Answer first. Prove it. Explain it.

A: One important difference between Crosby’s and Richter’s interpretations is that Crosby emphasizes biological exchange as the main driver of change, while Richter emphasizes the decisions and power of Indigenous peoples. Crosby focuses on disease and introduced species, whereas Richter focuses on Native trade, diplomacy, resistance, and alliances. Thus, Crosby explains change largely through ecological forces, while Richter explains it through human agency within Native political worlds.

B: One development that supports Crosby is the smallpox epidemic that struck central Mexico during the campaign against the Mexica. The disease killed many Indigenous people, including leaders and warriors who had no previous exposure to it. An Old World pathogen therefore weakened the Mexica beyond what Spanish military power alone could have accomplished.

C: One development that supports Richter is the alliance between the Tlaxcalans and Cortés. The Tlaxcalans supplied thousands of warriors and used the Spanish arrival to fight their Mexica rivals. Indigenous political choices and rivalries therefore helped determine the outcome of conquest.

T direct answer E specific evidence A explicit connection

A: “Crosby talks about disease, but Richter talks about Native Americans.”

• What works: The sentence attempts a direct contrast.
• What needs correction: “Talks about Native Americans” names a subject, not Richter’s interpretation. State that Richter emphasizes Indigenous choices and political power, while Crosby emphasizes biological and environmental forces.

B: “Smallpox supports Crosby.”

• What works: Smallpox is relevant outside evidence.
• What needs correction: The response only names the evidence. Describe a particular epidemic or its effects and explain how an Old World pathogen produced change beyond Spanish military power.

C: “Native alliances support Richter.”

• What works: Alliances could demonstrate Indigenous agency.
• What needs correction: Identify an alliance—such as the Tlaxcalan alliance with Cortés—and explain how Native participants pursued their own interests and shaped conquest.

• Part A: Summarizing each excerpt separately without stating one explicit, relational difference.
• Part A: Treating different emphases as total disagreement—for example, claiming Richter denies that disease mattered.
• Parts B and C: Repeating an idea already stated in an excerpt when the question requires evidence not directly mentioned there.
• Parts B and C: Name-dropping “the Columbian Exchange” or “Native alliances” without describing a specific development and its connection to the assigned historian.
• Part C: Treating Indigenous peoples as one unified group or assuming Europeans immediately controlled all Native nations.
• Time period: Using evidence after 1607, such as the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, even when the evidence otherwise fits the interpretation.

A: One claim Las Casas makes is that colonizers used systematic and extreme violence against largely defenseless Indigenous peoples. He portrays Spaniards as predators who massacred and tortured Native communities over many years. His language condemns conquest as sustained brutality rather than restrained conversion.

B: One development that led Las Casas to express this point of view was the expansion of the encomienda system. The Crown granted colonists the right to demand labor and tribute from Indigenous communities in exchange for supposed protection and Christian instruction, and Las Casas observed the resulting exploitation in the Caribbean. Those abuses helped turn him from an encomienda beneficiary into a Dominican critic who urged the Crown to restrain colonial violence.

C: One action Spanish authorities took in response to debates over Indigenous treatment was the New Laws of 1542. The Crown attempted to restrict Indigenous enslavement and prevent encomiendas from becoming permanent hereditary grants. The policy answered reformers’ criticism by trying to limit colonists’ control, although colonial resistance made enforcement uneven.

T direct answer E specific evidence A explicit connection

A: “Las Casas says the Spanish were cruel.”

• What works: The answer identifies the direction of Las Casas’s criticism.
• What needs correction: Describe the claim’s relevant characteristics: he portrays violence and forced labor as systematic, profit-driven, and destructive—not merely “cruel.”

B: “The Spanish wanted gold, so Las Casas disagreed with them.”

• What works: The response notices the source’s emphasis on gold.
• What needs correction: The prompt asks for a historical development, not only a motive. Name encomienda or Caribbean conquest, describe the coercion Las Casas witnessed, and explain how that experience shaped his reforming point of view.

