Flashcards European Exploration and Conquest: Key People, Events, and Impact

God, Gold, Glory

Religion, wealth and trade, and national power were major motives.

Trade routes

Offered merchants and rulers an opportunity for profit.

Crusades

Medieval wars and contacts that increased European interest in goods from the East.

New technology

Improved ships and navigational tools made long ocean voyages more practical.

Caravel

A small, maneuverable sailing ship.

Astrolabe

Used the sun or stars to help estimate latitude.

Magnetic compass

Indicated direction.

Rudder

Helped steer a vessel.

Prince Henry

Sponsored Atlantic voyages along Africa; expansion under his patronage was tied to early trade in enslaved Africans.

Bartolomeu Dias

Rounded the southern tip of Africa in 1488.

Vasco da Gama

Sailed around Africa to India and returned.

Christopher Columbus

Sought a westward route to Asia; reached the Caribbean in 1492.

Ferdinand Magellan

Led the first expedition to circle the globe; his crew finished after his death.

Hernán Cortés

Led the conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico with Indigenous allies.

Francisco Pizarro

Led the conquest of the Inca Empire in the Andes.

Conquest

Depended on Spanish arms and horses, Indigenous allies, political divisions, and disease.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement dividing Spanish and Portuguese claims along an imaginary line.

Northwest Passage

A hoped-for water route through or around North America to Asia.

Columbian Exchange

The movement of crops, animals, diseases, and people between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492.

Encomienda

A Spanish colonial system granting colonists claims to Indigenous labor and tribute.

Middle Passage

The forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas.

Bartolomé de las Casas

Argued that Indigenous peoples had rights and condemned abuses by Spanish colonists.

Malintzin (Doña Marina or La Malinche)

Interpreted for Cortés and played a diplomatic role.

Forced labor

Demanded by plantation owners as Indigenous populations declined and colonial production expanded.

Primary source

A source produced by a participant or witness in the period studied.

Source questions

Questions to analyze the context and purpose of a historical source.

Historical judgment

An evaluation of whether the Age of Exploration was more beneficial or harmful to the world.

The Spice Trade

The ancient and medieval enterprise of preparing, transporting, and selling spices and herbs across global networks connecting Asia, Northeast Africa, and Europe.

systematic racism

rules, laws or everyday practices in society they treat certain racial groups while benefiting others.

where Portugal, France, Spain, west Africa, Cape of Good Hope, India,