Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each item: was it set by the environmental field of possibility, or was it a human decision?
Groups: Field of possibility · Human decision
- The encomienda system of forced indigenous labour
- Which continent’s crops could diffuse without crossing climate zones
- The transatlantic slave trade
- Which populations carried smallpox and which had no immunity
Hints
- The environment set what was possible; people chose within it.
- Institutions of forced labour were decisions, not consequences.
Show the answer
Field of possibility: Which populations carried smallpox and which had no immunity, Which continent’s crops could diffuse without crossing climate zones
Human decision: The encomienda system of forced indigenous labour, The transatlantic slave trade
Why
Geography decided who arrived carrying which pathogens. It did not decide the encomienda, the mines, or the slave trade, those were made by people with names who had alternatives. Widening the frame locates agency; it does not dissolve it.
Practise Big History and Environmental History
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
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