Additional Vocabulary. Check the pronunciation


Alexandria

Alsace

Antwerp

Assyria

Babylon

Baltimore

Barcelona

Basel/Basle

Basra

Bavaria

Bern

Bombay

Bonn

Brandenburg

Bremen

Brittany

Bruges

Burgundy

Byzantium

Cadiz

Calais

Cannes

Carthage

Cologne

Corinth

Dresden

Geneva

Genoa

Ghent

Hamburg

Havre

Hellas

Hesse

Hiroshima

Kyoto

Leghorn

Leipzig

Liege

Lorraine

Lyons

Magdeburg

Mainz

Marseilles

Mecca

Medina

Memphis

Mesopotamia

Milan

Miletus

Montreal

Munich

Nagasaki

Naples

Normandy

Nuremberg

Osaka

Palermo

Phoenicia

Potsdam

Prussia

Rhineland-Palatinate

Quebec

Reims

Rotterdam

Saarland

Salonika

Saxony

Syracuse

Schleswig-Holstein

Stuttgart

Thebes

Thrace

Thuringia

Toledo

Torino

Transylvania

Tripoli

Troy

Vancuver

Vatican

Venice

Versailles

Wiesbaden

Zurich

UNIT 7

GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES

VOCABULARY.

Argonaut

bullion

caravel

carrack

compass

dead wind, tail wind, trade wind

displacement/tonnage

expedition, organize/outfit an expedition

explorer/pioneer/pathfinder;path-breaker

furs/peltry

high-performance ship

ivory

land reclamation

Levant (Левант – общее назв. стран вост. части Средиземного м.)

merchant

mutiny

navigation

pilot

sailing-ship

sailor/seaman/navigator

scurvy, smallpox, plague

seafaring

squadron/fleet

stronghold

to anchor

to beat against the wind

to circumnavigate

to explore, exploration

to make boards

to tack

trade routes

tradesman

walrus tusk

windward/leeward side

Read the text about the Age of Discovery.

Age of Discovery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery

The Age of Discovery or Age of Exploration was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which Europeans explored the world by ocean searching for trading partners and particular trade goods. The most desired trading goods were gold, silver and spices. Western Europeans used new sailing ship technologies to seek a viable trade route to Asia for valuable spices which would be uncontested by Mediterranean powers. In terms of shipping advances, the most important developments were the creation of the carrack and caravel designs in Portugal. These vessels evolved from medieval European designs from the North Sea and both the Christian and Islamic Mediterranean. They were the first ships that could leave the relatively placid and calm Mediterranean, Baltic or North Sea and sail safely on the open Atlantic.

Exploration by Land

The prelude to the Age of Exploration was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages. While the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction, the Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia creating trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. A series of Europeans took advantage of these to explore eastwards. These were almost all Italians as the trade between Europe and the Middle East was almost completely controlled by traders from the Italian city states. The close Italian links to the Levant created great curiosity and commercial interest in countries which lay further east. Christian leaders, such as Prince Henry the Navigator, also launched expeditions in hopes of finding converts, or the fabled Prester John. There were many different types of causes and effects on the Age of Exploration.

The first of these travelers was Giovanni de Plano Carpini who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241–1247. The most famous traveler, however, was Marco Polo who wrote of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295 in which he described being a guest at the Yuan Dynasty court of Kublai Khan. His journey was written up as Travels and the work was read throughout Europe. In 1439, Niccolò Da Conti published an account of his travels to India and Southeast Asia. In 1466-1472, a Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver described travels to India in his book A Journey Beyond the Three Seas.

These journeys had little immediate effect. The Mongol Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and soon the route to the east became far more difficult and dangerous. The Black Death of the fourteenth century also blocked travel and trade. The land route to the East was controlled by Mediterranean commercial interests and Islamic empires that both controlled the flow and price of goods. The rise of the aggressive and expansionist Ottoman Empire further limited the possibilities of European overland trade.

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