Western Civilization I / Unit 16 WC1 1525 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sequencing the Voyages, 1488 to 1522
The idea
The exam gives four voyages or conquests and asks their order across thirty-five years, and the trap is that Portuguese and Spanish tracks interleave. The method is two spines. Portugal: Dias fourteen eighty-eight, da Gama fourteen ninety-eight, Cabral fifteen hundred. Spain: Columbus fourteen ninety-two, Tordesillas fourteen ninety-four, Magellan fifteen nineteen to twenty-two, Cortes fifteen nineteen to twenty-one, Pizarro fifteen thirty-one to thirty-three.
In practice
Merge them. Dias comes first, four years before Columbus. Columbus's first voyage precedes Tordesillas by two years, and Tordesillas precedes da Gama's arrival by four. Cabral's Brazil in fifteen hundred comes two years after da Gama. Magellan sails the year Cortes lands, fifteen nineteen; Tenochtitlan falls in fifteen twenty-one, one year before Elcano returns. Pizarro follows a decade later. Read: Dias, Columbus, Tordesillas, da Gama, Cabral, Magellan and Cortes, Tenochtitlan, Elcano, Pizarro, Potosi in fifteen forty-five.
Where people slip
Two traps. Tordesillas was signed before anyone knew what lay west of the line, so it precedes Cabral's Brazil and Magellan's Pacific. And da Gama's arrival is fifteen ninety-eight on the witness though he sailed in ninety-seven; the exam may use either.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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