Application and Reflection Questions
1
.
How did the religious backgrounds of the Spanish, French, English, and Dutch differ? How did religion affect their motivations in colonizing the Americas?
2
.
How did Native Americans shape the colonization of North America?
3
.
Why did some colonies rely on enslaved labor more heavily than others? Why do you think that Europeans were willing to indenture fellow Europeans but not to enslave them in the way they did Africans?
4
.
What were the short- and long-term consequences of the rise of the global economy in the eighteenth century?
5
.
What were some of the successful movements to resist foreign expansion in Africa and the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
6
.
Why did some movements to resist colonial expansion in Africa, Asia, and the Americas succeed and others did not? Choose two resistance movements that opposed European empires and compare them to support your argument.
7
.
Were the Luddites right to resist mechanization? Why or why not?
8
.
What were the benefits and harms of mechanization?
9
.
Did Karl Marx’s argument effectively address the challenges of capitalism? Why or why not?