Navigation & Exploration
This Chinese invention helped sailors determine direction during ocean voyages.
Magnetic Compass
This Portuguese explorer reached India by sailing around Africa in 1498.
This term describes the exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and people between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
The Columbian Exchange
This European country established fortified trading posts along African coasts and throughout the Indian Ocean.
Portugal
This Spanish colonial labor system granted colonists rights to demand Indigenous tribute or labor.
Encomienda system
This African queen resisted Portuguese expansion in Ndongo and Matamba.
Queen Ana Nzinga
This navigational instrument helped sailors determine their latitude using celestial objects.
Astrolabe
This Portuguese explorer rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
Bartolomeu Dias
Name TWO crops that originated in the Americas and spread to Afro-Eurasia.
Potatoes, maize, tomatoes, cacao, or cassava
This economic system encouraged colonies to provide raw materials and markets for their mother countries.
Mercantilism
This Spanish colonial labor draft adapted an earlier Inca system and was used extensively in silver mining.
Mita system
This Indigenous resistance conflict challenged English colonial expansion in New England during the 1670s.
Metacom's War / King Philip's War
Explain how the lateen sail improved maritime exploration.
It allowed sailors to use winds from different angles, improving maneuverability
These two Spanish monarchs sponsored Columbus's voyage across the Atlantic in 1492.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
This disease devastated Indigenous populations in the Americas following European arrival.
Smallpox
These companies allowed investors to pool money and share financial risks associated with overseas trade.
Joint-stock companies
Increased demand for sugar and other plantation crops contributed to the expansion of this forced migration across the Atlantic.
Transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans
These French uprisings challenged royal authority during the 1600s.
The Fronde
Don't Mix Them Up: What is the difference between a caravel and a fluyt?
A caravel was useful for fast exploration; a fluyt was a Dutch ship designed for efficient cargo transport.
Identify TWO economic motivations for European maritime exploration.
Access to Asian trade, spices, precious metals, profits, or new markets
Cause → Effect: American crops spread to Afro-Eurasia → increased food supply → what demographic change?
Population growth in many regions
Make the Connection: Silver mined in Spanish America → Manila galleons → Chinese markets. What larger development does this illustrate?
The creation of interconnected global trade networks linking the Americas, Asia, and Europe
Don't Mix Them Up: How did the encomienda system and chattel slavery differ?
Encomienda involved colonial claims to Indigenous tribute or labor; chattel slavery treated enslaved people as property, typically with hereditary status
Despite the growth of European maritime empires, what was ONE major economic continuity in Afro-Eurasia?
Established Indian Ocean trading networks and powerful Asian commercial states continued to operate
Make the Connection: Chinese technology + Islamic navigation knowledge + European shipbuilding → what major historical development?
Expansion of European maritime exploration and global trade networks
Explain how competition among European states encouraged maritime exploration.
States financed voyages to gain territory, control trade routes, and acquire resources before rival powers
Explain ONE positive demographic effect and ONE devastating demographic effect of the Columbian Exchange, using specific examples.
American crops supported population growth in Afro-Eurasia; introduced diseases caused catastrophic Indigenous population decline in the Americas
Don't Mix Them Up: Explain ONE difference between Portuguese trading-post empires and Spanish territorial empires in the Americas.
Portugal initially focused on controlling strategic ports and trade routes, while Spain conquered and governed large American territories and extracted resources
Explain the connection: Plantation agriculture → demand for enslaved labor → development of racialized social hierarchies.
Plantation economies relied heavily on enslaved Africans, reinforcing social systems in which ancestry and legal status shaped rights, wealth, and power
Explain how European maritime expansion contributed to resistance movements in TWO different regions
Examples: Indigenous resistance to English settlement in North America; Ana Nzinga's resistance to Portuguese expansion in Central Africa; resistance to forced labor in Spanish America.