BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 83 of 144

Correct — A, a b c d 3 4 2 1. Each of the four has a birthplace recorded down to a town, and it is worth having the town rather than only the country, because the town is what makes the matching secure. Christopher Columbus was born at Genoa, eldest son of the wool-comber Domenico Colombo and Suzanna Fontanarossa; the year is uncertain, given as about 1446 or 1451, and he was still trading at Genoa in 1470, 1472 and 1473 and living at neighbouring Savona in 1473. Genoa is in present-day Italy, so a matches 3. Jacques Cartier was born at Saint-Malo in Brittany, where he also died in 1557; the Dictionary of Canadian Biography places his birth 'probably some time between 7 June and 23 Dec. 1491'. He made three voyages for Francois I from 1534, planted a thirty-foot cross bearing the arms of France at Penouille Point on 24 July 1534, and on 7 September 1535 reached the archipelago of Orleans, 'where the province and territory of Canada begins' — the name Canada then applying only to what is now Quebec. Saint-Malo is in France, so b matches 4. Sir Francis Drake was born, in the Dictionary of National Biography's careful phrasing, 'according to local tradition, at Crowndale, near Tavistock', in Devon; the year is disputed, with two apparently genuine portraits inscribed 'Anno Dom. 1581, Aetatis suae 42' and 'Anno Dom. 1594, Aetatis suae 53' pointing to about 1539-41. He circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580, renaming his Pelican the Golden Hind at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan on 20 August 1578 after the crest of his patron Sir Christopher Hatton, and Elizabeth I knighted him aboard her at Deptford on 4 April 1581. Devon is in the United Kingdom, so c matches 2. Ferdinand Magellan — Fernao de Magalhaes in Portuguese, Fernando de Magallanes in Spanish — was born about 1480 into the fourth order of Portuguese nobility, the fidalgos de cota de armas, son of Pedro de Magalhaes; the traditional birthplace is Sabrosa in the Vila Real district of Tras-os-Montes, and although Porto is argued for instead, no one disputes Portugal. So d matches 1. The sequence 3, 4, 2, 1 is option (a). In the exam hall a single fact collapses the list: Columbus is Genoese, so a must be 3, and only two options open with 3. The other one makes Drake a Portuguese and Magellan a Briton, which nothing in the record supports, so (a) survives without checking the remaining pairs.

• (b)a b c d 1 2 4 3 — This is what you get by pairing the two lists straight down the page in printed order — Columbus to Portugal, Cartier to the United Kingdom, Drake to France and Magellan to Italy. All four pairs are wrong, which is the usual signature of a code produced by position rather than by knowledge, and it is the option a candidate marks when the clock has run out. Its one instructive feature is that it is not quite absurd: Columbus really did take his westward project to Portugal first, and was refused there before Castile backed him — so 'Columbus and Portugal' has a real connection that is simply not a birthplace.
• (c)a b c d 3 4 1 2 — The dangerous one, because it gets Columbus and Cartier right and so survives the first check. It then swaps the last two, making Drake a Portuguese and Magellan a Briton. Magellan's Portuguese birth is the pair to hold, and his career makes it hard to forget once learnt: he was a page to Queen Leonor, sailed in 1505 with Francisco de Almeida, India's first Portuguese viceroy, was wounded at Cannanore in 1506 and again at the battle of Diu on 3 February 1509, and only after King Manuel refused him further employment did he formally renounce his nationality and reach Seville, on 20 October 1517.
• (d)a b c d 1 4 2 3 — Right for Cartier and Drake, wrong for the two Spanish-financed voyagers — it puts Columbus in Portugal and Magellan in Italy. It is the classic result of half-remembering that both men sailed under Spain and then guessing at the rest of the Mediterranean and Iberian map, and it is the trap the list is built for, since Spain itself is not among the four options. Note that it also inverts the one pairing the sources are clearest about: Columbus was a Genoese who died a servant of Castile, Magellan a Portuguese who died a servant of Castile, and neither ever changed his birthplace by changing his flag.

The Age of Discovery was financed by a handful of crowns but crewed and commanded by an international market of navigators, which is exactly why birthplace and paymaster so often diverge. Columbus, a Genoese, hawked his westward project to Portugal, was refused, and found backing from Isabella and Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon in 1492. Magellan was a Portuguese nobleman who fell out with Manuel I, formally renounced his nationality after May 1514, reached Seville in October 1517 and signed his contract with Charles V on 22 March 1518, which promised him and his partner Ruy Faleiro one-twentieth of the profits and the title of Adelantado over whatever they found. France and England entered a generation later and by different doors: Francois I sent Cartier in 1534, on the suggestion of Jean Le Veneur, bishop of Saint-Malo, to look for a passage to Asia through North America, and Cartier came back instead with the St Lawrence; Elizabeth I's Drake sailed in 1577 as a privateer against Spanish shipping in the Pacific and completed a circumnavigation almost incidentally. The second idea the question needs is that List-II is written in modern political vocabulary, and only one of its four entries was a state of that name in that place at the time. Genoa was an independent republic and Italy was not unified until 1861. Saint-Malo was in the Duchy of Brittany, which was joined to the French crown only by the Edict of Union of 1532 — Cartier was born a Breton subject in 1491, the year Anne of Brittany married Charles VIII, and became a Frenchman by treaty at about forty. Drake's Devon was in the Kingdom of England; a Kingdom of Great Britain dates only from the Acts of Union of 1707 and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1801. Portugal alone answers to its own name across the whole period.

