Part IV Terms Flashcards
world economy
Established by the Europeans by the 16th century; based on the control of the seas, including the Atlantic and Pacific; created an international exchange of foods, diseases, and manufactured products.
Cape of Good Hope
The southern tip of Africa; first circumnavigated in 1488 AD by the Portuguese in search of a direct route to India.
Christopher Columbus
Genoese captain in service of the king and queen of Castile and Aragon; successfully sailed to the New World and returned in 1492; initiated European discoveries in the Americas.
Ferdinand Magellan
(1480-1521) A Spanish captain who in 1519 initiated the first circumnavigation of the globe; died during voyage; allowed Spain to claim the Philippines.
Dutch East India Company
A joint stock company that obtained a government monopoly over trade in Asia, acting as a virtually independent government in regions it claimed.
British East India Company
A joint stock company that obtained a government monopoly over trade in India, acting as a virtually independent government in regions it claimed.
Lepanto
A naval battle between the Spanish and the Ottoman Empire resulting in a Spanish victory in 1571 AD.
core nations
Usually European nations that enjoyed profit from the world economy; controlled international banking and commercial services such as shipping; exported manufactured goods for raw materials.
mercantilism
An economic theory that stressed governments’ promotion of the limitation of imports from other nations and internal economies in order to improve tax revenues; popular during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe.
Vasco de Balboa
(c. 1475-1519) The first Spanish captain to begin a settlement on the mainland of Mesoamerica in 1509 AD. The intial settlement eventually led to the conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires by other captains.
Francisco Pizarro
Led the conquest of the Inca Empire of Peru beginning in 1535; by 1540, most of the Inca’s possessions fell to the Spanish.
New France
French colonies in North America; extended from St. Lawrence River along the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River valley system.
Seven Years War
Fought both in continental Europe and also in overseas colonies between 1756 and 1763 AD; resulted in Prussian seizures of land from Austria, and English seizures of colonies in India and North America.
Treaty of Paris
Arranged in 1763 following the Seven Year’s War; granted New France to England in exchange for the return of the French sugar islands in the Caribbean.
Cape Colony
A Dutch colony established at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, initially to provide a coastal station for the Dutch seaborne empire; by 1770, settlements had expanded sufficiently to come into conflict with Bantus.
Boers
Dutch settlers in Cape Colony in southern Africa.
Calcutta
Headquarters of the British East India Company in Bengal in the Indian subcontinent; located on the Ganges; captured in 1756 during the early part of the Seven Years War; later became an administrative center for all of Bengal.
Niccolo Machiavelli
(1469-1527 AD) Author of “The Prince” (16th century); emphasized realistic discussions of how to seize and maintain power; one of the most influential authors of the Italian Renaissance.
humanism
The focus on humankind as the center of intellectual and artistic endeavor; a method of study that stressed the superiority of classical forms over medieval styles, in particular the study of ancient languages.
Northern Renaissance
The cultural and intellectual movement of northern Europe; began later than the Italian Renaissance (c. 1450); centered in France, the Low Countries, England, and Germany; featured greater emphasis on religion than the Italian Renaissance.
Francis I
The king of France in the 16th century; regarded as a Renaissance monarch; patron of the arts; imposed new controls on the Catholic church; ally of the Ottoman sultan against the Holy Roman Emperor.
Johannes Gutenburg
Introduced movable type to western Europe in the 15th century; credited with the greatly expanded availability of printed books and pamphlets.
European-style family
Originating in the 15th century among the peasants and artisans of western Europe, it featured late marriage ages, emphasis on the nuclear family, and a large minority who never wed.
Martin Luther
(1483-1546 AD) A German monk who initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517 by nailing 95 theses to the door of the Schlosskirche (a Wittenberg church); emphasized the primacy of faith over the works stressed in the Catholic church; accepted state control of the church.
