Task: Question Answering
Input (English): This question refers to the following information.
"At least one of the [world's] societies would have to somehow enormously increase its productivity [in order to achieve global hegemony]. That quantum jump would have to be made before the various scientific, technological, agricultural, and industrial revolutions on which our post-quantum-leap world rests. It could only be accomplished by exploiting the ecosystems, mineral resources, and human assets of whole continents outside the lands of the society making the jump. Western Europe did just that by means of its brutality and guns and, more important, by geographical and ecological luck."
Copyright © 2015 Cambridge University Press.
Alfred Crosby, historian, Ecological Imperialism, 2004
The "quantum jump" mentioned in the passage most directly contributed to which of the following developments in the period 1450–1750 C.E.?
(A)A breakdown in trade routes through the collapse of the established state structure (B)An increase in the population of the world through more plentiful supplies of food (C)The spread of Chinese and Indian belief systems across the world (D)An increase in social unrest
Output (English): B