Tools of Exploration
This general term describes the new ships, maps, and instruments that made long ocean voyages possible for Europeans in the 1400s and 1500s.
What is technology?
In 1492, this Italian sailor crossed the Atlantic for Spain, hoping to reach Asia but landing in the Americas instead.
Who is Christopher Columbus?
These American colonies were controlled by Spain and focused on mining silver and gold, using forced Indigenous labor and enslaved Africans.
What are the Spanish colonies in the Americas?
One major motive for exploration was to find direct sea routes to this region so Europeans could trade for spices and luxury goods.
What is trade with Asia (finding a sea route to Asia)?
This term describes the transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Old World and New World after 1492.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
Sailors used this type of tool—including the compass and astrolabe—to figure out where they were on the open sea.
What are navigation tools
Sailing for Portugal, Vasco da this explorer reached India by going around Africa, opening a direct sea route to Asian trade.
Who is Vasco da Gama?
These colonies in parts of Canada and along the Mississippi River focused heavily on the fur trade and alliances with Native peoples.
What are the French colonies (in Canada and along the Mississippi River)?
Many European rulers and missionaries wanted to spread this religion to Indigenous peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
What is the spread of Christianity?
Diseases like smallpox brought by Europeans caused this dramatic trend in Indigenous populations across the Americas.
What is population decline among Indigenous peoples?
Improvements in these instruments helped sailors measure latitude by using the stars, making ocean navigation more accurate.
What is the astrolabe
This Spanish conquistador conquered the Aztec Empire in present-day Mexico using a small army, guns, horses, and local allies.
Who is Hernán Cortés?
These colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America grew cash crops like tobacco and relied on enslaved African labor.
What are the British colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America?
European powers hoped to gain this, another word for wealth, by controlling trade routes and colonial resources.
What is profit or gaining wealth?
This deadly disease from the Old World spread quickly in the New World and killed millions of Native people who lacked immunity.
What is smallpox?
Better maps, or this word that starts with “c,” helped explorers plan routes to Asia and the Americas.
What are improved charts or cartography?
Sailing for France, this explorer traveled along the St. Lawrence River and helped France claim parts of Canada.
Who is Jacques Cartier?
These colonies, including New Netherland, focused on trade and set up profitable port cities instead of large farming settlements.
What are the Dutch colonies, such as New Netherland?
This term describes taking control of territory by force, as the Spanish did when they defeated the Aztec and Inca Empires.
What is military conquest?
Europeans often forced Indigenous people and enslaved Africans to work on these large farms that grew crops like sugar and tobacco.
What are plantations that used forced labor and enslaved workers?
This European “Age” was made possible by advances in navigation and shipbuilding that let explorers cross entire oceans.
What is the Age of Exploration?
This English explorer sailed for both England and the Dutch, exploring waterways in what is now New York and giving his name to a famous river.
Who is Henry Hudson?
Europeans often used this phrase for communities they founded in the Americas, which could be farming towns, missions, or trading posts.
What are settlements or colonies?
Besides glory and God, this “G” word explains why many explorers and investors hoped voyages would make them rich.
What is gold (or the desire for riches, “gold” as in “God, gold, and glory”)?
In the Columbian Exchange, people, ideas, and goods moved back and forth between these two “worlds” that had once been separated.
What are the Old World and New World exchanging goods, people, and ideas?