apworld vocab

Champa Rice

Champa Rice

1.  Crop that greatly expanded agricultural production in China and led to growth in the population.

Scholar Gentry

1. China’s bureaucratic expansion led to the creation of an entirely new class known as the

Filial Piety

The duty of family members to subordinate their desires to those of the male head of the family and to the ruler. The emphasis on respect for one's elders helped the Song maintain their rule in China.

Grand Canal

 an inexpensive and efficient internal waterway transportation system that extended over 30,000 miles. Enabled China, under the Song Dynasty, to become the most populous trading area in the world.

Imperial Bureaucracy

1. a vast organization in which appointed officials carried out the empire's policies.

Civil Service Exam

1. Required students to analyze Confucian teachings. Those who scored well received prestigious jobs in the government bureaucracy.

Foot Binding

1. Signified social status, something suitors particularly desired. The practice became popular among the aristocratic classes in China.

Mahayana Buddhism

1. focused on spiritual growth for all beings and on service. It became strongest in China and Korea, though it was not a native belief system.

Neo-Confucianism

1.  This new update of a long-established East Asian belief system occurred as a result of the growing popularity of Buddhism and Taoism.

Mamluk Sultanate

1. Initially purchased by Arabs as enslaved people to serve as soldiers and later as bureaucrats. They seized control of the government in Egypt.

Seljuk Turks

1. They challenged the Abbassid Caliphate and, also, cut off access to the Holy Land, which led to the European Crusades.

Abbasid Caliphate

1. This empire became a center of learning where people made advances in medicine, built astronomical observatories, developed algebra, improved the astrolabe, and preserved Greek and Roman texts.

Sufis

1.  emphasized introspection to grasp truths that they believed could not be understood through learning. May have begun as a mystical response to the perceived love of luxury by the early Umayyad Caliphate. Helped spread Islam to non-Arabs.

House of Wisdom

1. Center of Learning located in Bagdhad where scholars from far away traveled to study.

Algebra

1.  Math developed by Islamic society.

Delhi Sultanate

1. Brought Islam to Northern India. Were resented by Hindus because they imposed the jizya.

Bhakti Movement

it could be labeled as a reform of Hinduism because it emphasized attachment to a particular deity instead of studying texts or performing rituals. It also did not discriminate against women or people of low social status.

Aztecs

1. In 1325, they founded their capital Tenochtitlan on the site of what is now Mexico City. Over the next 100 years, they conquered the surrounding peoples and created an empire that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.

Theocracy

1. The Aztecs had this type of government, which is rule of religious leaders.

Incan Empire

1.  Founded by Pachacuti, this empire extended from present-day Ecuador in the north to Chile in the south.

Mit’a System

1. Unlike the Aztecs, conquered people under the Inca did not have to pay tribute. Rather, they were subject to mandatory public service. Men between the ages of 15 and 50 provided agricultural and other forms of labor, including the construction of roads.

Carpa Nan

1. This Inca road system was used mainly by the government and military and aided in administering the empire.

Animism

1.  Inca religion included this belief that elements of the physical world could have supernatural powers. Called huaca, they could be large geographical features such as a river or a mountain peak. Or, they could be very small objects such as a stone, a plant, or a built object, such as a bridge.

Kin-based Networks

1.  In contrast to most Asian or European societies, those in Sub-Saharan Africa did not centralize power under one leader or central government. Instead, communities formed these types of relationships, where families governed themselves. A male head of the network, a chief, mediated conflicts and dealt with neighboring groups.

Hausa Kingdoms

1.  ​​Sometime before 1000, in what is now Nigeria, these seven states formed. The states were loosely connected through kinship ties, though they too had no central authority. People established prospering city-states, each with a speciality. For example, several were situated in plains where cotton grew well.

Mali

1.  By the 12th century, wars with neighboring societies had permanently weakened the Ghanaian state. In its place arose several new trading societies, the most powerful of which was this empire founded by Sundiata.

Magna Carta

n 1215, nobles forced King John to sign this royal charter, which required the king to respect certain rights, such as the right to a jury trial before a noble could be sentenced to prison. This development increased the rights of the English nobility, but not of the general population.

Manorial System

1.  provided economic self-sufficiency and defense. The manor produced everything that people living on it required, limiting the need for trade or contact with outsiders. Many serfs spent their entire lives on a single manor, little aware of events in the rest of Europe

Three-field System

1.  System in which crops are rotated throughout fields. This allowed the soil to remain fertile and, thus, increased agricultural production.

