Empires/Resistance
Queen of Angola (circa 1581-1663) who fought against the slave trade and European influence in the 17th century. Known for being an astute diplomat and visionary military leader, she resisted Portuguese invasion and slave raids for 30 years. A skilled negotiator, she allied herself with the Dutch and
Ana Nzinga
- An economic system based on private ownership and opportunity for profit-making
Capitalism
A term used in colonial Spanish America to describe a person born in the Americas of European parents
Criollos
Western learning embraced by some Japanese in the eighteenth century
Dutch learning
Naval battle fought in 1509 in the Arabian Sea, off the port of Diu, India, between the Portuguese Empire and a joint fleet of Muslim powers. The Portuguese victory allowed for control of the Indian Ocean trade route down the Cape of Good Hope, circumventing the traditional spice route controlled by the Arabs and the Venetians through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
Battle of Diu
West African kingdom (modern day Ghana) that became more powerful as a result of participating in the Atlantic slave trade as well as overland trade with states across the Sahara.
Asante
Cash Crop
A grant of authority over a population of Amerindians in the Spanish colonies. It provided the grant holder with a supply of cheap labor and periodic payments of goods by the Amerindians. It obliged the grant holder to Christianize the Amerindians.
Encomienda
Early Jesuit missionary often called the Apostle to the Indies. He was an associate of St Ignatius of Loyola, with whom he took the vow founding the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). From 1541 he traveled through India, Japan, and the East Indies, making many converts
Francis Xavier
A manufacturing method in which the stages of the manufacturing process are carried out in private homes.
Domestic system
Cossack revolts
Series of military conflicts between the Cossacks and the states claiming dominion over their territories, namely the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russian Empire during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Both states attempted to exert control over the independent-minded Cossacks.
The expansion of trade and commerce in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Commercial Revolution
A large estate with a dwelling-house, originally given by monarchs in Latin America as a reward for services done. Such estates are known as estancias in Argentina and fazendas in Brazil
Hacienda
Jesuits
Members of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic missionary and educational order founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1534.
The fencing of pastureland in England beginning prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Enclosure movement
West African state that became a centralized power in the region of modern-day Angola. The capital, Mbanza and surrounding areas were densely settled which allowed the king to have access to the manpower and supplies necessary to rule. Portuguese exploration in the area led to the conversion of the king and most of the nobles to Christianity.
Kingdom of Kongo
Dutch East India Company
Trading company founded in the Dutch Republic (present-day Netherlands) in 1602 to protect that state’s trade in the Indian Ocean and to assist in the Dutch war of independence from Spain. The company prospered through most of the 17th century as the instrument of the powerful Dutch commercial empire in the East Indies (present-day Indonesia). It was dissolved in 1799.
In the Spanish colonies, persons of mixed European and Indian descent.
Mestizos
Maroon
A group of formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants who gained their freedom by fleeing chattel enslavement and running to the safety and cover of the remote mountains or the dense overgrown tropical terrains near the plantations. Many of the groups are found in the Caribbean and, in general, throughout the Americas
Large heavily armed ship used to carry silver from the New World colonies to Spain; basis for convoy system utilized by Spain for transportation of bullion.
Galleon
Metacom’s War
Joint-stock company
A business, often backed by a government charter, that sold shares to individuals to raise money for its trading enterprises and to spread the risks (and profits) among many investors.
In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, a person of mixed African and European descent.
Mulatto
Queue
Male hairstyle worn by the Manchu people from central Manchuria and later imposed on the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty. The Manchu hairstyle was significant because it became a symbol of Han submission to Qing rule. The hairstyle was compulsory for all males and the penalty for not complying was execution for treason.
Malaria
Mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite. European settlers and their West African slaves transmitted the disease to the Native Americans, and it quickly spread to the Carolinas, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama and Florida and then west to Ohio, Missouri and the Gulf of Mexico.
Pueblo Revolts -
An economic concept that holds that the government should not interfere with or regulate business and industries.
Laissez-faire economics
In the Spanish colonies, those who were born in Europe.
Peninsulares
In the Spanish colonies, a replacement for the encomienda system that limited the number of working hours for laborers and provided for fair wages.
Repartamiento
Highly contagious infectious disease caused by a virus. It killed two-thirds of the natives of Cuba in 1529. Two years later, it was responsible for the deaths of half of the population of Honduras, and then ravaged Mexico, Central America, and the Inca civilization.
Measles
Omani traders
Merchants from the Indonesian island of Java, many of them ethnic Chinese, who interacted with Dutch traders in the 16th and 17th centuries to control the trade of spices such as cloves and nutmeg.
Javanese traders
Viceroyalty
A political unit ruled by a viceroy that was the basis of organization of the Spanish colonies.
Vodun
Traditional Afro-Haitian religion that is syncretic blend of West African religious beliefs and Roman Catholicism by the descendants of the Dahomean, Kongo, Yoruba, and other ethnic groups who had been enslaved and transported to colonial Saint-Domingue (as Haiti was known then) and partly Christianized by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Extremely contagious and deadly virus for which there is no known cure. Among the "new" infectious diseases brought by the Europeans, was one of the most feared because of the high mortality rates in infected Native Americans.
Smallpox