DBQ Practice: Topic 4.
Directions: Question 1 is based on the accompanying documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose
of this exercise.
In your response you should do the following.
• Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning.
• Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.
• Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least four documents.
• Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence (beyond that found in the documents)
relevant to an argument about the prompt.
• For at least two documents, explain how or why the document’s point of view, purpose, historical
situation, and/or audience is relevant to an argument.
• Use evidence to corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument that addresses the prompt.
Prompt: Explain how economic developments from 1450 to 1750 affected social structures over time.
Doc 1:
Doc 2:
An 18th century casta painting
Casta paintings were a series of works that seek to document the inter-ethnic mixing occurring in New Spain
among Europeans, indigenous peoples, Africans, and the existing mixed-race population. This genre of painting,
known as pinturas de castas, or caste paintings, attempts to capture reality, yet they are largely fictions.
Doc 3:
Source: Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Christian descendant of Inca nobles, two pages from The First New
Chronicle and Good Government, an illustrated history of South America that Poma de Ayala sent to the King of
Spain, circa 1615.
The page on the left shows Vari Viracocha Runa and Vari Viracocha Uarni, a mythical first couple of humans
created by the Inca god Viracocha. The page on the right shows Adam and Eve, the first couple of humans in the
Bible.
Doc 4:
Source: Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Amercas, Judith A. Carney, 2001
“Of the more than twenty species of the rice genus Orzya, only two were domesticated, glaberrima and sativa.
Most likely both types were introduced to the New World in the century following the voyages of Columbus. The
conventional interpretation of rice history in the Americas assigns Europeans the role of ingeniously adapting a
crop of Asian origin to the New World conditions. This perspective, however, ignores the role of Africans in
establishing a preferred food staple under slavery. The development of rice culture marked not simply the
movement of a crop across the Atlantic, but also the transfer of an entire cultural system, from production to
consumption.
Drawing upon diverse historical and botanical materials, I argue the primacy of African rice and skills in the
crop’s development in the Americas. My focus is on treating the transfer of rice as the diffusion of an (West
African) indigenous knowledge system…A knowledge system long practiced in West Africa was brought with
slaves across the Atlantic.
Doc 5:
The encomienda system was created by the Spanish to control and regulate [...] Indian labor and behavior during
the colonization of the Americas. Under the encomienda system, conquistadors and other leaders
(encomenderos) received grants of a number of Indians, from whom they could exact “tribute” in the form of gold
or labor. The encomenderos were supposed to protect and Christianize the Indians granted to them, but they
most often used the system to effectively enslave the Indians and take their lands.
Source:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/imperial-rivalries/timeline-terms/encomienda-system-establish
ed
Source: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda#/media/File:Kingsborough.jpg
Códice Kingsborough: un encomendero abusa de un indio. Copia del italiano Agostino Aglio 1825-1826, para
Lord Kingsborough.
Doc 6:
“The Sugar Works,” French West Indies, 17th century. [Pierre Pomet, A complete history of drugs. Written in
French by monsieur Pomet … (London, 1748, 4th ed.), facing p. 57]
Document 7:
Slave Ship Brookes Poster 1788 produced by abolitionist Thomas Clarkson
