Exploration and Empires, 1400-1700

Vocabulary flashcards focusing on key explorers, technological advancements, geographic terms, and historical events of European exploration and conquest from 1400 to 1700.

Constantinople

The capital of the Byzantine Empire that fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE after decades of ongoing attacks and was eventually renamed Istanbul in 1930.

Hagia Sophia

The Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople (constructed 532-537) that was converted into a mosque after the city fell to the Ottoman Turks.

Silk Road

A traditional overland trade route between Europe and Asia that was physically blocked and restricted by the Ottoman Empire by the mid-1400s.

East Indies

Region encompassing present-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines in Southeast Asia, which offered a lucrative spice trade that Europeans sought to access.

Cartographer

A mapmaker who drafted more accurate maps with detailed sea charts to aid European long-distance overseas exploration in the mid-to-late 1400s.

Astrolabe

A navigation technology improved in the mid-to-late 1400s that allowed sailors to determine their position at sea.

Caravel

An efficient ship design developed in the 1400s that combined the square sails of European vessels with Arab triangular sails.

Sternpost Rudder

A ship control development that helped vessels turn quicker and easier at sea.

Reconquista

The series of military campaigns from A.D. 1000 to 1492 in which Portuguese and Spanish forces slowly reconquered the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims.

Prince Henry the Navigator

Portuguese prince who financed the first exploration expeditions and made several voyages down the West African coast between 1418 and 1460.

Elmina Castle

A fortification constructed in 1482 along the coast of present-day Ghana to protect Portuguese gold.

Bartolomeu Dias

Portuguese explorer who rounded the southern tip of Africa from 1487 to 1488 in search of a water route to Asia.

Cape of Good Hope

The southern tip of Africa rounded by Bartolomeu Dias, named because it opened a sea route through the Indian Ocean to Asia.

Vasco da Gama

Portuguese explorer who sailed around Africa, established ports on the Indian Ocean, and reached Calicut, India, from 1497 to 1498.

Leif Eriksson

Norse explorer believed to be the first European to set foot in North America around 1000 CE, roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus.

L'Anse aux Meadows

A site in Newfoundland, Canada, containing the only verified Viking settlement on the North American continent.

Christopher Columbus

Italian navigator from Genoa who, financed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 with the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement between Portugal and Spain to divide the New World and designate trading zones to avoid future conflict.

Amerigo Vespucci

Italian sea captain who wrote journals about his voyages to Brazil in the early 1500s, inspiring a German cartographer in 1507 to name the continent "America" in his honor.

Alfonso de Albuquerque

Portuguese admiral who led efforts to build a vast trade empire around the Indian Ocean in the early 1500s, including seizing Malacca in 1511.

Vasco Núñez de Balboa

Spanish explorer who crossed Panama in Central America and reached the Pacific Ocean between 1510 and 1513.

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain who led a 1519 expedition of 5 ships and about 270 men across the Pacific, initiating the first circumnavigation of the globe.

Circumnavigate

To travel completely around the world, first accomplished by 18 surviving members of Magellan's crew aboard the ship Victoria from 1519 to 1522.