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BEST IELTS General Reading Test 459
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST 459 – PASSAGE – 3
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST – 459
READING PASSAGE – 3
Spanish Exploration and Conquest
A – The Spanish established the first European settlements in the Americas, beginning in the Caribbean and, by 1600, extending throughout Central and South America. Thousands of people flocked from Spain to the Americas seeking wealth and status. The most famous of these adventurers are Christopher Columbus (who, though Italian himself, explored on behalf of the Spanish monarchs), Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro.
B – The history of Spanish exploration begins with the history of Spain itself. During the fifteenth century, Spain hoped to gain advantage over its rival, Portugal. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469 unified Catholic Spain and began the process of building a nation that could compete for worldwide power. In 1492, they completed the Reconquista: the centuries-long Christian conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquista marked another step forward in the process of making Spain an imperial power, and Ferdinand and Isabella were now ready to look further afield.
IELTS General Reading Test
C – Their goals were to expand Catholicism and to gain a commercial advantage over Portugal. To those ends, Ferdinand and Isabella sponsored extensive Atlantic exploration. Spain’s most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, was actually from Genoa, Italy. He believed that, using calculations based on other mariners’ journeys, he could chart a westward route to India, which could be used to expand European trade and spread Christianity. Starting in 1485, he approached Genoese, Venetian, Portuguese, English, and Spanish monarchs, asking for ships and funding to explore this westward route. All those he petitioned—including Ferdinand and Isabella at first—rebuffed him; their nautical experts all concurred that Columbus’s estimates of the width of the Atlantic Ocean were far too low.
However, after three years of entreaties, and, more importantly, the completion of the Reconquista, Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance Columbus’s expedition in 1492, supplying him with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The Spanish monarchs knew that Portuguese mariners had reached the southern tip of Africa and sailed the Indian Ocean. They understood that the Portuguese would soon reach Asia and, in this competitive race to reach the Far East, the Spanish rulers decided to act.
IELTS General Reading Test
D – Columbus held erroneous views that shaped his thinking about what he would encounter as he sailed west. He believed the earth to be much smaller than its actual size and, since he did not know of the existence of the Americas, he fully expected to land in Asia. On October 12, 1492, however, he made landfall on an island in the Bahamas.
He then sailed to an island he named Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti). Believing he had landed in the East Indies, Columbus called the native Taínos he found there “Indios,” giving rise to the term “Indian” for any native people of the New World. Upon Columbus’s return to Spain, the Spanish crown bestowed on him the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and named him governor and viceroy of the lands he had discovered.
IELTS General Reading Test
E – Columbus’s 1493 letter—or probanza de mérito (proof of merit)—describing his “discovery” of a New World did much to inspire excitement in Europe. Probanzas de méritos were reports and letters written by Spaniards in the New World to the Spanish crown, designed to win royal patronage.
Today they highlight the difficult task of historical work; while the letters are primary sources, historians need to understand the context and the culture in which the conquistadors, as the Spanish adventurers came to be called, wrote them and distinguish their bias and subjective nature. While they are filled with distortions and fabrications, probanzas de méritos are still useful in illustrating the expectation of wealth among the explorers as well as their view that native peoples would not pose a serious obstacle to colonization.
IELTS General Reading Test
F – In 1493, Columbus sent two copies of a probanza de mérito to the Spanish king and queen and their minister of finance, Luis de Santángel. Santángel had supported Columbus’s voyage, helping him to obtain funding from Ferdinand and Isabella. Copies of the letter were soon circulating all over Europe, spreading news of the wondrous new land that Columbus had “discovered.” Columbus would make three more voyages over the next decade, establishing Spain’s first settlement in the New World on the island of Hispaniola.
Many other Europeans followed in Columbus’s footsteps, drawn by dreams of winning wealth by sailing west. Another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, sailing for the Portuguese crown, explored the South American coastline between 1499 and 1502. Unlike Columbus, he realized that the Americas were not part of Asia but lands unknown to Europeans. Vespucci’s widely published accounts of his voyages fueled speculation and intense interest in the New World among Europeans. Among those who read Vespucci’s reports was the German mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller. Using the explorer’s first name as a label for the new landmass, Waldseemuller attached “America” to his map of the New World in 1507, and the name stuck.
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 28-31
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from reading passage 3 for each answer.
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 32-36
Passage 3 has six paragraphs labelled A-F.
Which paragraphs contain the following information?
32. Why Ferdinand and Isabella at first refused to fund Columbus’s expedition
33. How Spain’s imperialist ambitions began
34. The difficulty of analysing the letters written to the Spanish king and queen
35. Columbus’s first discoveries
36. The number of journeys undertaken by Columbus to the New World
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 37-40
Look at the information below (Questions 37-40) and the list of people below.
Match each piece of information with the correct person A-E .
NB answers A-E can be used more than once.
37. Assisted Columbus in getting money for his voyage.
38. An Italian explorer.
39. Created a map based on the reports of a famous explorer.
40. Finally conquered the Iberian Peninsula.
IELTS General Reading Test
List of people
A. Christopher Columbus
B. Francisco Pizarro
C. Ferdinand and Isabella
D. Luis de Santangel
E. Martin Waldseemuller
IELTS General Reading Test
IELTS General Reading Test
ANSWERS
28. 1469
29. (THE) BAHAMAS
30. (THE) QUEEN / ISABELLA
31. AMERICA
32. C
33. B
34. E
35. D
36. F
37. D
38. A
39. E
40. C
IELTS General Reading Test