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Ch. 16
Term | Definition |
---|---|
caravel | a sailing vessel that uses square and triangular sails to help it sail against the wind. |
Henry the Navigator | Prince of Portugal and patron of exploration; he made no voyages himself but spent his life directing voyages of discovery along the African coast. |
Vasco da Gama | Portuguese navigator; in 1497-99, he became the first European to sail around Africa and reach India by sea. |
Christopher Columbus | Italian explorer, sailing for Spain, who reached the Americas in 1492 while searching for a western sea route from Europe to Asia. |
Ferdinand Magellan | Portuguese navigator; his ships were the first to circumnavigate the globe, though he died on the journey. |
circumnavigate | to proceed completely around |
Sir Francis Drake | English admiral; he rounded the tip of South America and explored the west coast. He ended up heading west to return to England, thus becoming the second man to circumnavigate the globe. |
Henry Hudson | English navigator; he sailed for the Dutch East India company and discovered the Hudson River in present-day New York. |
encomienda | Spanish colonial system in which a colonist was given a certain amount of land and a number of Native Americans to work the land in exchange for teaching the Native Americans Christianity. |
Hernan Cortes | Spanish conquistador; from 1519 to 1521, he defeated the Aztec Empire, conquering Mexico for Spain. |
conquistador | a Spanish soldier and explorer who led military expeditions in the Americas and captured land for Spain. |
Moctezuma II | Aztec ruler from 1502 to 1520; he was the emperor of the Aztecs when Cortes and his army conquered the empire. He was taken prisoner and killed during battle with the Spanish army. |
Francisco Pizarro | Spanish conquistador, conqueror of Peru; founder of Lima, Peru. From 1530 to 1533, he conquered the Inca Empire. |
Atahualpa | Last Inca king; he was taken prisoner by Pizarro and his army after refusing to accept Christianity and surrender his empire to Spanish conquistadors. |
viceroys | officials who ruled Spain's American empire. |
Bartolome de Las Casas | Spanish missionary and historian; he sought to protect Native Americans from Spanish mistreatment by replacing them as laborers with imported African slaves. |
Treaty of Tordesillas | the agreement between Spain and Portugal that created an imaginary north-south line dividing their territory in the Americas. |
Columbian Exchange | the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Americas and Europe, Asia, and Africa beginning with the voyages of Columbus |
mecantilism | an economic system used from about the 1500s to 1700s that held that a nation's power was directly related to its wealth. |
balance of trade | the difference in value between what a nation imports and exports over a period of time. |
subsidies | grants of money |
capitalism | economic system in which most businesses are privately owned. |
joint-stock companies | businesses formed by groups of people who jointly make an investment and share in the profits and losses. |
plantations | large farms that usually specialized in the growing of one type of crop for a profit. |
triangular trade | trading network lasting from the 1600s to the 1800s that carried goods and enslaved people between Europe, the Americas, and Africa. |
Middle Passage | the name for voyages that brought enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and the West Indies. |
Olaudah Equiano | African American abolitionist; he wrote on the need for a pure and simple Christian life. |
African Diaspora | the dispersal of people of African descent throughout the Americas and Western Europe due to the slave trade. |