Unit 4

Vasco de Gama

Portuguese explorer who completed the first all-water route from Europe to India in 1498

Trading post empire

A maritime empire built to control commerce and trade routes through a network of fortified coastal forts

“Carrying trade”

An economic practice where merchants or nations earn profit by transporting goods from one foreign country to another

Philippines

The strategic Pacific archipelago colonized by Spain that served as a crucial hub for global silver trade and Christian missionary efforts

British East India Company

A private joint-stock trading company chartered in 1600 that evolved into the de facto governing power of India

Dutch East India Company

A joint-stock company chartered in 1602 used by the Dutch in Indonesia

Shogun

The supreme military commander and actual ruler of Japan

Tokugawa

Centralized military government bringing internal peace and stability in Japan

Ahmad Ibn Majid

Accomplished Arab Muslim mariner with his book Kitab al-Fawa’id, providing a guide to routes and ports around the Indian Ocean

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese explorer who sailed for Spain and led the first expedition to circumnavigate the world and was killed in the Philippines

Diaspora/Diasporic communities

Dispersion of a group of people from their original homeland into foreign regions where they form permanent communities while maintaining their distinct cultural identity (groups of merchants who settled permanently in foreign port cities and trading hubs along major trade routes

Silver drain

The global siphoning of silver, mainly from the Americas and Europe, to pay for Asian luxury goods, resulting in the bulk of the world’s silver supply ending up in China

Potosi

A major silver-mining city in the Andes mountains of present-day Bolivia

Soft gold

Animal furs traded during the early modern period

Transatlantic slave system

Forced migration and maritime trafficking of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas

African diaspora

The global dispersion of African peoples and their descendants, primarily through the transatlantic slave trade