Midterm Study Guide

If you can write 6-minute answers on the following questions / topics, you should do well on the midterm.

1) Where are we on the timeline? Draw the timeline, including major events or ideas which defined or began the Modern era. Briefly discuss the significance of those major events or ideas.

2) What was the Great Dying? Was this a genocide? Was it a cultural genocide?

3) Why did Europeans come to the Americas, and why did they have an advantage over potential competitors & over native peoples? Cite approximately 6 reasons in your answer.

4) What was unique about slavery as it was practiced in North America as compared to Brazil and the Caribbean?

5) The three major regions colonized in the Americas as we compared them in class were Spanish South America, Brazil/Caribbean, and North America. Who were the colonizers in these three regions? What products or industries drove these economies? Which groups of people did the labor? What were the resulting long-term demographic changes in these different regions?

6) What is the “problem of Eurocentrism”? Is it still a problem today?

7) What was the Renaissance? In what ways was it inspired by Classical Greek Humanism? Why does it still matter today?

8) What was the significance of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment? Are Enlightenment ideas still relevant today?

9) Describe the “Atlantic revolutions” as they echoed across the Atlantic starting in the Enlightenment period. Include a discussion of the various movements that found their inspiration in these revolutions.

10) Discuss the significance of the Indian Ocean trade network within the Afro-Eurasian world of the early 1400s. What were the three ways Europeans tried to get in on that Indian Ocean trade before they began plundering in the Americas.

11) Should the US continue to celebrate Columbus Day? Why or why not?