Deck 20: The West and the Changing World Balance

Question 1

Which of the following was NOT a symptom of decline in the Arabic caliphate by 1300?

A) The narrowing of intellectual life symbolized by the triumph of religion over literature, philosophy, and science
B) Landlords seized power over peasants
C) The decline of the Sufis
D) Decline of tax revenues for the state

Answer 1

The decline of the Sufis

Question 2

By what date had the Middle Eastern peasants increasingly lost their freedom, becoming serfs on large estates?

A) 900
B) 1000
C) 1100
D) 1350

Answer 2

1100

Question 3

Which of the following statements concerning Arabic trade after 1100 is most accurate?

A) Arabic control of the seas was strengthened following 1100.
B) Although Arabic dynamism in trade was reduced, Muslims remained active in world markets.
C) The total collapse of the Islamic world in the 12th century can best be compared to the fall of the Roman Empire.
D) The Arab trading complex was reduced after 1100 to the Middle East.

Answer 3

Although Arabic dynamism in trade was reduced, Muslims remained active in world markets.

Question 4

Which of the following statements concerning the political fragmentation of the Arabic world is most accurate?

A) After the fall of the Abbasid caliphate, the emerging Ottoman Empire soon mastered most of the lands of the old caliphate plus the Byzantine corner.
B) The political fragmentation caused by the fall of Baghdad lasted for several centuries under the decentralized administration of the Seljuk Turks.
C) The Mongol conquests eliminated any form of centralized government in the Middle East until the 17th century.
D) Following the fall of the Abbasid caliphate, the Middle East became part of the colonial empire of the emerging feudal states of western Europe.

Question 5

Which of the following statements concerning the Ottoman Empire is most accurate?

A) The rise of the Ottoman Empire restored the full international vigor that the Islamic caliphate had possessed.
B) Turkish rulers promoted trade more actively than did their Arab predecessors.
C) The expansionist power of the Ottoman Empire was very real, but the focus on conquest and administration overshadowed wider commercial ambitions.
D) The Ottoman Empire had no expansionist interests or capabilities.

Question 6

What area represented a new conquest for the Ottoman Empire?

A) Asia Minor
B) North Africa
C) Southeastern Europe
D) Mesopotamia

Question 7

Which of the following statements concerning the Ottoman Empire is most accurate?

A) Turkish rulers did not promote maritime trade as vigorously as had the Arabs.
B) Scientific and philosophical investigations reached the level of innovation that they had enjoyed under the Abbasids.
C) The Turks refused to patronize the traditional Persian artists and craftsmen who had dominated the later Abbasid court.
D) The Ottomans were more interested in cultural patronage than in military organization.

Question 8

Which of the following civilizations first attempted to fill the commercial vacuum created by the decline in Arabic trade?

A) Russia
B) Japan
C) China
D) India

Question 9

What Chinese dynasty succeeded the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China?

A) Chou
B) Ming
C) Han
D) Tang

Question 10

What was the innovation launched by the Ming dynasty?

A) Receiving tribute payments from Korea
B) Extending their political control over Vietnam
C) Use of a centralized bureaucracy
D) Mounting huge, state-sponsored trading expeditions throughout Asia and beyond

Question 11

In what year did the Ming dynasty halt state-sponsored commercial voyages?

A) 1358
B) 1405
C) 1433
D) 1487

Question 12

Which of the following was NOT a reason used by the Ming dynasty to halt the trading expeditions?

A) The opposition of the scholar-gentry and bureaucracy
B) The technological inferiority of Chinese ships and navigation
C) The growing military expenses of the campaigns against the Mongols
D) The traditional preference of the Chinese for Asian products

Question 13

Which of the following statements concerning the cessation of state-sponsored trade by the Ming dynasty is most accurate?

A) The cessation of trade severely damaged the internal economy of China and produced the inevitable peasant revolutions that overthrew the Ming dynasty.
B) The end of international trade signaled a general decentralization of government in Ming China.
C) Because of the Chinese dependence on imports from abroad, the decision to end the state-sponsored expeditions was particularly critical in initiating cultural decline.
D) In Chinese terms, it was the brief trading flurry that was unusual, not its cessation.

Question 14

What admiral commanded China?s great overseas expeditions between 1405 and 1433?

A) Zhenghe
B) Jung Tzi Lung
C) Xun Xi
D) Yan Xuanshang

Question 15

Which of the following was NOT a drawback to the West?s emergence as a global power?

A) Western nations lacked the political coherence and organizing ability of imperial China.
B) The West did not begin to establish key maritime and commercial links until after 1600.
C) The church, long one of the organizing institutions of Western civilization, was under attack.
D) The lives and economic activities of ordinary Europeans, the artisans and peasants, were in serious disarray.

Question 16

Which of the following was NOT a contributing factor to the economic crises of the 14th century?

