Question

Globally, what happened to economic systems after 1450?
Mercantilism was replaced by
• capitalism as the world's most common economic system.
Highland Clearances were replaced
• by mercantilism as the world's most common economic system.
Capitalism was replaced by
• mercantilism as the world's most common economic system.
Indentured servitude was replaced
• by capitalism as the world's most common economic system.

Answer 1

Correct choice: "Mercantilism was replaced by capitalism as the world's most common economic system."

Brief explanation:
- After c.1450 European overseas expansion produced the mercantilist era (16th–18th centuries): state-regulated trade, colonies, tariffs and monopolies to accumulate bullion and national power.
- The Industrial Revolution (late 18th–19th centuries) produced industrial capitalism—market-driven production, private capital investment, wage labor—which gradually supplanted mercantilist practices as the dominant global economic system.
- The other options are incorrect: the Highland Clearances were a regional (Scottish) transformation, not a global economic replacement; capitalism did not get replaced by mercantilism; and indentured servitude was one labor form that declined or was transformed (alongside slavery and wage labor), but it was not simply "replaced by capitalism" globally in the way mercantilism was replaced by capitalism.