Chapter 2 - Motives and Methods of European Exploration

Bering Strait

Bering Strait

A strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska

Iroquois

A member of a former confederacy of six North American peoples (Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Tuscarora) who lived mainly in southern Ontario and Quebec and northern New York State

Bartholomew Dias

________- Discovered Cape of Good Hope.

North America

________- Small populations, different biomes, huge land tracts, natural resources.

Vikings

Member of the Scandinavian seafaring warriors who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the 9th to the 11th century

Cahokia

The largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the Central and the Southeastern United States, beginning more than 1,000 years before European contact

Reciprocity

Exchanging things for mutual benefit

Crusades

A series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups

Marco Polo

A Venetian merchant believed to have journeyed across Asia at the height of the Mongol Empire

Renaissance

A fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages

Capitalism

An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state

Amerigo Vespucci

An Italian merchant, explorer, and navigator from the Republic of Florence

Prince Henry the Navigator

A central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion

Vasco da Gama

A Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea

Plantation System

Created to grow cash crops for sale on the market

Christopher Columbus

An Italian explorer and navigator who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain

Treaty of Tordesillas

An agreement in 1494 between Spain and Portugal to divide the world between them using an imaginary line down the center of the Atlantic Ocean

Hernando Cortés

Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of what is now mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century

Francisco Pizarro

A Spanish conquistador, best known for his expeditions that led to the Spanish conquest of Peru

Cabeza de Vaca

A Spanish explorer of the New World, and one of four survivors of the 1527 Narváez expedition

Hernando de Soto

A Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula

John and Sebastian Cabot

Famed for discovering Newfoundland and was instrumental in the development of the transatlantic trade between England and the Americas

Giovanni de Verrazano

The first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick in 1524