Social Sciences and History / Unit 16 SSH 1504 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sample Question Four: The Atlantic Slave Trade's Result
The idea
The stem asks for a result of the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade. The options: stimulation of European capitalism; industrialization of West Africa; decrease in trade between Europe and North America; increase in gold and silver shipped to Spain; equal numbers of male and female slaves in the Americas. The key is A. Entry 0512 gives the anchor's mechanism: about twelve million shipped on the Middle Passage, some ten million arriving, most to grow sugar; cash crops to Europe, finished goods to Africa; Europeans profited immensely, and plantation profits were invested in capitalist enterprises including the new factories. The distractors: B reverses the anchor, whose Africa lost population and industries; C reverses the triangular trade's growth; D belongs to the sixteenth-century silver of Potosí, taught at 0313, not the eighteenth-century trade; E contradicts the anchor's account of the captives taken.
In practice
Find the option that names European gain; every other option names a loss or the wrong century.
Where people slip
The trap is the debate the anchor reports on whether plantations were themselves capitalist; that stays a debate. The key rests on the undisputed part, that their profits fed capitalism.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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