History 1700

Chapter 1
Three Old Worlds Create a New
1492 - 1600

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For thousands of years before 1492, human
societies in the Americas had developed in
isolation from the rest of the world.

The era that began in the Christian fifteenth

century brought that long standing isolation to
an end.

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Over the next 350 years, Europeans would
spread their influence across the globe.

The continents that European sailors reached in

the late fifteenth century had their own
histories, which the intruders largely ignored.

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The residents of the Americas were the worlds
most skillful plant breeders; they developed
vegetable crops more nutritious and productive
than those grown in Europe, Asia, or Africa.

They had invented systems of writing and

mathematics, and created more accurate
calendars than those used on the other side of
the Atlantic.

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1490 map of the

world as it was
known to Europeans
just before
Columbus set sail.

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AMERICAN SOCIETIES
Because the climate was far colder than it is
now, much of the earth’s water was
concentrated in huge rivers of ice called
glaciers.

Sea levels were accordingly lower, and land

masses covered a larger proportion of the
earth’s surface than they do today.
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Scholars long believed that the earliest inhabitants
of the Americas crossed the Beringia (at the site of
the Bering Strait) approximately 12,000 to 14,000
years ago.

Yet striking new archaeological discoveries in both

the North and South America suggest that parts of
the Americas may have been settled much earlier,
may be by seafarers.

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Paleo-Indians
◦ About 12,500 years ago, the climate warmed and sea levels
rose, Americans were separated from the peoples living on
the connected continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

◦ The first Americans are called Paleo-Indians.

◦ About 11,500 years ago the Paleo-Indians were making fine

stone projectile points, which they attached to spears and used
to kill and butcher bison, woolly mammoths, and other large
mammals.

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◦ Little is known about the early Paleo-Indians.
◦ In this region they are known as the Anasazi and
Fremont.

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NORTH AMERICA IN 1492

◦ Native American societies in 1492, prior to European discovery,

practiced polytheistic religious practices.

◦ There were over 10,000,000 inhabitants in North America.

◦ There were over 1,000 different languages spoke.

◦ Slavery was never an important source of labor in pre-Columbian

America.

◦ They did not consider themselves one people, nor consider uniting
to repel the European invaders.

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AFRICAN SOCIETIES
West Africa was a land of tropical forests and
savanna grasslands were fishing, cattle herding,
and agriculture had supported the inhabitants for at
least 10,000 years prior to European arrival in the
15th century. (See Page 11)

Thesocieties of West Africa, like those of the

Americas, assigned different tasks to men and
women.

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Unlike in the Americas prior to 1492, slavery
was practiced in Africa.

West Africans could be enslaved for

punishment for crimes, were enemy captives or
people who voluntarily enslaved themselves or
their children in payment for debts.

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EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
 In the 15th century, Europeans, too, were agricultural peoples.

 The daily lives of Europe’s rural people had changed little for several
hundred years.

 In the hierarchical European societies, a few families wielded

autocratic power over the majority of people.

 Although Europeans were not subject to perpetual slavery, Christian

doctrine permitted the enslavement of “heathens”.

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Europe’s kingdoms resembled those of Africa
but differed greatly from the more egalitarian
societies found in America north of Mexico.

Because Europeans kept domesticated animals

for meat, hunting had little economic
importance in their culture and was instead
primarily a sport for male aristocrats.

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When the 15th century began, European nations
were slowly recovering from the devastating
epidemic of the Black Plague which first struck in
1346.

Although no precise figures are available, the best

estimate is that fully 1/3 of Europe’s people died
through the duration of the plague through the
1370s.

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Western Europe was very dependant upon trade
with China, especially silk and tea.

Inorder to obtain such items, over land travel

was necessary.

These travels crossed several nations along

what was known as the Silk Road.

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Movable type and the printing press, invented in
Germany in the 1450s, made information more
accessible than ever before.

Marco Polo’s Travels, first published in 1477,

which described his travels in 13th Century China
and, most intriguing, described the nation as
bordered on the east by an ocean.

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The book made many Europeans to believe that
they could trade directly with China in oceangoing
vessels instead of relying on the Silk Road.

