Why Explore?
This economic theory encouraged European monarchs to explore because they believed a country’s power came from its wealth in gold and silver.
What is mercantilism?
This term describes the global transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
The name of the Spanish soldiers, such as Hernán Cortés, who were responsible for the fall of the Aztec and Inca Empires.
Who are conquistadors?
This was the name for the brutal sea voyage that brought enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas.
What is the Middle Passage?
This term describes the blending of different religious beliefs into a new system, such as Santeria or Vodou.
What is syncretism?
To reach the Spice Islands, the Portuguese sought a sea route to avoid the high prices of land routes controlled by middlemen in this trade route.
The Silk Road
This "Old World" disease was a primary cause of The Great Dying, which killed millions of Indigenous people in the Americas.
What is smallpox?
While Spain and Portugal focused on the Americas, the VOC was a powerful joint-stock company from this country that dominated the East Indies.
What is the Netherlands (the Dutch)?
The Spanish adapted this existing Incan system of "public service labor" to force Indigenous people to work in silver mines.
What is the Mit'a system?
The Triangular Trade connected these three regions in a network of exchange.
What are Europe, Africa, and the Americas?
European explorers were able to travel further than ever before thanks to new maritime technologies, such as this tool used to determine latitude.
What is the astrolabe (or compass/caravel)?
This specific type of crop, such as sugar or tobacco, was grown on large plantations specifically to be sold for profit rather than for food.
What is a cash crop?
Unlike the Spanish who settled inland to build empires, the Portuguese created this type of "empire" based on controlling coastal ports.
What is a Trading Post Empire?
This was the most important commodity in the first truly global trade network, often flowing from the Americas to China.
What is silver?
This specific syncretic religion developed in the Caribbean, blending West African spiritualism with Roman Catholicism.
What is Santeria (or Vodou)?
One major cause for the "New Monarchs" to fund expeditions was the recovery of the European population following the devastation of this disease.
What is the Bubonic Plague (Black Death)?
The arrival of the horse in the Americas is an example of a change for Indigenous cultures, while the continued cultivation of this crop in Mesoamerica was a continuity.
What is corn (maize)?
This was a major difference between the British East India Company and the Spanish Crown’s exploration; one was a private joint-stock company, while the other was funded by...
What is the government (or the Monarchy)?
This Spanish social hierarchy, or Castas system, ranked people in the colonies based on this specific factor.
What is race (or ancestry/ethnic background)
The introduction of African okra and rice to the Americas is an example of this type of "exchange" that happened alongside the slave trade.
What is cross-cultural exchange?
While Spain focused on finding gold in the Americas, this was the primary economic goal of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean.
What is controlling the spice trade (through the Cartaz system)?
This was the primary reason the plantation economy in the Americas led to the emergence of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
What is the need for a large, cheap labor force (due to the death of Indigenous workers)?
This term describes the 16th-century "tax" or trade license the Portuguese forced all merchants to buy in the Indian Ocean.
What is the Cartaz system?
This labor system, used by the Spanish in the Americas, granted landowners the right to the labor of Indigenous people living on their land.
What is the Encomienda system?
As European state power expanded, many Indigenous and enslaved groups engaged in this, such as the creation of "Maroon" communities or the Pueblo Revolt.
What is resistance?