Renaissance Revival
What intellectual movement emphasized studying Greek and Roman texts and developing human potential?
Humanism
Who developed the movable-metal-type printing system that transformed European book production in the mid-1400s?
Johannes Gutenberg.
Which Spanish monarchs sponsored Columbus’s 1492 voyage?
Ferdinand and Isabella
What three-word phrase summarizes the economic, religious, and political motives for European exploration?
GGG
What term describes the transfer of crops, animals, and diseases between the Americas and the Eastern Hemisphere after 1492?
The Columbian Exchange
Which wealthy Florentine banking family became famous for supporting Renaissance artists and scholars?
The Medici family.
What term describes writing in the everyday language of a population rather than in Latin?
Vernacular
What term describes concentrating political authority in a national government rather than leaving it with local nobles?
Centralization.
Which Portuguese explorer reached India by sailing around Africa in 1498?
Vasco De Gama
What Spanish colonial system granted colonists the right to demand Indigenous labor or tribute in exchange for supposed protection and Christian instruction?
Encomienda
What artistic technique uses converging lines and a vanishing point to create the appearance of depth?
Linear perspective.
What movement combined Renaissance learning with an effort to improve Christian morality and reform religious practices?
Christian humanism.
What 1494 treaty divided Spanish and Portuguese claims to lands outside Europe?
The Treaty of Tordesillas.
What triangular sail helped ships tack against the wind?
The Lanteen Sail
What was the forced Atlantic crossing endured by enslaved Africans called?
The Middle Passage
Why did wealthy Italian cities such as Florence become centers of the Renaissance?
Trade and banking generated wealth that merchants and rulers used to support artists, scholars, and architectural projects.
How did the printing press make it harder for established authorities to control ideas?
Books and pamphlets could reach more people quickly and cheaply, allowing criticism and competing interpretations to circulate widely.
Machiavelli wrote this pivotal historical text arguing that rulers might need these methods to preserve their power and the state, even when those actions violated conventional morality.
The Prince
What could sailors estimate with a mariner’s astrolabe, and why was that useful?
Latitude, using the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon. It helped sailors estimate their north–south position.
Besides weapons, identify two factors that helped Cortés defeat the Aztec Empire.
Alliances and Disease
How could commissioning a painting or building help a Renaissance ruler maintain power?
Patronage displayed wealth, increased prestige, and presented the ruler as a legitimate and accomplished leader.
Identify one similarity and one difference between Italian Renaissance humanism and Northern Renaissance Christian humanism.
Both used classical learning and valued education. Christian humanists placed greater emphasis on applying that learning to Christian morality and religious reform.
Explain two ways the New Monarchs reduced their dependence on powerful nobles.
They collected taxes through royal officials and maintained armies under royal control. Royal courts and appointed administrators also reduced nobles’ local authority.
How did Portugal’s empire in the Indian Ocean differ from Spain’s empire in the Americas?
Portugal primarily controlled trade through coastal posts, forts, and naval power. Spain conquered large territories and governed Indigenous populations to extract labor, agricultural products, and precious metals.
Explain how plantation expansion and Indigenous population decline contributed to the growth of the Atlantic slave trade.
Plantations increased colonists’ demand for coerced labor. Disease, violence, and exploitation devastated Indigenous communities, and European colonists increasingly turned to enslaved Africans to expand plantation production.