Renaissance
This word means "rebirth" and describes the cultural movement that began in Italy.
What is the Renaissance?
This network of trade routes connected China with Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
What is the Silk Road?
This year marks Christopher Columbus's first voyage across the Atlantic.
What is 1492?
These two crops, originally from the Americas, became important foods in Europe and other parts of the world.
What are potatoes and maize (corn)?
As Indigenous populations declined from European diseases, colonizers increasingly turned to the forced transportation of people from this continent to work in the Americas.
What is Africa?
This Italian city is often considered the birthplace of the Renaissance.
What is Florence?
These valuable goods from Asia, including pepper and cinnamon, motivated European merchants to seek new trade routes.
What are spices?
These two Spanish monarchs sponsored Columbus's voyage.
Who were Ferdinand and Isabella?
These animals, introduced to the Americas by Europeans, transformed transportation and warfare for many Indigenous peoples.
What are horses?
This system used enslaved labor to produce crops such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton for export.
What is plantation agriculture?
This intellectual movement emphasized human potential, classical learning, and the study of ancient Greek and Roman texts.
What is Humanism?
This ship design, used by Portuguese and Spanish explorers, was well suited for ocean voyages.
What is the caravel?
Europeans knew this huge body of water lay west of Europe and Africa, but they called it the “Ocean Sea” because they did not yet know its true size.
What is the Atlantic Ocean?
Before the Columbian Exchange, Italians did not use this fruit in their cuisine. Its arrival from the Americas helped transform foods such as pasta sauces and pizza.
What are tomatoes?
This forced Atlantic voyage transported enslaved Africans to the Americas.
What is the Middle Passage?
This invention by Johannes Gutenberg helped spread Renaissance ideas and literature throughout Europe.
What is the printing press?
This Italian explorer traveled to China and described the wealth and sophistication of the Yuan Dynasty, inspiring European interest in Asian trade.
Who is Marco Polo?
Columbus's crew had to eat this nearly rock-hard food for long periods because it could be stored for ocean voyages, although it eventually became infested with insects.
What is hardtack?
This devastating consequence of European contact caused enormous population loss among Indigenous people.
What are diseases?
Enslaved Africans were sometimes thrown overboard during the Atlantic voyage when ship captains believed they were too sick to survive or when supplies became scarce. This practice was sometimes recorded as a loss covered by this type of policy.
What is insurance?
This Italian poet and scholar is often called the "Father of Humanism."
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
Prior to the discovery of the Americas, Italian city-states became wealthy because they were positioned in the middle of this geographic location.
What is the Mediterranean Sea?
This Indigenous city, located in present-day Mexico, was one of the largest urban centers in the world when Columbus arrived in the Americas.
What is Tenochtitlan?
This economic system encouraged European nations to accumulate wealth through controlled trade, colonies, and precious metals.
What is mercantilism?
European merchants did not generally capture every person they enslaved themselves. In many parts of West and West-Central Africa, Africans themselves participated in capturing, purchasing, and transporting enslaved people to European trading posts.
What are middlemen?