Drill 21 · Multiple Choice · Unit 6: Industrialization and Its Effects
AP World History Unit 6 Drill 21 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Unit 6: Industrialization and Its Effects. 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 economic imperialism and the use of unequal treaties to establish informal empire, with particular attention to the Opium Wars and China's experience of Western commercial pressure in the 19th century. Read the passage carefully, then answer all five questions.
Adapted from a letter by Lin Zexu, Imperial Commissioner appointed by the Qing Emperor to suppress the opium trade, addressed to Queen Victoria of Britain, 1839 CE, with substantial paraphrase.
"We find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand li from China. The purpose of your ships in coming to China is to realize a large profit. Since this is the case, we are of the opinion that the foreign merchants who purchase opium for sale in China have been tempted by the enormous profit to be made and have not known that opium is a poison. Now we have received the Imperial command to root out opium, and we are going to carry this out thoroughly. We mean to punish severely the native Chinese who buy opium, and also to cut off the foreign merchants who bring it in. Suppose a man of another nation were to carry opium into England and seduce your English people to buy and use it — certainly your honorable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused. We now request your honorable majesty to have the production and sale of opium strictly forbidden by law."