Protestantism
A general wave of religious dissent against the Catholic church; generally held to have begun with Martin Luther’s attack on Catholic beliefs in 1517; included many varieties of religious belief.
Anglican church
A form of Protestantism set up in England after 1534 by Henry VIII with himself as the head, at least in part to obtain a divorce from his first wife; became increasingly Protestant following Henry’s death.
Jean Calvin
A French Protestant (16th century) who stressed a doctrine of predestination; established the center of his group at the Swiss canton of Geneva; encouraged ideas of wider access to government and wider public education; Calvinism spread from Switzerland to northern Europe and North America.
Catholic Reformation
A restatement of the traditional Catholic beliefs in response to the Protestant Reformation (16th century); established councils that revived Catholic doctrine and refuted Protestant beliefs.
Jesuits
A new religious order founded during the Catholic Reformation; active in politics, education, and missionary work; sponsored missions to South America, North America, and Asia.
Edict of Nantes
A grant of tolerance to Protestants in France in 1598; granted only after a lengthly civil war between Catholic and Protestant factions.
Thirty Years War
A war within the Holy Roman Empire between German Protestants and their allies (Sweden, Denmark, France) and the emperor and his ally, Spain; ended in 1648 after great destruction with the Treaty of Westphalia.
Treaty of Westphalia
Ended the Thirty Years War in 1648; granted the right to individual rulers within the Holy Roman Empire to choose their own religion-either Protestant or Catholic.
English Civil War
A conflict from 1640 to 1660 AD; featured religious disputes mixed with constitutional issues concerning the powers of the monarchy; ended with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 AD following the execution of the previous king.
proletariat
A class of working people without access to producing property; typically manufacturing workers, paid laborers in the agricultural economy, or the urban poor; in Europe, the product of economic changes of the 16th and 17th centuries.
witchcraft persecution
Reflecting the resentment against the poor and the uncertainty about religious truth, it resulted in the death of over 100,000 Europeans between 1590 and 1650; particularly common in Protestant areas.
Scientific Revolution
Culminated in the 17th century; a period of empirical advances associated with the development of wider theoretical generalizations; resulted in a change in the traditional beliefs of the Middle Ages.
Nicolaus Copernicus
A Polish monk and astronomer (16th century); disproved the Hellenistic belief that the earth was at the center of the universe.
Johannes Kepler
(1571-1630 AD) An astronomer and mathematican who was a prominent figure in the Scientific Revolution.
Galileo Galilei
Published Copernicus’ findings (17th century); added his own discoveries concerning the laws of gravity and planetary motion; condemned by the Catholic church for his work.
William Harvey
An English physician (17th century) who demonstrated the circular movement of blood in animals and the function of the heart as a pump.
Francis Bacon
(1561-1626 AD) An English philosopher, statesman, author, and scientist; an influential member of the Scientific Revolution; best known for his work on the scientific method.
René Descartes
Established the importance of skeptical review of all received wisdom (17th century); argued that human reason could then develop laws that would explain the fundamental workings of nature.
Issac Newton
(1643-1727 AD) An English scientist and the author of Principia; drew together astronomical and physical observations and wider theories into a neat framework of natural laws; established the principles of motion; defined the forces of gravity.
Deism
The concept of God current in the Scientific Revolution; role of divinity was the set the natural laws in motion, but not to regulate them once the process had begun.
John Locke
(1632-1704 AD) An English philosopher who argued that people could learn everything through senses and reason and that the power of the government came from the people, not the divine right of kings; offered the possibility of revolution to overthrow tyrants.
absolute monarchy
The concept of government that developed during the rise of nation-states in western Europe during the 17th century; featured monarchs that passed laws without parliaments, appointed professionalized armies and bureaucracies, established state churches, imposed state economic policies.
Louis XIV
(1638-1715 AD) A French monarch of the late 17th century who personified absolute monarchy.
