Why Europeans Explored
European explorers traveled to new lands for three main reasons, collectively known by this catchy phrase.
What are the 3 G's? (Gold, God, and Glory)
This Italian explorer sailed for Spain and arrived in the Americas in 1492, changing the world forever.
Who was Christopher Columbus?
This vocabulary word means to change something completely.
What is transform or change
This terrible, forced sea journey across the Atlantic Ocean brought enslaved Africans to the Americas.
What is the Middle Passage?
This describes a land that is tightly controlled by a powerful, distant country far away.
What is a colony?
This traveler went to China and wrote a book that made other Europeans eager to see Asia for themselves.
Who was Marco Polo?
This was the specific name of the Indigenous people living in the Caribbean islands when Columbus arrived.
Who were the Taino?
Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, and cocoa were all foods shipped from this location to Europe.
What are the Americas?
This three-step trade route connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
What is the Triangular Trade?
This economic system states that a country becomes wealthy by selling more goods than it buys.
What is mercantilism?
When this major trading city fell to a new empire, land routes became too expensive, forcing Europeans to look for a sea route to Asia.
What is the Fall of Constantinople?
The Spanish conquistadors held a massive advantage over Indigenous populations by bringing these three things, often summarized as "Guns, Steel," and this deadly factor.
What are Germs?
These two large farm animals were brought over from Europe/Africa to the Americas, changing transportation and agriculture.
What are horses and cows?
In the first step of the Triangular Trade, Europeans brought manufactured goods like cloth and these weapons to Africa to buy captured people.
What are guns?
Under mercantilism, colonies were forced to ship cheap items like wood, cotton, and sugar—collectively known as this—back to the mother country.
What are raw materials?
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?
This word describes the basic freedoms and protections that belong to every single person in the world.
What are human rights?
This was the overall movement of plants, animals, people, and diseases back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
Believing that your own culture is superior to anyone else's culture is known by this vocabulary term.
What is ethnocentrism?
This major conflict, also known as the Seven Years War, was fought between Britain and France for control over North American trade routes and land.
What is the French and Indian War?
This vocabulary term refers to choices and politics that are heavily affected by geography and where countries are located on a map.
What is geopolitics?
Because Indigenous populations lacked this biological protection against European germs, millions tragically died.
What is immunity?
These two highly contagious and deadly illnesses were accidentally brought to the Americas by Europeans, devastating the Native population.
What are smallpox and influenza (the flu)?
This vocabulary word means the words and data used to describe a population of people, such as changes in population size.
What is demographic?
This vocabulary word means the result of an action, which is usually a negative or bad result.
What is a consequence?