Sail Away: Ocean Exploration
This Portuguese explorer established a sea route from Europe to India by sailing around Africa.
Vasco da Gama
This European country established a trading-post empire in the Indian Ocean after Vasco da Gama's voyages.
Portugal
This name describes the transfer of plants, animals, diseases, and peoples between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres after 1492.
Columbian Exchange
This Spanish conquistador led the conquest of the Aztec Empire.
Hernán Cortés
This term describes the forced ocean voyage of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
Middle Passage
This navigational instrument helped sailors determine their latitude using the sun and stars.
Astrolabe
This valuable American mineral became central to global trade, particularly commerce between Spanish America and Asia.
Silver
This disease introduced from Afro-Eurasia devastated Indigenous populations in the Americas.
Smallpox
This Spanish conquistador conquered the Inca Empire in the 1530s.
Francisco Pizarro
This cash crop drove demand for enslaved labor on plantations in Portuguese Brazil and the Caribbean.
Sugar
This Portuguese-sponsored explorer's expedition became the first to circumnavigate the globe, although he died before its completion.
Ferdinand Magellan
These companies allowed investors to share the financial risks and profits of overseas trade.
Joint-stock companies
Name two American crops that spread to Afro-Eurasia and contributed to changes in agriculture and diets.
Maize, potatoes, or cassava
This colonial labor system gave Spanish settlers the right to demand labor from Indigenous peoples.
Encomienda system
This term describes the dispersal of African peoples and their descendants across the Atlantic world.
African diaspora
These two major motivations encouraged European rulers to finance overseas exploration.
Access to Asian luxury goods and the expansion of political or religious influence
This economic system encouraged countries to accumulate wealth by exporting more than they imported.
Mercantilism
These animals introduced by Europeans transformed transportation and hunting for some Indigenous American societies.
Horses
Identify two factors beyond superior weaponry that contributed to Spanish success against the Aztec and Inca empires.
Alliances with Indigenous groups opposed to imperial rule and the spread of epidemic diseases that weakened Indigenous populations.
This West African empire, centered at Gao, collapsed after an invasion by a Moroccan army equipped with firearms in 1591.
Songhay Empire
Explain why European states increasingly sought direct maritime routes to Asia rather than relying on established overland networks.
To bypass intermediaries, reduce trading costs, and gain greater control over the profitable spice and luxury-goods trade.
Explain how joint-stock companies contributed to European commercial expansion in Asia.
They pooled investors' capital, spread financial risk, and financed overseas trading posts and commercial operations, expanding European participation in Asian markets.
Explain one demographic consequence of the Columbian Exchange in the Americas and one in Afro-Eurasia.
American Indigenous populations declined dramatically from introduced diseases, while American food crops supported population growth in parts of Afro-Eurasia.
COHEN FOR BROKE! (Daily Double) This Indigenous woman served as an interpreter and diplomatic intermediary during Cortés's conquest of Mexico.
Doña Marina (Malintzin)
Explain one economic effect and one social effect of the Atlantic slave trade on African societies.
Economically: some African states and merchants gained wealth from slave trading
Socially: slave raids, warfare, and forced migration destabilized communities and separated families.