Question

read the passage from sugar changed the world. if you walked down beekman street in new york in the 1750s, you would come to a general store owned by gerard beekman—his family gave the street its name. the products on his shelves showed many of the ways sugar was linking the world. beekman and merchants like him shipped flour, bread, corn, salted beef, and wood to the caribbean. they brought back sugar, rum, molasses, limes, cocoa, and ginger. simple enough; but this trade up and down the atlantic coast was part of a much larger world system. textbooks talk about the triangle trade: ships set out from europe carrying fabrics, clothes, and simple manufactured goods to africa, where they sold their cargoes and bought people. the enslaved people were shipped across the atlantic to the islands, where they were sold for sugar. then the ships brought sugar to north america, to be sold or turned into rum—which evidence best supports the authors claim and purpose? \simple enough; but this trade up and down the atlantic coast was part of a much larger world system.\ \beekmans trade, for example, could cut out europe entirely.\ \africans who sold other africans as slaves insisted on being paid in fabrics from india.\ \what could the europeans use to buy indian cloth?\

Explanation:

The passage is about how sugar linked the world through trade. The claim is that the trade up and down the Atlantic coast was part of a larger world system. The evidence "Simple enough, but this trade up and down the Atlantic coast was part of a much larger world system." directly supports the claim as it explicitly states the relationship between the local trade (Beekman's trade) and the larger global system. The other options either focus on a specific aspect (like Beekman's trade cutting out Europe, which is too narrow) or introduce new elements (like Africans and Europeans' actions not directly related to the main claim about the trade being part of a larger system).

Answer:

"Simple enough, but this trade up and down the Atlantic coast was part of a much larger world system."