European Exploration and Conquest (1450–1650)

Vocabulary terms covering Afro-Eurasian trade networks, technological drivers of exploration, Spanish and Portuguese conquests, labor systems, and cultural changes between 1450 and 1650.

Admiral Zheng He

Chinese explorer who led seven maritime expeditions between 1405 and 1433, involving hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men sailing as far west as Egypt.

Mansa Musa

Ruler of the West African empire of Mali whose 1324/25 pilgrimage to Mecca brought international prestige to Mali on the overland trans-Saharan trade route.

Sultan Mohammed II

Ottoman ruler who captured Europe's largest city, Constantinople, in May 1453 and renamed it Istanbul, allowing the Ottomans to control eastern Mediterranean sea trade.

Caravel

A small, light, three-mast sailing ship developed by the Portuguese that used triangular lateen sails and a sternpost rudder to hold more cargo and maneuver rough Atlantic winds.

Ptolemy’s Geography

An ancient classical text reintroduced by Arab scholars that showed the world as round and introduced latitude and longitude, though underestimating the actual size of the earth.

Astrolabe

A navigational instrument invented by the ancient Greeks and perfected by Muslim navigators that enabled mariners to determine their latitude at sea.

Prince Henry

Portuguese royal (1394–1460) who sponsored annual expeditions down the western coast of Africa, supported navigational studies, and helped launch European overseas expansion.

Bartholomeu Dias

Portuguese explorer who was the first European mariner to round the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa in 1488.

Vasco da Gama

Portuguese navigator who rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497–1498 with four ships and successfully reached Calicut, India, with the aid of an Arab guide.

Taino

The Indigenous Arawak-speaking people inhabiting Hispaniola and neighboring Caribbean islands whom Christopher Columbus first encountered in 1492.

Amerigo Vespucci

Florentine navigator (1454–1512) who realized that the lands discovered by Columbus were a continent separate from Asia, leading mapmakers to name the continent after him.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement mediated by Pope Alexander VI dividing non-European lands between Spain (everything west of an imaginary Atlantic line) and Portugal (everything east).

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese mariner commissioned by Spain in 1519 whose expedition located the straits at South America's tip, entered the Pacific, and completed the first global circumnavigation.

Hernán Cortés

Spanish conquistador who allied with subject kingdoms like the Tlaxcalas to capture Tenochtitlan and systematically conquer the Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521.

Moctezuma II

Emperor of the Aztec Empire who ruled from Tenochtitlan, welcomed Cortés into his capital in 1519, was taken hostage, and died during an uprising in May 1520.

Francisco Pizarro

Spanish conquistador who ambushed and captured the Inca ruler Atahualpa in 1532, extorted a large gold ransom, executed him, and plundered the capital city of Cuzco in 1533.

Atahualpa

Inca ruler who emerged from a civil war over succession, only to be captured, ransomed for gold, and executed on false charges by Francisco Pizarro in 1532.

Viceroyalties

The administrative divisions established by the Spanish crown to govern New World territories, initially created as New Spain (1535) and Peru (1542).

Encomienda System

A system where the Spanish Crown granted colonists the legal right to force Indigenous populations into labor or demand tribute in exchange for food and shelter.

New Laws

1542 legislation enacted by King Charles I of Spain that set limits on encomiendas and outlawed the enslavement of Indigenous peoples, but retained African slavery.

Repartimiento and Mita

Government-run systems of forced labor used in New Spain (repartimiento) and Peru (mita) that replaced encomiendas and provided modest wages to Indigenous laborers.

Columbian Exchange

The complex global transfer of foods, crops, livestock, human populations, and lethal infectious pathogens between the Old World and the New World following 1492.

Potosí

A rich silver-mining deposit located in modern-day Bolivia, discovered by the Spanish in 1545, which supplied enormous quantities of silver to Spain and global trade.

Dutch East India Company

A commercial enterprise founded in 1602 that ousted the Portuguese from Ceylon and Indonesia to secure a monopoly over the lucrative spice trade.

Dutch West India Company

A trading corporation chartered in 1621 to challenge Iberian dominance in the Atlantic, capturing Caribbean territories and operating heavily in the transatlantic slave trade.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Dominican friar and former encomienda holder (1474–1566) who spoke out against the brutal exploitation of Indigenous populations and debated Spanish policy in 1550.

Conversos

People of Jewish ancestry in Spain and Portugal who had converted to Christianity, later subjected to discriminatory purity-of-blood laws in the fifteenth century.

Castas

A rigid hierarchical classification system established in Spanish colonies based on the varying proportions of European, Indigenous, and African ancestry.

Skepticism

A philosophical perspective holding that definitive knowledge or absolute certainty is impossible to attain, stimulated by religious conflicts and transatlantic encounters.

Cultural Relativism

The concept that one society's customs and values are not inherently superior to those of another, but merely different.

Michel de Montaigne

French humanist thinker (1533–1592) who pioneered the essay as a literary genre; his 1580 work 'Of Cannibals' used skepticism to question European superiority.