A. Mediterranean Trade and European Expansion

A. Mediterranean Trade and European Expansion

• A. Mediterranean Trade and European Expansion

• 1. Discovery of new trade routes and new lands

• From the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, goods traveled overland from Asia and Africa and then funneled into Europe through Mediterranean trade routes dominated by Italian cities; the vitality of these routes offered few incentives to look for alternatives.

• 2. Bubonic plague (Black Death)

• 3. European Exploration

• Black Death caused some people to take greater risks; exploration promised fame and fortune; monarchs sponsored journeys in hopes of gaining territory and subjects; innovations like movable type and navigational instruments like compasses, hourglasses, the astrolabe, and the quadrant were known by many people but first used by Portuguese.

• B. A Century of Portuguese Exploration

• 1. Reconquest

• cooperated with Spain to expel Muslims from Iberian Peninsula; religious zeal justified expansion into what the Portuguese viewed as heathen lands.

• 2. Prince Henry the Navigator

• most influential advocate of expansion; collected information on sailing techniques and geography and pushed explorers to find new trade routes to find gold and items for trade.

• 3. Caravel

• 4. Discovery of new sea route to Asia

• Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; ten years later, Vasco da Gama sailed all the way to India; this allowed the Portuguese to obtain goods from the East Indies and sell them at lower prices since they did not have to pay Mediterranean merchants; broke the old monopoly.

A. The Explorations of Columbus

• A. The Explorations of Columbus

• 1. Christopher Columbus and Felipa Moniz

• married Moniz; her father had been raised in the household of Prince Henry the Navigator

• Columbus gained access to maps and information about sailing the Atlantic; believed Earth was round, but he dramatically underestimated the distance west to Asia (2,500 miles vs. 11,000 miles).

• 2. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand

• Spanish monarchs financed Columbus’s voyage west after Portugal, Spain, England, and France turned him down

• they saw small potential loss, but big potential gain in financing the trip.

• 3. San Salvador and the Tainos

• ships the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria landed on a Caribbean island about 300 miles north of Cuba in 1492

• Columbus claimed it for Isabella and Ferdinand; named it San Salvador in honor of Jesus Christ

• called people “Indians,” believing he was in the East Indies

• the people called themselves Tainos; Columbus knew he made a monumental discovery but was disappointed by the Tainos’ lack of riches; Ferdinand and Isabella, however, were overjoyed with the news of Columbus’s discovery, and he joined the ranks of the nobility.

• 4. Treaty of Tordesillas

• Portuguese and Spanish monarchs negotiated the treaty in 1494

• drew an imaginary line 1,100 miles west of the Canary Islands

• land discovered west of the line belonged to Spain, land to the east belonged to Portugal; Spain sent Columbus back, and he found his sailors had terrorized the Tainos and sexually abused their women; the Tainos killed the sailors in response; foreshadowed what would happen between Native Americans and Europeans in the future.

B. The Geographic Revolution and the Columbian Exchange

• B. The Geographic Revolution and the Columbian Exchange

• 1. Further exploration after Columbus

• monarchs hurried to claim new land;

• John Cabot sailed to find a Northwest Passage to the Indies in 1497

• landed at Newfoundland, went back to England, but was never heard from again after he returned to the New World

• Spanish expedition accompanied by Italian businessman Amerigo Vespucci landed on the northern coast of South America in 1499

• Portuguese Pedro Álvars Cabral accidentally made landfall in Brazil while en route to the Indian Ocean.

• 2. Ferdinand Magellan

• Sponsored by King Charles I of Spain, Magellan led an expedition to circumnavigate the globe in 1519; crossing the Pacific took four months

• Magellan was killed by Philippine tribesmen, but a remnant of his expedition made it back to Spain

• left no doubt that America was separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean and that sailing west to India was inefficient.