C: “The New Laws ended the encomienda system.”

• What works: The New Laws are a specific and relevant action by Spanish authorities within the period.
• What needs correction: “Ended” is an overclaim. Explain that the Crown attempted to limit Indigenous enslavement and hereditary encomiendas, but colonists resisted and enforcement was uneven.

• Part A: Copying a vivid phrase from the source without stating the claim that the phrase communicates.
• Part A: Dismissing the passage because Las Casas intended to persuade. Purpose shapes how a source is read; it does not make the source unusable.
• Part B: Naming a motive such as “gold” or an isolated term such as “encomienda” without describing the development and explaining how it shaped his point of view.
• Part B: Saying only that Las Casas was religious. His Dominican commitments matter when connected to his observation of conquest, coerced labor, or demographic destruction.
• Part C: Claiming the New Laws immediately ended encomienda or all coerced Indigenous labor. They attempted restrictions and met major colonial resistance.
• Part C: Using the Valladolid debate without explaining what Spanish authorities did, or using the later Black Legend, which was not a Spanish-authority response.
• Time period: Using a relevant-sounding policy or event outside 1491–1607.

A: One important pattern is a catastrophic decline in central Mexico’s estimated Indigenous population. The estimate falls from about 25.2 million in 1519 to roughly 1.1 million in 1605, with especially rapid losses before 1568. The data indicate a loss of well over ninety percent in less than a century.

B: One factor that contributed to the decline was the spread of Old World diseases such as smallpox. Indigenous populations had little prior exposure or immunity, allowing epidemics to spread rapidly after contact. Repeated epidemics caused high mortality and disrupted food production and community care.

C: One labor-system effect was increased Spanish reliance on enslaved African labor. As Indigenous populations declined while colonists demanded workers for mines and plantations, Spain expanded the transport of enslaved Africans. Demographic collapse therefore helped colonists seek another coerced labor force.

T direct answer E specific evidence A explicit connection

A: “The population went down because of disease.”

• What works: The answer recognizes the direction of change.
• What needs correction: Part A asks only for a pattern, so do not substitute a cause. Describe the magnitude or pace—for example, a fall from about 25 million to about 1 million, with the steepest losses early in the period.

B: “Disease killed many Indigenous people.”

• What works: Disease is a relevant factor.
• What needs correction: Identify a pathogen such as smallpox and explain the mechanism: limited prior exposure allowed repeated epidemics to spread rapidly, while mortality and social disruption compounded one another.

C: “The decline caused slavery.”

• What works: The response attempts to connect population loss with labor.
• What needs correction: “Slavery” is too broad and the causal claim is absolute. Explain that shrinking Indigenous labor supplies, alongside continued colonial demand, contributed to increased reliance on enslaved Africans.

• Part A: Explaining a cause instead of describing the pattern visible in the graph.
• Part A: Treating the exact estimates as universally accepted or generalizing central Mexico’s data to every Indigenous society in the Americas.
• Part B: Claiming the graph itself proves disease was the only cause; a graph shows association and change over time, not a complete causal explanation.
• Part B: Writing that Indigenous peoples had “no immunity” as an absolute racial trait. The defensible explanation is limited prior exposure to particular Old World pathogens.
• Part B: Ignoring how warfare, forced labor, displacement, famine, and disrupted community care could intensify epidemic mortality.
• Part C: Referring generally to “slavery” without identifying increased reliance on enslaved African labor and explaining the labor-demand connection.
• Part C: Claiming demographic collapse single-handedly created African slavery or that coerced labor began only after Indigenous population loss.

These are examples, not the only defensible answers. T.E.A. is a reasoning routine, not a required sentence count.

A: Kidd describes an emerging evangelical movement with internal disagreements, while Butler questions whether one “Great Awakening” label adequately represents different colonial revivals. Kidd identifies renewed attention to revival and personal conversion, then places antirevivalists, moderate evangelicals, and radicals on a continuum. Butler acknowledges Calvinist revivals in New England but identifies Lutheran, Reformed, and Pietist roots in the middle colonies. Kidd uses disagreement to describe the contested shape of a changing movement; Butler uses differences among regional revivals to question how much one label can explain. Both can be right that revivals occurred and varied.

