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Exploration and Colonization
Introduction This chapter opens with a description of Christopher Columbusʹs encounter with the Tainos, the native people on the island of San Salvador, in October 1492. Columbusʹs landfall in the Caribbean signaled the beginning of the transformative impact European cultures would have on the New World and its inhabitants. But that impact cut both ways— the encounter changed the history of Europe and the rest of the world as well. Europeans slowly began to understand that what Columbus had found was a whole New World (as they called it) separated from their own by vast oceans. After 1492, neither of these worlds would be the same again. Europe in the Age of Exploration, pp. 36‐40 Despite the brief settlement of Newfoundland by Norsemen around the year 1000, historically Europeans had generally turned to the East to pursue an expanding trade with Asia and Africa. Although risky, trading ventures could and did reveal rich new information, opportunities, and land. Mediterranean Trade and European Expansion The Mediterranean trade in exotic goods carried overland by traders from the East was dominated by Italian bankers and merchants from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. By the fifteenth century, various factors impeded and stimulated further European expansion. The bubonic plague— the Black Death‐wiped out about a third of the European population, causing great hardship and distress. While the insecurity and dislocation caused by the plague led some to avoid taking risks, paradoxically it encouraged others to venture out on voyages of exploration, especially those who sought to better their position within European society. This desire for overseas expansion was heightened further by advances in geographic knowledge and navigational aids. In the end, it was the Portuguese who took the lead in venturing out beyond the borders of the known world. A Century of Portuguese Exploration Portugal was a small and relatively poor nation located on the fringes of the thriving Mediterranean trade. It had participated in zealous crusades against Muslims in the Reconquest. Prince Henry the Navigator was an influential advocate of Portuguese exploration. From 1415 to 1460, he amassed information about sailing techniques and geography and encouraged the explorations and conquests down the daunting west coast of Africa that eventually would lead to a discovery of a sea route to the rich trade of the East. A key development in this quest was the Portuguese invention of a sturdier seagoing vessel: the caravel. By 1480, the Portuguese were trading with Africans, obtaining gold, slaves, and ivory, and venturing farther down the African coast. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa‐the Cape of Good Hope— and, ten years later, Vasco da Gama led the first Portuguese fleet to India. By the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese had established trading posts throughout the East Indies and controlled a widespread empire. The sea route they discovered to the East destroyed the monopoly of the old Mediterranean trade as it eliminated the need for overland travel and the role of middlemen merchants; it also allowed Portuguese merchants to charge much lower prices for the eastern goods they imported and still make handsome profits. A Surprising New World in the Western Atlantic, pp. 40‐44 Inspired by the example of the Portuguese, other Europeans reasoned that alternative routes to the Indies might be possible. One such European was Christopher Columbus. Exploration and Colonization
The Explorations of Columbus An Italian born in Genoa in 1451, Christopher Columbus spent years as a sailor and learned from Portuguese maritime innovations. He became obsessed with the possibility that by sailing west instead of east, one could eventually reach Asia. Although Columbus, like most other Europeans, believed that earth was spherical, he parted company with many of his fellow mariners in his certainty that the circumference of earth was much smaller than commonly believed and thus that an expedition west was feasible. In 1492, after years of seeking a sponsor, he persuaded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to provide financial backing for such an expedition. Columbusʹs initial voyage to the New World and his reports of the new landʹs abundance excited the overseas ambitions of the Spanish monarchs, who hastened to assert their control by asking for the popeʹs official confirmation of their right to the lands Columbus had discovered. Alarmed by this move, the Portuguese negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain in 1494, which established that all lands discovered to the east of an imaginary line belonged to Portugal, whereas all lands to the west of that line were the province of Spain. Columbus returned to the New World three more times; numerous conflicts between the Tainos and the Europeans foretold of the future conflicts that would arise between the Old World and the New World. Christopher Columbus died in 1506, still convinced that what he had explored was part of Asia. The Geographic Revolution and the Columbian Exchange Within thirty years of Columbusʹs landfall in the West Indies, European perceptions of world geography underwent a revolution. Journeys of other explorers in the wake of Columbusʹs voyage confirmed the presence of several large land masses in the western Atlantic, but