Question

Africans who sold other Africans as slaves insisted on being paid in fabrics from India. Indeed, historians have discovered that some 35 percent of the cargo typically taken from Europe to Africa originally came from India. What could the Europeans use to buy Indian cloth? The Spanish shipped silver from the mines of Bolivia to Manila in the Philippines, and bought Asian products there. Any silver that English or French pirates could steal from the Spanish was also ideal for buying Asian cloth. So to get the fabrics that would buy the slaves that could be sold for sugar for the English to put into their tea, the Spanish shipped silver to the Philippines, and the French, English, and Dutch sailed east to India. What we call a triangle was really as round as the globe.

–Sugar Changed the World,
Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

How does the evidence in this passage support the central idea that the exchange of goods in the sugar trade involved much of the world?

It delivers an ethical rationale for certain methods used in sugar production.
It provides a logical argument for the effect of sugar production on the sale of goods.
It offers empirical evidence of the cargo that traveled between India, Europe, and Africa.
It gives an anecdotal explanation of the manufacturing and transport of luxury items.

Answer 1

It offers empirical evidence of the cargo that traveled between India, Europe, and Africa.

Explanation: The passage cites a specific statistic (about 35% of European-to-Africa cargo came from India) and concrete examples (Spanish silver to Manila, European voyages to India) showing real, measurable trade flows linking multiple regions.