# Land-Based Gunpowder Empires & Transoceanic Interconnections (1450–1750) > High-yield AP World History Unit 3 & 4 review covering the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Qing, and Russian empires, European maritime exploration, the Columbian Exchange, Atlantic labor systems, and global silver circuits. - **Canonical URL:** https://flashcards.world/flashcards/sets/18f1578c-cc28-4770-a3f3-e4e3e8f8f524/ - **Markdown URL:** https://flashcards.world/flashcards/sets/18f1578c-cc28-4770-a3f3-e4e3e8f8f524.md - **Level:** basic - **Languages:** en → en - **Total Cards:** 32 ## Flashcards (32 Cards) | # | Front (Term / Prompt) | Back (Definition / Answer) | Example | Multiple-Choice Options | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | 1 | Contrast the religious and administrative policies of Mughal emperors Akbar the Great (r. 1556–1605) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). | Akbar promoted religious tolerance (sulh-i kul, 'universal peace'), abolished the jizya on Hindus, integrated Hindu Rajput nobles into the mansabdari bureaucracy, and founded the syncretic Din-i Ilahi faith; Aurangzeb reimposed the jizya, destroyed Hindu temples, and waged costly wars in the Deccan that weakened the empire. | | | | 2 | What were the primary goals and methods of Peter the Great's (r. 1682–1725) Westernization of Russia? | Peter built Russia's first navy, defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War to secure a Baltic warm-water port ('Window on the West' at St. Petersburg), replaced the patriarchate with the state-controlled Holy Synod, introduced the Table of Ranks to promote nobles by merit, and taxed boyars' beards. | | | | 3 | How did the Fronde (1648–1653) in France shape the absolutist rule of King Louis XIV? | A series of civil wars led by French nobles (nobles of the sword and robe) and the Parlement of Paris against royal taxation during Louis XIV's childhood convinced the young king to strip the nobility of political power by domesticating them at the Palace of Versailles and governing through bourgeois intendants. | | | | 4 | How did the Mughal zamindar system work, and why did it eventually undermine imperial centralization? | Zamindars were local hereditary landowners and officials who collected agricultural taxes from peasants (paid in silver coin) and remitted a fixed share to the central treasury; over time, zamindars retained revenue to build private armies and carve out autonomous regional kingdoms. | | | | 5 | What caused the enduring geopolitical and religious conflict between the Ottoman and Safavid Empires? | Shah Ismail I (r. 1501–1524) declared Twelver Shi'a Islam the mandatory state religion of the Safavid Empire in Persia, clashing directly with the Sunni Ottoman Empire over religious orthodoxy and control of Mesopotamia, culminating in the Ottoman victory at the Battle of Chaldiran (1514). | | | | 6 | How did Shah Abbas the Great (r. 1588–1629) modernize the Safavid Empire? | He created a standing slave-soldier corps armed with muskets and artillery (ghulams, recruited from Christian Georgians and Armenians) to counterbalance Turkic Qizilbash tribal chiefs, and beautified his capital at Isfahan as a hub of the global silk trade. | | | | 7 | How did the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1867) centralize political control in Japan after the Sengoku (Warring States) period? | Tokugawa Ieyasu reorganized Japan into ~250 domains (han) ruled by daimyo and instituted the sankin-kotai ('alternate attendance') system, requiring daimyo to reside in Edo every other year while leaving their families as hostages, alongside the sakoku ('closed country') policy restricting foreign trade to Dutch and Chinese ships at Nagasaki. | | | | 8 | What examples of religious syncretism emerged in the Americas as a result of Spanish colonization and the African Diaspora? | • Virgin of Guadalupe (Mexico): Blended Catholic veneration of Mary with Indigenous Nahua symbolism (Tonantzin). • Vodou (Haiti), Santería (Cuba), and Candomblé (Brazil): Blended West African Yoruba and Fon deities (orishas/loa) with Roman Catholic saints. | | | | 9 | How did the Spanish Crown adapt the Inca mit'a system for silver mining at Potosí? | Spain transformed the traditional Inca community public-service labor obligation into a coercive wage-labor draft requiring one-seventh of adult Indigenous males from surrounding highland villages to work under lethal conditions (including mercury poisoning from amalgamation) in the Potosí silver mines. | | | | 10 | What was the Portuguese 'Trading Post Empire' in the Indian Ocean, and how did the cartaz system operate? | Rather than conquering vast interior territories, Portuguese admirals (Almeida and Albuquerque) seized strategic choke points—Goa, Hormuz, Malacca, and Mombasa—and required all merchant vessels in the Indian Ocean to purchase a cartaz (naval trade pass) and