History Unit 1 Master Notes & Study Guide Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards generated directly from the Unit 1 History Master Notes covering 1450 to 1750.

The Atlantic World

The regions connected by the Atlantic Ocean: Europe, West Africa, and the Americas.

The 3 G's

Gold, God, and Glory: the primary motivations for European overseas exploration starting in the 1400s.

Caravel and Nau

Portuguese-developed ship types that were fast, sturdy, had multiple masts/sails, required no rowers, and could navigate coasts and rivers.

Astrolabe

A navigational instrument that helped mariners calculate latitude at sea.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 treaty dividing Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence; Africa and Asia were assigned to Portugal, and the Americas and Philippines were assigned to Spain.

Columbian Exchange

The transfer of organisms, crops, animals, diseases, people, and goods between the Americas and Afroeurasia following European contact after 1492.

Afroeurasia

Africa, Europe, and Asia considered as an interconnected zone.

Reconquista

The Christian 're-conquest' of Muslim-ruled Iberian territories, completed in Spain in 1492.

Feitoria

A trade fort or trading post established and used by the Portuguese.

Potosí

A famous silver-mining center in Spanish America, located in modern Bolivia.

Plantation

A large-scale agricultural estate, especially associated with sugar production and coerced labor.

Benin

A coastal West African kingdom famous for highly skilled metalworking and Benin bronzes, which became a Portuguese trading partner in the late 1400s.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

A massive forced trade network active from the 1500s to 1800s that transported approximately 10–12 million enslaved Africans to the Americas, creating distinct racial hierarchies.

Songhay

A major West African empire that dominated the Niger region by the 1500s before being conquered by Moroccan forces in 1591.

Swahili

A culture, language, and religious identity along the East African coast combining Bantu African and Arabian influences, along with Indian contact.

Vijayanagara Empire

A predominantly Hindu empire in southern India that flourished from the 1300s to 1565, with its capital at Hampi, before collapsing after its defeat by northern Muslim kingdoms.

Mughal Empire

A Muslim dynasty founded by Babur in the early 1500s that expanded from modern Afghanistan/Pakistan to control almost all of India by 1700.

Dutch East India Company (VOC)

A chartered company founded in 1602 that pooled merchant investment to trade in the Indian Ocean, driving out Portuguese rivals and expanding in Southeast Asia.

Monsoon Winds

Seasonal wind patterns in the Indian Ocean that made maritime trade highly regular and predictable.

Hijra

The movement of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622, marking the start of the Muslim calendar.

Devshirme

An Ottoman system used until the early 1700s where certain Balkan Christian populations supplied boys to convert to Islam and train as Janissaries or bureaucrats.

Janissaries

Elite Ottoman military troops, often recruited and trained through the devshirme system.

Grand Vizier

The chief administrator and prime minister-like official heading the Ottoman state bureaucracy under the sultan.

Suleiman the Magnificent

Ottoman sultan who ruled from 1520 to 1566, expanded territory into North Africa and Hungary, and consolidated the empire's legal system using sharia law.

Roxelana (Hürrem)

A former slave girl who rose to become Suleiman the Magnificent's concubine, legal wife, and a influential court figure.

Protestant Reformation

A 1500s movement initiated by figures like Martin Luther and Jean Calvin that caused a permanent split in Western Christianity between Catholics and Protestants.

Thirty Years' War

A conflict lasting from 1618 to 1648 in Europe, described as the largest and most destructive of the early modern religious wars.

Mercantilism

A 1600s economic theory aiming to maximize national wealth by exporting more than importing, supported by state regulation and colonial production.

Heliocentrism

The astronomical model published by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543 asserting that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun.

Absolutism

A political model in which a central monarch claims extensive, concentrated authority without constitutional limits.

Constitutionalism

A political model in which governing authority is limited and structured by established laws or representative institutions.