AP World History Summer Project-2016

An Edible History of Humanity-Tom Standage

The book you have been assigned to read is one that provides an excellent, thought-provoking look at

world history through the food we eat. The foods we eat are something most people take for granted.

As we will see in this reading and throughout this class, everything from what we eat to the clothes we

wear to the technology we use to the religion we practice; everything has an interrelated history.

The completeness and correctness of this assignment are paramount. Please keep in mind that this

assignment should be completed entirely on your own. You should not work on the assignment with

others.

Instructions: All work must be typed in 12 pt. font with 1 inch margins. Use headings to designate your

answers. Answer all questions in complete sentences. Answers should not use personal pronouns but

should restate the question.

Due Date: A hard copy of your answers will be due on the first day of school Thursday, August 11, 2016.

Chapter 1 – The Invention of Farming (Choose any 3 questions)

1. Farming emerged from what three places and time periods to spread throughout the world to

become mankind’s chief means of food production?

2. Where was maize originally domesticated and where did it spread to become a major staple for

people?

3. Why did domestication make wheat and rice more dependent on human intervention?

4. Wheat and barley come from? Rice and millet come from? Maize came from?

5. Give an example of how food was incorporated into one of the creation myths around the world.

Chapter 2 – The Roots of Modernity (Choose any 2 questions)

1. Give three reasons why the adoption of farming was “the worst mistake in the history of the human

race.”

2. What were some of the elements that contributed to the evolution of sedentism and farming?

3. How did farming and domestication spread almost everywhere across the world?

4. Why is farming and domestication “profoundly unnatural”?

Chapter 3 – Food, Wealth, and Power (Choose any 3 questions)

1. How did the surplus of food generated by agriculture revolutionize the social stratification of society?

2. Why did hunter-gatherer societies tend to be egalitarian?

3. How did powerful leaders, such as “big men,” emerge and how did they end up in control of the

agricultural surplus?

4. Describe two theories of how the “big men” developed into chiefs, kings, or the ruling elite.

5. Describe archaeological evidence in the river valley civilizations that suggest levels of social

stratification and organization.

Chapter 4 – Follow the Food (Choose any 2 questions)

1. Why did the Incas closely link agriculture to warfare?

2. Give some examples of how food and/or labor were used as currency for financial and social

obligations.

3. How did the farmers, their rulers, and the gods all depend upon each other for their survival?

4. Explain how wealth and poverty seemed to be inevitable consequences of agriculture and civilization.

Chapter 5 – Splinters of Paradise (Choose any 5 questions)

1. What did Herodotus, Theophrastus, and Pliny the Elder believe about the origin of species?

2. Why were people willing to pay such high prices for spices?

3. What was the original meaning of the word “spice” according to the Alexandria Tariff?

4. Explain why the book states, “the pursuit of spices is the third way in which food remade the world.”

5. How was the knowledge of the seasonal trade winds an advantage to sailors on the Indian Ocean

trade routes?

6. What was the “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea”?

7. When and where did overland trade routes occur? What were they later called?

8. What things, in addition to food and spices, were exchanged along trade routes?

9. Who was Ibn Battuta? Who was Sheng He?

10. What was the “Muslim Curtain”?

11. What was the connection between the spice trade and the plague?

12. Why did European explorers seek radical new sea routes to the East?

Chapter 6 – Seeds of Empire (Choose any 5 questions)

1. Who was Paolo Toscanelli and what did he believe?

2. Explain the connection between Columbus and the search for spices.

3. What foodstuffs did the Americas provide to the rest of the world?

4. In the 1420’s, what was the goal of Infante Henrique of Portugal (Prince Henry the Navigator) for

exploring the west coast of Africa?

5. How did the Portuguese obtain spices on their voyages to India? How successful were they?

6. What/when was the Treaty of Tordesillas and what did Portugal and Spain gain from it?

7. How did the Dutch East India Company, or VOC, conduct their spice trade and how did they treat the

native populations where the spices were found?

8. Explain the concept of “food miles.”

9. Why is the legacy of the spice trace mixed?

Chapter 7 – New World, New Foods (Choose any 3 questions)

1. Who passed the Navigation Acts of the 1660’s and what were they?

2. How did the exchange and redistribution of food crops remake the world, in particular those parts of

it around the Atlantic Ocean?

3. In the 17th and 18th centuries, what were the overlapping triangles of trade?

4. What did Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher and economist, say about the potato in his book The

Wealth of Nations?

5. What were two new agricultural techniques that allowed European farmers to have more productive

fields? of crops?

6. What was Thomas Malthus’ theory on the connection between the population and food supply?

Chapter 8 – The Steam Engine and the Potato (Choose any 3 questions)

1. How did Great Britain become the first industrialized country in the world?

2. How did coal fuel Britain’s industrialization?

3. Explain the significance of steam power to the progress of the Industrial Revolution.

4. What was the impact of the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840’s?

5. What is the connection between “free trade” and the repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain?

6. Compare the Neolithic Revolution to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th century Britain.

7. Why is the 21st century development of biofuels considered a step backward?

Chapter 9 – The Fuel of War (Choose any 5 questions)

1. Define and give examples of “logistics.”

2. Explain the changes and the effects made by Philip II and Alexander the Great that enabled them to

create the fastest, lightest, and most agile armies.

3. How could good be used bother offensively (as a weapon) and defensively?

4. How did logistics play a role in the American Revolutionary War? (Hint: Look at Britain)

6. Why was Napoleon described as a “new Alexander the Great”?

7. Why did Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 turn out to be such a disaster?

8. Discuss Nicolas Appert’s discovery. How did this process change the food supplies of the military and

civilian populations?

9. What was the second invention in the 19th century that transformed military logistics? Why?

10. What methods did General Sherman use on the March to the Sea?

11. How did motorized warfare displace food for men and animals as the most important fuel of war?

Chapter 10 – Food Fight (Choose any 3 questions)

1. Where was Berlin located? Why was it necessary for the Western nations start the Berlin Airlift?

2. The Cold War was fought between whom and with what?

3. What was Stalin’s plan called Collectivization? Why did it not work?

4. Describe the horrific results of Stalin’s plan?

5. What were the components of Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward”? What was the goal?

6. Explain Russian Yegor Gaidar’s point of view that “the regime disintegrated in large part because it

could not feed its people.”

7. Explain how the purchasing of food in this contemporary world can have both commercial and

political implications.

Chapter 11 – Feeding the World (Choose any 3 questions)

1. Why was the 1909 development of ammonia significant?

2. What is the “Green Revolution”? What are its plusses and minuses?

3. Practically since agriculture began, peas and beans have been rotated with grain crops. Why?

4. What problems developed as a result of the increase in population in the latter half of the 19th

century?

5. How did war highlight the way chemicals, like ammonia, could be used to sustain life or destroy it?

6. Why did farmers need to adopt new dwarf varieties of grains?

7. In the late 1960’s, how did technology disprove “Malthusian” predictions?

8. What did the combination of nitrogen rich fertilizer and dwarf varieties lead to?

Chapter 12 – Paradoxes of the Future (Choose any 3 questions)

1. Explain and give examples of the connection between agricultural production and industrialization in

developing areas.

2. Discuss the various factors that influence population growth.

3. What are some of the problems with the “Green Revolution”?

4. Why did food prices rise sharply in 2007 and 2008?

5. What are the parts of the second “Green Revolution” or the “doubly green revolution”?

Chapter 13 – Ingredients of the Future (Must be answered)

1. What are the short-term and long-term purposes of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and what is its

connection with global climate change?