Why this works: The answer uses specific details from both excerpts and explains the different uses each historian makes of variation. It does not invent an all-or-nothing disagreement.

B: One development supporting Kidd’s interpretation was the circulation of Whitefield’s preaching through print in 1739–1740. Franklin published Whitefield’s sermons and journals in Philadelphia while Whitefield preached personal conversion in several colonies. Print carried the call for personal conversion beyond a single congregation or preaching event. Its wider circulation helps explain how the emphasis on personally experienced religion that Kidd identifies could spread, without proving that every reader converted.

Why this works: The answer connects a specific communication practice to the spread of the conversion emphasis in Kidd’s passage. Circulation demonstrates wider access, not universal acceptance.

C: One development supporting Butler’s caution was the Presbyterian Old Side–New Side split in 1741. Members of the same denomination separated over revival-related disputes, and the division continued beyond 1754. This institutional fracture shows why a single label can obscure opposing responses to revivalism. It supports Butler’s caution about coherence, although division is also compatible with the conflict Kidd acknowledges.

Why this works: The answer explains what a denominational split reveals about unity. It supports this particular caution, not a claim that all change was absent.

T direct answer E specific evidence A explicit connection

A: “Kidd liked religion and Butler did not.”

• What works: This tries to contrast the authors.
• What needs improvement: A historian’s attitude toward religion is not the issue. Compare their interpretations of the revivals’ coherence and reach, using details from both passages.

B: “Whitefield preached and Franklin printed things.”

• What works: The people and activities are relevant.
• What needs improvement: Describe what Franklin printed and explain how circulation spread the call for personal conversion emphasized in Kidd’s passage. Naming the activity does not explain its connection to his interpretation.

C: “The Great Awakening caused the American Revolution.”

• What works: The answer attempts to identify a consequence.
• What needs improvement: It does not support Butler’s caution and moves beyond 1754. Choose a specific division or limitation within the required period and explain its bearing on a shared experience.

• Treating Butler’s criticism of an interpretive label as a denial that revivals happened.
• Claiming Kidd thought revivals unified everyone; his account explicitly includes conflict.
• Using the same example twice without supplying the different development required in C.
• Confusing the First Great Awakening with the nineteenth-century Second Great Awakening.
• Assuming spiritual equality automatically produced legal equality or independence.
• Using “New Lights” and “Old Lights” as if every denomination used identical labels; the Presbyterian division is Old Side/New Side.

These are examples, not the only defensible answers. T.E.A. is a reasoning routine, not a required sentence count.

A: The two provisions reinforced hereditary enslavement by making a child’s status follow the mother and preventing baptism from changing enslaved status. The 1662 act assigned children their mother’s condition; the 1667 act said baptism did not alter bondage or freedom. A child born to an enslaved mother therefore remained enslaved even after Christian baptism, protecting an inheritable labor claim against a religious route to freedom.

Why this works: Both laws are necessary to the explanation. The answer traces their joint effect rather than listing two quotations.

B: One economic development that helps explain these protections was the expansion of Virginia’s tobacco economy. Beginning in the 1610s, planters grew tobacco for Atlantic export, creating sustained demand for workers to cultivate and prepare the crop. Laws that secured control over enslaved workers and their children protected planters’ access to coerced labor and its future value. Tobacco demand helps explain that interest without making slavery the only possible labor system.

Why this works: The answer names an economic development, supplies concrete evidence, and explains the incentive to protect labor claims.

C: One consequential difference was that English indentured service generally had a contractual endpoint, whereas the enslaved status reinforced by these laws could pass to children without such an endpoint. An indentured servant could complete a specified term, while the 1662 act assigned a child born to an enslaved mother her status and the 1667 act denied baptism the power to change it. Thus, completion of service could offer an indentured worker a route to legal freedom that these inherited-status rules did not provide to an enslaved family.

