Unit 2 Networks of Exchange (1200-1450) Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, regions, and primary source details from Unit 2 Networks of Exchange.

Silk Road

A land network of trade routes spanning China, Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe used to exchange goods like silk and spices, spread religions, and transmit diseases.

Strait of Malacca

A famous market and maritime trade location in the Indian Ocean world, renowned for its marketplace and spice trade.

Sultanate of Malacca

The Muslim state formed after Arabs conquered the Kingdom of Srivastava in Southeast Asia.

Gujarat

A region in India whose Muslim Indian merchants became extremely wealthy and powerful by trading along the Indian coastline.

Kingdom of Ghana

A traditional North African kingdom located southwest of the Sahara Desert that grew wealthy trading gold and salt with Arab and Indian merchants.

Kingdom of Mali

An Islamic kingdom in North Africa that replaced Ghana and accumulated even greater wealth through the gold and salt trade.

Kingdom of Songhai

A massive empire in North Africa that replaced the Kingdom of Mali.

Timbuktu

The most important trade city in North Africa, featuring universities and libraries with scholars brought from thousands of miles away to teach the children of wealthy merchants.

Dunhuang

A Chinese town that served as a goal and rest stop for monks, where scholars met to share knowledge of the Buddha during the fall of the Song Empire.

Great Fleet

A giant fleet created during the Ming Dynasty carrying thousands of Chinese soldiers that sailed the Indian Ocean to form trade deals and peace treaties with small trade nations like Calicut.

Kilwa

An East African coastal trading city where Arab sailors and Persian merchants arrived in dhows when seasonal winds shifted, exchanging silk and precious objects for stored gold.

Mansa Musa

The King of Mali who made a famous Haj pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325, bringing and giving away so much gold in Cairo that its local value dropped.

Emperor Tiberius

The Roman Emperor who prohibited Romans from wearing silk to prevent the drain of silver and gold coins from the Roman treasury.

Bubonic Plague

Also known as the Black Death (1347-1351), a highly contagious disease originating in Mongolia that spread along Silk Road trade routes, killing as many as 50 million people across Europe and Asia.

Mongols

A nomadic group that unified Asia around 1200, protected Silk Road caravans from bandits, lowered taxes, adopted Song Dynasty paper money, and made trade routes exceptionally safe from 1250 to 1350.

Marco Polo

A famous European traveler from Venice who traveled the Silk Road all the way to Mongol-controlled China under Kublai Khan.

Ottoman Turks

A nation that took over Mongol lands in the 1400s and permanently cut off the Silk Road to Europe while at war with European nations.

Isolationism

A policy adopted by Ming Dynasty emperors who cut off trade with the outside world due to fear of invasion and Confucian beliefs that trade was not respectable compared to farming.

Quintus Peo

A Roman scribe who wrote in 30 AD about the silver shortage caused by silk imports and suggested paying Roman soldiers with blocks of salt.

Anand Rapani

A historian to the Court of Rajputana who documented the 1411 arrival of China's Great Fleet in Calicut, India.

dhows

Traditional ships used by Arab and Persian merchants to sail across the Indian Ocean to East African coastal towns like Kilwa.