Question

Two statements labelled as Assertion (A) and Reason (R) are given below. Read both the statements carefully and choose the correct option:

Assertion (A): The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonisation of America was decisively under way by the mid-sixteenth century.
Reason (R): The Spanish conquerors had the most powerful conventional weapons.

• A. Both Assertion (A) and Reason (R) are true and Reason (R) is the correct explanation of Assertion (A).
• B. Both Assertion (A) and Reason (R) are true, but Reason (R) is not the correct explanation of Assertion (A).
• C. Assertion (A) is true, but Reason (R) is false.
• D. Assertion (A) is false, but Reason (R) is true.

Hint:

Ask what actually destroyed the American populations. The chapter says it was not a military weapon at all. Judge the Reason on that point before looking at the options.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Concept:

• In an assertion and reason question each statement is judged true or false on its own first, and only after that is the link between them examined.
• The chapter makes a very specific point here: the conquest of America succeeded not through guns but through disease.

Step 1: Judge the Assertion.
Portuguese and Spanish conquest and settlement of America was well under way by the middle of the sixteenth century. Spanish expeditions had overthrown the Aztec and the Inca states, and Portugal had begun settling Brazil.
The Assertion is true.

Step 2: Judge the Reason.
The Reason claims the Spanish won because they carried the most powerful conventional weapons. The textbook states the opposite. Spanish success was not really the result of superior firepower.

Step 3: Identify what the real weapon was.
The decisive weapon was not military at all. It was the germs the Spanish carried on their bodies, above all smallpox. The people of America had lived cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years and had no immunity to these diseases.
Smallpox spread ahead of the soldiers, wiped out whole communities and cleared the way for conquest.

Step 4: Settle the Reason and pick the option.
Because the deciding factor was disease and not conventional weapons, the Reason is false. A true Assertion with a false Reason matches option (C).

Final Answer: (C) Assertion (A) is true, but Reason (R) is false.