Download Our Nation: Unit 2 Study Guide Vocabulary: Be able to match these

Our Nation: Unit 2 Study Guide
Vocabulary: Be able to match these words with their definitions.
Navigation
Cartographer
Magnetic compass
Colony
Astrolabe
Reform
Expedition
Convert
Entrepreneur
Emperor
Latitude
Circumnavigation
Longitude
Mission
Tributary
Trading post
Slavery
Charter
Settlement
1. In 1295 Marco Polo returned to Europe from ASIA and wrote a book about his experience there.
Because of Polo’s book, European interest in Asia began to grow / diminish.
2. Many goods moved between Asia and Europe along land routes called the Silk Road
3. Some of the risks traders faced on the Silk Road were:
1. Bad weather
2. Illness
3. THIEVES
4. Because of all the risks, goods from Asia were very costly.
5. In 1453, the OTTOMAN TURKS captured Constantinople and blocked trade going through the city. This
made it so that Europeans couldn’t use the Silk Road to continue trading. They began looking for new
trade routes to Asia.
6. Europeans had brought back several technologies from Asia that made travel by sea much easier.
These were:
1. Navigation: the science used by sailors to find their place and plan their route.
2. Magnetic compass: A TOOL THAT SHOWS WHICH DIRECTION IS NORTH
3. Astrolabe: tool that helped sailors use the sun and stars to find their location.
4. Caravel: a fast sailing ship
7. With these new technologies, Europeans set to the sea to try and find a new trade route to Asia. One
of the first explorers to head out on an expedition was Christopher Columbus. He believed that Asia
could be reached by sailing WEST (hint: direction), something that Europeans had never done before.
8. Columbus went to the King and Queen of Spain and asked them to sponsor (give money) his trip. They
agreed and he was off to explore. Some reasons that Kings and Queens would agree to sponsor an
expedition were to bring themselves WEALTH and POWER
9. Christopher Columbus had hoped to sail to Asia by heading west, but instead he landed on San
Salvador (an island off the southeast coast of North America). He thought he had landed in the Indies,
so he mistakenly called the native people he met, “Indians.”
10. It wasn’t until a man named Amerigo Vespucci led a Portuguese expedition to lands south of where
Columbus had landed that people realized that they weren’t sailing to Asia. Vespucci named these
lands a “New World.” Since he was the first person to realize that this was a new place, they began to
refer to it as America.
11. In 1513, VASCO NUNEZ DE BALBOA crossed the Isthmus of Panama and because the first European to
see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the Americas.
12. Each country that began to explore the “New World” had a different reason for their exploration.
Some of the reasons for exploration were:
1. Religious freedom
2. Spread religious beliefs
3. CLAIM LAND
4. To find trade routes to Asia
5. To gain wealth
13. Spanish explorers began to conquer some of the large empires in South America. Two specific
examples of this were:
1. Hernando Cortes who conquered the Aztecs
2. Francisco Pizarro who conquered the Incas
14. While Spain landed in South America, France, the Netherlands, and England landed in North America.
France and the Netherlands were looking for a waterway that would cross North America to create a
trade route to Asia. This waterway was known as THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
15. The Dutch (people from the Netherlands) founded two major trading posts in North America, NEW
AMSTERDAM and FORT ORANGE where the present-day cities of New York and Albany are located.
16. With new colonies and trading posts being set up in the Americas, a triangular trade route began to set
up between Europe, Africa, and North America. The good being sent from each location were:
i. From Africa to America: enslaved Africans, gold
ii. From America to Europe: timber, grain, tobacco, rice
iii. From Europe to Africa: iron products
iv. From America to Africa: iron products
v. From Europe to America: tools, clothing, and other manufactured goods.
17. Many of the settlers who came to the new world set up colonies near bodies of water. They did this
because:
1. They had access to fish and other supplies.
2. IT ALLOWED THEM TO USE SHIPS TO MOVE PEOPLE AND SUPPLIES EASILY
Know a little about each of the following explorers (what country sponsored them, where they landed, why they were
exploring):
1. Marco Polo
2. Christopher Columbus
3. Francisco Vasquez de
Coronado
4. Amerigo Vespucci
5. Vasco Nunez de Balboa
6. Hernando Cortes
7. Francisco Pizzaro
8. Henry Hudson
9. Jacques Cartier
10. Samuel de Champlain
11. Ferdinand Magellan
12. Juan Ponce de Leon
13. Hernando de Soto