The Age of Exploration and Mercantilism

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering key individuals, voyages, motives, and treaties from the Age of Exploration and early European mercantilism.

Italian merchants

Traders who resold Asian spices and luxury goods throughout Europe at inflated prices, motivating Portugal and Spain to search for direct sea routes to India.

The Crusades

Historical conflicts that left Europeans with enduring hostility toward Muslims and reinforced a perceived sacred duty to combat them and convert non-Christians worldwide.

Bartolomeu Dias

Portuguese explorer who summarized the motives of exploration as serving God and majesty, illuminating those in darkness, and acquiring wealth; he made an unsuccessful early attempt to reach Asia.

Prince Henry

The son of the King of Portugal and the kingdom's most dedicated supporter of maritime exploration, who also sought to spread the Christian faith.

Ceuta

A city located in North Africa that became the first conquest of Prince Henry of Portugal.

Vasco da Gama

Portuguese navigator who completed the sea voyage to the southwestern coast of India, returning with luxury goods worth $60$ times the initial cost of the expedition.

Calicut

A major trading port on the southwestern coast of India where Vasco da Gama and his crew discovered shops filled with valuable spices, rare silks, and precious gems.

Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón)

Navigator who sailed westward across the Atlantic under the Spanish flag in search of a route to India, ultimately making landfall on an island in the Caribbean.

The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María

The three ships that departed a Spanish port at dawn on 3 August 1492 and arrived in the Americas on 12 October 1492 after more than two months at sea.

Taíno

The indigenous population encountered by Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean whom the Europeans mistakenly labeled 'Indians'.

San Salvador

The name, signifying 'Holy Saviour', bestowed by Columbus upon the Caribbean island he claimed for Spain upon arrival.

Columbus's Journal

Firsthand record documenting the initial encounter with indigenous islanders, describing their lack of iron weaponry, peaceful trade of goods like parrots and cotton yarn, and potential to be converted to Christianity.

Pope Alexander VI

The leader of the Catholic Church who mediated territorial disputes between Spain and Portugal in 1493 by issuing a papal bull (Inter Caetera) establishing a line of demarcation.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement between Spain and Portugal that established a revised boundary giving lands to the west to Spain and lands to the east to Portugal, securing Portuguese claim to part of modern-day Brazil.