Time Period 2 Flashcards
Hernán Cortés
Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that conquered the Aztec Empire in modern Mexico. (p. 207)
Great Dying
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. (p. 210)
Little Ice Age
A period of unusually cool temperatures from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, most prominently in the Northern Hemisphere. (p. 210)
General Crisis
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. (p. 210)
Columbian exchange
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. (p. 212)
mercantilism
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. (p. 213)
mestizo
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. (pron. mehs-TEE-zoh) (p. 215)
mulattoes
A derogatory term commonly used to describe people of mixed African and European origin. (p. 219)
settler colonies
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. (pp. 222, 559)
Russian Empire
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. (p. 223)
yasak
Tribute that Russian rulers demanded from the Indigenous peoples of Siberia, most often in the form of furs. (p. 224)
Ming dynasty
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. (pp. 145, 226)
Qing expansion
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. (p. 228)
Ottoman Empire
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. (pp. 84, 230)
devshirme
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. (pron. devv-shirr-MEH) (p. 233)
Safavid Empire
Major Turkic empire established in Persia in the early sixteenth century and notable for its efforts to convert its people to Shia Islam. (pron. SAH-fah-vid) (p. 235)
Mughal Empire
A successful state founded by Muslim Turkic-speaking peoples who invaded India and provided a rare period of relative political unity (1526–1707); their rule was noted for efforts to create partnerships between Hindus and Muslims. (pron. MOO-guhl) (p. 235)
zamindars
An elite class of the Mughal Empire whose members controlled large tracts of land and collected taxes on behalf of the imperial court. (p. 235)
Akbar
The most famous emperor of India’s Mughal Empire (r. 1556–1605); his policies are noted for their efforts at religious tolerance and inclusion. (p. 236)
Aurangzeb
Mughal emperor (r. 1658–1707) who reversed his predecessors’ policies of religious tolerance and attempted to impose Islamic supremacy. (pron. ow-rang-ZEHB) (p. 237)
Songhay Empire
Major Islamic state of West Africa that formed in the second half of the fifteenth century. (pron. song-GAH-ee) (p. 237)
Pueblo Revolt
A major revolt of Native American peoples against Spanish colonial rule in late-seventeenth-century New Mexico. (p. 239)
Protestant Reformation
Massive schism within Christianity that had its formal beginning in 1517 with the German priest Martin Luther; the movement was radically innovative in its challenge to church authority and its endorsement of salvation by faith alone, and also came to express a variety of political, economic, and social tensions. (p. 262)
Martin Luther
German priest who issued the Ninety-Five Theses and began the Protestant Reformation with his public criticism of the Catholic Church’s theology and practice. (p. 263)
Thirty Years’ War
Catholic-Protestant struggle (1618–1648) that was the culmination of European religious conflict, brought to an end by the Peace of Westphalia and an agreement that each state was sovereign, authorized to control religious affairs within its own territory. (p. 266)
Counter-Reformation
An internal reform of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century stimulated in part by the Protestant Reformation; at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), Catholic leaders clarified doctrine, corrected abuses and corruption, and put a new emphasis on education and accountability. (p. 266)
Taki Onqoy
Literally, “dancing sickness”; a religious revival movement in central Peru in the 1560s whose members preached the imminent destruction of Christianity and of the Europeans and the restoration of an imagined Andean golden age. (p. 272)
Jesuits in China
Series of Jesuit missionaries from 1550 to 1800 who, inspired by the work of Matteo Ricci, sought to understand and become integrated into Chinese culture as part of their efforts to convert the Chinese elite, although with limited success. (p. 273)
Wahhabi Islam
Major Islamic movement led by the Muslim theologian Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) that advocated an austere lifestyle and strict adherence to the Islamic law; became an expansive state in central Arabia. (p. 276)
Wang Yangming
Influential Ming thinker (1472–1529) who argued that anyone could achieve a virtuous life by introspection and contemplation, without the extended education and study of traditional Confucianism. (p. 277)
The Dream of the Red Chamber
Book written by Cao Xueqin that explores the life of an elite family with connections to the court; it was the most famous popular novel of mid-eighteenth-century China. (p. 278)
Mirabai
One of India’s most beloved bhakti poets, who transgressed the barriers of caste and tradition. (p. 279)
Sikhism
Religious tradition of northern India founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539); combines elements of Hinduism and Islam and proclaims the brotherhood of all humans and the equality of men and women. (p. 279)
Scientific Revolution
The intellectual and cultural transformation that shaped a new conception of the material world between the mid-sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries in Europe; instead of relying on the authority of religion or tradition, its leading figures believed that knowledge was acquired through rational inquiry based on evidence, the product of human minds alone. (p. 280)
