| capitalism | An economic system based on the investment of resources (money, capital) in various enterprises in the hope of making a profit.
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| conquistadores | Spanish for "conqueror." Conquistadores, such as Hernando Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, led military expeditions in the New World in order to claim lands and resources for Spain and to subjugate the Native American empires they encountered on their way.
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| coureurs de bois | Adventurous French trappers and fur traders who penetrated far into the North American wilderness and developed an extensive trade that became one of the underpinnings of the French colonial economy.
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| demography | The statistical study of human populations, especially with reference to size, density, distribution, and vital statistics such as sex or family size. Using computers to store, sort, and retrieve the considerable data available to them, historians have conducted complex demographic studies and shed new light on social life in early America.
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| encomiendas | The Spanish right to exact tribute and labor from Native Americans on large tracts of land, granted by Don Juan de Onate to favored Spaniards in what would become the American Southwest.
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| feudalism | A political, social, and economic system that existed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Based on the ownership of land and the obligations of tenant to lord, feudalism tended to fragment power and authority. By the end of the fifteenth century, it was being replaced by centralized governments in nation-states, but aspects of the feudal system remained in parts of Europe for centuries.
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| high church | The party within the Church of England that retained many of the Catholic ceremonies and practices that the Puritans opposed and wished to purge from the church.
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| mercantilism | Economic philosophy popular in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe which argued that one person or nation could grow rich only at the expense of another, and that a nation's economic health depended, therefore, on a "favorable balance of trade" (selling as much as possible to foreign lands while buying as little as possible from them.)
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| mestizos | People of mixed Spanish and Native-American blood, who came to numerically dominate the colonies of the Spanish Empire.
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