AP World History: Transformations in the Atlantic World from 1492 to 1750

Part B (from the 2005 AP^® World History Released Exam; suggested planning and writing time: 40 minutes)

Directions: You are to answer the following question.  You should spend 5 minutes organizing or outlining your essay.  Write an essay that:

·              Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with appropriate historical evidence.

·              Addresses all parts of the question.

·              Uses historical context to show change over time and/or continuities.

2.         Analyze the social and economic transformations that occurred in the Atlantic world as a result of new contacts among Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas from 1492 to 1750.

            For millennia prior to the fifteenth century, the Americas developed apart from Afro-Eurasia.  America was a land of rudimentary peoples and tribes in comparison to the nations and kingdoms of Afro-Eurasia.  It was as a world set back in time; one which had not yet experienced continent-wide reformation or enlightenment.  Though distantly related, no one in Afro-Eurasia remembered their ancestors who had migrated to the Americas after the flood in approximately the second or third millennium BC.¹  No one on the Atlantic coast, except for the Vikings, knew two other continents existed across the ocean.  And so, when Christopher Columbus discovered the Caribbean Islands of the New World in 1492, a tidal wave of change and advance inevitably engulfed the American and Afro-Eurasian worlds in the centuries to come.  From AD 1492 to 1750, the Atlantic world of Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas experienced significant social change as a result of mass African slavery and New World invasion.  At the same time, these landmasses enjoyed continued economic advancement due to the burgeoning transatlantic trade.

            Throughout the late-fifteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, the discovery of the New World, the mass enslavement of Africans, and the mixing of Europeans and American natives brought significant social changes.  With the discovery of the New World came the discovery of vast arable land.  The mercantilist kingdoms of Europe immediately worked to seize control of such lands.  Once they had control, the Europeans, initially the Spanish and Portuguese, needed man-power to work their newly acquired assets in the Caribbean and South America.  Such labor-force was willingly supplied by African nations.  In many cases, the victors of warring African tribes sold their brethren Africans to the Europeans.  These slaves, predominantly male, were then shipped to the New World to toil and labor in wretched conditions.  Because of the horrible conditions many Africans died prematurely; and due to the imbalance of male and female slaves, few produced offspring in the New World.  Thus, the demand for more African slaves continued.  The addition of England to the competition in the new World only increased the draw on the African slaved trade.  As more male Africans were sold, Africa’s gender balance shifted dramatically.  There were now significantly more females in Africa than males.  Thus, Africa’s social hierarchy began to shift in some tribes.  In the place of the dwindling male population, some women became the head of the houses and the leaders of the tribes.  As a result of the slave-trade, Africa developed into a predominantly female society.  Meanwhile, the societies of North America experienced significant changes as well.  With the introduction of the French to native lands, a new group of people developed – Métis.  The French, in comparison to early English and Spanish settlers, were generally peaceful in their interactions with the natives.  Instead of immediately laying claim to land, the French developed trade relations with the locals.  In order to monopolize on such trade routes and strengthen the French-Native American tie, Frenchmen married the daughters of affluent native leaders.  This French-Native union was further bound by the offspring of such relations.  The French-American children were Métis.  Thus, a new sociological group grew, influenced by both European advances and native traditions.  New contacts between Europe, Africa, and the Americas brought significant social change to African hierarchy and a mixed sociological group to the Atlantic world.

            Despite the atrocities of the African slave trade, the general transatlantic trade from 1492 to 1750 stimulated the continuation of Atlantic economic prosperity.  It was the prosperity of the Renaissance, beginning in the early fifteenth century, that allowed for Christopher Columbus’s navigation of the Atlantic Ocean in search of a new route to Asia.  Instead of arriving in the Eastern portion of Old World Asia, he landed in the New World.  In this other world were new and nutritious crops, bountiful silver mines, and a vast quantity of land.  Expanding European states took this opportunity to continue their paths towards a world-wide presence and sent colonists and slaves to the new lands.  In doing so, they established a trade triangle between the Atlantic land-masses called the Atlantic System.  In this system, Europeans traded tools, textiles, and ammunition in Africa for slaves.  In the Americas and Caribbean, such African slaves worked the ground and exported crops to Europe.  Simultaneously in North America, Natives and immigrant Europeans shipped other crops, furs, precious metals, and raw materials to Europe.  In Europe, Europeans manufactured equipment, tools, and other items from the raw materials.  These manufactures were then sent to American colonies and used to purchase more slaves in Africa; thus, the process continued.  The transatlantic trade provided a route for continuous, self-sustaining economic progress throughout 1492 to 1750 in the Atlantic World. 

            From the late fifteenth to mid eighteenth centuries, new contacts and transatlantic trade brought social change and persistent economic progress to Atlantic coast-lands.  The gender balance in Africa shifted towards primarily females and a new group of European-American individuals grew.  During this time, the Atlantic world experienced sustained economic advance due to the Atlantic System.  In the Eastern Old World of Ming China, the situation was quite different.  Trade did not result in continual economic progress.  Though the Ming Dynasty prohibited the Chinese from directly engaging in world-wide commerce, European traders were permitted to import foreign goods and export Chinese articles at specific guarded ports.  Thus, at first, China was able to benefit from European innovations and New World products – especially silver.  However, as the Spanish imported greater quantities of silver into China, the Chinese economy experienced inflation and commoners could not keep-up with the rapidly rising prices.  This, along with multiple other disastrous circumstances, led to China’s economic faltering and the eventual fall of the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu people in 1644.

¹ According to Tignor pg. 15-17, early man traveled to the Americas between 16000 and 9000 BC.  However, for this essay I decided to use the Biblical time-frame (see https://answersingenesis.org/bible-timeline/timeline-for-the-flood/).