Attack the codes, not the whole list. Columbus is the single fact almost every candidate holds securely, and fixing a to 3 removes half the options at once; the surviving pair is then settled by asking whether Drake could conceivably be Portuguese. That is the mechanical route, and on a four-by-four match list it is nearly always faster than verifying all four pairs — find the pair you are certain of, strike every code that contradicts it, and only then test the survivors against your second-most-certain pair. The conceptual trap underneath is the confusion of birthplace with sponsor, because the two most famous names here — Columbus and Magellan — both sailed under the Spanish crown, and a candidate primed on 'Columbus sailed for Spain' reaches for the flag rather than the cradle. The tell is inside List-II: Spain is not on it. A four-item list of birthplaces that omits the chief patron of two of the four explorers is announcing that patronage is not the axis being tested, and that observation alone converts the question from a memory test into a reading test. The other likely inversion is Drake against Magellan, since both are filed under circumnavigation. Keep them apart by outcome: Magellan's expedition achieved the first circumnavigation, but he was killed at Mactan on 27 April 1521, more than a year before the Vittoria came home under Juan Sebastian del Cano with thirty-one survivors of the 270-odd who had sailed, whereas Drake's voyage of 1577 to 1580 was the second and he brought his own ship back — which is why his biographer could write that Elizabeth knighted 'the first man of any nation who had commanded through such a voyage'.

• Christopher Columbus was born at Genoa, in present-day Italy, son of the wool-comber Domenico Colombo and Suzanna Fontanarossa; the birth year is uncertain, given as about 1446 or 1451, and he was trading at Genoa in 1470, 1472 and 1473 before sailing for Castile on 3 August 1492 and making landfall in the Bahamas on 12 October 1492
• Jacques Cartier was born at Saint-Malo in Brittany and died there in 1557; the Dictionary of Canadian Biography dates his birth 'probably some time between 7 June and 23 Dec. 1491' — the widely quoted '31 December 1491' is not what the authoritative record supports
• Cartier made three voyages for Francois I from 1534, raised a thirty-foot cross with the arms of France at Penouille Point on 24 July 1534, and on 7 September 1535 reached the archipelago of Orleans, 'where the province and territory of Canada begins' — the name Canada then applying only to what is now Quebec
• Sir Francis Drake was born 'according to local tradition, at Crowndale, near Tavistock' in Devon; two apparently genuine portraits inscribed with his age in 1581 and 1594 place his birth around 1539-41, and the Dictionary of National Biography heads his entry '1540?'
• Drake renamed the Pelican the Golden Hind on 20 August 1578, at the entrance to the Strait of Magellan, after the crest of his patron Sir Christopher Hatton; Elizabeth I knighted him aboard her at Deptford on 4 April 1581, after the voyage of 1577-80
• Ferdinand Magellan (Fernao de Magalhaes) was born about 1480 in Portugal — traditionally at Sabrosa in the Vila Real district of Tras-os-Montes, with Porto the rival claim — son of Pedro de Magalhaes and a fidalgo de cota de armas, the fourth order of Portuguese nobility
• Magellan served in Portuguese India before he ever sailed for Spain: he left with Francisco de Almeida's fleet on 25 March 1505, was wounded at Cannanore on 16 March 1506 and again at the battle of Diu on 3 February 1509, and joined Diogo Lopes de Sequeira's Spice Islands voyage at Cochin on 19 August 1509
• Magellan's five ships left Seville on 10 August 1519 and put to sea from Sanlucar de Barrameda on 20 September 1519 with about 270-280 men; he was killed at Mactan on 27 April 1521, and only the Vittoria returned, under Juan Sebastian del Cano, with thirty-one survivors, reaching Spain on 6 September 1522
• List-II uses modern country names for historical states: Genoa was an independent republic and Italy was unified only in 1861; Brittany was joined to France by the Edict of Union of 1532; the Kingdom of Great Britain dates from the Acts of Union of 1707 and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1801

• Matching a navigator to the crown that financed him rather than to the country of his birth, which puts Columbus and Magellan in Spain — note that Spain is deliberately absent from List-II
• Swapping Drake and Magellan because both are remembered for circumnavigation; Magellan's expedition finished first but he did not, while Drake commanded his own ship all the way home
• Reading 'Italy' and 'United Kingdom' as states that existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rather than as modern labels for the Republic of Genoa and the Kingdom of England

BPSC sets world history as a four-by-four match list of people against places and builds the codes so that one securely known pair collapses the options — here Columbus alone leaves only two rows standing, which is the skill to practise rather than the content. UPSC almost never asks a European navigator's birthplace; it turns the same period towards India, asking which ruler allowed the Portuguese to build at Bhatkal, who surrendered Diu, or which medieval Indian writer refers to the discovery of America. The bridge between the two styles is Magellan's own career, which ran through Cannanore, Diu and Cochin a decade before he sailed west for Spain.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first circumnavigation of the globe, completed in 1522, was brought to its end by the ship Victoria under the command of

  • (a)Ferdinand Magellan
  • (b)Juan Sebastian Elcano
  • (c)Sir Francis Drake
  • (d)Amerigo Vespucci

  Answer(b) Juan Sebastian Elcano — Magellan, who planned and led the expedition, was killed at Mactan in April 1521, more than a year before the Victoria reached Spain.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Jacques Cartier, who explored the Gulf of St Lawrence and gave Canada its name, sailed under the patronage of the ruler of

  • (a)Portugal
  • (b)Spain
  • (c)France
  • (d)England

  Answer(c) France — he was sent by Francis I and made three voyages from 1534, sailing from his native Saint-Malo in Brittany.