Maritime Exploration and Trade Quiz

Maritime Exploration and Trade

• Caravel: Small, highly maneuverable ship used by Portuguese and Spanish for Atlantic exploration (15th-17th centuries). Primarily used for voyages, not trade.
• Carrack: Large merchant ship used in European waters (especially by Portuguese) for trade (14th-17th centuries).
• Fluyt: Dutch sailing vessel optimized for cargo capacity and crew efficiency, controlling Baltic trade (16th-17th centuries).

Key Explorers and Navigators

• Henry the Navigator: Portuguese prince (1394-1460). Promoted navigation studies and directed African exploration voyages, seeking an all-water route to Asia. Sponsored slave trade.
• Vasco da Gama: Portuguese explorer who led the first naval expedition to India (1497-1498), establishing a sea route for European trade.
• Ferdinand Magellan: Portuguese navigator who led the first circumnavigation of the globe (1519-1522) for Spain.
• Christopher Columbus: Italian navigator who "discovered" the Americas for Spain (1492), sailing to the West in search of Asia.

Colonial Empires and Economic Systems

• Trading Post Empire: Form of empire focused on control of trade routes, not conquering land (used by Europeans in the Indian Ocean).
• Mercantilism: Economic system (16th-19th centuries) aiming to maximize national wealth through accumulating gold/silver and exporting more than importing; colonies were integral.
• Joint-Stock Company: Groups of investors pooling money to finance exploration and trade (e.g., British East India Company, Dutch East India Company).
• Royal Chartered Monopoly Companies: Joint-stock companies granted exclusive trade rights by European monarchs.

Impacts of European Expansion

• Columbian Exchange: Global exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies after Columbus' voyages.
• The Great Dying: Devastating impact of European diseases (smallpox, measles) on the indigenous populations of the Americas. High death tolls (50-90%).
• Chattel Slavery: Absolute ownership of people, often hereditary, used in the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade.
• Mita System: Inca labor tax system, later exploited by the Spanish to extract silver.
• Indentured Servitude: Workers bound to work for a set period in exchange for passage to the New World; mainly Europeans before 1800, then Asians.
• Encomienda System: Grant of land and labor from Spain to settlers in the Americas.
• Hacienda: Large Spanish estates in the Americas, often plantations, acting as a form of feudalistic land ownership.

Syncretic Religious Practices

• Vodun/Vodoo: African animist traditions blended with Roman Catholicism in the New World.
• Santeria: Blend of African traditions and Roman Catholic beliefs in Cuba.

Social Hierarchy and Racial Mixing

• Casta Paintings: Spanish commissioned paintings depicting racial mixing in the New World.
• Mestizo: People of mixed Native American and European descent.
• Mulatto: People of mixed African and European descent.
• Creoles: Descendants of European colonists born in the Americas.
• Peninsulares: Span-born people colonizing Latin America; highest social rank.