Unit 1 - American Studies Vocab

Colonization

The process where one country takes control of a foreign territory and sends its own people to live there.

Conquistador

A Spanish soldier and explorer who led military expeditions in the Americas and captured land for Spain.

Columbian Exchange

The transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Americas and Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Northwest Passage

A nonexistent path through North America that early explorers searched for that would allow ships to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

Line of Demarcation

Boundary between Spanish and Portuguese territories in the New World.

Caravels

Ships that used triangular sails to sail against the wind, and had rudders to improve steering.

Mercantilism

An economic system where a “mother country” controlled trade with its colonies to build its own wealth and power.

Imports

Imports are goods or services bought from another country.

Exports

Exports is a good or service produced within one country and sold to buyers in another country.

Raw Materials

Raw materials are basic, natural, or unprocessed substances used to create finished goods or products.

Cash Crop

A plant grown specifically to sell for money or profit rather than to feed the farmer's family.

Indentured Servitude

A legal contract where a person agreed to work without pay for a set number of years in exchange for passage to the Americas, food, clothing, and shelter.

Slavery

A system of forced labor in which one person has total legal ownership of another as property.

Middle Passage

A voyage that brought enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and the West Indies.

Triangular Trade

Trading networks in which goods and slaves moved among England, the American colonies, and Africa.

African Diaspora

The population of displaced Africans and their descendants sound the world.

Leif Erikson

Norwegian explorer, son of Erik the Red, was the first European to explore the Americas.

Christopher Columbus

Italian explorer, he was convinced that he could reach Asia by sailing westward across the Atlantic Ocean. He gained the support of Spain's monarchs and commanded a small fleet that reached the so-called New World, setting off a tide of European exploration of the area.

John Cabot

John Cabot was an Italian explorer who sailed for England in 1497. He is famous for being the first European since the Vikings to land on the coast of mainland North America.

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese captain of a Spanish fleet that sought a western route to Asia via the “Southern Ocean”, he found  passage through South America, now known as the Strait of Magellan, but died during the expedition. His crew of 18 people with one remaining ship successfully circumnavigated the world.

Bartolomé de las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas was a Spanish priest in the 1500s who fought to protect Native Americans from the cruelty of Spanish colonizers

Hernán Cortés

Spanish conquistador, he conquered Mexico and brought about the fall of the Aztec Empire.

Moctezuma II

Emperor of Mexico's Aztec Empire, he welcomed explorer Cortes as a god but was taken prisoner by him. He was later killed, and the Aztec capital was destroyed during the following Aztec uprising.

Francisco Pizzaro

Spanish conquistador who sailed with Balboa on the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, he later pursued rumors of golden cities in the Andres Mountains of South America and conquered the Inca Empire.

Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain was a French explorer and navigator who is known as the "Father of New France." In 1608, he founded Quebec City, which became the first permanent French settlement in North America. He explored and mapped the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, and he established a major fur-trading network with local Native American tribes.