AP World History: Western Europe Extends Its Influence and Global Interactions (1450–1750)

Essential vocabulary terms and definitions covering European religious, scientific, and political developments alongside maritime exploration, colonization, and cross-cultural interactions from 1450 to 1750.

Humanism

A Renaissance intellectual movement emphasizing secular concerns, individual human potential, and the study of classical Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and aesthetic values.

Secular

Denoting attitudes, activities, or matters pertaining to the worldly, non-religious sphere rather than spiritual or ecclesiastical affairs.

Heliocentrism

The astronomical model introduced by Nicolaus Copernicus asserting that the Sun is at the center of the solar system, contradicting the traditional geocentric view.

Indulgences

Certificates or grants sold by the Roman Catholic Church offering individuals absolution from the punishments of sin in purgatory, sparking widespread protest by Martin Luther.

Simony

The corrupt buying and selling of church offices, ecclesiastical positions, and spiritual privileges within the Roman Catholic Church.

95 Theses

The list of arguments challenging papal corruption and the sale of indulgences posted by German monk Martin Luther in Wittenberg in 1517, igniting the Protestant Reformation.

Cluniac Reforms

A series of monastic and church reforms occurring between 950 and 1130 aimed at curbing corruption, clerical abuse, and secular influence within the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Lollards

Followers of English theologian John Wycliffe in the late fourteenth century who claimed priests were unnecessary for salvation and promoted translating the Bible into the English vernacular.

Hussites

Bohemian followers of Jan Hus who challenged Church doctrine and corruption; they were declared heretics by Church councils, and Hus was burned at the stake.

Babylonian Captivity (Papal)

The period from 1309 to 1378 during which the Roman Catholic papacy was relocated to Avignon, France, giving French monarchs undue leverage over papal elections and policy.

Politiques

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European rulers and moderates, such as French King Henry IV, who prioritized political stability and practical sovereignty over theological orthodoxy.

Edict of Nantes

A 1598 proclamation by King Henry IV of France authorizing religious toleration and worship rights for the Huguenots, providing domestic tranquility for 87 years.

Huguenots

French Calvinist Protestants who fought prolonged wars of religion against French Catholics during the sixteenth century before receiving toleration under the Edict of Nantes.

The Elect

In Calvinist theology, the group of souls chosen and predestined by God from eternity to attain salvation and enter heaven.

Protestant Work Ethic

A socio-economic principle identified by Max Weber whereby Calvinists regarded hard work, reinvestment of profits, and worldly prosperity as indications of belonging to the elect.

Anglican Church

The Church of England, established by King Henry VIII in the 1530s through parliamentary act, placing the English monarch at its head to gain an annulment and secure autonomy from the papacy.

Counter-Reformation

The comprehensive sixteenth-century Catholic response to Protestantism, combining institutional reform, defensive orthodoxy, suppression of heresy, and aggressive global missionary expansion.

Jesuits (Society of Jesus)

A Catholic religious order established in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola dedicated to absolute obedience to the pope, rigorous education, and global missionary operations.

Council of Trent

An ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church held between 1545 and 1563 that reaffirmed traditional sacraments and doctrine, tightened clerical training, and issued the Index of Prohibited Books.

Index of Prohibited Books

An official catalogue of literary works and doctrinal texts declared heretical and dangerous to the Catholic faith, which Catholics were forbidden to read under penalty of spiritual censure.

Peace of Augsburg

A 1555 agreement ending war between Charles V and the Schmalkaldic League, permitting each German state ruler to choose whether Catholicism or Lutheranism would be practiced within his realm.

Peace of Westphalia

The 1648 peace treaties that concluded the Thirty Years' War, granting Holy Roman Empire territories autonomy to adopt Catholicism, Lutheranism, or Calvinism and permanently reshaping the European political landscape.

Divine Right of the Monarchy

The political doctrine articulated by theorists such as Jean Bodin stating that monarchs receive their supreme governing authority directly from God and are unaccountable to earthly parliaments.

Petition of Right

A major 1628 English constitutional declaration signed and subsequently breached by Charles I, prohibiting non-parliamentary taxation, arbitrary detention, and martial law in private homes.

English Bill of Rights

A 1689 statute enacted under William and Mary establishing civil rights, due legal process, regular parliamentary sessions, and exclusive parliamentary authority over taxation and standing armies.

