Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context, 7e (Knox/Marston)
Chapter 2 The Changing Global Context
2.1 Multiple Choice
1) According to your text, which country has NOT been hegemonic over the world economy at
some time in the last 500 years?
A) Portugal
B) Holland
C) England
D) the United States of America
E) Russia
2) The global scope and activity of the global financial system has been made possible in large
part by
A) policies of the World Bank.
B) new information technologies.
C) the global decline of communism.
D) the strength of the U.S. dollar.
3) The average user in Germany upgrades their cellphone every (almost) 4 years, and every 6 1/2
years in Brazil. In the U.S., the average user upgrades their cell phone every
A) less than 2 years.
B) 4 years.
C) 6 years.
D) more than 8 years.
4) In addition to environmental mismanagement, Lake Baikal’s fragile and unique ecology is
seriously threatened by
A) tourism.
B) climate change.
C) gold mines.
D) oil refineries.
5) One sign of the environmental mismanagement of Russia’s Lake Baikal in Siberia—the
world’s deepest and largest (by volume) lake—was the 1997 death of thousands of
A) Siberian black bears.
B) migratory cranes.
C) tourists from western Russia.
D) freshwater seals
E) the world’s largest salmon.
6) To help understand and visualize the extent and intensity of the human impact on the earth,
some scientists use the concept of the human (or ecological)
A) analysis.
B) convergence.
C) footprint.
D) region.
E) settlement.
7) The increasing connectedness of different parts of the world through common processes of
economic, environmental, political, and cultural change is what we mean by
A) world regions.
B) globalization.
C) spatial diffusion.
D) distance-decay.
E) time-space convergence.
8) Which of the following is NOT one of the critical and interdependent “three Es” of sustainable
development?
A) entrepreneurialism
B) environment
C) economy
D) social equity
9) According to Knox and Marston, globalization of the last 25 years is linked to all of the
following except
A) new international division of labor.
B) internationalization of finance.
C) emergence of new technology systems.
D) end of neocolonialism.
E) growth and homogenization of consumer markets.
10) Which of the following was NOT among the important geographical phenomena introduced
by world-empires?
A) urbanization
B) colonization
C) religion
D) inter-regional trade
11) The first agricultural revolution set the preconditions for early world-empires by
A) enabling an increase in population densities & trade between minisystems.
B) introducing warfare to the countryside.
C) introducing colonialism and imperialism.
D) highlighting the benefits of import substitution and comparative advantage.
E) both introducing warfare to the countryside and introducing colonialism and imperialism.
12) Slash-and-burn—the name given to an early innovation that enabled the growth of
minisystems into early world-empires—refers to an innovation in
A) agriculture.
B) warfare.
C) metal-working.
D) urbanization.
E) colonization.
13) World-empires are organized around a
A) reciprocal social economy.
B) subsistence production economy.
C) system of taxation and redistribution.
D) capitalist social economy.
E) both a system of taxation and redistribution and a capitalist social economy.
14) The first agricultural revolution was characterized by all of the following except
A) domestication of animals such as sheep and cattle.
B) new methods to process, prepare and store foods.
C) sedentary agriculture based on burning plant matter as a way of returning nutrients to the soil.
D) uprising of rural populations against urban landholders.
E) centers in Fertile Crescent, South Asia, East Asia, Mesoamerica and the Andes.
15) Faced with problems associated with the law of diminishing returns, world-empires
characteristically ________ in order to feed and provide for their populations.
A) colonized nearby lands
B) imported slave labor
C) regularly invented new technologies
D) promoted import substitution
E) established trade relations with countries having comparative advantages
16) World-empires introduced ________ to enlarge their resource base in the face of rising
populations.
A) colonization
B) the law of diminishing returns
C) urbanization
D) import substitution
E) minisystems
17) The sphere of economic influence around cities—from which products for export and taxes
are collected and to which imports are distributed—is known as the city’s
A) external arena.
B) hinterland.
C) hearth area.
D) peripheral region.
E) both as the hinterland and the external arena.
18) By the 15th century, emerging regions of capitalism in the developing world-system included
all except
A) NE coastal North America.
B) Nile Valley.
C) Baltic Sea region.
D) SE coastal China.
E) Bengal region.
19) Which of the following centers of early global civilization was NOT linked by the Silk
Road?
A) Eastern Mediterranean
B) China
C) Northern India
D) Central Andes and Mesoamerica
E) the Ottoman Empire
20) Motivations for 16th-century European overseas exploration and expansion included all but
which of the following?
A) Europe’s growing population and limited agricultural resource base
B) competition among numerous small monarchies in Europe
C) declining wealth and land holdings of the European aristocracy
D) boredom with European food, culture and ways of doing things
E) search for commercial advantage and economic gain
21) Until the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s, the volume and velocity of world trade
were constrained by technologies limited to those based on
A) wood, wind and water.
