Chapter 10 Vocab Significance

World Economy

This marked the beginning of global economic integration that created lasting hierarchies of wealth and power, with Western Europe at the center controlling trade and extraction of resources from other regions.

Cape of Good Hope

This geographical breakthrough eliminated European dependence on Arab and Ottoman middlemen, allowing direct access to Asian markets and establishing European naval dominance in ocean trade.

Christopher Columbus

His voyages opened the Americas to European colonization, triggering the Columbian Exchange that devastated indigenous populations while providing Europeans with new resources and territorial claims.

Ferdinand Magellan

His voyage proved European ships could navigate global waters, demonstrating Western maritime superiority and giving Spain territorial claims in the Philippines that lasted centuries.

Dutch East India Company

This pioneering joint-stock company model showed how private enterprises could function as colonial governments, establishing a template for European commercial expansion and control overseas.

British East India Company

It exemplified how trading companies could gradually transform into colonial administrators, placing an entire subcontinent under European control through commerce and military force.

Lepanto

This victory symbolized the decisive military shift from Islamic to European naval power in the Mediterranean, ending Ottoman challenges to European expansion.

Core Nations

These Western European powers monopolized profits from global trade by positioning themselves at the center of economic networks, extracting wealth from dependent regions while keeping manufacturing for themselves.

Mercantilism

This economic policy deliberately structured the world system to benefit European nations, prohibiting colonial manufacturing to force dependent regions into subordinate economic roles.

Mestizos

Their emergence in Latin America represented cultural synthesis and biological mixing that created new colonial societies, distinguishing them from North America where European settlers remained more separate from indigenous populations.

Vasco de Balboa

He pioneered European mainland colonization of the Americas, demonstrating that conquest of indigenous empires was possible and encouraging further Spanish territorial expansion.

Francisco Pizarro

His conquest of the wealthy Inca Empire proved that small European forces could overcome sophisticated indigenous civilizations through military tactics and indigenous division, inspiring further conquests.

New France

This highly organized colonial venture showed how European nations could replicate their own societies overseas, establishing durable settler colonies that influenced North American development.

Seven Years' War

This first truly global conflict demonstrated that European rivalries for colonial dominance would shape world politics, establishing Britain as the preeminent colonial power.

Treaty of Paris

This agreement formally redistributed colonial territories to reflect European military power, marking Britain's emergence as the dominant colonial nation and determining North American and Indian futures.

Cape Colony

It established permanent European settlement in Southern Africa as a strategic supply point, eventually becoming the foundation for European expansion into the African interior.

Boers

Their inland expansion initiated the long struggle for control of Southern Africa, creating the framework for racial conflict and European dominance that would define the region into modern times.

Calcutta

It became the administrative center from which Britain expanded control over India, serving as the foundation for eventual British rule over the entire subcontinent.