AP World Unit 7: Age of European Exploration

Maritime Technology

Compass, astrolabe, lateen sail, knowledge of wind patterns, astronomical charts, new ship designs

Caravel

Small, highly maneuverable ships good for exploring

Carrack

Larger trade ships

Cartography

The science of making maps, improved greatly over time

Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal

Sponsored Portuguese exploration along coast of Africa

Bartolomeu Diaz

Reached the Southern tip of Africa for Portugal

Vasco De Gama

From Portugal, first European to sail to India

Christopher Columbus

Italian navigator who “discovered” the New World in the service of Spain while looking for a route to China

Effect of Columbus’s Voyages

Increased European’s interests in transoceanic trade, led to lasting connections between hemispheres

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese navigator who was the first to circumnavigate the Earth

Northwest Passage

A sea route across the Atlantic to Asia, did not exist

Motives of British, Dutch, and French

Economic (fur, tobacco, cotton) and religious opportunities

New World Plants

Corn, potatoes, tobacco, tomatoes, cocoa

New World Animals

Llama, turkey

Old World Plants

Rice, wheat, coffee, bananas, oranges, sugar

Old World Animals

Horses, cows, pigs, sheep

New World Diseases

Syphilis

Old World Diseases

Smallpox, measles, malaria

Demographic Effects in the Old World

Increased population

Demographic Effects in the New World

Decreased population

Plantation Farming and Ranching

Led to deforestation and soil depletion

Disease Vectors

Rats and mosquitoes

Great Dying

The devastation on native population from diseases brought to New World during the Columbian Exchange

New Spain

The Spanish established a permanent colony in the Americas (Caribbean, Mesoamerica, some of South America)

Conquistador Motive

Glory, God, Gold

Hernan Cortes

Conquered the Aztecs (Mexica)

La Malinche

Was sold into slavery and became the translator for Cortes, was crucial during the conquering of the Mexica

Fransisco Pizzaro

Conquered the Inca

Reasons the Spanish Easily Defeated the Mexica and the Inca

Guns, germs, rivalries

Viceroy System

Spanish officials who represented the monarchy in Spain’s colonial empire

Republica de Indios

Laws designed to segregate Indians from the Spanish

Pueblo Revolts

Failed uprisings seeking to reclaim the Pueblo religious and cultural practices and land from the Spanish

Silver Mining

Economy of New Spain was based on silver mining, most laborers were natives and most died

Encomienda System

Gave Spanish the right to tax natives or to make them work in exchange for protection and Christianity

Hacienda

Large plantations used to grow sugarcane in Brazil and the Caribbean with high death rates

Mit’a System

Spanish continued the Inca mit’a system to get them to work for them

Treaty of Tordesillas

The Pope divided the New World between Spain and Portugal, Portugal colonized Brazil

Casta System

Rigid social classes based on ethnicity and location of birth

Lots of Intermarriage

Small amount of European women and families migrated which led to intermarriage

Penisulares

Highest casta, Spaniards born in Europe

Creoles

White Europeans born in the Americas

Mestizos

Mixed European and Native American ancestry

Mulattoes

Mixed European and African ancestry

The Lowest Casta

Natives and Native American slaves

Indentured Servitude

A worker bound by a voluntary agreement to work for a specified period of years often in return for free passage to an overseas destination

Metacom’s War

A conflict between natives and English colonists in New England, deadliest war in American history

Effect of Metacom’s War

Ended peace between colonists and natives in North America

Chattel Slavery

Form of slavery where they are treated as personal property of an owner and are bought and sold

Cause of Atlantic Slave Trade

Racism-Africans seen as savages who benefited, Europeans trapped into existing slave trade, Africans had greater resistance to diseases, wind and ocean currents

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Warlords captured Africans and traded them for European manufactured goods

Middle Passage

Journey taken by Africans on slave ships to the Americas

Sugar Plantations

Where most African slaves went to in Brazil and the Caribbean

Effects of Atlantic Slave Trade

African diaspora, gender imbalance in Africa, syncretism, resistance efforts

Vodun

Created in Haiti, religious practice combining Christianity and West African animism

Queen Nzinga

Leader who ruled in Angola and battled Portuguese slave traders to stop the expansion of slave trade

Maroon Societies

Communities formed by runaway slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil