Lesson Y8-U03-L03

Y8-U03-L03 The Middle Passage Quiz: KS3 History, Unit 9

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson Y8-U03-L03, The Middle Passage: 20 multiple choice questions for the KS3 History (National Curriculum), Unit 9: Year 8: Slavery, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. What was the Middle Passage?

    • A military campaign that crossed the mountains of central Europe
    • A river crossing used by traders in West Africa
    • The forced sea voyage of enslaved Africans to the Americas
    • A trade fair held in the port of Liverpool each year

  2. Which 1839 revolt, led by Sengbe Pieh, seized a ship and later won freedom through the courts?

    • The Boston Massacre
    • The Bristol Riots
    • The Peasants' Revolt
    • The Amistad revolt

  3. Roughly how long did the Atlantic crossing typically take?

    • 6 to 10 months
    • 6 to 10 days
    • 6 to 10 weeks
    • 6 to 10 hours

  4. Which act of shipboard resistance is an everyday or 'quiet' form?

    • Seizing the ship at night
    • Fighting the crew during a revolt
    • Leading an uprising to seize the ship
    • Singing songs from home to keep hope alive

  5. Who wrote the 1789 autobiography describing being forced onto a slave ship as a boy?

    • Olaudah Equiano
    • Mansa Musa
    • Ibn Battuta
    • Matthew Hopkins

  6. Roughly how many Africans were forced onto ships between the 1500s and 1800s?

    • About 12 million
    • About 120 thousand
    • About 12,000
    • About 12 billion

  7. What does 'agency' mean in this lesson?

    • A government office for trade that regulated the ships sailing from the port of Liverpool
    • An order from the Pope that condemned the trade and ordered its immediate end
    • A type of ship that was built for speed and carried sails made from heavy canvas
    • People making their own choices and acting, even in terrible conditions

  8. Which phrase does the lesson recommend because it keeps the person first?

    • Cargo
    • Enslaved person
    • Slave
    • Human property

  9. What is 'testimony' in history?

    • A first-hand account given by someone who lived through an event
    • A government tax form that was filed each year by the merchants of the city
    • A type of ship's log in which the captain recorded the daily course of the voyage
    • A cargo list that recorded the goods and people loaded onto each ship in the port

  10. What did the slave-trading captain's logbook in Source C record about the people carried?

    • Their songs and religions, which the crew recorded so that they could be sold later
    • Their names and families, which were written down carefully in the captain's private diary
    • They were 'a number' of men, women and boys, with some lost and the rest sold
    • Their wishes to be free, which the captain noted and then dismissed as unimportant

  11. Why is Equiano's testimony a valuable primary source?

    • It is a modern textbook written in 2020 for schools across the whole of England
    • It was written by a ship's captain for profit and kept in the company's archive
    • It is a first-hand account by someone who survived the crossing
    • It was a painting of the ship that hung in the merchant's counting house in Bristol

  12. What was the main purpose of Source B, the abolitionist poster?

    • To campaign against the trade and persuade people it was wrong
    • To list the goods carried to Africa on each ship that left the port
    • To celebrate the Atlantic crossing as a great achievement of British seamanship
    • To record the profit made by merchants on each voyage across the Atlantic

  13. Why did crews keep ships under heavy guard and nets?

    • They feared revolts by enslaved people
    • They were guarding gold for the King
    • They were protecting sugar from the sea
    • They wanted the ships to look grand

  14. Which example shows enslaved Africans kept their humanity during the crossing?

    • Losing all hope at once and giving up on life during the crossing
    • Accepting the crew's orders without question and working hard for the captain
    • Forgetting their homes and their families as quickly as they could manage
    • Keeping their language, names and faiths alive across the ocean

  15. Why is 'Middle' in Middle Passage a historians' term rather than the people's own word?

    • It refers to the middle of the Atlantic only, and not to any other part of the route
    • It was the name the enslaved people gave it to describe their own terrible journey
    • It is simply the middle leg of the triangle, a term used by historians
    • It is a Spanish word that sailors used for the long voyage across the open sea

  16. Why should historians avoid describing enslaved people only as victims?

    • It makes the story shorter and easier for students to remember in the classroom
    • Because enslaved people did not suffer in the way that the sources sometimes describe
    • It can rob them of dignity and make them seem helpless, when they resisted and kept their humanity
    • It is the only way to show suffering, and the only way historians can explain it

  17. Why does the logbook's language, which treats people as goods, matter to historians?

    • It shows enslaved people were paid for their work on the ship during the crossing
    • It shows the captain was a poet who wrote in the style of the Romantic movement
    • It proves the trade was legal and fair, because the captain recorded it carefully
    • It shows how traders dehumanised people to justify the trade

  18. Which act is an example of open, direct resistance?

    • Fighting the crew during a planned revolt
    • Singing songs from home during the long nights below deck in the hold of the ship
    • Caring for a sick captive by bringing water and sharing food with the weakest people
    • Keeping one's language alive in secret, away from the eyes of the crew and officers

  19. Why does the lesson say that surviving the crossing could itself be a form of resistance?

    • Survival meant the enslaver had won, because the people were still alive to be sold
    • Survival was never important, since the enslavers always expected most people to die
    • Survival only mattered to merchants, who needed living cargo to sell at the markets
    • Keeping hope and dignity alive refused to let enslavers destroy people

  20. Why must historians use both the abolitionist poster (Source B) and the logbook (Source C)?

    • C is a modern film script that was written in Hollywood to dramatise the trade
    • They are identical sources that were printed from the same wooden block in London
    • B is a secret government file that was hidden in the archives for two centuries
    • B shows human suffering and the campaign to end it, while C shows the business reality and scale

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