Strayer, Ways of the World with Sources for the AP® Modern Course, 4E - Chapter 6

Indian Ocean commercial network

The massive, interconnected web of commerce in premodern times between the lands that bordered the Indian Ocean (including East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia); the network was transformed as Europeans entered it in the centuries following 1500.

trading post empire

Form of imperial dominance based on control of trade through military power rather than on control of peoples or territories.

Philippines (Spanish)

An archipelago of Pacific islands colonized by Spain in a relatively bloodless process that extended for the century or so after 1565, a process accompanied by a major effort at evangelization; the Spanish named them the Philippine Islands in honor of King Philip II of Spain.

Manila

The capital of the colonial Philippines, which by 1600 had become a flourishing and culturally diverse city; the site of violent clashes between the Spanish and Chinese.

British East India Company

Private trading company chartered by the English around 1600, mainly focused on India; it was given a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade, including the right to make war and to rule conquered peoples.

Dutch East India Company

Private trading company chartered by the Netherlands around 1600, mainly focused on Indonesia; it was given a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade, including the right to make war and to rule conquered peoples.

"silver drain"

Term often used to describe the siphoning of money from Europe to pay for the luxury products of the East, a process exacerbated by the fact that Europe had few trade goods that were desirable in Eastern markets; eventually, the bulk of the world's silver supply made its way to China.

piece of eight

The standard Spanish silver coin used by merchants in North America, Europe, India, Russia, West Africa, and China.

Potosí

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.

fur trade

A global industry in which French, British, and Dutch traders exported fur from North America to Europe, using Native American labor and with great environmental cost to the Americas. A parallel commerce in furs operated under Russian control in Siberia.

"soft gold"

Nickname used in the early modern period for animal furs, highly valued for their warmth and as symbols of elite status.

transatlantic slave system

Between 1500 and 1866, this trade in human beings took an estimated 12.5 million people from African societies, shipped them across the Atlantic in the Middle Passage, and deposited some 10.7 million of them in the Americas as slaves; approximately 1.8 million died during the transatlantic crossing.

African diaspora

The global spread of African peoples via the slave trade.

maroon societies / Palmares

Free communities of former slaves in remote regions of South America and the Caribbean; the largest such settlement was Palmares in Brazil, which housed 10,000 or more people for most of the seventeenth century.

signares

The small number of African women who were able to exercise power and accumulate wealth through marriage to European traders.

Benin

West African kingdom (in what is now Nigeria) whose strong kings for a time sharply limited engagement with the slave trade.

Dahomey

West African kingdom in which the slave trade became a major state-controlled industry. (pron. deh-HOH-mee)