• 3. Columbian Exchange

• Transatlantic trade of goods launched by Columbus’s expedition

• Spaniards brought to the New World Christianity, iron, horses, firearms, sailing ships; also unknowingly brought smallpox, measles, and deadly diseases; ancient American goods (corn and tobacco), people, ideas, and even diseases (syphilis) made the return trip back.

A. The Conquest of Mexico

• A. The Conquest of Mexico

• 1. Hernán Cortés

• Had experience in the New World fighting in the conquest of Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean

• in 1504, he led an expedition of about six hundred men to investigate rumors of a wealthy kingdom on the mainland.

• 2. Malinali (“Marina”)

• A gift to Cortés from a Tobasco chief; she spoke several languages and served as Cortés’s translator; Cortés would not have been able to communicate without her; Spaniards called her Marina; she knew many languages because her step-father had sold her as a slave to Mayan-speaking Indians. Malinali was also Cortés’s mistress and bore him a son.

• 3. Emperor Montezuma and the riches of Tenochtitlán

• emperor Montezuma feared the Spaniards were led by the god Quetzalcoatl

• Marina told Cortés this so they dressed in regalia, played horns, and displayed swords

• Cortés marched inland to find Montezuma, who welcomed him on November 8, 1519

• Montezuma showed Cortés the riches of the city; Cortés took Montezuma hostage and hoped to rule through a puppet government

• Montezuma was killed by an unknown assailant during a revolt; the Mexica mounted a ferocious assault on the Spaniards, who fled to Tlaxcala, a stronghold of enemies of the Mexica.

4. Cortes invades and conquers Mexica

• 4. Cortes invades and conquers Mexica

• With the help of Indian allies, Cortés returned to the Mexican capital in the spring of 1521

• conquered Tenochtitlán by August; succeeded due to several advantages: they were using weapons of iron and steel against weapons of stone, wood, and copper

• smallpox arrived with Cortés and decimated the Mexican population

• Spaniards also sought total victory in war, while the Mexicans only sought surrender; key point is that Cortés could exploit the tensions between the Mexica and the people they ruled in their empire; exploited Indians fought alongside the Spanish.

B. The Search for Other Mexicos

• B. The Search for Other Mexicos

• 1. Tales of wealth

• 2. Francisco Pizarro

• Conquered the Incan empire in Peru in 1532; Pizarro and his men captured the Incan emperor Atahualpa, who gave the Spaniards a ransom of gold equal to half a century of precious metal production in Europe; the Spaniards killed Atahualpa in spite of the ransom.

• 3. de Soto, Coronado, and Cabrillo

• Tales of wealth attracted more conquistadors; in 1539, Hernando de Soto tried to find another Peru in the North

• landed in Florida and searched for riches in southeastern North America; died of a fever in 1542

• Francisco Vásquez de Coronado searched for the mythical Seven Cities of Cíbola, which turned out to be a small Zuñi pueblo of about a hundred families; Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo died in an attempt to find wealth along the coast of California in 1542.

• C. Spanish Outposts in Florida and New Mexico

• 1. Menéndez and the founding of St. Augustine

• St. Augustine was founded in 1565, the first permanent European settlement in what became the United States; by 1600, it was the only remaining Spanish beachhead on the North American Atlantic shore.

• 2. Oñate and the founding of New Mexico

• Oñate and about 500 people settled present-day New Mexico in 1598

• soldiers planned to mutiny, and relationships with Indians deteriorated; Indians in the Acoma pueblo revolted; Oñate suppressed the rebellion, killing 800 men, women, and children; no peace or stability in region; many of his settlers returned to Mexico after another pueblo revolt in 1599.

D. New Spain in the Sixteenth Century

• D. New Spain in the Sixteenth Century

• 1. New Spain and Spanish domination of the Western Hemisphere

• New Spain was more interested in colonization than other powers that mostly wanted to trade or deal with domestic issues; allowed Spain to become the dominant European power in the Western Hemisphere during the sixteenth century.