Feudalism

1. The core of this political structure was a system of mutual obligations: A monarch gave land to lords. In return, a lord became a king's vassal. Lords then provided land to knights. In return, knights pledged to fight for the lord or king. Lords also provided land and protection to peasants. In return, peasants were obligated to farm the lord's land and obey the lord's orders.

Serfs

1.  while not enslaved, they were tied to the land. This meant they could not travel without permission from their lords. Nor could they marry without their lord's approval. In exchange for protection provided by the lord of the manor, they paid tribute in the form of crops, labor, or, in rare cases, coins. Their children were also tied to the land.

Primogeniture

1.  under these rules the eldest son in a family inherited the entire estate, left a generation of younger sons with little access to wealth and land. This influenced the Crusades because nobles without inheritance sought to make fortunes elsewhere. 

Crusades

1. pressures resulted in the Crusades a series of European military campaigns in the Middle East between 1095 and the 1200s.

Marco Polo

1.  from Venice, he visited the court of Kublai Khan in Dadu, modern-day Beijing. His captivating descriptions of the customs of the people he met intrigued Europeans. For example, he described how Mongols had multiple marriages, drank mare's milk, burned black stones (coal) to heat their homes, and bathed frequently often three times per week. Curiosity about Asia skyrocketed, stimulating interest in cartography, or mapmaking.

Humanism

1. the focus on individuals rather than God. Followers sought education and reform. They began to write secular literature. Cultural changes in the Renaissance, such as the increased use of the vernacular language, propelled the rise of powerful monarchies, the centralization of governments, and the birth of nationalism. 

Little Ice Age

1. Urban growth was hampered after about 1300 by a five-century cooling of the climate. Lower temperatures reduced agricultural productivity, so people had less to trade and cities grew more slowly. This era led to an increase in disease and an increase in unemployment. These, in turn, created social unrest.

Magnetic Compass

1. This Chinese innovation aided in navigation along the seas.

Junk

1.  Chinese merchant ship known for the massive size and large loads.

Caravanserai

1. these inns sprang up, often about 100 miles apart. That distance is how far camels could travel before they needed water. There, travelers could rest both themselves and their animals and sometimes trade their animals for fresh ones. This increased the amount of trade, especially on the Silk Roads.

Flying Cash

1. This system of credit established in China allowed a merchant to deposit paper money under his name in one location and withdraw the same amount at another location. Locations for exchanging this paper money became the model for the banks of the modern era, including the banking houses established in European cities.

Hanseatic League

1.  In the 13th century, cities in northern Germany and Scandinavia formed this commercial alliance. Controlling trade in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, member cities, such as Lubeck, Hamburg, and Riga, were able to drive out pirates and monopolize trade in goods such as timber, grain, leather, and salted fish. 

Mongols

1. They conquered the Abbasid Caliphate and China came under their control as well. Parts of the Silk Roads were, for the first time, unified in a system under the control of an authority that respected merchants and enforced laws. They increased the safety of travel on the Silk Roads. New trade channels were also established between Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. 

Khanates

1. Smaller Mongol kingdoms that developed after the death of Genghis Khan.

Pax Mongolica

1.  This period of Eurasian history between the 13th and 14th centuries experienced political stability, economic growth, and great cultural exchange under Mongol rule.

Golden Horde

1. In 1236, Batu, the son of Genghis Khan's oldest son, led a Mongolian army of 100,000 soldiers into Russia, which at the time was a loose network of city-states and principalities. Batu's army, which came to be known as this, marched westward, conquering the small Russian kingdoms and forcing them to pay tributes. 

Yuan Dynasty

In the eastern part of the Mongolian Empire, a grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, set his sights on China and created this dynasty. Kublai Khan adhered closer to Chinese tradition than Mongol practices, a critique from other Mongol rulers.

Gobi Desert

1.  Mongols resided north of here where they herded goats and sheep and also hunted and foraged.  

Siege Weapons

1. Mongols incorporated these types of weapons, such as portable towers used to attack walled fortifications and catapults that hurled stones or other objects. This allowed the Mongol Empire to expand.

Calicut

1.  became a bustling port city for merchants in search of spices from southern India. Foreign merchants from Arabia and China met there to exchange goods from the West and the East, respectively. Local rulers welcomed the presence of Muslim and Chinese merchants, as it brought the city wealth and prominence in the Indian Ocean Basin.

