(a) Why did many Europeans migrate to America after sixteenth century? Explain.

(i) Poverty and hunger were common in Europe until the nineteenth century. Cities were crowded and deadly diseases were

(ii) widespread. Religious conflicts were common, and religious dissenters were persecuted.

(iii) Thousands therefore fled Europe for America. Here, by the eighteenth century, plantations worked by slaves captured in Africa were growing cotton and sugar for European markets.

(iv) From the sixteenth century, America’s vast lands, abundant crops and minerals began to transform trade and lives everywhere. This led to further migration to America by Europeans Precious metals, particularly silver, from mines

(v) located in present day Peru and Mexico also enhanced Europe’s wealth and financed its trade with Asia.

(b) How did trade and long-distance travel contribute to the spread of diseases during ancient period?

(i) From ancient times, travelers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual fulfilment, or to escape persecution.

(ii) They carried goods, money, values, skills, ideas, inventions, and even germs and diseases.

(iii) The long-distance spread of disease-carrying germs may be traced as far back as the seventh century.

(iv) Later, trade and long-distance travel also contributed to the spread of diseases especially when Europeans attempted to conquer America.

(v) Spanish and Portuguese conquerors carried with them germs like small pox to the Americas. The local inhabitants had no immunity against these diseases from Europe. It killed and decimated whole communities.