gradually it became clear that these were not parts of Asia. Discoveries by Vasco Núñez de Balboa and Ferdinand Magellan provided conclusive geographic evidence that Columbus had stumbled on a whole new world&mdash but they also demonstrated the enormous dangers and the impracticalities of sailing west to gain access to Asia. Columbusʹs arrival in the Caribbean had other revolutionary effects as well. The reconnection of the two hemispheres initiated the Columbian exchange, an exchange of goods, peoples, and ideas. New items and technologies were introduced into the New World, including iron, sailing ships, and horses, as well as deadly diseases that caused epidemics among Indian tribes. American goods made the reverse trip, introducing Europeans to pineapples, corn, and potatoes. However, it took another generation for the Spanish to locate the material wealth for which they longed. Spanish Exploration and Conquest, pp. 44‐60 The early period of Spanish colonization in the New World (1492‐1519) took place primarily in the Caribbean islands, where Spanish settlers enslaved local tribes and forced them to grow crops and mine the limited gold available. Far more enticing to the Spanish monarchs was the possibility of great wealth in the interiors of Mexico and Central and South America. The mainland phase of exploration, which began with Hernán Cortésʹs expedition into Mexico in 1519, lasted until about 1545. The Conquest of Mexico In 1519, Hernán Cortés, who would become the most famous conquistador of all, led an expedition of Spaniards from Cuba into Mexico in search of a rumored kingdom of fabulous wealth. His guide and interpreter was Malinali, called Marina by the Spanish, a Mexican girl who had been sold into slavery by her stepfather, enabling her to learn the languages of numerous captors. Montezuma, the emperor of the Mexica, heard of Cortésʹs approach and sent emissaries bearing gifts to meet the intruders believing Cortés to be the Mexican god Quetzalcoatl. When the Exploration and Colonization
Spaniards finally reached Tenochtitlán in November 1519, they took Montezuma hostage, hoping to use him as a puppet through whom they could rule. However, after the Spanish massacred some Mexica nobles, the population revolted, killed Montezuma, and launched a ferocious assault against the Spaniards. Cortés and his men fought their way out of the city, but determined to return to conquer Tenochtitlán. In the spring of 1521, with the support of tens of thousands of Indian allies bitter at Mexican treatment, Cortés and his men besieged the city. Within two months, they had completed the systematic looting and destruction of Tenochtitlán and the total subjugation of the Mexica people. The Search for Other Mexicos Urged on by an insatiable lust for gold, conquistadors moved out to search for other Mexicos. In the following few years, Francisco Pizarro brutally conquered the vast Inca Empire in Peru, capturing a huge treasure of gold and silver. In the 1520s, Ponce de León and Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón explored the Atlantic coast; both died in their efforts. In the 1540s, Hernando de Soto and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado separately explored parts of the North American interior in search of gold. De Soto led his men on a brutal three‐year march through the southeastern United States in search of riches but perished empty‐handed in 1542. Coronado moved northward out of Mexico, traveling as far as Kansas in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola. After several years of wandering through the Southwest and Great Plains, he gave up, never having located the fabulously rich cities. Juan Rodríguez de Cabrillo sailed along the coast of California; his men made it as far as Oregon but were forced to turn back by a storm. The expeditions of conquistadors like de León, de Ayllón, de Soto, Coronado, and many others convinced Spaniards that, although extensive land stretched northward from Mexico and Peru, its inhabitants had few riches worth pursuing. New Spain in the Sixteenth Century Spain dominated the New World in the sixteenth century and created a colonial society that exploited the New World to serve the purposes of the Old. One‐fifth of all plunder went to the crown, and leaders such as Cortés took the rest, leaving common soldiers without a share of the loot. After 1519, Cortés and the Spanish monarchy compensated Cortésʹs men by giving them Mexica towns under the system of encomienda. The encomenderos often mistreated the Indians, abusing and overworking them. The Catholic missionaries who sought to convert the Indians were guilty of similar maltreatment. The Spanish crown itself sought to make amends, in part through a reform of 1549 known as the repartimiento, which limited the amount of labor an encomendero could require from his Indians. Despite these reforms, Indian labor had replaced gold as the most important New World treasure. Spaniards used Indian labor for silver mining, which created immense profits for the crown. New Spain had a rigid class and caste system comprising peninsulares, creoles, mestizos and Indians, who made up the bulk of the population. This type of strict social stratification by race and country of origin would become commonplace in European colonies throughout the New World. The Toll of Spanish Conquest and Colonization The conquest and colonization of New Spain devastated Indian cultures. By 1560, the main centers of Indian civilization had been destroyed and the remaining peoples completely subjugated. Adding to the culture shock of conquest was the deadly devastation wrought by European diseases, such as smallpox and measles, against which the Indians had no immunities. By 1570, the Indian population of New Spain had fallen about 90 percent from what it had been prior to Columbusʹs arrival. Because the Indian deaths left New Spain with a shortage of laborers, Exploration and Colonization
