Western Civilization I / Unit 16 WC1 1527 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Classifying an Exchange: Crop, Animal, Disease, Metal, Person
The idea
The exam describes something that crossed the Atlantic and asks what kind of exchange it was and which way it went. The method is two questions: which direction, and what effect. Crops both ways, enriching diets. Animals mostly west, transforming work and war. Disease mostly west, emptying populations. Metal east, inflating prices. People west by force, building plantations.
In practice
Five cases. A tuber from the Andes that fed Ireland: crop, eastward. A herd animal that gave Plains peoples mobility: animal, westward, the horse. A fever that killed nine in ten in a valley with no prior exposure: disease, westward. Bars that passed through Seville and raised bread prices in Germany: metal, eastward. A cargo of captives sold under a crown contract to a sugar planter: people, westward, the asiento. A sixth, the trick: sugar itself went west as a crop and came back east as the product of enslaved labor, so it belongs in two columns.
Where people slip
Direction is not always simple; tobacco went east as a crop and came back as a colonial product. Classify by the first crossing and note the return, and remember the anchor's judgment on the whole as attributed.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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