• 2. The “royal fifth” and the system of encomienda

• monarchy allowed conquistadors to keep all loot, giving the crown one-fifth, the “royal fifth,” of what they confiscated; encomienda empowered conquistadors to rule Indians; Spanish encomendero owned the town and thus received the tribute the town previously paid to the Mexican empire; the encomendero was supposed to be responsible for Indians’ well-being, guarantee order and justice, and convince Indians to convert to Christianity.

3. Repartimiento replaces encomienda

• 3. Repartimiento replaces encomienda

• Encomenderos overworked and abused Indians

• believed they were superior and therefore had the right to use Indians as slaves; a few Catholic missionaries, including Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, protested the brutal treatment

• the Spanish monarchy replaced encomienda with the repartimiento

• limited labor an encomendero could command to forty-five days per year from each adult male

• did not, however, challenge the principle of forced labor or prevent encomenderos from cheating, mistreating, and overworking Indians.

4. Intermarriage creates sharp social hierarchy

• 4. Intermarriage creates sharp social hierarchy

• Most settlers were poor young men of common lineage who came directly from Spain

• men vastly outnumbered women, which meant that Europeans never made up more than 1 or 2 percent of the total population; also meant Spanish men often married Indian women or used them as concubines

• hierarchy; from highest to lowest: peninsulares (natives of Spain), creoles (children born in the New World to Spanish men and women, together with peninsulares constituted 1 to 2 percent of population), mestizos (children of Spanish men and Indian women, 4 to 5 percent of population), and Indians (the overwhelming majority) of the population.

E. The Toll of Spanish Conquest and Colonization

• E. The Toll of Spanish Conquest and Colonization

• 1. Demoralization of Indian society

• 1560, Indian civilizations had been conquered, their leaders overthrown, their religion held in contempt, and their people forced to work for Spaniards.

• 2. Virulent epidemics

• had no immunity to measles, smallpox, and respiratory illnesses; by 1570, the Indian population of New Spain had fallen about 90 percent from what it was when Columbus arrived.

• 3. Labor shortage and the importation of African slaves

• Indian deaths depleted the labor supply; in response, colonists began to import African slaves; only 15,000 slaves were imported from Africa before 1550; 36,000 imported from 1550 to1600.

A. The Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Response

• A. The Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Response

• 1. Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

• publicized his criticisms of the Catholic Church in 1517; he preached a doctrine known as “justification by faith”: Christians could only obtain salvation by having faith in God, not by giving money to the church, following orders of priests, or participating in church rituals

• also argued the Bible was more important than the Church; charged that Catholic Church was fraudulent.

• 2. Anti-Reformation monarchs

• Charles V and his son and successor Philip II pledged to exterminate Luther’s Protestant heresies; they used wealth of Spain’s New World empire to defend orthodox Catholic faith against Protestants, Muslims, Jews, or other nations.

• 3. New Spain’s effect on the Spanish economy

• New Spain’s wealth made Spain rich and powerful, but the monarchs’ expenses for constant warfare outstripped their revenues

• they raised taxes, exempting the nobility and therefore putting the burden of taxation of the poor; they also borrowed heavily from European bankers. As a result, Spain ended up far in debt by the end of the century;

B. Europe and the Spanish Example

• B. Europe and the Spanish Example

• 1. Expansion of European influence

• 2. Failed expeditions

• 1524, France sent Giovanni da Verrazano to the Atlantic Coast to search for a Northwest Passage

• the search failed; in 1535, Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River; Cartier established a colony in 1541, but it came to nothing; England tried to find a Northwest Passage again in 1576

• Martin Frobisher of the Cathay Company hoped to open trade with China

• he believed he found gold, but it was worthless ore; Cathay Company collapsed, and the English interests turned South

• Sir Walter Raleigh organized an expedition to settle Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina; when he sent settlers to the area two years later, they all disappeared, leaving only the word Croatoan in a tree; by the end of the century, England had no New World beachhead.