Download 14: High Middle Ages in Europe (Based on Chapter 19)

Chapter 9: The Early Modern World
Alfonso d'Alboquerque: Commander of Portuguese forces in the Indian Ocean responsible for
Portuguese hegemony in the region.
Archipelago of San Lazaro was first “discovered” by Magellan and later, after its conquest by Spain,
called the Philippines
Astrolabe: A simplified version of an instrument used by Greek and Persian astronomers to determine
latitude by measuring the angle of the sun or the pole star above the horizon.
Aztec Empire: Like the Inca Empire in South America, this complex empire in Mesoamerica was
ravaged by the effects of biological and cultural invasions.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa: Spanish military commander responsible for sighting the Pacific Ocean in
1513; Balboa is credited by many as naming the Pacific Ocean Pacifico because its waters seemed so
calm
Boyars: elite military aristocracy in Moscow who ruled minor principalities and who, like the
medieval dukes and princes of Europe and the daimyo in Japan, opposed absorption into the
Muscovite state of the Tsars.
Michelangelo Buonarotti: Famous Italian sculptor of Renaissance times; lived from 1475 to 1564. He
felt called as a sculptor and created the David in Florence and Pieta in Rome; but perhaps he is best
known for his painting of the Sistine Chapel; both the ceiling and the back wall.
Catholic Kings: Refers to Fernando of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, whose marriage in 1469 united
the two wealthiest and most important Iberian realms and strengthened the state of Spain. The Catholic
kings conquered the Islamic kingdom of Granada, established hegemony throughout most of the
Italian peninsula, and sponsored Christopher Columbus's voyages.
Christopher Columbus: Genoese mariner; crossed the Atlantic Ocean and sailed to the Bahamas in
1492, with his voyage sponsored by the Catholic Kings of Spain. His goal was to shorten the journey
to the Asian trade markets by traveling directly west across the Atlantic. His miscalculation led him to
uncharted land he believed to be were Asian islands, which in fact were the Caribbean Islands. He died
never knowing he found a New World.
The Colombian Exchange, named for Christopher Columbus, was the name applied to European
explorers establishing links between all lands and peoples of the world. These interactions in turn
resulted in an unprecedented volume of exchange across the boundary lines of societies and cultural
regions. Sometimes that exchange involved biological species: plants, foot crops, animals, human
populations, and disease pathogens all spread to regions they had not previously visited. These global
exchanges were the byproducts of the commercial exchange we have just described.
Caravels were small, highly maneuverable, three-masted ships that carried a sternpost rudder and
both square and lateen sails.
Calicut: Portuguese trading port in India; anglicized from Arabic name of todays city, Kozhikode.
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Jan Pieterszoon Coen: in 1619 founded Batavia on the island of Java to serve as an entrepot for the
VOC. Coen used his superior navy and weapons to dominate the Indonesian islands and by the late
17th century all of Indonesia was under Dutch authority. The VOC and its enormous monopoly led to
great prosperity for the Netherlands..
Captain James Cook: Led three expeditions to the Pacific. Cook charted eastern Australia and New
Zealand, Pacific islands and Arctic waters as well as collecting ethnographic materials about the lands
and peoples he encountered.
Cossacks: were recruited from the ranks of the peasants who were lured into military service when
Ivan III offered them their freedom and the opportunity to settle in recently conquered territories.
(Cossack is a Turkish meaning “free man”) The Cossacks were loyal to Ivan and his successors and
undertook their own campaigns of expansion pushing Russian influence south and east into the steppes
and the Volga River Valley at the expense of the Golden Horde and later across the Ural Mountains
into Siberia.
Circumnavigation: Complete voyage around the world, beginning at a specific point and ending at
the same point. Ferdinand Magellan’s Crew completed the first circumnavigation of the world.
Columbian exchange: Global diffusion of plants, food crops, animals, human populations, and
disease pathogens that took place after voyages of exploration by Columbus.
Cross Staffs: Instruments used by mariners to measure the angle of the sun or the pole star above the
horizon and determine latitude.
Francis Drake: was the First English navigator to circumnavigate the globe. The Spanish grudgingly
recognized Drake’s brilliance and called him El Draque (the Dragon).
Leonardo da Vinci: Italian painter of Renaissance times (1452-1519); relied on the technique of
linear perspective to represent the three dimensions of real life on flat, two-dimensional surfaces.
