ch4 ap world vocab

ch4 strayer ways of the world

Akbar

The most famous emperor of India’s Mughal Empire (r. 1556–1605); his policies are noted for their efforts at religious tolerance and inclusion.

Aurangzeb

Mughal emperor (r. 1658–1707) who reversed his predecessors’ policies of religious tolerance and attempted to impose Islamic supremacy.

Columbian Exchange

The enormous network of transatlantic communication, migration, trade, and the transfer of diseases, plants, and animals that began in the period of European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

devshirme

A term that means “collection or gathering”; it refers to the Ottoman Empire’s practice of removing young boys from their Christian subjects and training them for service in the civil administration or in the elite Janissary infantry corps.

General Crisis

The near-record cold winters experienced in much of China, Europe, and North America in the mid-seventeenth century, sparked by the Little Ice Age; extreme weather conditions led to famines, uprisings, and wars.

Great Dying

Term used to describe the devastating demographic impact of European-borne epidemic diseases on the Americas; in many cases, up to 90 percent of the pre-Columbian population died.

Hernan Cortes

Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that conquered the Aztec Empire in modern Mexico.

Little Ice Age

A period of unusually cool temperatures from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, most prominently in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mercantilism

The economic theory that governments served their countries’ economic interests best by encouraging exports and accumulating bullion (precious metals such as silver and gold); helped fuel European colonialism.

mestizo

A term used to describe the multiracial population of Spanish colonial societies in the Americas. Recently, the word has been criticized for being associated with colonialism and racial stratification.

Ming Dynasty

Chinese dynasty (1368–1644) that succeeded the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols; noted for its return to traditional Chinese ways and restoration of the land after the destructiveness of the Mongols.

Mughal Empire

A successful state founded by Muslim Turkic-speaking peoples who invaded India and provided a rare period of relative political unity (1526–1707); their rule was noted for efforts to create partnerships between Hindus and Muslims.

mulattoes

A derogatory term commonly used to describe people of mixed African and European origin.

Ottoman Empire

Major Islamic state centered on Anatolia that came to include the Balkans, parts of the Middle East, and much of North Africa; lasted in one form or another from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century.

Pueblo Revolt

A major revolt of Native American peoples against Spanish colonial rule in late-seventeenth-century New Mexico.

Qing expansion

The growth of Qing dynasty China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into a Central Asian empire that added a small but important minority of non-Chinese people to the empire’s population and essentially created the borders of contemporary China.

Russian Empire

A Christian state centered on Moscow that emerged from centuries of Mongol rule in 1480; by 1800, it had expanded into northern Asia and westward into the Baltics and Eastern Europe.

Safavid Empire

Major Turkic empire established in Persia in the early sixteenth century and notable for its efforts to convert its people to Shia Islam.

settler colonies

Imperial territories in which Europeans settled permanently in substantial numbers. Examples include British North America, Portuguese Brazil, Spanish Mexico and Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, and South Africa.

Songhay Empire

Major Islamic state of West Africa that formed in the second half of the fifteenth century.

yasak

Tribute that Russian rulers demanded from the Indigenous peoples of Siberia, most often in the form of furs.

zamindars

An elite class of the Mughal Empire whose members controlled large tracts of land and collected taxes on behalf of the imperial court.