Exploration flashcards

Aztec

A powerful civilization who built a vast empire from their capital, Tenochtitlan, known for advanced agriculture an and advanced military. They were conquered and collapsed by the Spanish led by Cortés.

Commercial Revolution

A period of major European economic expansion. Increased trade routes, rise of mercantilism (a way of running an economy where a country tries to get rich and powerful by selling more to other countries than it buys from them) and birth of capitalism (an economic system where private individuals/businesses own and control resources).

Atlantic slave trade 

A massive, forced migration (16th to 19th centuries) involving the abduction and force transport of many Africans from Africa to Americas.

Conquistador

A conqueror, especially one of the Spanish conquerors in the 16th century.

Silk Road

A vast network of ancient trade routes connecting the East with the West, exchanging good like silk, cultures, and ideas.

Triangle Trade

A trade of three areas (Europe, Africa, and the Americans)

Encomienda System

Spanish colonial arrangement in Americas where crown granted conquistadors the right to demand labor from Indigenous people

Circumnavigate

Sail or travel all the way around the world

Ottoman Empire 

A vast, long-ing Islamic empire that emerged from a small Turkish principality. Control vast territories across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Christopher Columbus

A navigator who explored the Americas under the flag of Spain. He conducted many voyages across Atlantic Ocean.

Northwest Passage

A sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Columbian Exchange 

A massive transfer of plants and animals, diseases, technology, ideas, and people between Old World (Europe) and New World (Americas).

Joint Stock Company

Business where stocks can be bought and owned by shareholders.

Middle Passage 

A brutal, forced journey of enslaved Africans from West Africa across Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

Bartolome de las Casas

Publicized accounts of Indigenous exploitation and slave like conditions in the Americas.

New Laws of the West Indies

Laws issued by Spanish kings to reform how Indigenous people were treated in Spanish’s American colonies.

Peninsulares

People born in Spain who lived in Spanish colonies in Americas.

Creoles

People of full Spanish descent born in Spanish colonies in Americas.

Mulattoes

People of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and African ancestry in Spanish colonies in Americas.

Mestizos

People of full mixed Europeans and Indigenous American ancestry in Spanish colonies in Americas.

Francisco Pizarro 

A Spanish conquistador, best know for his expeditions that led to the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.

Hernan Cortez

A Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire.

Songhai Empire

A vast West African Empire centered around the Niger River.

Smallpox

A contagious disease, with fevers and pustules usually leaving permanent scars.

Inca Empire

A powerful South American civilization that built a vast empire in the Andes Mountains from the 14002 to the mid-1500s.

Racism

The discrimination of an individual.

Prince Henry the Navigator

Was a 15th-century Portuguese prince who sponsored key exploration along Africa’s west coast and the Atlantic islands.

Ferdinand Magellan

Was a Portuguese explorer born around 1480 who led the first expedition to circumnavigate the world.

Ferdinand and Isabella

Were the Catholic Monarchs whose marriage united Spain.

Vasco da Gama

Was a Portuguese explorer born around 1460, who led the first successful sea voyage from Europe to India by rounding Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.