Drill 5 · Multiple Choice · Unit 2: Networks of Exchange
AP World History Unit 2 Drill 5 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Unit 2: Networks of Exchange. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
This drill focuses on the integrated Indian Ocean trading network from c. 1200 to c. 1450, with attention to the monsoon winds, the roles of Malaccan, Arab, Swahili, and Gujarati merchants, and the cultural and biological consequences of long-distance exchange. Read the passage carefully, then answer all five questions.
Adapted from a modern historian's account.
"The Indian Ocean world of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was not a collection of isolated civilizations but an integrated system in which people, goods, ideas, and pathogens moved with striking regularity. The monsoon winds — predictable, reversible, and seasonally reliable — provided the natural infrastructure that made this integration possible. What emerged was a network in which no single power dominated: the Sultanate of Malacca controlled the straits between the Indian and Pacific Oceans; Arab and Swahili merchants managed the East African coast; Gujarati merchants from western India served as indispensable middlemen across the whole basin. When trade flourished, it brought not only silk and spices but also crop varieties, religious practices, and epidemic diseases — binding distant peoples together in ways that were simultaneously enriching and devastating."