Leonardo was a the epitome of a Renaissance man as he not only painted but also designed military
armaments and hundreds of gadgets including primitive airplanes.
Desiderius Erasmus: Famous humanist of Renaissance times; worked diligently to prepare accurate
texts and translations of the New Testament and other important Christian writings; responsible for
publishing the first edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516.
English East India Company: was a joint stock company chartered by Queen Elizabeth I in 1599 and
given a monopoly over the emerging Asian trading market. After they were deflected from the spice
trade and Indonesian markets, the British begin to take an interest in India.
Entrepot: is a French word, (from the Latin interponere), which means a storage or distribution point
for goods, such as a seaport like Batavia
Donatello was an Italian sculptor of Renaissance times who lived from 1386 to 1466. He sought to
create statues of natural poses that reflected the actual working of human muscles, rather than the
awkward rigid postures of medieval times.
Filippo Brunelleschi: Famous Italian architect (1377-1446) of Renaissance times; responsible for the
construction of a magnificent dome on the cathedral of Florence during the 1420s and 1430s.
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Francesco Petrarch: Florentine humanist (1304-1374); worked diligently in searching for classical
works of ancient Greek and Roman authors throughout Europe.
Hongwu: Founder of the Ming dynasty in China; an orphaned beggar who rose to power by joining
rebellions against Mongol rule in China; toppled Mongol rule and proclaimed himself emperor in
1368; reestablished the Confucian educational and civil service systems.
Ibn Battuta: Muslim scholar of Morocco; world traveler of the 14th century; served as a qadi (judge)
in north India and the Maldive Islands; lived between 1304 and 1369. Ibn Battuta was not unusual, but
that he wrote down his experiences, gives us a glimpse into 14th century Islamic thinking and Eurasian
interaction.
Ivan III (Ivan the Great): was the Grand prince of Moscow from 1462-1505 and the first Muscovite
ruler to declare Russian independence from Mongol rule. This was a turning point in Russian history
as the Princes of Moscow had imposed their rule on Russia.
Jaquerie Revolt: broke out in France in 1358 when peasants looted castles, attacked the rich and
demanded fair wages. The basis of the revolt was the Black Death; the surviving workers wanted
higher wages and the rich refused to give them.
John of Montecorvino was an Italian Franciscan priest, who went to China in 1291, became the first
archbishop of Khanbaliq in 1307, and died there in 1328. While serving the Roman Catholic
expatriates in China, John worked energetically to establish Christianity in China.
Joint Stock Companies: Companies funded by private merchants, providing funds for ships, crews
and supplies. These private merchants would also provide merchants with commodities and money to
trade.
Miguel Lopez de Legazpi: Spanish commander who seized control of the Philippines in 1565.
John of Montecorvino: Italian Franciscan, went to China in 1291; became the first archbishop of
Khanbaliq (Beijing) in 1307; baptized some six thousand individuals in China; translated the New
Testament into Turkish; died in 1328.
The Little Ice Age was a mini Ice Age that lasted from 1300 to about 1850.
Marco Polo: Venetian merchant (1253-1324) who traveled to China while it was under Mongol rule;
met Khubilai Khan and undertook many diplomatic missions for the Mongol government. His stories
of travel circulated widely throughout Europe and deeply influenced Europeans' desire for exploring
Chinese markets. His deathbed statement fascinated generations, when he declared, "I didn't tell half
of what I saw, because no one would have believed me."
Masaccio: Renaissance painter of Italy, lived from 1401-1428. Like Leonardo da Vinci he rejected
medieval, two dimensional style and used perspective to represent three-dimensional forms to create
reality on flat surfaces. They also applied this perspective to the human body, creating increasingly
lifelike representations of the human body. Many artists were daring in their representations of the
human figure, especially the nude figure, but were still deeply Christian.
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Ferdinand Magellan: Explored the Pacific and circumnavigated the world in the service of Spain
(1519-1522). Although he was killed during the voyage in the Philippines and did reach his goal of the
Spice Islands, he did accomplish to most difficult part of his task in proving that the world was round
and that Columbus had been right. Magellan had led the way, established a trade route between
Central America and the Philippines, and the way for exploration of the Pacific by other nations in
addition to Spain.
Magnetic Compass: A Chinese invention of the Tang or Song dynasty that had diffused throughout
the Indian Ocean basin in the eleventh century.