Social Contract

An Enlightenment political philosophy formulated by thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke postulating an implicit pact wherein people grant authority to a government in exchange for protection and rights.

Intendants

French bureaucratic agents and royal commissioners, nicknamed 'tax farmers,' dispatched across provinces under Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV to enforce central royal authority and tax collection.

Five Great Farms

A free-trade internal economic zone in France established under Louis XIV's finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert that abolished internal customs tariffs to promote domestic manufacturing.

Empiricism

A scientific method formulated by Francis Bacon in 1620 requiring hypotheses to be based on direct observation, systematic experimentation, and collection of measurable data.

Principia

Sir Isaac Newton's seminal 1687 scientific work synthesizing Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion and Galileo's terrestrial mechanics into a unified system governed by universal gravitation.

Philosophes

Public intellectuals and thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, including Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, who applied rational inquiry and scientific methods to reform government and society.

Mercantilism

An early modern economic doctrine holding that national power depends on accumulating gold and silver bullion by maximizing domestic exports, limiting foreign imports, and exploiting colonies.

Commercial Revolution

The early modern expansion of European commerce from local subsistence and barter markets to global monetary trade networks fueled by colonialism, silver imports, and ocean sailing routes.

Price Revolution

The prolonged era of widespread price inflation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe resulting from rapid demographic growth and an unprecedented influx of American gold and silver.

Joint-Stock Company

A corporate commercial enterprise owned by investors who purchase fractional shares of stock, pooling capital and sharing profits and operational hazards in high-risk oceanic commerce.

Limited Liability

A legal condition shielding investors in joint-stock ventures from individual accountability for company debts or catastrophic losses beyond their initial financial contribution.

Caravel

A fast, three-masted sailing ship engineered by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century equipped with lateen sails, enabling seafarers to tack against head winds and explore open oceans.

Astrolabe

A navigational instrument refined by Muslim astronomers and adopted by European sailors to calculate a ship's latitude based on the angle of the sun and stars above the horizon.

Cartography

The scientific discipline and practice of mapmaking, which underwent dramatic advances alongside maritime navigation during the Age of Exploration.

Columbian Exchange

The global biological transfer of crops, animals, human populations, and lethal pathogenic diseases between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas initiated by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

Encomienda

A Spanish colonial labor system granting encomenderos authority to demand tribute and forced labor from indigenous Americans in return for nominal food, housing, and Christian indoctrination.

Mit'a System (Spanish)

A coerced restructuring of the traditional Incan community labor draft by Spanish administrators in Peru requiring native Andean villages to supply male labor to silver mines at Potosí.

Manila Galleons

Armored Spanish merchant fleets that sailed yearly across the Pacific Ocean, exchanging Mexican and Peruvian silver at Manila for Chinese silk, porcelain, spices, and luxury goods.

Engenhos

The Portuguese term for sugar plantations and processing mills in colonial Brazil, referring to their mechanized, industrial scale and lethal reliance on enslaved African labor.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 treaty negotiated with papal support dividing newly discovered non-European lands between Spain and Portugal along an Atlantic meridian, granting Brazil to Portugal and the rest to Spain.

Sepoys

Indian soldiers recruited, armed, and trained under European military discipline to protect and expand British East India Company territorial control across the Indian subcontinent.

Chattel Slavery

A system of servitude in which human beings are legally classified as personal property and commodities that can be bought, sold, inherited, and exploited without civil rights.

Creoles

Persons of European or Spanish racial heritage born in the Americas who occupied an elite social standing beneath Iberian-born peninsulares in the colonial casta structure.

Mestizos

A colonial Spanish legal and social category designating individuals of mixed European and indigenous American parentage.

Mulattos

A social caste classification utilized across colonial Iberian America denoting persons of combined European and African racial lineage.

Songhay Empire

A dominant West African trading empire along the Niger River centered at Gao that eclipsed the Mali Empire under Sunni Ali, controlling trans-Saharan trade routes and Timbuktu.

King Afonso I

The Christian monarch of the Kongo Kingdom who sent letters in 1526 to the King of Portugal protesting the depopulation and societal collapse inflicted by European slave traffickers.

Middle Passage

The traumatic transatlantic voyage of overcrowded European slave ships transporting enslaved Africans across the ocean under brutal conditions to plantation complexes in the Americas.

Casta System

A rigid racial and ethnic caste hierarchy developed in Spanish and Portuguese America establishing legal privileges and social status based on ancestral lineage and skin tone.