Swahili City-States

1. bustling commercial centers, such as Kilwa, Mombasa (in modern Kenya), and Zanzibar (in modern Tanzania). The traders of the Zanj Coast, as it was known in Arabic, sold ivory, gold, and enslaved people to their Arab trading partners, as well as more exotic goods such as tortoise shells, peacock feathers, and rhinoceros horns. In exchange, the "Zanj" cities acquired Chinese porcelain, Indian cotton, and manufactured ironwork. 

Monsoon Winds

1. Knowledge of these winds was essential for trading in the Indian Ocean. In the winter months, winds originated from the northeast, while in the spring and summer, they blew from the southwest. Thus, merchants had to time their voyages carefully, often remaining in port cities for months at a time, depending on when favorable winds would come their way.

Lateen Sails

1. these sails were popular because sailors found that the triangular shape could easily catch winds coming from many different directions. This led to an increase in trade.

Astrolabe

1.  improved by Muslim navigators in the 12th century, this instrument allowed sailors to determine how far north or south they were from the equator, improving trade.

Zheng He

 The transfer of knowledge, culture, technology, commerce, and religion intensified as a result of thriving trade in the Indian Ocean Basin. In 1405, the Ming emperor Yongle sent him on the first of seven great voyages. The main purposes of the voyages were to display the might of the Ming Dynasty to the rest of the world and to receive tribute from the people he encountered.

Mansa Musa

1.  A devout Muslim, he began a pilgrimage in 1324 to Mecca. His voyage demonstrated Mali’s wealth and connectivity to the rest of the world. His actions of giving away gold in Egypt may have led to an increase in inflation, disrupting the region’s economy.

Timbuktu

1. this city developed into a center of Muslim life and learning in Sub-Saharan Africa. By the 1500s, books created and sold here brought prices higher than most other goods.

Mecca

1. Islam’s holiest city. Muslims from all over, such as Mansa Musa, must make a pilgrimage at least once in their lives, a pillar of Islam. 

Oases

1. places where human settlement is possible because water from deep underground is brought to the surface, making land fertile. In some oases, the water comes from underground naturally. In others, humans have dug wells to access the water. This allowed trade to occur across the Saharan Desert.

Camel Saddle

1. this technology was developed by the Somalis in Eastern Africa. It allowed them to carry loads up to 600 pounds. Without it, camels could not have been used to carry heavy loads of goods in trade.

Black Death

1. A major epidemic broke out between 1347 and 1351. Additional outbreaks occurred over the succeeding decades. As many as 25 million people in Europe may have died as a result. With drastically reduced populations, economic activity declined in Europe. In particular, a shortage of people to work on the land had lasting effects on the feudal system.

Ibn Battuta

1. Over 30 years, this Moroccan Muslim scholar traveled through Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, China, Spain, North Africa, and Mali, mainly to Muslim lands. His accounts provided a wealth of detail about the places he visited and their cultures. The fact that he was able to travel to these places shows the expansiveness of Muslim Empires. 

Bubonic Plague

1. termed the Black Death, it spread from southern China to Central Asia, and from there to Southeast Asia and Europe. Some historians believe the caravanserai that housed people and animals together may have contributed to the spread of the disease since the animals likely carried infected fleas.

Qing Dynasty

1. This Dynasty changed China’s currency from paper to silver and, thus, increased the demand for silver mined in the Americas and Japan. As a result, the Portuguese and the Spanish became increasingly wealthy.

Gutenberg PrintingPress

 This Invention led to an increase in literacy. Therefore, it contributed to Europe emerging out of the “Dark Ages.”

Ottoman Empire

1. the largest and most enduring of the great Islamic empires of this period. Founded by the Osman Dynasty in the 1300s, the empire lasted until its defeat in 1918 by the Allies in World War I. Thus a single dynasty controlled the empire for more than 600 years.

Safavid Empire

1. This empire used Shi'a Islam as a unifying force, Shah Ismail built a power base that supported his rule and denied legitimacy to any Sunni. This strict adherence to Shi'a Islam caused frequent hostilities with the Ottoman Empire, a stronghold of Sunni Islam.

Mughal Empire

1. under Akbar this empire was one of the richest and best-governed states in the world. Overseas trade flourished during the relatively peaceful period; Arab traders conducted most of the commerce. Trade within the borders of the empire was carried on by merchant castes.

