Studied by 988 people
Absolutism
Def: the political theory that monarchs have complete control over their subjects by divine right
Sig: this theory allowed many monarchs across Europe and Asia to consolidate their power at a time of remarkable change to their societies and to handle the religious diversity of their many subjects
Ana Nzinga
Def: 17th century Angolan queen who fought internal and neighboring enemies by partnering with the Portuguese and then partnering with the Dutch to unsuccessfully stop the Portuguese from taking over her country
Sig: resistance to European expansion by a powerful female African monarch who took over a neighboring country (Matamba) and established it as a trading power and the gateway to the Central African interior while stirring rebellions against the Portuguese who had taken over her native Ndongo homeland
Asante Kingdom
Def: kingdom that emerged in the 1700s in present-day Ghana
Sig: it's activity in the Atlantic slave trade led to its growth and influence
Atlantic Trading System
Def: A triangle trading system on which Africa depended on goods, the Americas depended on slaves, and Europe depended on cash crops
Sig: brought about the dominance of Northern European countries in global trade and as the masters of the American colonies
Boyars
Def: traditional Russian landholding aristocrats
Sig: their power would increasingly decrease as the Russian tsars adopted European traditions and increased their own autocratic powers
Caravel
Def: small oceangoing ships invented by the Portuguese in the 15th century which allowed them access to coastal waters and to explore upriver
Sig: Allowed for the discovery and swift colonization of the Americas and elsewhere by Western European nations
Carrack
Def: an innovative large merchant ship of a kind operating in European waters in the 14th to the 17th century
Sig: was the model for the galleons used by the Spanish to haul new world wealth to Europe while defending themselves with cannons
Cartography
Def: the art and science of map-making and superimposing political, cultural, or other non-geographical divisions such as national borders on maps
Sig: new techniques such as the Mercator projection allowed for a better understanding of land layout and led to increasing global exploration in the 16th-18th centuries
Casta System
Def: a hierarchical system of race classification created by Spanish elites in Hispanic America and the Philippines during the 17-18th centuries
Sig: Was used for social control and determined a person's importance in society, thereby impacting every aspect of life, including economic status and taxation
Catholic (Counter) Reformation
Def: a direct response by the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation by attempting to reform the church to stop spread of Protestant ideas and win back converts
Sig: new religious orders to gain conversions were founded, who were dedicated to the reaffirmed doctrines of the Catholic Church, which saw only minor reforms
Chattel Slavery
Def: the owning of human beings as property to be bought, sold, given, and inherited which came to rise as part of the Triangular Trade
Sig: Enabled the increase of the plantation system and racial tensions
Columbian Exchange
Def: global exchange between the New and Old Worlds of plants, food, animals, people and diseases
Sig: killed off the majority of the native populations in the Americas through disease and the food products exchanged increased global population while some of them led to the forced migration of many people, especially from Africa
Creoles
Def: any white person of European descent (usually Spanish or French) born in the West Indies or certain parts of the Americas
Sig: considered socially inferior to European-born residents of the colonies, peninsulares, as they received more land and power in the colonies
Devshirme
Def: a system developed by the Ottoman Empire which took non-Muslim children as an alternative tax to have them trained as Janissaries (soldiers trained to protect and serve the sultan) or to serve in the government
Sig: system was utilized by Ottoman emperors to maintain centralized control over their culturally diverse populations
Encomienda System
Def: a labor system that forced Native Americans to labor on land, typically originally given to conquistadors, as a cheap labor source
Sig: harsh treatment led to Native Americans dying, leading to the increased importation of slaves from Africa
Hacienda System
Def: large mostly self-sufficient profit-making estates (primarily agricultural plantations)
Sig: tying the Native Americans into a peonage system of service (even as they called them 'free wage earners') led to many revolts even as the system endured into the late 20th century
Indentured Servitude
Def: a system of coerced labor in which people from Europe promised to work for a certain amount of time in the New World in exchange for their paid passage there
Sig: developed due to a demand for cheap labor in North America but lasted for a short period of time, especially in the south, as plantation owners began looking for a cheaper supply of labor by the early 17th century- African slaves
