Quiz on 11/7 Flashcards
Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that conquered the Aztec Empire in modern Mexico
Hernán Cortés
Term used to describe the devastating demographic impact of European-borne epidemic diseases on the Americas; in many cases, up to 90 percent of the pre-Columbian population died.
Great Dying
A period of unusually cool temperatures from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, most prominently in the Northern Hemisphere.
Little Ice Age
The near-record cold winters experienced in much of China, Europe, and North America in the mid-seventeenth century, sparked by the Little Ice Age; extreme weather conditions led to famines, uprisings, and wars.
General Crisis
The enormous network of transatlantic communication, migration, trade, and the transfer of diseases, plants, and animals that began in the period of European exploration and colonization of the Americas
Colombian Exchange
The economic theory that governments served their countries’ economic interests best by encouraging exports and accumulating bullion (precious metals such as silver and gold); helped fuel European colonialism.
Mercantilism
A term used to describe the multiracial population of Spanish colonial societies in the Americas. Recently, the word has been criticized for being associated with colonialism and racial stratification.
Mestizo
A derogatory term commonly used to describe people of mixed African and European origin.
Mulattoes
Imperial territories in which Europeans settled permanently in substantial numbers. Examples include British North America, Portuguese Brazil, Spanish Mexico and Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, and South Africa.
Settler Colonies
A Christian state centered on Moscow that emerged from centuries of Mongol rule in 1480; by 1800, it had expanded into northern Asia and westward into the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
Russian Empire
Tribute that Russian rulers demanded from the Indigenous peoples of Siberia, most often in the form of furs.
Yasak
Chinese dynasty (1368–1644) that succeeded the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols; noted for its return to traditional Chinese ways and restoration of the land after the destructiveness of the Mongols
Ming Dynasty
The growth of Qing dynasty China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into a Central Asian empire that added a small but important minority of non-Chinese people to the empire’s population and essentially created the borders of contemporary China
Qing Expansion
Major Islamic state centered on Anatolia that came to include the Balkans, parts of the Middle East, and much of North Africa; lasted in one form or another from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century.
Ottoman Empire
A term that means “collection or gathering”; it refers to the Ottoman Empire’s practice of removing young boys from their Christian subjects and training them for service in the civil administration or in the elite Janissary infantry corps.
Devshirme
What historical developments enabled Europeans to carve out huge empires an ocean away from their homelands?
-closer to the Americas than potential competitors.
-motivated to gain access to the world of Eurasian commerce.
- Seafaring technology
- Germs and Diseases
What large-scale transformations did European empires generate in the Americas, in Europe, and globally?
*collapse of Native American societies.
* exchanges of plants and animals
* The need for plantation workers sugar and cotton trade
* Columbian exchange
How did the Columbian exchange transform societies in the Americas?
-mixing of ethnic groups
- New animals transformed societies by bringing greater mobility, sources of food, and agricultural practices.
- Diseases caused numbers to decrease
How did sugar transform Brazil and the Caribbean?
- led to technological developments to make production more efficient.
-led to the introduction of African slaves into the Americas
How did the plantation societies of Brazil and the Caribbean differ from those of the southern colonies in British North America?
-North America, there was less racial mixing and less willingness to recognize the offspring
What distinguished the British settler colonies of North America from their Spanish or Portuguese counterparts in Latin America?
- British colonies developed greater mass literacy and traditions of local self-government
- British colonies were almost pure settler colonies
What motivated Russian expansion?
-the problem of security
Compare the processes by which the Russians and Western Europeans built their empires.
They were similar in terms of conquest, settlement, exploitation, religious conversion, and feelings of superiority; they absorbed adjacent territories
What were the distinctive features of Chinese empire building in the early modern era?
-constantly dealt with security issues
-defensive military measures (e.g., the Great Wall)
A. Identify ONE way in which the European empires were different from the empires of Asia during the period 1450–1750.
- the empires of Europe were far from their imperial heartlands.
- depended on maritime technologies more than opponets
B. Explain ONE motive for European empire building in the period 1450–1750.
- Europeans’ marginal position and access to trade made exploration and acquisition of new territory more pressing than for Asian states, thus there was a strong economic motive.