Ivan IV

1.  crowned tsar in 1547, he immediately set about to expand the Russian border eastward, first by taking control of the khanates held by the descendants of the Golden Horde. He established a paramilitary force loyal to him called the oprichnina. Dressed in black and traveling quickly on horseback, the members showed fierce loyalty to him.

1.  crowned tsar in 1547, he immediately set about to expand the Russian border eastward, first by taking control of the khanates held by the descendants of the Golden Horde. He established a paramilitary force loyal to him called the oprichnina. Dressed in black and traveling quickly on horseback, the members showed fierce loyalty to him.

1.  Seen as the most effective ruler of his empire. Under him Hindus were excluded from paying the jizya and could work in government. He attempted to establish a religion that blended Islamic and Hindu beliefs.

Absolutism

1.  In contrast to developments in England were the king had to share power, the French government became directed by one source of power, the king, with complete authority in the 17th and 18th centuries, which is known as this 

Peter I

1. Known for modernizing Russia’s military, economy, and political system. Created a navy and forced the nobility to adopt Western fashions, such as shaving off their beards. 

Devshirme

1. System used by the Ottomans to staff their military and their government. Through this system, Christian boys who were subjects of the empire were recruited by force to serve in the Ottoman government. Some became elite members of the military in charge of protecting the sultan.

Janissaries

1. Technically, they were called slaves. But they became an elite military group in charge of protecting the Ottoman sultan. Removed from their families and homeland, they were indoctrinated to be fiercely loyal to the sultan. This position was seen as a path of upward mobility. Because they could protect the sultan, they gained significance influence in politics.

Daimyo

1.  Landholding aristocrats in Japan. Each had an army of warriors (known as samurai); ambition to conquer more territory; and power to rule his fiefdoms as he saw fit. The samurai were salaried, paid first in rice and later in gold, which gave them significant economic power. Finally, just as gunpowder weapons enabled the rise of new empires in Turkey, Persia, and India, gunpowder weapons helped a series of three powerful landholding aristrocrats to gradually unify Japan.

Tokugawa Shogunate

1. This government set about reorganizing the governance of Japan in order to centralize control over what was essentially a feudal system. Japan was divided into 250 hans, or territories, each of which was controlled by a landholding aristocrat who had his own army and was fairly independent. However, the Tokugawa government required that landlord to maintain residences both in their home territory and also in the capital; if the landlord himself was visiting his home territory, his family had to stay in Tokyo, essentially as hostages. This kept the landholding aristocrat under the control of the government, reducing them to landlords who managed the hans, rather than independent leaders.

Aurangzeb

1.  In expanding the Mughal empire to the south, he drained the empire's treasury and was unable to put down peasant uprisings. Some of these uprisings were sparked by his insistence on an austere and pious Islamic lifestyle and an intolerance of minority religions Sikhs, Hindus, and others. His policies led to frequent conflicts and rebellions.

Taj Mahal

1. The craftspeople and builders of Mughal India combined the arts of Islam (calligraphy, illumination of manuscripts, and ceramics) with local arts to create magnificent, airy structures with decorative geometric designs. All these accomplishments showed the power of the rulers. This tomb for one of the Mughal rulers’ wives is an example of such accomplishments.

Boyars

Russia’s noble landowning class, stood at the top of the social pyramid. They received more power and control over the economy and serfs during the rule of Catherine II, the Great.

Serfdom

1. system where peasants received a plot of land and protection from a noble. In return, the peasants were bound to that land and had little personal freedom. Transfers of land ownership to another noble included control over the peasants on that land.

Henry VIII

1. He wanted a male heir to succeed him. After his wife gave birth to several daughters, he asked the pope to annul his marriage so he could marry another woman, Anne Boleyn. But the pope refused out of worry over the reaction of Charles V, the powerful emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. With the approval of the English Parliament, he set himself up as head of the new Church of England, or Anglican Church—one that would be free of control by the pope in Rome.

Peace of Augsburg

1. This treaty allowed each German state to choose whether its ruler would be Catholic or Lutheran. As a result, churches and inhabitants were forced to practice the state religion. People who refused could move to another state where their preferred religion was practiced. This was an attempt to stop the warring between Protestants and Catholics.

Indulgences

1. Catholic Church practice of granting a person absolution from the punishments for sin for a payment. The practice led to priest Martin Luther defiantly challenging the Church by nailing his charges of corruption, the 95 Theses, to a church door.

