vocabulary test Flashcards
Conquistador
Conquistadors is a term used to refer to the soldiers and explorers of the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire in a general sense.
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies.
Mercantilism
Mercantilism was an economic theory and practice, dominant in modernized parts of Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, that promoted governmental regulation of a nation’s economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers.
Balance of trade
The commercial balance or net exports (sometimes symbolized as NX), is the difference between the monetary value of a nation’s exports and imports over a certain period.
The compass
A compass is an instrument used for navigation and orientation that shows direction relative to the geographic “cardinal directions”, or “points”. Usually, a diagram called a compass rose, shows the directions north, south, east, and west on the compass face as abbreviated initials.
Joint Stock Company
A joint-stock company is a business entity where different stocks can be bought and owned by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by his or her shares (certificates of ownership).
Triangular trade
Triangular trade or triangle trade is a historical term indicating trade among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come.
Columbian exchange
The Columbian Exchange refers to a period of cultural and biological exchanges between the New and Old Worlds. Exchanges of plants, animals, diseases and technology transformed European and Native American ways of life. Beginning after Columbus’ discovery in 1492 the exchange lasted throughout the years of expansion and discovery.
Middle passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade.
Treaty of Tordesillas
The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed at Tordesillas on June 7, 1494, and authenticated at Setúbal, Portugal, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Portugal and the Crown of Castile, along a meridian 370 leagues[note 1] west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa.
Henry the Navigator
Infante Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu (4 March 1394 – 13 November 1460), better known as Henry the Navigator, was an important figure in 15th-century Portuguese politics and in the early days of the Portuguese Empire.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer, and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean.
Vasco de Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (Portuguese, 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and, in this way, the West and the Orient.
Hernan Cortes
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca (Spanish, 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Zheng he
Zheng He (1371–1433 or 1435), formerly romanized as Cheng Ho, was a Hui court eunuch, mariner, explorer, diplomat, and fleet admiral during China’s early Ming dynasty. Born Ma He, Zheng commanded expeditionary voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433.