Joint-Stock Companies
Def: a profitable commercial venture that enabled exploration by bringing together many investors and merchants in order to minimize the risks and costs of the investment (i.e. the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company)
Sig: a significant element of mercantilism and operated with their own military - brought raw materials, resources, and wealth back to the mother country, dramatically increasing European power around the world
Kingdom of Kongo
Def: Kingdom dominating small states along the Congo River that maintained effective, centralized government and a royal currency until the seventeenth century
Sig: grew as a result of its participation in the Atlantic slave trade but also challenged the Portuguese by pushing for the slave trade to be subjected to/limited by Kongolese laws
Lateen Sail
Def: Triangular sail that was developed in Indian Ocean trade that allowed a ship to sail against the wind
Sig: a European technological development that was influenced by cross-cultural interactions with the Islamic and Asian world
Manchus/Qing Dynasty (1636-1912)
Def: Nomadic people from north of the Great Wall who invaded China and established a dynasty, claiming the "Mandate of Heaven" and adopting the Confucian belief and political administration system
Sig: opened up trade with Europeans and the limitations on the power and freedoms of the ethnic Chinese Han people, as well as intermarriage with them, dramatically increased the power of the dynasty during this time
Maroon societies
Def: from SE USA to Brazil, groups of runaway slaves who gathered in mountainous, forested, or swampy areas and formed their own self-governing communities, raided plantations for supplies, and used guerrilla warfare to defend themselves from slave owners and bounty hunters
Sig: the existence of these continuities remained a continuous example of successful slave resistance to chattel slavery in the Americas
Mercantilism
Def: a new economic theory adopted by many Western European nations with the goal of maintaining a favorable trade balance- whereby a country exports more than it imports - in an effort to accumulate the most bullion (precious metals such as gold and silver)
Sig: Through this process, European rulers expanded and controlled their economies and claimed overseas territories that were required to trade exclusively with their own mother country, thus encouraging competition and a race for conquest among the Western European nations
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Def: saw the restoration of Confucian traditions after Mongol rule, as well as increased economic exchange outside of China and extensive overseas trade through the journeys of Zheng He
Sig: after the date of Emperor Yongle, the dynasty abandoned international exchange and focused solely on internal affairs, allowing the Europeans to explore and dominate the Indian Ocean trade
Mita System
Def: economic system in Incan society where people paid taxes with their labor and what they produced; primarily used in the silver mines in South America
Sig: adopted by the Spanish to use indigenous labor in encomienda - was in evidence in the mining for silver in Potosi
Mughal-Maratha Wars (1680-1707)
Def: aka Maratha War of Independence fought in response to Mughal expansionism over the Indian sub-continent
Sig: the first significant resistance to Mughal rule by a Hindu kingdom, which then encroached on additional Mughal territory while other minor kingdoms elsewhere also began to assert their independence against the Mughals - beginning of the end of Mughal dominance over India and the beginning of British incursion into India
Ottoman Tax Farming
Def: the Ottoman government assigned land to holders who paid fixed annual sums to the empire's central treasury in exchange for use of the property and the right to collect taxes for the empire - they were able to keep a portion of their collections as profit
Sig: The assignment of tax farmers to the land of existing nobles (timars) led to the decline in the power of the timars to influence the Sultan
Ottoman-Safavid Conflict
Def: A century-long conflict from 1534-1639 in which the Sunni Ottomans fought the Shiite Safavids over control of Mesopotamia
Sig: it was a political and religious dispute between two groups descended from Central Asian Turks, it led to emerging Iranian nationalism as a Shi'ite Islamic state struggling against its Sunni neighbors
Plantation Economy
Def: economic system stretching between the Chesapeake Bay and Brazil that produced crops, especially sugar, cotton, and tobacco, using slave labor on large estates
Sig: a significant factor driving the Columbian Exchange and the need for coerced slave labor
Protestant Reformation
Def: followed Martin Luther's publication of the 95 Theses and was a movement to reform the Catholic Church but it resulted in the second major split within Christianity instead
Sig: each side branded the other as heretics and their own religion as the one true faith; led to the creation of new Protestant churches in England and Switzerland AND provided a motive to Catholics to earn more converts in America than the Protestants
