European Exploration and Colonization Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering European exploration motivations, key historical figures, environmental/demographic impacts, and colonial systems from the transcript.

Reasons for European Exploration

The three main motivations for exploration: economy (acquiring spices, gold, and faster trade routes), religion (spreading Christianity), and glory (personal fame).

Mercantilism

An economic policy where colonies produced raw materials to be imported into Great Britain, which were then refined by British companies and sold back to the colonies at higher rates.

Giovanni Caboto

An Italian navigator and explorer credited with the discovery of continental North America on June 24, 1497, under the commission of King Henry VII.

Ceuta

A North African city that fell in 1415 under the leadership of John I of Portugal, granting a European power its first toehold on the African continent.

Prince Henry

Son of John I of Portugal who organized Portuguese resources and information for exploration, initiating voyages to the Madeira Islands and the Azores.

Northwest Passage

A theoretical direct and efficient water route through North America to the Orient/Asia sought by English, Spanish, and French explorers.

El Dorado

The legendary City of Gold searched for by Spanish explorers seeking mineral wealth in the Americas.

Christopher Columbus

An Italian explorer who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 seeking a trade route to India, and who introduced sugarcane to the Caribbean in 1493.

Jacques Cartier

A French navigator authorized by King Francis I in 1534 to explore the New World for gold and trade routes, who named Canada after the word "kanata."

Kanata

The Huron-Iroquois word meaning settlement, which served as the origin for Jacques Cartier naming Canada.

Native View of Land Use

The belief among Native peoples that land was a resource to be held in common for group benefit, which directly clashed with European private property ownership.

New England Coastal Epidemics (1616–1618)

Disease outbreaks introduced by Europeans that killed 75 percent of native inhabitants along the New England coast between 1616 and 1618.

Great Lakes Smallpox Epidemic (1630s)

A smallpox outbreak in the 1630s that resulted in the death of half of the Huron and Iroquois people living near the Great Lakes.

Peter Fontaine

Author of "A Defense of Slavery in Virginia" who justified slavery by arguing that Africans were enslaved prior to purchase and that buying them was a business transaction.

Mayflower Compact

A document signed on November 11, 1620, establishing a "civil body politick" to enact just and equal laws for the general good of the colony.

Olaudah Equiano

A West African kidnapped at age 11 into the slave trade whose 1789 autobiography documented the Middle Passage from an enslaved person's perspective.

Triangular Trade

A trade network connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas involving manufactured goods, rum, textiles, enslaved Africans via the Middle Passage, and raw sugar or tobacco.

Benjamin Moseley

Author of "A Treatise on Sugar with Miscellaneous Medical Observations" (1800) who highlighted the addictive nature and rising European consumption of sugar.