Each country craved easy access to African and

Asian goods—silk, dyes, perfumes, jewels, sugar,
gold, and especially spices such as pepper, cloves,
cinnamon, and nutmeg.

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Technological advances at the time were being
made in sailing as well.

The Lateen sail had been invented in the 14 th

century which greatly improved the
maneuverability of the ships, enabling vessels
to sail out of the Mediterranean and north
around the European coast, along with better
abilities to navigate.

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The new triangular lateen sail was used to sail to
islands in the Mediterranean Atlantic.

Europeans reached first the Canaries, then Madeira

and the Azores, all during the 14th century.

During the 15th century, armed with knowledge of

the winds and currents of the Mediterranean
Atlantic, Europeans regularly visited the three
island groups.

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By the 1490s Europeans had learned three key
lessons of colonization in the Mediterranean
Atlantic:
◦ How to transport their crops and livestock to exotic
locations.

◦ Natives of these lands could be conquered.

◦ Developed a viable model of plantation slavery and a

system of supplying nearly an unlimited supply of
such workers.

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The invention of the lateen sail and
improvements in navigation which allowed for
the exploration of the Mediterranean Atlantic,
coupled with the invention of the printing press,
led many Europeans to believe they could sail
WEST to China to conduct trade directly,
cutting out the middlemen.

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VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS, CABOT, AND THEIR
SUCCESSORS
Christopher Columbus was well schooled in the lessons
of the Mediterranean Atlantic.

Likeall accomplished seafarers, Columbus knew the

world was round.

So indeed, did most educated people: the idea that his
contemporaries believed the world to be flat is a myth.

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Columbus believed China could be reached by sailing
west a mere 3,000 miles.

Experts scoffed at this and accurately predicted the two

continents lay 12,000 miles apart.

On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail.

He landed in present day San Salvador on October 12,

1492 believing it to be India.

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Columbus would explore the islands of present
day Cuba and Hispaniola.

He took several species of plants, animals, and

even seized Natives to return to Spain.

Columbus in total would make three trips to the

new world.

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 Columbus would die at the age of 55 in 1506 still believing
he had reached India even though in 1499 Florentine
Amerigo Vespucci had explored the South American coast
and published the idea that a new continent had been
discovered.

 In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller, a German mapmaker, was the

first person to designate the newly discovered southern
continent as "America." He named the continent after
Amerigo Vespucci, who realized that he had reached a "new
world" rather than islands off the coast of Asia.

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SPANISH EXPLORATION
AND CONQUEST
 Only in the areas that Spain explored and claimed did colonization
begin immediately.

 Columbus would return to San Salvador in 1493, bringing 17 ships

loaded with 1,200 men, seeds, plants, livestock, chickens, and dogs.
 Also on board were microbes, rats, and weeds.
 The settlement named Isabella (in modern Dominican Republic) and
its successors became the staging area for the Spanish invasion of
America.

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The exchange of disease, crops, and animals between the
Western and Eastern Hemispheres from the 15th and 16th
centuries is known as the Columbian exchange.

Nothing in this exchange would have a more devastating

impact as the smallest item not even intently exchanged,
the microbe.

500,000 Natives resided in Hispaniola when Columbus

landed there in 1492. By 1542, fewer than 2,000 Natives
remained.

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 Spain would be the first to colonize the Americas and would be almost a full
century ahead of the other European powers.

 Spain established a model of colonization that other countries would try to

imitate, a model with three major elements:
◦ Crown control over the colonies allowing little autonomy.

◦ Most colonist were male.

◦ Colonies wealth was based on slave labor, rather it be Natives or imported from Africa.
This was known as the encomienda system, which granted native villages to
individual conquistadors as a reward for their services, thus legalizing slavery in all but
name.

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 In 1542, Spaniards demanded that the enslavement of natives be brought to
an end. A new set of reform laws were passed which forbid such action.

 These new laws did not forbid African enslavement, so the Spanish colonies
began to import more African slaves.

 St. Augustine Florida was settled in 1565, it is the first European settlement
in North America.

 Other than Spain, by the turn of the 17th Century no other Country
from the Eastern Hemisphere had been able to settle a permanent
colony in the new world.

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