B) coal, steel and rail.
C) oil, plastics and roads.
D) human labor and animal power.
22) The concept of import substitution is best characterized as
A) purchasing imported goods to replace locally produced goods.
B) manufacturing goods that had previously been imported or available through trading.
C) exporting and importing the same type of product.
D) changing suppliers of imported goods.
23) Production of sugar from sugar beets, as an alternative to trading for sugar made from sugar
cane in a foreign, tropical country is an example of
A) import substitution.
B) comparative advantage.
C) spatial justice.
D) division of labor.
E) the law of diminishing returns.
24) The specialization of peripheral countries in raw materials and foodstuffs, the
decentralization of manufacturing to areas of low labor costs, and the emphasis of core regions
on high-tech manufacturing and services describes
A) the digital divide.
B) the international division of labor.
C) comparative advantage.
D) import substitution.
E) initial advantage.
25) Plantations established to exploit labor and resources in the periphery are geared toward
A) high value crops like indigo, sugar and cocoa.
B) mixed fruits and vegetables like tomatoes and apples.
C) staple crops like corn and potatoes.
D) industrial crops like hemp, flax and sunflowers.
E) both staple crops like corn and potatoes and high value crops like indigo, sugar, and cocoa.
26) The core-periphery framework for explaining the world-system is based on geographic
divisions that have emerged as a result of
A) private economic competition.
B) competition between states.
C) competition between religious groups.
D) competition between political perspectives.
E) both private economic competition and competition between states.
27) Colonialism always results in ________ domination of a foreign society by the colonizing
power.
A) political
B) legal
C) religious
D) cultural
E) both political and legal
28) While people and societies do, indeed, respond to the opportunities and constraints of their
physical environments, ________ takes this to a simplistic, and often racist, extreme by claiming
that people’s physical, social and economic development and behavior are fundamentally the
result of their physical environments.
A) ecological determinism
B) ethnocentrism
C) egocentrism
D) masculinism
E) environmental determinism
29) Over the last 200 hundred years, clusters of improved technological innovations seem to
have come in waves of industrialization every half-century or so. With each successive wave, the
world-system
A) core expanded.
B) periphery expanded.
C) core and periphery remained unchanged.
D) core and periphery both expanded.
E) core and periphery both shrank.
30) According to Knox and Marston, the “short 20th century”—a period of fairly coherent
economic and political development—occurred between World War I and the
A) Great Depression.
B) start of World War II.
C) collapse of the Soviet Union.
D) invention of the Internet.
E) world-side emergence of performance-enhancing drugs among athletes.
31) In a surge of European imperialism to protect established interests, expand territory and
compete for world influence at the end of the 19th century, European core countries carved
almost the entire ________ into a collection of colonies.
A) continent of Africa
B) continent of South America
C) country of India
D) country of Brazil
E) world
32) In response to a global climate study by state engineers and scientists that calculated a sea
level rise of one meter by 2100, the state legislature of North Carolina voted in 2012 to
A) immediately reduce power plant emissions.
B) immediately increase automobile fuel efficiency standards.
C) immediately restrict backyard activities (barbecues, lawn mowing).
D) immediately start legislation on the creation of several wind farms on the coast of North
Carolina.
E) ban further discussion for 4 years.
33) Because of their ability and willingness to exercise power and influence in peripheral states,
giant, transnational corporations have been referred to as commercial
A) colonialists.
B) neocolonialists.
C) imperialists.
D) determinists.
34) Globalization of the last 3-4 decades is characterized by a significant increase in all of the
following except
A) the transnational scope of global economic and cultural activities.
B) the expansion and intensification of linkages and flows of capital, people, goods, ideas and
cultures across national borders.
C) the influence of transnational rules and organizations.
D) the importance of local communities and national governments.
E) both the influence of transnational rules and organization and the importance of local
communities and national governments.
35) People find evidence of the spatial injustice in the current world system in the fact that 20%
of the world’s population living in the highest income countries
A) earns 75% of world income.
B) has 84% of world export markets.
C) controls 75% of global trade in goods and services.
D) consumes 86% of the world’s goods.
E) creates 65% of the waste.
36) A global commodity chain is the network of linkages describing
A) international loans—from initial application to final project.
B) products—from its production origins to final consumption.
C) manufacturing plants—from shutting down in the core to opening in the periphery.
D) transnational companies—the links between headquarters and their retail outlets.
E) cultural trends—from its origins in the periphery to diffusion to the core.
