AP World History Unit 2: Networks of Exchange (c. 1200 to c. 1450)

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering interregional trade networks, maritime innovations, imperial expansion, commercial systems, and environmental exchanges from c. 1200 to c. 1450.

Silk Roads

A vast network of overland trade routes across Eurasia that was revived by Arab merchants in the 8th and 9th centuries and further invigorated under the Mongol Empire, facilitating the exchange of luxury goods, technology, and culture.

Magnetic compass

A naval navigation instrument developed by Chinese scientists during the Han Dynasty that helped aid navigation and ship control along maritime trade routes.

Stern rudder

A naval steering technology developed by Chinese sailors during the Han Dynasty that gave ships greater stability and made them easier to maneuver.

Junk

A Chinese ship developed in the Han Dynasty with multiple sails, measuring up to $400\text{ feet}$ in length, with a hull divided into compartments that strengthened the vessel and made sinking less likely.

Kashgar

A thriving Silk Roads oasis city located where northern and southern routes crossed at the western edge of China, known for its river-watered fertile crops, bustling markets, artisans, and Islamic scholarship.

Samarkand

A Silk Roads trading center located in present-day Uzbekistan in the Zeravshan River valley that served as a stopping point between China and the Mediterranean, known for decorated mosques and Islamic learning.

Caravanserai

Inns along overland trade routes, often established roughly $100\text{ miles}$ apart (the distance camels could travel before needing water), where travelers and their pack animals could rest and replenish.

Money economy

An economic system that relies on the use of money rather than bartering with commodities such as cowrie shells or salt.

Flying cash

A Chinese system of credit that allowed a merchant to deposit paper money under his name in one location and withdraw the same amount at another location.

Banking house

A financial establishment developed in European cities in the 1300s, modeled on flying cash locations, where a person could present a bill of exchange to receive money.

Bill of exchange

A written legal document presented at banking houses stating that the holder is promised payment of a set amount on a predetermined date.

Hanseatic League

A 13th-century commercial alliance of cities in northern Germany and Scandinavia that controlled trade in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, driving out pirates and monopolizing timber, grain, leather, and salted fish.

Kuriltai

A meeting of Mongol chieftains where leaders were elected; in 1206, Temujin was elected khan of the Mongolian Kingdom at such a gathering.

Genghis Khan

The title meaning "ruler of all" assumed by Temujin in 1206 after uniting nomadic tribes north of the Gobi Desert and founding the Mongol Empire.

Pax Mongolica

The era of Mongolian peace between the 13th and 14th centuries during which the Mongols unified trade routes, instituted religious tolerance, and revitalized interregional commerce across Eurasia.

Karakorum

The capital city established by Genghis Khan near the center of modern Mongolia, built with the consultation of Chinese and Islamic engineers and scholars.

Uyghur alphabet

A written script adapted in 1204 under Genghis Khan by a captured scribe to represent the Mongol language, which remains in use in Mongolia today.

Batu

The grandson of Genghis Khan who in 1236 led a Mongolian army of $100{,}000$ soldiers, known as the Golden Horde, into Russia.

Golden Horde

Batu's Mongolian army that conquered Russian city-states and principalities, looted Kiev in 1240, and ruled northern Russia indirectly through regular tribute collection.

Battle of Kulikovo

A 1380 battle in which an anti-Mongol coalition of Russian city-states, under the leadership of Moscow, defeated the Golden Horde.

Hulegu

A grandson of Genghis Khan who captured Baghdad in 1258, destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate, and established the Il-khanate in Central Asia.

Il-khanate

Hulegu's kingdom in Central Asia stretching from Byzantium to the Oxus River, where Mongols ruled while employing Persians as local officials and ministers to maximize tax collection.

Kublai Khan

A grandson of Genghis Khan who assumed the title of Great Khan in 1260, conquered China's Song Dynasty in 1271, and established the Yuan Dynasty.

Yuan Dynasty

The dynasty established in China by Mongol ruler Kublai Khan in 1271, with its capital at Dadu, which adhered closer to Chinese traditions than other Mongol realms.

