Study Guide: The Age of Exploration

What you should know for the test:

  1. Marco Polo, a Venetian explorer’s accounts of his travel to Asia encouraged exploration.
  2. Navigators used an hourglass and a sextant to know where they were and where they were going.
  3. Prince Henry the Navigator provided the leadership for Portuguese exploration in the 1400s.
  4. Bartolomeu Dias found the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.
  5. Dias’s discovery led to the route leading to the Indian Ocean.
  6. Vasco de Gama explored almost the entire coast of Africa.
  7. Although Pedro Alvares Cabral set sail from Portugal to India, he wound up discovering Brazil instead.
  8. Christopher Columbus discovered the Bahamas.
  9. Columbus called the people he encountered Indians because he thought he had reached the East Indies.
  10. The Treaty of Todesillas divided the land in the western hemisphere between Spain and Portugal
  11. Encomiendas were the land and labor grants that the Spaniards set up to encourage settlers in their newly conquered lands.
  12. Las Casas was the Spanish missionary who tried to end the enslavement of Indians.
  13. Magellan visited the following regions on his expedition: The Philippines, Argentina, and the Pacific Ocean.
  14. The Strait of Magellan is near the southern tip of South America.
  15. The first English colony in North America was Roanoke Island.
  16. The first permanent English settlement in North America was Jamestown, Virginia.
  17. Ferdinand Magellan was not an explorer of North America.
  18. Jaques Cartier’s big mistake was that he did not realize that the Gulf of St. Lawrence was the outlet of a great river.
  19. The growth of the fur trade got France interested in building colonies in the land called New France.
  20. The first European to sail up the AtlanticCoast of the present day United States was Giovanni da Verrazano.
  21. Jaques Cartier claimed the North American area of Canada around Montreal for France.
  22. Marquette and Jolliet were the first Europeans to reach the Mississippi River.
  1. Henry Hudson sailed up a river into what is now New YorkStateand found a huge inland sea in Canada.

Short Answer:

  1. What was the name of the trip from Africa to the Americas that slaves were forced to make? What are some of the words that describe the horrors of the trip?
  2. How was the Age of Exploration both a time of triumph and a time of hardship for many?