Social Studies Grade

Revision of contents for chapters covered.

Study Guide

Other explorers who visited the Americas that were inspired by Columbus’s discoveries.
o Amerigo Vespucci, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Ferdinand Magellan
Note their discoveries
o Amerigo Vespucci – Vespucci led a Spanish fleet to the coast of present-day
South America. He believed he had found a “new world.”
o Vasco Nunez de Balboa – Balboa set out to find another ocean farther west.
o Ferdinand Magellan – Set out with a Spanish fleet to sail down the east coast of
South America.
Pay attention to vocabulary words under each heading
o Amerigo Vespucci - explorer
o Vasco Nunez de Balboa – explorer
o Ferdinand Magellan – a Portuguese navigator
o Christopher Columbus – a sailor from Genoa, Italy
o Line of Demarcation – imaginary line that divided the Atlantic Ocean.
o Treaty of Tordesillas – moved the line of demarcation 800 miles further west.
This gave Portugal more opportunity to claim lands unexplored by other
Europeans.
o Circumnavigate – go all the way around the globe
o Columbian Exchange – the transfer that started with Columbia’s explorations
o Conquistadors – soldiers who led military expeditions in the Americas
o Hernan Cortes – conquistador
o Francisco Pizzaro – conquistador
o Encomienda System – a reward that gave settlers the right to tax local native
Americans or to make them work.
o Plantations – large farms that grew just one kind of crop
o Bartolome de Las Casas – a priest
o Protestants – reformers who protested some of the Catholic Church’s practices.
o Spanish Armada – a huge fleet of warships meant to end English plans
o Northwest passage – water route through north America that would allow ships to
sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific
o Jacques Cartier – a French sailor
o Charter – a document giving permission to start a colony
o Peninsulares– settlers who came from Spain
Spanish conquests
o
How they were able to conquer
o By bringing diseases to kill most of them off quickly, scaring them with the
horses, and using their more advanced superior weapons to kill them
Who led these conquests?
o Hernan Cortes
How Spain treated natives
o Spanish treated the Native Americans as slaves. They were forced to work in
harsh conditions and were treated terribly. Natives were forced to work in the
fields.
Systems developed under forced labour
o Encomienda system
Role of the Church
o Convert the local people to the Christian faith
Protestant reformation
o A religious movement that began in small German towns but quickly spread to
most of Europe.
o
European presence in North America (English, French, Dutch)
o