History entrance exam, 2011 E.C. (2019)

Lebna Dengel sent John Bermudez to Europe in 1535, carrying a letter to the King of Portugal and to the Pope that asked for soldiers against Imam Ahmed. Bermudez returned in 1541 with 400 Portuguese musketeers. Christopher da Gama is the tempting choice, but he commanded those 400 soldiers; he was the help that came, not the messenger who went to ask for it. Pero Paez and Alphonso Mendez were Jesuits who reached Ethiopia much later, in the 17th century.

Textbook: History Grade 11, Unit 7 States, Principalities, Population Movements and Interactions in Ethiopia, section 7.4 (page 190).

The French army was crushed at Sedan on 2 September 1870 and Emperor Napoleon III was captured there. That defeat decided the Franco Prussian War, and the German Empire was proclaimed at the Palace of Versailles in 1871. Sadowa, also called Koniggratz, is the tempting answer, but it was fought in 1866 against Austria, five years earlier. Versailles was the place where the empire was declared, not a battle.

Textbook: History Grade 10, Unit 1 Development of Capitalism and Nationalism, section 1.2.2 Unification of Germany (pages 15 to 16).

Ottoman Turkey blocked the link. The Ottomans held Egypt and the Red Sea coast and were the sea rivals of Portugal, and they armed Adal: Yemeni musketeers sent by the Ottoman Sultan fought for Imam Ahmed at the battle of Shimbra Kure in 1529. Mamluk Egypt looks close, but the Ottomans had already defeated the Mamluks in 1517, before the Portuguese mission reached the court of Lebna Dengel in 1520. The Western Roman Empire had ended in 476 AD, so it could block nothing in this period.

Textbook: History Grade 11, Unit 7 States, Principalities, Population Movements and Interactions in Ethiopia, section 7.4 (pages 189 to 190).

The triangular trade linked Africa, Europe and the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean. Ships carried guns, cloth and spirits from Europe to Africa, enslaved Africans from Africa to the plantations of the Americas, and sugar, cotton and tobacco from the Americas back to Europe. Every option that names Asia fails, because Asia was not one of the three corners of this Atlantic circuit.

Textbook: History Grade 9, Unit 6 Africa and the Outside World, section 6.2 Slavery (page 111).

The Tokugawa Shoguns closed the country. From the 1630s Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu banned Christianity, forbade Japanese to sail abroad and shut the ports to foreigners. The Dutch East India Company is the tempting answer, but the Dutch were the one European group allowed to stay, on the small island of Dejima at Nagasaki. They were the exception the seclusion policy allowed, not the ones who made it.

The question asks for a state and its ruling DYNASTY. Yem was first ruled by the Halman Gama line and from the 14th century by the Mowa dynasty, so Yem and Mowa is the pair that matches. Kaffa and Tato is the tempting choice, but Tato is the royal TITLE of the kings, and the kings of Kaffa, Shekka and Yem all used it. The ruling clan of Kaffa was the Minjo. Motalami founded the Wolaita Malla dynasty of Wolaita, and Wolaita later passed to the Tigre dynasty, so the Wolaita and Sheka pairs are wrong as well.

Textbook: History Grade 11, Unit 8 Political, Social and Economic Processes in Ethiopia, section 8.1 (pages 204 to 205).