The document contains 6 passages that discuss a variety of topics from 16th-17th century European history, including: 1. Reasons for European overseas exploration including trade, wealth, glory and spread of Christianity. Motives changed over time with wealth exploitation becoming most important. 2. Cortés' description of the Aztec capital focused on its grandeur and wealth, justifying its conquest. 3. De las Casas' work helped create the image of Spaniards as cruel for their treatment of natives in the New World, likely to provoke reaction and reform.

1. What justifications does Albuquerque give for the attack on
Malacca? Which might have been the most important in the
sixteenth century?
2.
What are three reasons for European overseas exploration? As
more countries tried to expand overseas, did these motives
change? Or, more directly, which motive was exploited the
most?
3.
What did Cortés focus on in his description of the Aztec capital
city? Why do you think Cortés felt justified in conquering the
city?
4.
In what ways did Bartolomé de las Casas’s
Destruction of the Indies
help create the image of the Spaniards as “cruel and murderous
fanatics?” What may have de las Casas’s motives behind such
imagery and reaction to the events in the “New World?”
5.
Analyze the interaction between King Louis XIV of France and
the King of Tonkin. What are the underlying beliefs and
approaches of the two rulers? How are they alike? Different?
How does each date their letters? What do you infer from these

2. dates?
6.
Why and how did Japan succeed in keeping Europeans largely
away from its territory in the seventeenth century?
1.
According to Grimmelshausen, what was the effect of the Thirty
Years’ War on ordinary Europeans?
2.
During the 17
th
century, at whose expense did Austria expand? What territories
did Austria add by 1772?
3.
Describe the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire during the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and the eighteenth centuries. Why did
the Ottoman Empire initially succeed? Why did it falter?
4.
What motivated Cromwell’s political and military actions?

3. What was Edmund Ludlow’s criticism of Cromwell, and how
did Cromwell respond? In what ways did Edward Hyde see both
good and bad features in Cromwell? How do you explain the
differences in these perspectives?
5.
How did the
Bill of Rights
lay the foundation for a constitutional monarchy? What key
aspects of this document testify to the exceptional nature of
English state politics in the seventeenth century?
6.
What theories of government were proposed by Jacques
Bossuet, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, and how did their
respective theories reflect concerns and problems of the
seventeenth century?
1.
What did Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton contribute to
a new vision of the universe, and how did it differ from the
Ptolemaic conception of the universe?
2.
What does the correspondence between Galileo and Kepler
reveal about an emerging spirit of scientific inquiry? What other

4. notable achievements must European society have reached even
to make this exchange of letters possible? What aspects of
European material culture made the work of these scientists
easier? What language were these letters written in?
3.
What does Galileo think is the difference between knowledge
about the natural world and knowledge about the spiritual
world? What does Galileo suggest that his opponents should do
before dismissing his ideas? In what ways does Cardinal
Bellarmine attempt to refute Galileo’s ideas? Why did Galileo’s
ideas represent a threat to the Catholic Church?
4.
What did Paracelsus, Vesalius, and Harvey contribute to a
scientific view of medicine?
5.
What arguments did Spinoza use to support the idea of female
inferiority? What was the effect of this line of reasoning on the
roles women could play?