Counter Reformation

1. The Catholic Church’s response to the Protestant Reformation. It was a three-pronged strategy that yielded such gains for the Church that it remains the largest Christian denomination in the world.

Inquisition

1. Its use was increased during the Counter-Reformation. It had been established in the late 12th century to root out and punish nonbelievers. It sometimes allowed the use of torture to achieve its ends. It was essentially an ecclasiastical tribunal. 

Jesuits

1.  Religious order founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola, it opposed the spread of Protestantism. It developed as a result of the Counter-Reformation. They undertook missionary activity throughout the Spanish Empire as well as in Japan and India.

John Calvin

1.  In 1536, he authored The Institutes of the Christian Religion and helped reform the religious community in Geneva, Switzerland. The elect, those predestined to go to heaven, ran the community, which was based on plain living, simple church buildings, and governance by the elders of the church. He was part of the Protestant Reformation.

Manila

1.  Located in the Pacific Ocean, it became a Spanish commercial center in the area, attracting Chinese merchants and others. As a result, Catholicism spread to the area as well. Became extremely important during the height of the silver trade.

Sikhism

1. Akbar provided land grants for this relatively new religion, which developed from Hinduism and may have been influenced by the Islamic mysticism known as Sufism. It is a monotheistic faith that recognized the rights of other faiths to exist and became the fifth most popular religion in the world by the 21st century. 

Mercantilism

In the 17th century, Europeans generally measured the wealth of a country in how much gold and silver it had accumulated. For this reason, countries set policies designed to sell as many goods as they could to other countries in order to maximize the amount of gold and silver coming into the country and to buy as few as possible from other countries—to minimize the flow of precious metals out of the country. This economic system or theory was known as

Trading Post Empire

To ensure control of trade, the Portuguese had constructed a series of forts stretching from Hormuz on the Persian Gulf (built in 1507) to Goa in western India (built in 1510) to Malacca on the Malay Peninsula (built in 1511). The aims of the fort construction were to establish a monopoly (complete control over a market) over the spice trade in the area and to license all vessels trading between Malacca and Hormuz. The forts gave Portugal this type of empire, one based on small outposts, rather than control of large territories.

Galleons

1.  These were heavily armed Spanish ships. They would carry silver from the Americas to trade with in East Asia and carry back luxury goods.

Bartholomew Diaz

1. First that sailed around the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, in 1488, into waters his crew did not know. He feared a mutiny if he continued pushing eastward, so he returned home.

Vasco Da Gama

1.  sailed farther east than Bartholomew Diaz, landing in India in 1498. There he claimed territory as part of Portugal's empire. The Portuguese ports in India were a key step in expanding Portugal's trade in the Indian Ocean and with points farther east.

Jamestown

1.  At about the same time the French were founding Quebec, the English were establishing a colony in a land called Virginia. In 1607, about one hundred English colonists traveled approximately 60 miles inland from the coast, where they built this settlement. It was England's first successful colony in the Americas, and one of the earliest colonies in what would become the United States. 

Smallpox

1.  This disease’s pathogens are spread through the respiratory system. When Europeans, who were largely immune after millennia of exposure in Afro-Eurasia, had face-to-face contact with indigenous populations, they infected these populations with this deadly disease. As colonists began to settle in the Americas, so did insects, rats, and other disease-carrying animals. The indigenous population of the Americas fell by more than 50 percent through disease alone in less than a century. Some American lands lost up to 90 percent of their original populations. It was one of the greatest population disasters in human history.

Engenhos

1. These sugar plantations got this name because they processed so much sugar in Brazil. They included horrible working conditions which resulted in 5 to 10% of labor force dying per year. They also increased the demand for slave laboe from Africa.

Conquistadores

1. Spanish soldiers that conquered indigenous Americans and introduced diseases, livestock, and new agricultural to the continent.

Columbian Exchange

1. This historical development had far-reaching effects beyond dramatic changes in population and biodiversity. It also contributed to a changing global economy, sometimes with unintended consequences. For example, Spain successfully mined silver in the Americas. However, this silver sparked inflation in Spain, which contributed to the downfall of the Spanish Empire.

African Diaspora

1. Term used to refer to the dispersion of Africans out of Africa. 

Mita System

1.  Incan system of labor obligation, in which young men were required to devote a certain amount of labor to public works projects, into a coerced labor system. During Spanish colonial rule, the system was used primarily for mining silver.