Mercantilism, Transnational Commodities, and Imperial Expansion

Vocabulary flashcards covering key commodities, locations, historical figures, and imperial systems discussed in the lecture.

Potosi and Zacatecas

Major mining locations in The Americas that served as the principal source of silver as a global commodity during the early modern period.

Beaver Pelts

A highly valued transnational fur commodity from The Americas used by Europeans to make waterproof felt hats using the pelt's barbed undercoat.

Port of Mocha

A major trading port located on the Arabian Peninsula where coffee was originally cultivated and traded prior to its global expansion.

Ottoman Coffee Houses

Social spaces that emerged in cities like Istanbul starting around 1555, providing male sociability, information exchange, and interaction across social boundaries.

Anthony Wood

An Oxford scholar who argued in 1674 that English coffee houses caused the decay of study and learning by leading scholars to waste time discussing news and criticizing superiors.

Indentured Labor

A system of contract-bound, unfree labor for a specified period, used initially in early Chesapeake tobacco and Caribbean sugar cultivation before the shift to permanent enslaved labor.

Mercantilism

An economic system adopted by European powers in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries based on state-regulated trade and the concept of finite global wealth.

Surveying

A key technique used by European powers, particularly the English, to establish property boundaries and assert control over land as imperial claims expanded further inland in the eighteenth century.