Ap world vocab 4.3-4.4

Columbian exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia (Old World) following Columbus's voyages.

Conquistadores

Spanish 'conqueror' or soldier in the New World. They were searching for the 3-G's: gold, God, and glory. Spanish conquerors of the Native American lands, most notably the Aztec and Inca empires.

• Spanish explorers and soldiers who led military expeditions in the Americas during the 15th and 16th centuries, primarily to conquer indigenous territories and claim them for Spain

Small pox

A highly contagious viral disease spread by Europeans in the Americas. Led to the deaths of millions of Native Americans in North and South America

• A highly contagious viral disease that devastated Indigenous populations in the Americas following European contact

Transatlantic Slave Trade

A brutal system of forced migration from the 16th to the 19th centuries, where millions of Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic to the Americas to be enslaved

Egenhos

The Portuguese term for a sugar plantation and mill complex in colonial Brazil. Sugar plantations processed so much sugar that they were referred to as engenhos, which means "engines" in Brazil.

• A sugar plantation in Brazil that was the core of the colonial economy

Cash Crops

Crops, such as tobacco, sugar, and cotton, raised in large quantities in order to be sold for profit rather than subsistence.

African Diaspora

The separation of Africans from their homeland through centuries of forced removal to serve as slaves in the Americas and elsewhere.

• The dispersion of people of African descent across the world, particularly as a result of the transatlantic slave trade and other forms of migration.

Creole

A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.

Indentured Servitude

A worker bound by a voluntary agreement to work for a specified period of years, often in return for free passage to an overseas destination.

• A labor system in which individuals signed a contract to work for a set number of years in exchange for passage to a new land, along with food, shelter, and eventual freedom.

Chattel Slavery

Absolute legal ownership of another person, including the right to buy or sell that person. Individuals considered property.

East India Company (EIC)

The large British trading company in India that took a large portion of India after the Mughal empire started to collapse.

• It started as a trading organization focused on commerce but gradually gained political power through military conquests and strategic alliances. Played a significant role in the colonization of India.

• A government-chartered, joint-stock company that began as a trading company in 1600 and became a powerful political and military force in India

New Spain

After the defeat of the Aztecs, it became a Spanish colony. The Spanish colonial territory established in the Americas after the conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521.

Mexico City

Capital of New Spain; built on the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan after the Spanish conquest in 1521.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement between Portugal and Spain, declaring that newly discovered lands to the west of an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean would belong to Spain and newly discovered lands to the east of the line would belong to Portugal.

Hispaniola

Caribbean island, present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The site of the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas.

Encomienda

A grant of authority over a population of Amerindians in the Spanish colonies. It provided the grant holder with a supply of cheap labor and periodic payments of goods by the Amerindians. It obliged the grant holder to Christianize the Amerindians.

• Spanish colonial labor system that granted colonists the right to demand labor from Indigenous peoples in exchange for protection and Christian instruction

Encomenderos

Spanish settlers who were in charge of the natives working on the encomiendas.

• Spanish colonists who were granted the right to demand tribute and forced labor from specific groups of Indigenous people in the Americas.

Hacienda System

A large estate or plantation system (produced agriculture on their lands) in colonial Latin America that relied on a coercive and hierarchical labor structure, primarily using Indigenous people and, to a lesser extent, enslaved Africans.

• A large estate or plantation system in colonial Latin America, where landowners, known as hacendados, controlled vast tracts of land and relied on the labor of indigenous people and mestizos.

• A Spanish colonial land grant system where large estates (haciendas) were created for agriculture, ranching, or mining

• A large estate/plantation system in Spanish colonial Latin America, using forced Indigenous/mestizo labor (debt peonage) on vast lands for cash crops, establishing rigid social hierarchies (casta system), and creating self-sufficient economic/social units that concentrated wealth and power with landowners (hacendados) while exploiting workers, similar to feudalism but adapted for colonial America

Middle Passage

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

• The brutal transatlantic journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas as part of the slave trade. It was the second leg of the Triangle Trade, where enslaved people were packed into horrific conditions on ships for voyages that could last weeks or months.

Mita System

The Spanish colonial version of the Incan labor system, which heavily exploited indigenous people by forcing them to work in mines, particularly silver mines.