pay customs duties or face confiscation. | | | | 11 | How did the Ottoman Empire manage religious diversity and tax collection? | Non-Muslim 'People of the Book' (Christians and Jews) were organized into autonomous religious communities called millets that governed their own schools, courts, and religious affairs in exchange for paying the jizya tax; taxes were collected through tax farming (iltizam), where rights to collect revenue were auctioned to local notables. | | | | 12 | How did the Spanish Manila Galleons and the Ming Single Whip Tax Reform create the first truly global silver trade circuit? | Ming China's Single Whip Reform (1580s) required all land and poll taxes to be paid in silver bullion; Spanish galleons sailed annually from Acapulco to Manila loaded with Potosí and Zacatecas silver to purchase Chinese silk and porcelain, fueling both Asian commercialization and European Price Revolution inflation. | | | | 13 | How did the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Middle Passage affect West and Central African societies? | Over 12.5 million Africans were forcibly embarked (with ~15% dying on the Middle Passage); coastal states like Dahomey and Asante grew powerful by trading captives for European firearms ('gun-slave cycle'), while interior regions suffered severe depopulation, polygyny from skewed sex ratios, and political destabilization. | | | | 14 | What were the causes and outcome of Pugachev's Rebellion (1773–1775) in Imperial Russia? | Yemelyan Pugachev, a Cossack claiming to be the assassinated Tsar Peter III, rallied Cossacks, Russian serfs, and non-Russian minorities promising an end to serfdom and taxation; Catherine the Great crushed the revolt and responded by granting the Russian nobility (dvorianstvo) absolute control over serfs in the Charter to the Nobility (1785). | | | | 15 | How did the Manchus establish and legitimize the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) over a majority Han Chinese population? | Originating from Manchuria, the Qing organized their military into the Eight Banners, forced Han men to wear the Manchu queue hairstyle as a sign of submission, prohibited Manchu-Han intermarriage, and legitimized their rule by retaining the Confucian civil service exam and commissioning Kangxi's Imperial Encyclopedia. | | | | 16 | Describe the major biological, agricultural, and demographic exchanges of the Columbian Exchange. | • Old World to Americas: Smallpox, measles, typhus, influenza (causing the 'Great Dying' of 50–90% of Indigenous populations); horses, cattle, pigs, sheep; wheat, sugar cane, coffee, and okra. • Americas to Afro-Eurasia: Maize, potatoes, manioc (cassava), tomatoes, cacao, tobacco, and turkeys (driving massive Afro-Eurasian population growth). | | | | 17 | What were the defining doctrines of Mercantilism, and how did joint-stock companies serve mercantilist states? | Mercantilism held that global wealth (measured in gold and silver bullion) was finite, requiring states to maintain a favorable balance of trade (exports > imports) via tariffs and colonies; joint-stock companies like the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and British East India Company (EIC) pooled private investor capital with limited liability and state-chartered monopolies. | | | | 18 | What was the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), and how did it divide global exploration between Spain and Portugal? | Brokered by Pope Alexander VI, the treaty drew a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands: Spain received exclusive rights to newly discovered lands west of the line (most of the Americas), while Portugal received lands east of the line (Brazil, Africa, and the Indian Ocean route). | | | | 19 | What was the Commercial Revolution and the 'Price Revolution' in 16th-century Europe? | The influx of American silver combined with population growth caused sustained secular inflation ('Price Revolution'), which eroded the fixed feudal rents of landed aristocrats while enriching commercial bourgeoisie, stimulating double-entry bookkeeping, joint-stock banking, and the putting-out (cottage industry) system. | | | | 20 | How did Ivan IV (the Terrible) and the Romanovs expand and centralize the Russian Empire? | Ivan IV crushed the power of the boyar nobility using the oprichnina secret police and conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan; subsequently, Cossack pioneers expanded Russian control across Siberia to the Pacific in pursuit of the lucrative sable fur trade (yasak tribute). | | | | 21 | How did the Ottoman devshirme system and the Janissary corps consolidate the Sultan's power? | Under the devshirme ('selection'), the Ottoman state levied Christian boys from the Balkans, converted them to Islam, and educated them for top administrative posts (Grand Viziers) or elite infantry service (Janissaries), creating a loyal standing army and