Glorious Revolution
The English overthrow of James II in 1688; resulted in the affirmation of parliament as having basic sovereignty over the king.
parliamentary monarchy
Originated in England and Holland (17th century), with monarchs partially checked by significant legislative powers in parliaments.
Frederick the Great
A Prussian king of the 18th century; attempted to introduce Enlightenment reforms into Germany; built on military and bureaucratic foundations of his predecessors; introduced freedom of religion; increased state control of the economy.
Enlightenment
An intellectual movement centered in France during the 18th century; featured scientific advance, application of scientific methods to study human society; belief that rational laws could describe human behavior.
Adam Smith
Established liberal economics (Wealth of Nations, 1776); argued that the government should avoid the regulation of the economy in favor of the operation of market forces.
Denis Diderot
(1713-1784 AD) A French Enlightenment figure best known for his work on the first encyclopedia.
Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797 AD) An Enlightenment feminist thinker in England; argued that new political rights should extend to women.
mass consumerism
The spread of deep interest in acquiring material goods and services below elite levels, along with a growing economic capacity to afford some of these goods. While hints of mass consumerism can be found in several premodern societies, it developed most clearly beginning in western Europe from the 18th century onward.
proto-globalization
A term sometimes used to describe the increase of global contacts from the 16th century onward, particularly in trade, while also distinguishing the patterns from the more intense exchanges characteristic of outright globalization.
Ferdinand of Aragon
(r. 1479-1516 CE) Monarch of largest Christian kingdom in Iberia; marriage to Isabella of Castile created a united Spain; responsible for the reconquest of Granada and the initiation of exploration of the New World.
Isabella of Castile
(1451-1504 CE) Monarch of the largest Christian kingdom in Iberia; marriage to Ferdinand created a united Spain; responsible for the reconquest of Granada and the initiation of exploration of the New World.
Carribean
The first area of Spanish exploration and settlement that served as an experimental region for the nature of Spanish colonial experience; where encomienda system of colonial management was initiated.
Hispaniola
The first island in the Carribean settled by the Spaniards; settlement founded by Columbus on his second voyage to the New World; Spanish base of operations for further discoveries.
encomienda
A grant of Indian laborers made to Spanish conquerors and settlers in Mesoamerica and South America; basis for earliest forms of coerced labor in Spanish colonies.
encomendero
The holder of a grant of Indians who were required to pay tribute or provide labor and the person responsible for their integration into the church.
Bartolomé de Las Casas
(1484-1566 CE) A Dominican friar who supported the peaceful conversion of the Native American populations of Spanish colonies, opposing forced labor and advocating for Indian rights.
Hernán Cortés
Led expedition of 600 men to the coast of Mexico in 1519 CE; conquistador responsible for the defeat of the Aztec Empire; captured Tenochitlan.
Moctezuma II
(1480-1520 CE) The last independent Aztec emperor; killed during Cortés’ conquest of Tenochitlan.
Mexico City
Capital of New Spain, built on the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochitlan.
New Spain
A Spanish colonial administrative unit including Central America, Mexico, and the southeast and southwest of the present-day United States.
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado
(c. 1510-1554 CE) Leader of the Spanish expedition into the northern frontier region of New Spain; entered what is now the United States in search of mythical cities of gold.
Pedro de Valdivia
A Spanish conquistador; conquered Araucanian Indians of Chile and established the city of Santiago in 1541 CE.
mita
Labor extracted for lands assigned to the state and the religion; all communities were expected to contribute; an essential aspect of Inca imperial control.
Potosí
A mine located in upper Peru (modern Bolivia) that was the largest of the New World silver mines, porducing 80% of all Peruvian silver.
Huancavelica
Location of the greatest deposit of mercury in South America; aided in American silver production; linked with Potosí.
haciendas
Rural estates in Spanish colonies in the New World; produced agricultural products for consumers in America; basis of wealth and power for the local aristocracy.
consulado
The merchant guild of Seville; enjoyed virtual monopoly rights over goods shipped to America and handled much of the silver received in return.
