Chapter 1 Vocabulary: Colliding Worlds (1450–1600)

Flashcards covering important key terms, concepts, and primary visual artifacts from Chapter 1: Colliding Worlds (1450–1600).

Tribute

Payments or goods demanded from subject peoples by empires such as the Aztecs and Incas, comparable to taxes in Europe.

Matriarchy

A gendered social system in which political authority and property ownership are inherited through female lines of descent.

Animism

A spiritual belief system holding that the natural world—including animals, plants, stones, and weather—is suffused with spiritual power.

Patriarchy

A social system in which property, political authority, and social identity descend through male lines, with men governing households and society.

Primogeniture

The practice of passing all family land and estates exclusively to the eldest son, forcing younger siblings into wage labor or poverty.

Peasants

European farmworkers who lived in small rural villages and farmed fields cooperatively or worked on manorial estates.

Republic

A state without a monarch that is governed instead by coalitions of elected elites, merchants, or public representatives.

Civic Humanism

An ideology originating in Italian city-states that praised public virtue and selfless service to the state.

Renaissance

A major cultural movement in Europe from 1300 to 1450 that produced a flowering of artistic, literary, and scientific achievements originating in Italian city-states.

Guilds

Organizations of artisans and merchants in European towns that regulated trade, manufacturing standards, and commercial transactions.

Christianity

A monotheistic religion stemming from Jewish roots that holds Jesus Christ as divine; it became the official religion of the Roman Empire in A.D. 312.

Heresy

Religious doctrines or teachings that contradict the official dogmas of the established Christian Church.

Islam

A monotheistic religion whose followers consider Muhammad to be God's final prophet, expanding from Arabia across North Africa, Asia, and parts of Europe.

Crusades

A series of Christian military campaigns conducted between A.D. 1096 and 1291 to halt Muslim expansion and recover the holy lands of the Middle East.

Predestination

The Protestant theological concept, popularized by John Calvin, stating that God determines an individual's salvation or damnation before birth.

Protestant Reformation

A sixteenth-century religious movement initiated by Martin Luther in 1517 that rejected papal authority and reformed Christian doctrine.

Counter-Reformation

A movement within the Catholic Church triggered by the Protestant Reformation that introduced internal reforms and created new missionary orders like the Jesuits.

Trans-Saharan Trade

The historic overland trade network across the Sahara Desert that exchanged West African gold, copper, salt, and slaves for goods from North Africa and the Mediterranean.

Reconquista

The centuries-long military campaign by Spanish Catholics to reclaim the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule, completed in 1492 with the capture of Granada.

Beringia

A 100-mile-wide land bridge submerged beneath the Bering Strait that connected Siberia and Alaska during the last Ice Age.

Tenochtitlán

The capital city of the Aztec Empire, established in 1325 in the Valley of Mexico, with a peak population around 250,000 by 1500.

Cahokia

The central urban settlement of the Mississippian culture near present-day St. Louis, featuring 120 earthen mounds and over 10,000 residents at its peak around A.D. 1000–1350.

Iroquois Confederacy

A political alliance formed around 1500 among five Native American nations—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—in upstate New York.

Potlatch

A ceremony native to Pacific Northwest tribes where wealthy leaders gave away possessions to guests to demonstrate generosity and strengthen authority.

Caravel

A maneuverable Portuguese sailing vessel developed in the fifteenth century equipped with lateen sails, enabling ships to sail against the wind.

Great Serpent Mound

A 1,300-foot-long earthen mound in southern Ohio built between A.D. 950 and 1200, aligned with the summer solstice sunset.

Anasazi Ladle

A ceramic dipper molded and painted with geometric designs in Arizona between A.D. 1300 and 1600, used by Pueblo peoples to manage water resources.

Chilkat Tlingit Bowl

A mid-nineteenth-century alder wood bowl inlaid with snail shells and carved in the shape of a brown bear, representing a clan totem in Tlingit culture.