bureaucracy independent of the Turkish nobility. | | | | 22 | How did the Dutch Republic achieve its 17th-century 'Golden Age' of commercial and financial dominance? | Following independence from Spain, the decentralized Dutch Republic pioneered the fluyt cargo ship (low crew cost, high capacity), founded the Bank of Amsterdam (1609) and Amsterdam Stock Exchange, dominated the Baltic grain and Asian spice trades via the VOC, and practiced religious toleration that attracted skilled Huguenot and Jewish immigrants. | | | | 23 | How did the Peace of Westphalia (1648) transform the European state system after the Thirty Years' War? | Ending the devastating religious conflict in the Holy Roman Empire, Westphalia recognized Calvinism alongside Catholicism and Lutheranism under cuius regio, eius religio, recognized Dutch and Swiss independence, fragmented German princely states, and established the modern principle of state sovereignty and balance-of-power diplomacy. | | | | 24 | Compare the four major labor systems utilized in the colonial Americas between 1450 and 1750. | 1. Encomienda: Grant of Indigenous labor/tribute to Spanish conquistadors. 2. Hacienda: Large rural landed estates binding Indigenous peasants through debt peonage. 3. Indentured Servitude: European laborers bound by 4–7 year contracts in exchange for transatlantic passage. 4. Chattel Slavery: Hereditary, race-based ownership of enslaved Africans as legal property on sugar, tobacco, and cotton plantations. | | | | 25 | What were Maroon societies in the Americas, and how did enslaved peoples resist bondage? | Maroons were communities of escaped enslaved Africans who established autonomous settlements in rugged interiors—such as Palmares in Brazil and the Jamaican Windward and Leeward Maroons—and fought guerrilla wars against European colonial forces, alongside covert resistance and revolts like the Stono Rebellion (1739). | | | | 26 | What defined the 'Gunpowder Empires' (Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal) of 1450–1750? | All three were land-based empires of Turkic-nomadic origin that utilized firearms, siege artillery, and centralized bureaucracies to conquer vast territories across the Middle East and South Asia, legitimizing rule through Islamic patronage and monumental architecture. | | | | 27 | What was the Glorious Revolution (1688–1689) in England, and why was it significant for constitutionalism? | Parliament invited Protestant rulers William of Orange and Mary to depose the Catholic King James II without bloodshed on condition that they sign the English Bill of Rights (1689), which established Parliamentary supremacy over taxation, guaranteed regular parliaments, and rejected divine-right absolutism. | | | | 28 | Why was the Metacom's War (King Philip's War, 1675–1678) a turning point in New England colonial history? | Wampanoag leader Metacom united Algonquian peoples in a desperate attempt to halt English territorial expansion; although a high percentage of colonial towns were destroyed, Metacom was killed and New England's Indigenous population was decimated or sold into slavery. | | | | 29 | Describe the Sistema de Castas in Spanish America. | A rigid socio-racial hierarchy ranking colonial subjects by ancestry and birthplace: Peninsulares (born in Spain) at the top, followed by Creoles (Criollos, European ancestry born in the Americas), Mestizos (European/Indigenous), Mulattoes (European/African), and Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans at the bottom. | | | | 30 | How did rulers between 1450 and 1750 use monumental architecture and art to legitimize their authority? | Examples include Shah Jahan's Taj Mahal in Mughal India (blending Persian and Indian styles), Suleiman the Magnificent's Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Louis XIV's Palace of Versailles in France, and the Ming/Qing Forbidden City in Beijing. | | | | 31 | How did Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba (r. 1624–1663) resist Portuguese colonialism in Angola? | She forged a military alliance with the Dutch, offered sanctuary to runaway enslaved people and Portuguese-trained African soldiers, personally led troops in battle, and used diplomacy and Christian conversion strategically to preserve her kingdom's independence for decades. | | | | 32 | What maritime innovations enabled Portuguese and Spanish transoceanic exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries? | Portuguese caravels and carracks combined lateen sails (for tacking against the wind) with square sails (for speed), mounted naval cannon, and utilized the magnetic compass, astrolabe, portolan charts, and knowledge of Atlantic wind gyres (volta do mar). | | | --- Study this deck interactively with FSRS-6 spaced repetition, audio review, and multiple-choice mode at [Flashcards World](https://flashcards.world/flashcards/sets/18f1578c-cc28-4770-a3f3-e4e3e8f8f524/).