Why this works: The comparison identifies a legal distinction and explains its consequence while avoiding a claim that indentured service was benign.

T direct answer E specific evidence A explicit connection

A: “Children were slaves and baptism did not matter.”

• What works: The response recognizes topics in both laws.
• What needs improvement: Specify children born to enslaved mothers; the act also recognized free mothers’ status. Explain how the baptism provision reinforced that inherited bondage.

B: “Bacon’s Rebellion made planters pass these laws.”

• What works: The answer tries to connect lawmaking to a historical event.
• What needs improvement: The rebellion occurred in 1676, after both acts and outside B’s end date. Use an economic development such as tobacco expansion and explain the interest in securing labor.

C: “Slaves had hard lives, but servants were free.”

• What works: The response attempts a contrast.
• What needs improvement: Indentured servants were bound to service, not simply free laborers. Compare term-limited service with hereditary enslavement and explain what that meant for eventual freedom.

• Claiming that every child of an African mother was enslaved: the law followed the mother’s legal status, including freedom.
• Saying the laws invented slavery in 1662 or instantly eliminated indentured labor.
• Reading a statute as proof of universal enforcement, acceptance, or absence of resistance.
• Using Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) to explain enactments of 1662 and 1667.
• Treating baptism as a guaranteed route to freedom everywhere before 1667.
• Calling enslaved Africans “immigrants” without identifying forced transport, or treating English servants’ contractual status as identical to hereditary slavery.

These are examples, not the only defensible answers. T.E.A. is a reasoning routine, not a required sentence count.

A: One feature communicating a British imperial perspective is the map’s title, which makes the British empire its central subject. It names the British Empire in America and describes French and Spanish settlements as adjacent to it. That wording organizes a contested continent around Britain’s imperial presence rather than presenting all political communities on equal terms.

Why this works: The answer explains how a concrete source feature frames the subject. It does not rely on “all maps are biased.”

B: One development explaining English settlement around Chesapeake Bay was the growth of tobacco cultivation for Atlantic export after the 1610s. Planters used navigable rivers feeding the bay to move bulky tobacco crops to ships. Access to those waterways made nearby plantation settlement commercially useful, helping explain the relationship between colonial settlement and the bay shown on the map.

Why this works: The answer supplies a mechanism connecting the economy to a location, instead of treating the map as proof of its own cause.

C: One Native action complicating uncontested European control was the Powhatan attack on English settlements organized by Opechancanough in 1622. Powhatan forces struck multiple settlements as English expansion threatened Native lands, and renewed warfare followed. The ability to organize resistance and disrupt settlement shows that an English colony’s name on a map did not establish secure authority over Native territory.

Why this works: The answer identifies a nation, leader, date, and action, then connects resistance to the limits of the map’s political claims.

T direct answer E specific evidence A explicit connection

A: “It is biased because Popple was British.”

• What works: The answer notices that perspective matters.
• What needs improvement: An author’s identity alone does not analyze the source. Cite the title or another feature and explain how it frames the continent.

B: “The English settled there because there was water.”

• What works: The response identifies a geographic feature.
• What needs improvement: Explain what waterways enabled in this region and period: for example, transporting tobacco from plantations to Atlantic ships.

C: “The Indians fought back in Pontiac’s Rebellion.”

• What works: The answer attempts to use resistance to challenge European control.
• What needs improvement: Pontiac’s War began in 1763, outside the prompt. Name a particular Native nation and an action before 1733, then explain its significance.

• Treating a map’s imperial labels as proof of uncontested sovereignty.
• Claiming the map shows modern U.S. boundaries or an already independent United States.
• Assuming a printed border was jointly accepted by European empires and Native nations.
• Claiming all Native peoples opposed all Europeans in the same way; diplomacy and alliances also expressed Native agency.
• Using the Proclamation of 1763 or Pontiac’s War for a task ending in 1733.
• Saying that a perspective makes every geographic feature false; evaluate particular claims and limitations instead.