APUSH KEY TERMS CHAPTER 1
(FONER, ERIC. GIVE ME LIBERTY! AN
AMERICAN HISTORY (AP* THIRD
EDITION). W. W. NORTON & COMPANY,
07/2012. )
z Maize (pg.8) - The Native Americans faced a food crisis when the climate warmed; the wooly mammoth
and the giant bison were going extinct. Around 9k years ago, at the same time that agriculture was being
developed in the Near East, it also emerged in modern-day Mexico and the Andes, and then spread to
other parts of the Americas, making settled civilizations possible. Throughout the hemisphere, maize
(corn), squash, and beans formed the basis of agriculture. The absence of livestock in the Western
Hemisphere, however, limited farming by preventing the plowing of fields and the application of natural
fertilizer.
Tenochtitlán (p. 10) - Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico, was one of the
world's largest cities. Its great temple, splendid royal palace, and a central market comparable to that of
European capitals made the city seem "like an enchanted vision," according to one of the first Europeans
to encounter it.
Cahokia (p. 11) - More than a thousand years before Columbus sailed, Indians of the Ohio River valley,
called "mound builders" by eighteenth-century settlers who encountered the large earthen burial
mounds they created, had traded across half the continent. After their decline, another culture
flourished in the Mississippi River valley, centered on the city of Cahokia near present day St. Louis, a
fortified community with between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants in the year 1200. Its residents, too,
built giant mounds. Little is known of Cahokia's political and economic structure. But it stood as the
largest set- tled community in what is now the United States until surpassed in population by New York
and Philadelphia around 1800.
Iroquois (p. 12) - In eastern North America, hundreds of tribes inhabited towns and villages scattered
from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. They lived on corn, squash, and beans, supplemented by
fishing and hunting deer, turkeys, and other animals. Indian trade routes crisscrossed the eastern part of
the continent. Tribes frequently warred with one another to obtain goods, seize captives, or take revenge
for the killing of relatives. They conducted diplomacy and made peace. Little in the way of centralized
authority existed until, in the fifteenth century, various leagues or confederations emerged in an effort to
bring order to local regions. In the Southeast, the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw each united dozens
of towns in loose alliances. In present-day New York and Pennsylvania, five Iroquois peoples—the
Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga—formed a Great League of Peace, bringing a period of
, stability to the area. Each year a Great Council, with representatives from the five groupings, met to
coordinate behavior toward outsiders
"Christian liberty" (p. 18) - One conception common throughout Europe understood freedom less as a
political or social status than as a moral or spiritual condition. Freedom meant abandoning the life of sin
to embrace the teachings of Christ. In this definition, servitude and freedom were mutually reinforcing,
not contradictory states, since those who accepted the teachings of Christ simultaneously became "free
from sin" and "servants to God." "Christian liberty" had no connection to later ideas of religious
toleration, a notion that scarcely existed anywhere on the eve of colonization
Zheng He (p. 20) - At the beginning of the fifteenth century, one might have predicted that China would
establish the world's first global empire. Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng He led seven large
naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean. On his sixth voyage, Zheng explored the coast of East Africa. China
was already the world's most important trading economy, with trade routes dotting the Indian Ocean.
Zheng's purpose was not discovery, but to impress other peoples with China's might. Had his ships
continued west-ward, they could easily have reached North and South America. But as a wealthy land-
based empire, China did not feel the need for overseas expansion, and after 1433 the government ended
support for long-distance maritime expeditions. It fell to Portugal, situated on the western corner of the
Iberian Peninsula, far removed from the overland route to Asia, to take advantage of new techniques of
sailing and navigation to begin exploring the Atlantic.
Caravel (p. 20) - The development of the caravel, a ship capable of long-distance travel, and of the
compass and quadrant, devices that enabled sailors to determine their location and direction with
greater accuracy than in the past, made it possible to sail down the coast of Africa and return to
Portugal.
Factories (p.22) - In 1485, the Portuguese reached Benin, an imposing city whose craftsmen produced
bronze sculptures that still inspire admiration for their artistic beauty and superb casting techniques. The
Portuguese established fortified trading posts on the western coast of Africa. The profits reaped by these
Portuguese "factories"—so named because merchants were known as "factors"—inspired other
European powers to follow in their footsteps.
Reconquista (p. 23) - Columbus sought financial support throughout Europe for the planned voyage.
Most of Columbus's contemporaries, however, knew that he considerably underestimated the earth's
size, which helps to explain why he had trouble gaining backers for his expedition. Eventually, King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to become sponsors. Their marriage in 1469 had united
the warring kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. In 1492, they completed the reconquista—the "reconquest"
of Spain from the Moors, African Muslims who had occupied part of the Iberian Peninsula for cen- turies.
The capture of Grenada, the Moors' last stronghold, accomplished Spain's territorial unification. To
ensure its religious unification, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered all Muslims and Jews to convert to
Catholicism or leave the country. Along with the crown, much of Columbus's financing came from
bankers and merchants of Spain and the Italian city-states, who desperately desired to circumvent the
Muslim stranglehold on eastern trade. Columbus set sail with royal letters of introduction to Asian rulers,
authorizing him to negotiate trade agreements
Columbian Exchange (p. 26) - The transatlantic flow of goods and people, sometimes called the
Columbian Exchange, altered millions of years of evolution. Plants, animals, and cultures that had
