Y205: Exploration, Encounters and Empire 1445-1570 | OCR A-Level History A (H505)
Y205: Exploration, Encounters and Empire 1445-1570
- 80 questions
- 8 subtopics
- Non-British period study, one of twenty-four
- Y201 to Y224
Exploration, Encounters and Empire 1445–1570 is unit Y205 of OCR History A, one of the twenty-four options in unit group 2, the non-British period study; a student sits one of them.
Its four key topics are exploration, encounters and conquest, settlement and consequences, impact of overseas empire on Europe. 80 recall questions across 8 subtopics.
Sample questions from Y205: Exploration, Encounters and Empire 1445-1570
Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
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Exploration: Reasons why this was an age of exploration and motives for patronage
Why was the spice trade such a powerful motive for seeking a sea route to the East?
Show the answer
Pepper, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon reached Europe only after passing through Muslim and Venetian middlemen who multiplied the price, so a crown that could buy at source stood to make enormous profits. -
Exploration: explorers, their routes and the difficulties they faced
What did Columbus believe he had reached, and why was he mistaken?
Show the answer
He believed he had reached the islands off Asia, because he had badly underestimated the circumference of the earth and overestimated the eastward extent of Asia, and he clung to that belief through all four voyages. -
Encounters and conquest: Treaty of Tordesillas and Portuguese conquest
What was the most important long-term consequence of the Tordesillas line?
Show the answer
It placed the eastern bulge of South America on the Portuguese side, giving Portugal a legal title to Brazil, and it excluded other Christian powers, a claim the French and English later refused to accept. -
Encounters and conquest: Spanish Conquests, gains and losses for individual explorers
Why did Panama matter to the Spanish advance?
Show the answer
The isthmus was the shortest crossing to the Pacific after Balboa's sighting, and the founding of Panama City in 1519 gave the Spanish a base from which expeditions could probe the coast southwards towards Peru. -
Settlement and consequences: Portuguese trading posts, Brazil and Spanish settlement
How far east did the Portuguese trading network reach by the 1550s?
Show the answer
Beyond Malacca to the spice islands, with a foothold at Macau on the China coast from 1557 and a growing trade with Japan, so that Portuguese ships carried goods between Asian ports as well as home to Europe. -
Settlement and consequences: colonial government and the effects on indigenous peoples
How did Portuguese and Spanish administration in the new territories differ?
Show the answer
Portugal ran a seaborne network from Lisbon through a viceroy at Goa and factors in the ports, concerned with trade and shipping; Spain built a territorial empire of councils, viceroys, courts and towns designed to govern and Christianise large settled populations. -
Impact of overseas empire on Europe: bullion, the price revolution and European trade
Explain the link between American treasure and Habsburg warfare.
Show the answer
Silver did not pay directly for war so much as underwrite credit: it let the crown borrow far beyond its ordinary income, and it was the failure of that credit, when interest outran revenue, that produced the suspension of payments in 1557. -
Impact of overseas empire on Europe: slave trades, balance sheet of personal and national benefits
How did the older slave trades of the Mediterranean and Sahara relate to the new Atlantic one?
Show the answer
Slavery was already familiar in Iberia, supplied across the Sahara and by Mediterranean raiding, so the Atlantic trade grew out of an accepted institution and initially fed the same domestic and urban markets before turning towards plantation labour.
The 8 subtopics
One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.
| Subtopic | What it covers | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Exploration: Reasons why this was an age of exploration and motives for patronage | Recall questions on reasons why this was an age of exploration, Renaissance learning and values, trade, religion, technological change, geography of and internal developments in Portugal and Spain, motives for patronage. | 8 |
| Exploration: explorers, their routes and the difficulties they faced | Recall questions on Columbus, Dias, da Gama, Cabral, Vespucci, Balboa, Magellan, Cortés and Pizarro, the routes of Portuguese and Spanish voyages, and the difficulties crews faced. | 12 |
| Encounters and conquest: Treaty of Tordesillas and Portuguese conquest | Recall questions on the Treaty of Tordesillas and Portuguese conquest: Albuquerque, Brazil. | 8 |
| Encounters and conquest: Spanish Conquests, gains and losses for individual explorers | Recall questions on Spanish Conquests: the Caribbean, Mexico, Panama and Peru, reasons for success, gains and losses for individual explorers and their patrons. | 12 |
| Settlement and consequences: Portuguese trading posts, Brazil and Spanish settlement | Recall questions on feitorias and African posts, Goa and the eastern network, Brazilian captaincies and sugar, Spanish settlement in the Caribbean, Mexico and Peru, and the encomienda. | 9 |
| Settlement and consequences: colonial government and the effects on indigenous peoples | Recall questions on the bodies that governed the Indies from Spain, viceroys and audiencias, local authority, the New Laws, and the demographic, economic, social, religious and military consequences for indigenous peoples. | 11 |
| Impact of overseas empire on Europe: bullion, the price revolution and European trade | Recall questions on the scale of bullion imports, the quinto real and treasure fleets, silver and Habsburg war, the price revolution, Seville and Lisbon, Spanish industry, the Cape route and the northern distribution centre. | 10 |
| Impact of overseas empire on Europe: slave trades, balance sheet of personal and national benefits | Recall questions on the slave trades, the balance sheet of personal and national benefits and losses. | 10 |
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
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Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
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Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
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Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Nearby units
OCR A-Level History A Active Recall Guide
Every unit, not just this one. 6,240 questions with their answers.