Empires
This empire connected Europe and Asia through trade routes like the Silk Roads
What is the Mongol Empire?
This triangular sail revolutionized maritime navigation by allowing ships to sail effectively against the wind
What are lateen sails?
This disease killed millions in Europe during the 1300s
What is the Black Death/Bubonic Plague?
This famous trade route connected China to the Mediterranean
What is the Silk Road?
This war was fought between the North and South regions of the United States
What is the Civil War?
This Mongol ruler was so prolific that about 1 in 200 people worldwide are believed to be his direct descendants, totaling around 16 million men today
Who is Genghis Khan?
This invention by Gutenberg helped spread ideas quickly in Europe
What is the printing press?
Carried across the Atlantic by European explorers, this highly contagious viral disease decimated up to 90% of the Native American population, facilitating the rapid collapse of the Aztec and Inca Empires
What is smallpox?
This highly profitable luxury textile became the primary export of imperial China, so closely guarded that revealing the secret of how the cocoons were harvested was punishable by death
What is silk?
This term refers to the German "surprise attack" strategy that relied on speed and surprise
What is Blitzkrieg?
Under what leader did Russia abolish serfdom?
What is Tsar Alexander II/Alexander the Liberator?
This adapted piece of technology, originating in Arabia, greatly increased the load-bearing capacity of animals, boosting trade along the Trans-Saharan routes
What is the camel saddle?
This global pandemic broke out in 1918 at the end of World War I, ultimately killing more people than the war itself
What is the Spanish Flu?
Championed by European empires from the 16th to 18th centuries, this economic system dictated that a nation's wealth depended on maximizing exports and accumulating gold and silver, heavily relying on colonies for raw materials
What is mercantilism?
This powerful empire used a brand new weapon to blast through the walls of Constantinople and conquer the city in 1453. What was the weapon and the empire?
What is the Ottoman Empire and Gunpowder Canon?
This system allowed local officials and private collectors in the Mughal Empire to act as tax farmers. They collected heavy agricultural taxes and often grew corrupt
What is the Zamindar system?
This ancient and post-classical Mesoamerican agricultural technique used raised, fertile marshland beds (sometimes called "floating gardens") to intensively grow crops
What are chinampas?
Emerging globally in the early 1980s, this viral pandemic predominantly attacks the human immune system. Its rapid spread highlighted deep global inequalities in healthcare access, particularly regarding the availability of life-saving antiretroviral treatments in Sub-Saharan Africa
What is HIV/AIDS?
To monopolize the immensely profitable spice trade, this powerful joint-stock company used private corporate armies to violently seize the Banda Islands, forcing the local population into slave labor to harvest nutmeg
What is the Dutch East India Company? (Accept: VOC)
To build their massive empire through military conquest, this Mesoamerican civilization formed a Triple Alliance and forced defeated kingdoms to pay them regular taxes in the form of jade, bird feathers, and sacrificial captives
What is the Aztecs?
This Mughal Emperor, known for his religious tolerance, removed the jizya tax, married Hindu Rajput princesses, and even created a syncretic faith called Din-i Ilahi.
Who is Akbar the Great?
Essential for the British textile industry, this 1760s invention allowed a single worker to spin multiple spools of thread simultaneously, dramatically accelerating yarn production before the steam engine was even widely adopted
What is the spinning jenny?
This water-borne bacterial infection spread rapidly in crowded 19th-century industrial cities due to contaminated water supplies before the development of modern sanitation
What is cholera?
This late-medieval financial arrangement allowed Italian merchants to invest capital in a sea voyage for a share of the profits, legally shielding the investor from liabilities beyond their initial investment—a vital precursor to the joint-stock company.
What is the commenda system?
Following the defeat of Nationalist forces in 1949, this revolutionary leader officially established the People's Republic of China, dramatically shifting the global balance of Cold War power
Who is Mao Zedong?