White Lotus Society

A secret society that began organizing quietly in the 1350s to overthrow the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty in China.

Zhu Yuanzhang

A Buddhist monk from a poor peasant family who led a revolt in 1368 that successfully overthrew the Yuan Dynasty and founded the Ming Dynasty.

Calicut

A bustling trade city on India's west coast known as the "City of Spices," where foreign merchants from Arabia and China met to acquire pepper and cinnamon.

Spice Islands

A term for modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia, so named because of their export of fragrant crops like nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom.

Monsoon winds

Seasonal winds across the Indian Ocean that blew from the northeast during winter and from the southwest during spring and summer, determining the timing of merchant voyages.

Lateen sails

Triangular sails popularized by Arab sailors on the Indian Ocean that allowed ships to easily catch winds coming from multiple directions.

Astrolabe

A navigation device improved by Muslim navigators in the 12th century that allowed sailors to calculate their latitude by determining distance north or south of the equator.

Malacca (Melaka)

A wealthy Muslim city-state on a narrow waterway between India and China that prospered by building a navy and collecting fees on passing ships.

Diaspora

A settlement of people living away from their homeland, formed by traveling merchants who married locally and introduced their cultural traditions into host communities.

Gujarat

A western Indian Rajput kingdom that generated immense revenue by acting as a commercial intermediary between East and West and levying customs taxes on port goods.

Swahili city-states

Commercial centers along the East African coast—such as Kilwa, Mombasa, and Zanzibar—that traded ivory, gold, and enslaved people for Asian porcelain and Indian cotton.

Zheng He

A Chinese Muslim admiral sent by Ming Emperor Yongle in 1405 on seven voyages across the Indian Ocean to project China's power and collect foreign tribute.

Oases

Fertile areas in arid deserts where water from deep underground surfaces naturally or through human-dug wells, enabling agriculture and human settlement.

Somali camel saddle

A pack saddle developed by semi-nomadic Somalis in Eastern Africa that enabled camels to carry heavy trading loads of up to $600\text{ pounds}$.

Trans-Saharan trade

An extensive network of caravan trade routes across the Sahara Desert that exchanged West African gold, ivory, and enslaved people for Arab and Berber salt, cloth, and horses.

Sundiata

The founding ruler of the Mali Empire, remembered as "the Lion Prince," who reclaimed his kingdom in 1235 and established lucrative gold trade ties with North African merchants.

Mansa Musa

A 14th-century grand-nephew of Sundiata and devout ruler of Mali whose extravagant 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca highlighted Mali's extraordinary wealth to the world.

Timbuktu

A major West African trading hub in the Mali Empire that developed into a world-renowned center of Islamic learning where books were sold for high prices.

Chan Buddhism

A syncretic faith, also known as Zen Buddhism, that developed in China by fusing traditional Buddhist doctrines with Daoist principles.

Neo-Confucianism

A syncretic philosophical system originating in Tang and Song Dynasty China that combined rational Confucian philosophy with abstract concepts from Daoism and Buddhism.

Hangzhou

A major cultural, literary, and commercial center in southern China situated at the southern end of the Grand Canal, home to about one million residents.

Marco Polo

An Italian merchant from Venice who visited the court of Kublai Khan in the late 13th century and wrote a widely circulated book describing China's urban affluence and customs.

Ibn Battuta

A 14th-century Muslim legal scholar and traveler from Morocco who traveled for $30\text{ years}$ across Afro-Eurasia, documenting Muslim societies and cultures.

Margery Kempe

An English Christian mystic who dictated one of the earliest autobiographies in English, recording her spiritual visions and pilgrimages across Europe and Jerusalem.

Champa rice

A fast-ripening, drought-resistant, and flood-resistant strain of rice introduced from Vietnam to China that yielded two crops per year, spurring population and urban growth.

Bubonic plague

A lethal epidemic disease, also known as the Black Death, carried by fleas along trade routes and Mongol military paths, killing tens of millions across Eurasia between 1347 and 1351.