Reconquista
Def: The effort by Christian leaders to drive the Muslims and Jews out of Spain, lasting from the 1100s until 1492
Sig: evidence of differential treatment of religious groups in Spain that eventually led to their expulsion but also allowed for the Ottoman Empire to absorb them and their talents to their benefit (Jews were allowed their own self-governance in Ottoman lands)
Salaried Samurai
Def: Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, the importance of these individuals as mercenaries/warriors who reported only to their daimyo declined so they took paid jobs as bureaucrats within the government of the shogunate
Sig: this was an effort by the Tokugawa government to minimize resistance from this warrior class and in effect, break the power hold of the daimyos who they served
Sikhism
Def: a syncretic belief system founded by Guru Nanak in the early 1500s in South Asia which blends elements of Hinduism and Islam into a single faith
Sig: its rejection of the caste system and lesser patriarchal expectations made it appealing to Hindus, women, and merchants; was under attack by the Mughal empire since its inception, leading to longstanding Sikh/Muslim enmity
Silver
Def: vital product of the Americas as mined by the Spanish in Mexico and Peru that was increasingly demanded in global exchange
Sig: was the world's first global currency (coins called "pesos de ochos") that united the entire world in trade for the first time
Single-Whip Tax System
Def: due to a shortage of copper coins and falsification of records by local landholders, Ming policy starting in 1522 was to combine land and labor tax into one national tax to be paid in the form of silver
Sig: prototype of the modern taxation system but also increased China's demand for New World and Japanese silver
Sultanate of Oman
Def: a prominent Indian Ocean Trade player located on the Strait of Hormuz in the middle east, all its ports faced the Indian Ocean and it was greatly involved in trade from East Africa to China
Sig: Defeated and occupied by the Portuguese from 1507-1648, it remerged as a Indian Ocean Trade power and ran the slave trade out of East Africa after kicking the Portuguese out and despite of growing European power in the Indian Ocean
Syncretism
Def: the combining of different beliefs, religions and schools of thought into new belief systems, such as Santeria in Cuba and Vodun in Haiti (Catholicism+Native American+West African beliefs)
Sig: these cultural blendings became a central feature of a country's identity, such as in Mexico and Cuba, and also allowed African slaves to secretly thwart the efforts of Spanish missionaries to convert them to Christianity
Tokugawa Shogunate
Def: the unification of Japan in the 1500s under a military government led by the shogun (who had more power than the symbolic emperor he "reported" to) which brought nearly 300 years of peace and stability to the nation while decreasing the power of the landholders and the samurai warriors
Sig: policies of this government included isolationism from trade with Europeans by only giving the Dutch the right to trade with Japan once a year
Trading Post Empire
Def: began by the Portuguese who implemented control over trade routes from West Africa to East Asia by forcing merchant vessels to pay duties at fortified trading sites and buy safe-conduct passes to trade on the routes
Sig: dramatically increased European power in these areas without the need to create land empires
Versailles Palace
Def: royal palace built during the reign of Louis XIV which he used to enforce his power and prestige and limited the power of his nobles by insisting they live in the palace under his watchful eyes
Sig: an example of a monarch using monumental architecture to legitimize his rule
Volta del Mar
Def: a major step in the art/science of navigation perfected by Portuguese navigators in the mid-late 15th century, using the dependable phenomenon of the great permanent wind wheel, the North Atlantic Gyre
Sig: the European sea empires would never have been established had the Europeans not figured out how the trade winds in the Atlantic worked
Wahhabism
Def: named for the teachings of strict Islamist scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in Saudi Arabia, who believed that non-Quranic practices, such as veneration of Sufi saints or the study of logic, were damaging to authentic Islam
Sig: was a conservative backlash within Islam against more lax practices or way of life (i.e. women's rights dramatically decreased); the Saudi Wahhabis in Arabia became the chief challengers to the Ottoman Empire for the spiritual leadership of Islam and overseeing of Mecca
Zamindar system
Def: this group was the noble ruling class under the Mughals, with most being former Indian princes whose sovereignty became limited and ultimately lost under British rule.
Sig: the aristocrats were responsible for collecting taxes from the peasants living in their large tracts of land while keeping some of the money for themselves
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