Medieval Europe
About 90% of medieval Europeans belonged to this social group.
What are peasants?
This military ruler held real power in Japan, while the emperor’s role was only symbolic.
What is a shogun?
In 1492, this explorer sailed west looking for a sea route to Asia but reached the Americas instead.
Who is Christopher Columbus?
I was a peasant girl who led French troops to victory at Orleans. I was burned at the stake in 1431.
Who is Joan of Arc?
Both medieval Europe and shogunate Japan used this system, in which land was exchanged for loyalty and military service.
What is feudalism?
In 1215, the barons forced King John to sign this, which meant the king had to respect the law.
What is the Magna Carta?
The samurai code of behaviour. Its first duty was loyalty to one’s daimyo.
What is bushido?
The Aztec capital, built on islands in Lake Texcoco, with a population of about 250,000.
What is Tenochtitlan?
I was the Aztec emperor who welcomed Cortes into Tenochtitlan in 1519.
Who is Moctezuma II?
These Japanese warriors swore allegiance to their lord, much as European knights served theirs.
What are samurai?
Peasants paid this to the church. It was worth 10% of the crops they grew.
What is a tithe?
This name means “divine wind”. It was given to the typhoon that destroyed the Mongol fleet in 1281.
What is kamikaze?
This European disease struck the Aztecs during the siege of 1521. Indigenous people had no natural immunity to it.
What is smallpox?
I was crowned Emperor in 800 CE and became known as “the father of Europe”.
Who is Charlemagne?
In Japan, this group ranked lowest of the four classes. In late medieval Europe, they became more important than nobles.
Who are merchants?
In this kind of trial, an accused person was tied up and thrown into a river. Sinking meant they were innocent, and floating meant they were guilty.
What is trial by ordeal?
Japan’s original religion, based on worshipping nature spirits called kami.
What is Shinto?
The Aztecs farmed on these artificial islands, made from mud dredged up from the lake.
What are chinampas?
I spoke Nahuatl and Mayan and became Cortes’s interpreter. Some Mexicans still call me a traitor.
Who is La Malinche?
The Portuguese brought this weapon to Japan in 1543. Guns like it also gave the conquistadors an advantage in the Americas.
What is the musket (firearms or guns)?
In the three-field system, villagers left one field like this each year, without a crop so that the soil could recover.
What is fallow?
Under this “alternate residence” system, daimyo had to spend every second year with the shogun in Edo.
What is sankin kotai?
Under this system, Spanish settlers received Indigenous land, labour and tribute in exchange for “protecting” and giving a Catholic education to Indigenous people.
What is the encomienda system?
In 1853, I sailed four US naval ships into Edo Bay and demanded that Japan open its ports.
Who is Commodore Matthew Perry?
The conquistadors set out to spread this religion, but the Tokugawa shoguns banned it in the 1630s.
What is Christianity (Catholicism)?