exactly like chestnuts. The ones grown here are the largest and best I have seen anywhere. I have also seen them in Guinea, but those that grow there are thick as your leg.”

Document 9: Letters from King Afonso of Kongo to King Joao III of Portugal, 526 “Sir, your highness should know how our kingdom is being lost in so many ways that we will need to provide the needed cure, since this is caused by the excessive license given by your agents and officials to the men and merchants who come to this kingdom to set up shop with goods and many things which have been prohibited by us, and which they spread throughout our kingdoms and domains in such abundance that many of our vassals, whose submission we now rely on, now act independently so as to get the things in greater abundance that we ourselves; whom we have formerly held content and submissive and under our vassalage and jurisdiction, so it is doing a great harm not only to the service of God, but also to the security and peace of our kingdom and state….”

“Moreover, sir, in our kingdoms there is another great inconvenience which is of little service to God, and this is that many of our people, out of great desire for the wares and things of your kingdoms, which are brought here by your people, and in order to satisfy their disordered appetite, seize many of our people, freed and exempt men. And many times noblemen and the sons of noblemen, and our relatives are stolen, and they take them to be sold to the white men who are in our kingdoms and take them hidden or by night, so that they are not recognized. And as soon as they are taken by the white men, they are immediately ironed and branded with fire.”

Document 10: Mexican-Aztec encounter, 1520

Document 11: Map of New World colonial possessions