the colonists began to import African slaves, but due to their expense relatively few (under fifty thousand) were imported in the sixteenth century. Spanish Outposts in Florida and New Mexico After the explorations of de Soto, Coronado, and others, North America attracted little interest by Spanish officials. In the mid‐sixteenth century, however, the Spanish monarchy ordered the establishment of a few settlements in North America to give credence to its claim over the area. Thus, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Spanish established an outpost on the Atlantic coastline&mdash St. Augustine, founded in Florida in 1565. Sixteen hundred miles west of St. Augustine, another Spanish outpost was founded (in 1598) by Juan de Oñate in New Mexico. However, Indian revolts against Spanish rule saw Oñate slaughter eight hundred men, women, and children. Many disillusioned settlers returned to Mexico. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the few scattered, decrepit settlers in New Mexico were no more than a dusty reminder of Spanish claims to the North American Southwest. The New World and Sixteenth‐Century Europe, pp. 60‐64 The sixteenth century was considered the Golden Age of Spain. Using the vast wealth of New Spain, King Charles I fought dynastic and religious wars in Europe and used bribes to have himself selected as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. But still another challenge confronted the Catholic king: Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation and the European Order In 1517, Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation by publicizing his criticisms (ninety‐
five theses) of the Catholic Church. Luther wanted to reform what he believed were unscriptural practices. He insisted that people did not need priests to interpret the Bible for them and that faith in God, not good works, was essential for salvation. Although Lutherʹs ideas caught on quickly, the new theology faced a formidable adversary in Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman emperor, who swore to commit all his efforts to extinguish the Protestant heresies. New World Treasure and Spanish Ambition New World wealth allowed Charles V and his son and successor, Philip II, to maintain Spanish supremacy throughout the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, the ambitions of Charles V and Philip II were too great— the expense of constant warfare far outstripped the revenues arriving from New Spain. To raise more capital, both kings increased taxes in Spain more than fivefold during the sixteenth century, but the nobility, by far the wealthiest class, was exempt from taxation and burdensome new taxes fell mostly on poor peasants. To escape bankruptcy, Charles V and Philip II borrowed heavily from European bankers. It was no easy fix. Eventually interest payments on royal debts swallowed two‐thirds of the crownʹs annual revenues. Europe and the Spanish Example Spain proved that a New World empire could make a major contribution to a nationʹs power and prestige in Europe. France and England tried to follow Spainʹs example. In 1524, France authorized Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano to sail westward. Verrazano searched the coast of North America from North Carolina to Canada for the fabled Northwest Passage to the East Indies. More important for later French claims, Jacques Cartier mounted expeditions to the St. Lawrence River area beginning in 1535 and established a colony in 1541 that survived only briefly. English attempts to establish North American settlements in the sixteenth century were Exploration and Colonization
no more successful. Sir Humphrey Gilbert led two expeditions in 1578 and 1583 to establish colonies in Newfoundland, until Gilbert himself disappeared at sea. In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh explored the North Carolina coast and later sent a colony of over one hundred settlers to the island of Roanoke. When the next supply ship reached Roanoke, the colonists had disappeared mysteriously. Nothing was left except the word Croatoan carved on a tree. Conclusion: The Promise of the New World for Europeans, p. 64 The establishment of the Columbian exchange became the most important legacy of the European presence in the New World. This exchange, initiated by the Spanish, saw the introduction into the New World of European ʺproductsʺ and especially diseases. The exchange also demonstrated another sixteenth‐century event of momentous significance: after millions of years, the Atlantic Ocean no longer constituted an unbridgeable barrier separating the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. After almost a century of unchallenged dominion over the New World, the Spanish would find themselves having to contend with other European interlopers. In the seventeenth century, as Spainʹs new rivals began to challenge its hegemony and make colonial forays of their own, they would have to learn how to differ from and improve on Spainʹs example.