AP Euro Ch. 15

Viceroy

A viceroy was a person who ruled over the viceroyalty in the New World for Spain. These viceroys were often not as loyal to the monarchy as the Crown would have liked them to be, which led to the institution of intendants (people who would watch over the viceroy and the viceroyalty, but remained completely loyal to the Crown).

Prince Henry the Navigator

Henry was a Portuguese prince in the 1400s. He played a crucial role in ensuring that Portugal was successful in their seafaring and navigational enterprises.

Hernando Cortes

Hernando Cortes was a brash and determined conquistador. He launched a conquest on the Mexica Empire, or the Aztecs, and successfully conquered the Empire and killed their leader, Montezuma.

John Cabot

John Cabot was an Italian navigator and explorer. In 1497 he sailed westward under the commission of King Henry VII of England.

Columbian Exchange

The migration of people into the New World led to an exchange of animals, plants, and, especially, disease. This complex exchange was known as the Columbian Exchange, and worked for the Europeans that were migrating to the America's advantage.

Spain's golden century

1500-1600

Vasco de Gama

A Portuguese sailor that rounded the Cape of Good Hope nearly a decade after Bartholomew Diaz. De Gama was successful in rounding the Cape and was able to reach the port of Calicut in India, but had failed to establish any trading alliances thus ensuring the future hostility of Muslim merchants within the trading system.

Zheng He

Admiral Zheng He was an explorer for China. He went as far west as Egypt, and led seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433 sixty years before Columbus ever left for the Americas.

Atahualpa

Atahualpa was an Inca emperor during the fall of the Inca Empire. He was captured and ransomed by Pizarro and the conquistadors, and even after his ransom was paid in full, he was executed.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was a controversial figure in history, who was one of the first documented people to sail to the New World. He was a deeply religious man and sailed to the across the Atlantic Ocean for Spain. Upon reaching the Americas, he was sure that he had hit India.

European nation that gained territory in North America from Canada to Louisiana

France

Intendants

Intendants were people that the Spanish Monarchy sent to the viceroyalties to watch over them and the viceroys. They were to remain completely loyal to the Crown, unlike the viceroys, who were the reason for the institution of Intendants in the first place.

Bartolome de Las Casas

Las Casas was one of the most outspoken critics of Spanish brutality against the indigenous people in the New World. He documented their treatment at the hands of the Spanish and asserted that the Indians in the New World had human rights. His and others pressure on these issues led to Charles V's abolishment of the worst abuses of the encomienda system in 1531.

Ferdinand Magellan

Magellan was a Portuguese mariner sent out by Charles V of Spain to find a sea route to the spices in the isles off the southeast coast of Asia. He sailed southwest across the Atlantic, down the coast of Brazil, and through treacherous straits that now bear his name. Magellan then sailed into the Pacific, and was the first to dub it as "Pacific."

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian trader and explorer. He travelled west and did much business in the Asian area, along with creating tales of his travels and his encounter with the Great Khan fueled western fantasies about the exotic Orient.

Mestizo

Mestizo refers to people of mixed Native American and European origin. The term was most commonly used in Spanish America.

Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne was a Frenchman who developed a new literary genre: the essay. In 1580, he published "Essays," which consisted of many of his own personal reflections drawing on his readings of ancient texts, his experience as a government official, and his own moral judgment. He would question European ideals and the superiority complex of Europeans, the definition of what is savage and what is not, and even the idea that humans are superior to animals.

The four Spanish viceroyalties

New Spain, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata

Juan de Pareja

Pareja was a religious and portrait painter. He was a slave of the artist Diego Velazquez, who eventually gave him his freedom.

Francisco Pizarro

Pizarro was a Spanish conquistador and conqueror of the Inca Empire. He was responsible for capturing and ransoming Atahualpa, emperor of the Inca Empire, and for executing him after the ransom had been paid in full.

Potosi

Potosi is in present-day Bolivia and the Spanish found an unbelievable mass of silver at this location in 1545. By 1550, Potosi yielded perhaps 60 percent of all the silver mined in the world.

Racism

Race distinction did not truly start to form until the mid-1400s. At this time, Africans became the main subject of racism, hatred, inferiority, and slavery. This belief that they were a totally inferior people was fostered by the biblical story of Noah's curse on his son Ham.

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare was a very well-known and now world-renowned literary icon and playwright. He had a deep appreciation for classical culture, individualism, and humanism. His works and writings, like Montaigne's, reveals the impact of new discoveries of his day. Shakespeare would also touch on the uncertainty of racial and religious classifications of his day in his play, "Othello."

Skepticism

Skepticism is a state of thought that arose to be very believed in and popular. It is founded on the thought that total certainty or knowledge will never be attainable.

Disease brought to the New World that will destroy the indigenous population

Small pox

Ruler who conquered Constantinople

Sultan Mohammed II

Dutch East Indies Co.

The Dutch East Indies Co. was a company that set up business' in East Asia. This company forced Indians to produce and sell spices in Southeast Asia, and was also the beginning of capitalism.

Inca Empire

The Inca Empire was a remote native empire in South America that fell at the hands of Francisco Pizarro and the Spanish conquistadors. It was located deep in the Andes Mountains, and it's capital was Cuzco.

Cultural Relativism

The idea that one culture is not necessarily superior to others was known as cultural relativism. It was advocated by humanists and progressives of the time, though was still seen as a radical idea.

Amerigo Vespucci

Vespucci was the first to claim that the New World was actually a separate continent, and not part of Asia. His claims, of course, were correct, and the continents were named the Americas after him.

Roanoke

was the first English colony founded in the New World. It was founded in 1585 in what is now North Carolina, and after a three-year loss of contact with England the settlers were found to have disappeared. To this day, the fate of the settlers of Roanoke remain an unsolved mystery.

Bartholomew Diaz

A Portuguese sailor that rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa in 1487. Unfortunately, he had to turn back due to storms and a threatened mutiny.

Conquistador

A conquistador was a Spanish soldier-explorer sent out to conquer "unclaimed" lands and peoples. Some of the most famous conquistadors were Francisco Pizarro and Hernando Cortes, among others.

Encomienda System

A system the Spanish instituted in the New World which allowed the Crown to grant the conquerors the right to employ groups of Native Americans as laborers in exchange for food and shelter. Theoretically, the Spanish were not allowed to enslave the natives, however, in reality, the system was a legalized form of slavery.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A treaty instituted by Pope Alexander VI in 1494 that gave Spain everything to the west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic and Portugal everything to the east. In the long run, this decision worked in Portugal's favor greatly.

Ptolemy's Geography

A work written in the second century by a Hellenized Egyptian. Ptolemy's work provided significant improvements over medieval cartography, showing the world as round, and introducing the idea of latitude and longitude.

Ruler who funded Magellan's voyage to the West

Charles V

The first European country to establish sea routes to the East

Portugal