4.3 4.4

Smallpox

The overall deadliest known disease in the history of the world. Because the native american indian population had no acquired immunity to this disease. Natural occurrences of this were destroyed worldwide by 1980.

Conquistadores (conquerors)

Spanish 'conqueror' or soldiers in the New World. Hernan Cortes was the most famous. They were searching for the 3-G's: Gold, God, and glory

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages

Transatlantic Slave Trade

The brutal system of trading African Slaves from Africa to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries

Engenhous

Portugese term for sugar mill and the associated facilities

cash crop

a crop produced for its commercial value rather than for use by the grower.

African Diaspora

The worldwide collection of communities descended from native sub-saharan Africas or people from Sub-Saharan Africa, mostly in the Americas. The largest is in Brazil.

Asante Empire

African empire established along the Gold Coast among Akan people. They traded gold, ivory and slaves to European merchants fro gunpowder weapons. They had indoor plumbing and a hieroglyphics writing system. They were eventually taken over by the British.

New Spain

The Spanish colony that became parts of the USA, Mexican and Central America. After the defeat of the Aztecs, it was a Spanish colony. Its capital was MExico City

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.

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. Before 1800 most were Europeans; after 1800 most indentured laborers were Asians.

Chattel Slavery

A type of Slavery where an enslaved person who is owned for ever and whose children and children's children are automatically enslaved. Chattel Slaves are individuals treated as complete property, to be bought and sold.

Encomienda System

A labor system that gave Spanish Settlers the right to tax local Native Americans or to make them work. In exchange, these settlers were supposed to protect the Native American people and convert them to christianity.

Coercive Labor Systems

types of labor arrangements that included slavery, indentured servitude, serfdom, and indentured servitude.

Hacienda system

A Latin American system similar to the feudal system, whereby natives got money and had to buy their products from their owners.

Middle Passage

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

Global Silver Trade

The flow of silver between the Americas and Europe and onward to China from the 16th to 18th centuries. It had a profound effect on the world economy and silver trade could also be considered the beginning of the global economy.

Potosi

City that developed high in the Andes (in present-day Bolivia) at the site of the world's largest silver mine and that became the largest city in the Americas, with a population of some 160,000 in the 1570s.

Francisco Pizarro

Spanish explorer who conquered the Incas in what is now Peru and founded the city of Lima (1475-1541).

Hernan Cortes

Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztecs and conquered Mexico (1485-1547)

Kingdom of Kongo

Kingdom dominating small states along the Congo River that maintained effective, centralized government and a royal currency until the seventeenth century.

portolan maps

Maps with lines radiating from compasses that showed routes to important ports