37) The phrase “Jihad vs. McWorld” is intended to symbolize the struggle and tensions between
A) nutritious/traditional food and unhealthy/processed food.
B) religious fundamentalists and secular capitalists.
C) traditionally based cultural values and pop culture/shallow materialism.
D) the local and the global.
E) the North and the South.
38) The world’s agricultural hearth areas are those regions
A) from which the core gets most of its food.
B) where an agricultural surplus is produced.
C) where plants and animals were domesticated.
D) where swidden cultivation is practiced.
E) where industrial agriculture is most prominent.
39) Which of the following are NOT among the world’s main agricultural hearth areas?
A) North America’s Mississippi and St. Lawrence Rivers
B) Middle East’s Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
C) South Asia’s Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers
D) South America’s Andes Mountains
E) Central America’s Tamaulipas and Tehuacan Valley
40) The first agricultural revolution and the subsequent transition to food-producing minisystems
resulted in all of the following except
A) more settlements.
B) higher population densities.
C) industrialization.
D) nonagricultural specializations.
E) barter and trade between communities.
41) The modern world-system had its origins in late 15th-century Europe, and was especially
associated with a rise in
A) consumer demand for imported products.
B) art.
C) food production.
D) manufacturing.
E) exploration.
42) With the emergence of the world-system in the 16th century, European ________ reshaped
the world.
A) merchant capitalism
B) languages
C) sports
D) transnational corporations
E) comparative advantages
43) The early formation of the modern world-system was driven primarily by
A) colonial missionaries.
B) racially-motivated Europeans.
C) enlightened monarchs.
D) European merchant capitalists.
44) Satin, muslin, damask and calico are all named after Asian
A) animals.
B) cities.
C) fabrics.
D) foods.
E) people.
45) The first core regions of the world-system were the trading hubs of
A) Italy, Greece and Spain.
B) Portugal, Spain and North Africa.
C) Austria, Hungary & Germany.
D) Holland, England & France.
E) Japan, Korea and China.
46) Which of the following entered the core after having been in the periphery?
A) Canada
B) Mexico
C) Brazil
D) Portugal
E) Thailand
47) Global integration and transformation of the capitalist world system were most dramatically
accelerated after the
A) fall of the Roman Empire.
B) arrival of Europeans in the Americas.
C) Industrial Revolution.
D) World Trade Center attacks of 2001.
48) The core regions of the modern world-system
A) dominate world trade.
B) are primarily in the southern hemisphere.
C) tend to have low per-capita incomes.
D) became core regions by refusing to engage in imperialism.
E) both dominate world trade and tend to have low per-capita incomes.
49) Semiperipheral regions
A) currently include Japan and Scandinavia.
B) often exploit peripheral regions.
C) will eventually evolve to become core regions.
D) are geographically located between core regions and peripheral regions.
50) Of the following, the most important determinant of a state’s status within the world-system
is its
A) military power.
B) population size.
C) ability to keep out foreign goods and run a positive trade balance.
D) ability to ensure international economic competitiveness of its domestic producers.
51) Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of early world-empires?
A) colonialization
B) agriculturally based economy
C) use of religion and/or the military to control subjects
D) distribution of wealth from the upper classes to the lower classes
52) In 1400 A.D., the dry steppes and desert margins that ranged from the western Sahara to
Mongolia were populated by
A) pastoral (animal herding) minisystems.
B) land speculators.
C) newly evangelized Christians.
D) European immigrants.
53) Many of the roads laid out by the ________ around 2000 years ago continue to be major
routes throughout Europe.
A) Vandals
B) Romans
C) Greeks
D) Vikings
E) Packers
54) In 1800, the core of the world-system was located in
A) North America.
B) Japan.
C) western Europe.
D) the countries surrounding the Mediterranean.
E) China.
55) European industrialization began in the late ________ century.
A) 15th
B) 16th
C) 17th
D) 18th
E) 19th
56) European industrialization got its start in
A) France.
B) Sweden.
C) Italy.
D) Spain.
E) Britain.
57) Which sequence matches the order in which the countries were world-system hegemons?
A) British, Netherlands, Portuguese
B) Netherlands, British, Portuguese
C) Portuguese, Netherlands, British
D) Netherlands, Portuguese, British
58) Britain’s dominance of the world-system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was
helped most by which of the following?
A) naval power
B) the fall of Napoleon
C) decline of the Roman Empire
D) British prowess in land battles
59) The United States became a part of the world-system core
A) in the 1600s.
B) in the 1700s.
C) in the 1800s.
D) at the end of World War I.
E) at the end of World War II.
60) What was the single most important innovation stimulating the international division of
labor?
A) sewing machine
B) railroad
C) metal-hulled, ocean-going steamship
D) cargo truck
E) jet-engine airplane