Mikhail Romanov: In 1610, when Polish and Swedish armies threatened Moscow, representatives
selected Mikhail Romanov as the new Tsar to drive the Poles and Swedes out of Moscow. Romanov
was the first of the Romanov Dynasty and which lasted until 1917.
Ming dynasty: Chinese dynasty after the Mongols' Yuan dynasty, established by the Hongwu emperor
in 1368. Government became even more centralized under the Ming than before and returned to
reliance on a Confucian-trained civil service.
New Albion was the name given to the area around San Francisco Bay claimed for England by Francis
Drake in 1579 (some 400 miles north of Spain’s northern most claim).
Nicolo Machiavelli: wrote a pivotal book, The Prince, which was a manual of how to seize and
maintain power. Christian morality and idealism had often been ignored by Christian rulers, but
Machiavelli – for the first time - openly advocated the “end justifies the means.”
Novgorod: an autonomous city-state and an important commercial city which governed itself through
a town counsel: absorbed by Ivan III in 1470s.
Oprichnina: meaning the "land apart," used by Ivan IV to confiscated large estates and redistribute
them among his supporters in his attack on rebellious boyars. Oprichniki: were Ivan IV’s supporters
whom he made a new aristocracy. From them he recruited a private army whose members dressed in
black and wore insignia displaying a dog’s head and a broom, symbolic of their function to hunt down
treason and sweep it out of Russia.
The Third Rome: Orthodox clergy held that Germanic invaders had conquered the first Rome and
that the Ottoman Turks had toppled the second Rome, Constantinople. Only Moscow survived as the
seat of true Christian faith.
Prince Henrique: Often called Prince Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal, responsible for seizing
the Moroccan city of Ceuta in 1415; adopted policy of encouraging Christian expansion and
exploration of commercial opportunities overseas especially down the west coast of Africa.
Renaissance: Cultural flowering of western Europe from the 14th through the 16th centuries. Arts and
scholarly works reflected a revived interest in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome and a growing
concern for individualism and secularism.
Rabban Bar Sauma: Nestorian Christian priest of Turkish ancestry; dispatched in 1287 by the
Mongol ilkhan of Persia as an envoy to the pope and European political leaders for seeking support;
mission did not succeed.
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Sao Jorge da Mina: Fortified Portuguese trading post on the coast of west Africa (in modern Ghana).
Seven Years' War : Global conflict (1756-1763) that included Asians, indigenous American people
and Europeans. Sometimes called the "Great War for Empire", it laid the foundations for British
hegemony in the world.
Smallpox: One of several infectious and contagious virgin soil diseases that ravaged the populations
of the Americas due to their lack of exposure and immunity. These diseases were responsible for
reducing indigenous populations of the Americas by ninety-five percent.
Sophia Palaeologus: wife of Ivan III and niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Using this marriage,
Ivan adopted Byzantine terms and symbols which signified his imperial status
Vasco da Gama: Portuguese mariner; took the first voyage around the tip of Africa to India in 1497.
His fleet of four ship successfully returned with a cargo of pepper and cinnamon that would motivate
more European merchants to make the journey east.
Taino: The indigenous residents of the Bahamas. Columbus mistook these people for inhabitants of
India and erroneously named them "Indians."
Trade Winds: Strong wind patterns blowing from the northeast that complicated travel and forced
mariners to take indirect routes.
Trading-post empires: A series of fortified trade posts established by Dutch, French, Portuguese,
English and Spanish to command hegemony over large coastal areas.
Volta do mar: The strategy employed by mariners in their return journeys, avoiding sailing against
slow and perilous trade winds
Wat Tyler: led English peasants in 1381 into London where they demanded and end to all forms of
serfdom.
Wind Wheels: Strong wind patterns in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, north and south of the
equator, used by mariners to direct voyages.
Yakut: were the best know of many of the indigenous people of Siberia who resisted Russian
expansion and were persecuted terribly for 40 years as punishment, losing at 70% of their population
from pillaging and European diseases. .
Yongle Encyclopedia: Enormous anthology compiled by Ming scholars and sponsored by the
emperor Yongle. It contained all significant works of Chinese history, philosophy, and literature, and
ran to about 23,000 manuscript rolls, each equivalent to a medium-sized book.
Zheng He: Eunuch Admiral of the Ming court; led seven grand naval expeditions between 1405 and
1433; presented Chinese naval power to important port cities in the Indian Ocean basin.
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