Why Empire?
The three G’s that sum up European motives for exploration.
God, Gold, Glory
Invented in China, this device uses a magnetized needle to show direction
The Compass
Sailing for Spain in 1492, this explorer reached the Caribbean while trying to reach Asia.
Christopher Columbus
This Spanish conquistador defeated the Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521.
Hernán Cortés
The transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres after 1492.
Columbian Exchange
This empire captured Constantinople in 1453 and controlled key trade routes between Europe and Asia.
Ottoman Empire
This small, fast Portuguese ship used triangular lateen sails.
The Caravel
This Portuguese explorer opened the first all-sea route from Europe to India in 1498.
Vasco da Gama
The Aztec capital, built on an island in Lake Texcoco, where the Spanish later built Mexico City.
Tenochtitlan
This disease, carried from Europe, killed millions of Native Americans who had no immunity.
Smallpox
Before 1500, this trade network used seasonal monsoon winds to connect East Africa, Arabia, India, and Southeast Asia.
Indian Ocean Trade Network
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
Navigators used this instrument to measure the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon to find their latitude.
The Astrolabe
His expedition, finished by Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1522, was the first to sail around the world.
Ferdinand Magellan
The Inca emperor captured by Francisco Pizarro at Cajamarca in 1532, then executed after paying a huge ransom.
Atahualpa
Name two crops that spread from the Americas to the rest of the world.
Maize (Corn) Potatoes Tomatoes
Cacao Tobacco Peanuts
Cassava Chili Peppers
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
The economic policy in which a nation tries to gain gold and silver by exporting more than it imports and by building colonies.
Mercantilism
These detailed sea charts showed coastlines and harbors, crossed by straight rhumb lines spreading from compass roses.
Portolan Charts
This 1494 agreement divided newly found lands between Spain and Portugal, which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese.
(Hint: Turtles)
Treaty of Tordesillas
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
Under this Spanish system, colonists received the labor of Indigenous people in exchange for promising to protect them and convert them to Christianity.
Encomienda System
Name two animals that Europeans brought to the Americas.
Horses Cattle Pigs
Sheep Goats Chickens
Explain why spices were so expensive in Western Europe in the 1400s.
They passed through many middlemen (Asian, Arab, Ottoman, and Venetian merchants), and each one added a profit or tax.
These triangular sails let ships sail into (against) the wind, so ships could explore and return home.
Lateen Sails
Organizations like the Dutch East India Company, in which many investors shared the risks and profits of voyages.
Joint-Stock Companies
In Spain’s colonial social hierarchy, people born in Spain held the highest positions. What were they called?
Peninsulares
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
This American crop helped cause a population boom in Europe, especially in Ireland.
The Potato
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
This centuries-long Christian campaign to retake the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rulers ended in 1492 and fueled Spanish and Portuguese religious zeal.
The Reconquista
Name two technologies used in European exploration that came from other societies, and where each came from.
Compass & Gunpowder (China)
Astrolabe (Islamic World)
Lateen Sail (Arab & Indian Ocean)
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
This Portuguese system forced Asian merchants to buy a pass or risk having their ships seized in the Indian Ocean.
Cartaz System
Besides guns, steel, horses, and disease, name one factor that helped a few hundred Spaniards defeat the Aztec and Inca empires.
Indigenous allies who opposed Aztec or Inca rule (like the Tlaxcalans), or divisions such as the Inca civil war
Explain how the deaths of Native Americans from disease contributed to the growth of the Atlantic slave trade.
The Native population collapse created a labor shortage on plantations, so colonists enslaved millions of Africans to do the work