Euro Unit 3+4 Terms

conquistador

spanish for “conqueror”; spanish soldier-explorers, such as Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, who sought to conquer the New World for the Spanish

caravel

A small, maneuverable, three-mast sailing ship developed by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century that gave the Portuguese a distinct advantage in exploration and trade.

Ptolemy’s Geography

A second-century-c.e. work that synthesized the classical knowledge of geography and introduced the concepts of longitude and latitude. Reintroduced to Europeans about 1410 by Arab scholars, its ideas allowed cartographers to create more accurate maps.

Treaty of Tordesillas

The 1494 agreement giving Spain everything to the west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic and giving Portugal everything to the east.

Mexica Empire

Also known as the Aztec Empire, a large and complex Native American civilization in modern Mexico and Central America that possessed advanced mathematical, astronomical, and engineering technology.

Inca Empire

The vast and sophisticated Peruvian empire centered at the capital city of Cuzco that was at its peak from 1438 until 1532.

Columbian exchange

The exchange of animals, plants, and diseases between the Old and the New Worlds.

Viceroyalties

The name for the four administrative units of Spanish possessions in the Americas: New Spain, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata.

Encomienda system 

A system whereby the Spanish crown granted the conquerors the right to forcibly employ groups of Indians in exchange for providing food, shelter, and Christian teaching.

Fronde

A series of violent uprisings during the early reign of Louis XIV triggered by growing royal control and increased taxation.

Mercantilism

A system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state based on the belief that a nation’s international power was based on its wealth, specifically its supply of gold and silver.

Peace of Utrecht

A series of treaties, from 1713 to 1715, that ended the War of the Spanish Succession, ended French expansion in Europe, and marked the rise of the British Empire.

Junkers

The nobility of Brandenburg and Prussia, they were reluctant allies of Frederick William in his consolidation of the Prussian state.

Boyars

The highest-ranking members of the Russian nobility.

Cossacks

Free groups and outlaw armies originally comprising runaway peasants living on the borders of Russian territory from the fourteenth century onward. By the end of the sixteenth century they had formed an alliance with the Russian state.

Janissary Corps

The core of the sultan’s army, composed of slave conscripts from non-Muslim parts of the empire; after 1683 it became a volunteer force.

Millet system

A system used by the Ottomans whereby subjects were divided into religious communities, with each millet (nation) enjoying autonomous self-government under its religious leaders.

Sultan

The ruler of the Ottoman Empire; he owned all the agricultural land of the empire and was served by an army and bureaucracy composed of highly trained slaves.

Constitutionalism

A form of government in which power is limited by law and balanced between the authority and power of the government, on the one hand, and the rights and liberties of the subjects or citizens on the other hand; could include constitutional monarchies or republics.

republicanism 

A form of government in which there is no monarch and power rests in the hands of the people as exercised through elected representatives.

Puritans

Members of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reform movement within the Church of England that advocated purifying it of Roman Catholic elements, like bishops, elaborate ceremonials, and wedding rings.

stadholder

The executive officer in each of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, a position often held by the princes of Orange.

Natural philosophy

An early modern term for the study of the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it functioned; it encompassed what we would call “science” today.

Copernican hypothesis

The idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe.

Experimental method

The approach, pioneered by Galileo, that the proper way to explore the workings of the universe was through repeatable experiments rather than speculation.

Law of inertia

A law formulated by Galileo that states that motion, not rest, is the natural state of an object, and that an object continues in motion forever unless stopped by some external force.

Law of universal gravitation

Newton’s law that all objects are attracted to one another and that the force of attraction is proportional to the objects’ quantity of matter and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Empiricism

A theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through observation and experimentation rather than deductive reason and speculation.

Cartesian dualism

Descartes’s view that all of reality could ultimately be reduced to mind and matter.

Rationalism

A secular, critical way of thinking in which nothing was to be accepted on faith, and everything was to be submitted to reason.

Enlightenment

The influential intellectual and cultural movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that introduced a new worldview based on the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress.

Philosophes

A group of French intellectuals who proclaimed that they were bringing the light of knowledge to their fellow humans in the Age of Enlightenment.

Reading revolution

The transition in Europe from a society where literacy consisted of patriarchal and communal reading of religious texts to a society where literacy was common- place and reading material was broad and diverse.

Salon

Regular social gathering held by talented and rich Parisians in their homes, where them and their followers met to discuss literature, science, and philosophy.

Rococo

A popular style in Europe in the eighteenth century, known for its soft pastels, ornate interiors, sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed lovers protected by hovering cupids.

Public sphere

An idealized intellectual space that emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment, where the public came together to discuss important issues relating to society, economics, and politics.

Enlightened absolutism

Term coined by historians to describe the rule of eighteenth-century monarchs who, without renouncing their own absolute authority, adopted Enlightenment ideals of rationalism, progress, and tolerance.

Cameralism

View that monarchy was the best form of government, that all elements of society should serve the monarch, and that, in turn, the state should use its resources and authority to increase the public good.

Haskalah

The Jewish Enlightenment of the second half of the eighteenth century, led by the Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

bureaucracy

a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.

secularism

the principle of prioritizing non-religious, worldly matters over religious ones in governance, education, and daily life; characterized by an emphasis on human reason, science, and individualism, and is often defined by the separation of church and state.