A) Withdrawal from the global trading network
B) Bubonic plague
C) Lack of technological advance in agriculture
D) Recurrent famine

Question 17

What proportion of the European population died as a result of the 14th -century plague?

A) one tenth
B) one fourth
C) one third
D) one half

Question 18

Which of the following was NOT a source of Western dynamism in the 14th and 15th centuries?

A) The strengthening of feudal monarchy
B) The growth of cities and urban economies
C) Advances in metallurgy
D) Two centuries of peace among the major nations

Question 19

Strong regional monarchies took hold in this period in

A) France and England
B) the Ottoman Empire
C) Spain and Portugal
D) Germany and Austria

Question 20

From what source did many technological innovations arrive in the West during the 13th and 14th centuries?

A) Asia
B) Africa
C) The Americas
D) The Islamic regions of the Middle East

Question 21

In what region of Europe did the Renaissance begin?

A) Germany
B) Italy
C) France
D) England

Question 22

In comparison to medieval culture, Renaissance culture was

A) more concerned with Aristotelian philosophy.
B) more concerned with things of this world.
C) disinterested in classical models.
D) based less on urban vitality and expanding commerce.

Question 23

Which of the following was NOT one of the reasons that Italy emerged as the center of the early Renaissance?

A) The emergence of centralized states in Italy allowed for more extensive patronage of the arts.
B) Italy retained more contact with Roman traditions than did the rest of Europe.
C) Italy led the West by the 14th century in banking and trade.
D) Italy had closer contacts with foreign scholars, particularly those in late Byzantium.

Question 24

What Florentine painter led the way in the movement toward nature and people as the primary subject matter of Renaissance art?

A) Giotto
B) Petrarch
C) Masaccio
D) Fra Angelico

Question 25

What Italian city-state was best placed to engage in the new, Western -oriented commercial ventures of the 15th century?

A) Venice
B) Florence
C) Genoa
D) Pisa

Question 26

Along with Italy, a key center for political change in the 14th and 15th centuries was

A) France.
B) Germany.
C) England.
D) the Iberian peninsula.

Question 27

What was unique about the development of states in the Iberian peninsula?

A) These governments were based on city-states rather than nation-states.
B) Based on Castile and Aragon, the Iberian states were unique in their adoption of Islam.
C) Spain and Portugal developed effective new governments with a special sense of religious mission and religious support.
D) The states of Spain and Portugal were able to develop without emphasis on the military.

Question 28

Which of the following was NOT an international economic difficulty experienced by the West by 1400?

A) Western elites were accustomed to increasing consumption of Asian luxury products.
B) Trade with Asia had ceased as a result of the Mongol conquests.
C) Western trade for luxuries had to be paid for in gold, establishing a negative balance of trade.
D) The rise of the Ottoman Empire once again closed off the eastern Mediterranean for Western merchants and shipping.

Question 29

What was the Western response to the problems of international trade that they experienced in 1400?

A) Western nations halted trade with Asia and the East and became more dependent on European-produced commodities.
B) Many nations sought to establish alliances with the Ottoman Empire in order to restore the trade routes.
C) Overland trade routes through northern Russia were established to the East.
D) Western nations began explorations of alternative routes to Asia that would bypass the Middle East and Muslim realms.

Question 30

The key theme of Polynesian culture from the 7th century to 1400 was

A) the adoption of Japanese civilization in the island societies.
B) the development of a uniform written script.
C) contraction as a result of the world-wide epidemic of the 14th century.
D) spurts of migration and conquest that implanted Polynesian culture beyond the initial base in the Society Islands.

Question 31

Which of the following was NOT characteristic of Hawaiian culture?

A) Urbanization
B) Animal husbandry featuring swine
C) Warlike regional kingdoms
D) Highly stratified social structure

Question 32

Which of the following represents a significant difference between New Zealand and Hawaii?

A) Art based on carved wood
B) A cold and harsh climate
C) A highly stratified society
D) A society based on warfare

Question 33

The practice of judging other peoples by the standards and practices of one?s own culture of ethnic group is

A) ethnocentrism.
B) genocide.
C) anthropomorphism.
D) aversionism.

Question 34

Which of the following was NOT a result of the European contact with sub-Saharan Africa after 1500?

A) Trade patterns in west Africa shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic
B) Trade shifted in west Africa from Muslim to European hands
C) Seizure of slaves for European use affected many regions deeply
D) Regional kingdoms lost all influence in west Africa and were replaced by European governments

Question 35

Account for the decline of the Middle East.

Question 36

Evaluate the position of China in the international balance of power in 1450.

Question 37

What were the sources of dynamism that fueled the Western advances relative to other civilizations?

Question 38

Describe early Western exploration and colonization patterns.

Question 39

In what sense were the civilizations outside the world network of cultural exchange (the Americas, Africa, and Polynesia) vulnerable to interaction with other civilizations?