Copernicus
Polish mathematician and astronomer who was the first to argue in 1543 for the existence of a sun-centered universe, helping to spark the Scientific Revolution. (p. 282)
Galileo
An Italian scientist who developed an improved telescope in 1609, with which he made many observations that undermined established understandings of the cosmos. (pron. gal-uh-LAY-oh) (p. 283)
Newton
English scientist whose formulation of the laws of motion and mechanics is regarded as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution. (p. 283)
European Enlightenment
European intellectual movement of the eighteenth century that applied the principles of the Scientific Revolution to human affairs and was noted for its commitment to open-mindedness and inquiry and the belief that knowledge could transform human society. (p. 286)
Voltaire
The pen name of François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), a French writer whose work is often taken as a model of the Enlightenment’s outlook; noted for his deism and his criticism of traditional religion. (p. 286)
Condorcet
The Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) was a French philosopher who argued that society was moving into an era of near-infinite improvability and could be perfected by human reason. (p. 288)
kaozheng
Literally, “research based on evidence”; Chinese intellectual movement whose practitioners were critical of conventional Confucian philosophy and instead emphasized the importance of evidence and analysis, applied especially to historical documents. (p. 289)
Indian Ocean commercial network
The massive, interconnected web of commerce in premodern times between the lands that bordered the Indian Ocean (including East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia); the network was transformed as Europeans entered it in the centuries following 1500. (p. 320)
trading post empire
Form of imperial dominance based on control of trade through military power rather than on control of peoples or territories. (p. 322)
Philippines
An archipelago of Pacific islands colonized by Spain in a relatively bloodless process that extended for the century or so after 1565, a process accompanied by a major effort at evangelization; the Spanish named them the Philippine Islands in honor of King Philip II of Spain. (p. 323)
Manila
The capital of the colonial Philippines, which by 1600 had become a flourishing and culturally diverse city; the site of violent clashes between the Spanish and Chinese residents. (p. 324)
British East India Company
Private trading company chartered by the English government around 1600, mainly focused on India; it was given a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade, including the right to make war and to rule conquered peoples. (p. 324)
Dutch East India Company
Private trading company chartered by the Netherlands around 1600, mainly focused on Indonesia; it was given a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade, including the right to make war and to rule conquered peoples. (p. 324)
silver drain
Term often used to describe the siphoning of money from Europe to pay for the luxury products of the East, a process exacerbated by the fact that Europe had few trade goods that were desirable in Eastern markets; eventually, the bulk of the world’s silver supply made its way to China. (p. 328)
piece of eight
The standard Spanish silver coin used by merchants in North America, Europe, India, Russia, West Africa, and China. (p. 329)
Potosí
City that developed high in the Andes (in present-day Bolivia) at the site of the world’s largest silver mine and that became the largest city in the Americas, with a population of some 160,000 in the 1570s. (p. 329)
fur trade
A global industry in which French, British, and Dutch traders exported fur from North America to Europe, using Native American labor and with great environmental cost to the Americas. A parallel commerce in furs operated under Russian control in Siberia. (p. 331)
soft gold
Nickname used in the early modern period for animal furs, highly valued for their warmth and as symbols of elite status. (p. 335)
transatlantic slave system
Between 1500 and 1866, this trade in human beings took an estimated 12.5 million people from African societies, shipped them across the Atlantic in the Middle Passage, and deposited some 10.7 million of them in the Americas as enslaved people; approximately 1.8 million died during the transatlantic crossing. (p. 335)
African diaspora
The global spread of African peoples via the slave trade. (p. 338)
maroon societies / Palmares
Free communities of formerly enslaved people in remote regions of South America and the Caribbean; the largest such settlement was Palmares in Brazil, which housed 10,000 or more people for most of the seventeenth century. (p. 344)
signares
The small number of African women who were able to exercise power and accumulate wealth through marriage to European traders. (p. 346)
Dahomey
West African kingdom in which the slave trade became a major state-controlled industry. (pron. deh-HOH-mee) (p. 346)
Benin
West African kingdom (in what is now Nigeria) whose strong kings for a time sharply limited engagement with the slave trade. (p. 348)
Palmares
Free communities of formerly enslaved people in remote regions of South America and the Caribbean; the largest such settlement was Palmares in Brazil, which housed 10,000 or more people for most of the seventeenth century. (p. 344)
