Download AP 01 Notes Exploration - Miami Killian Senior High School

European Settlements
General Causes for European Exploration:
1. European Pop growth in 15th century
*Crusaders (1100s) and adventurers (Marco Polo – mid 1200s) acquired and brought to Europe a taste for exotic goods from
Asia.
*Rebound after Black Death – 1347
*Agricultural technological breakthroughs
*Caused increase and reawakening in commerce and expansion of trade
*Luxuries from the east were very expensive in Europe – silk, drugs, perfumes, colorful drapery, spices, and especially sugar
Europeans were eager to find a cheaper way to get Eastern goods
2. Emergence of new governments – Nation States
*End of feudal governments – warfare among nobility greatly reduced the power of the landed classes, monarchs replaced
lords as the new centers of power
*More powerful and united Monarchs – merchants supported the new monarchs who had standing armies and navies and
gave them lucrative royal contracts and trading monopolies
Spain
Motives:
*Gold, Glory, and God
Material wealth, personal glory, religious devotion, and you can add “greed”
*Competition w/ Portugal as a leading seafaring nation – Portugal already controlled the African water route to India. (Bartholomeu
Dias got to the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, and Vasco da Gama went all the way around to India in 1497. Spain was forced to look
westward.
*Nationalism (loyalty to the crown)
*“We Spanish suffer from a strange disease of the heart for which the only known remedy is gold.” Hernando Cortez (Aztecs)
Exploration and Claims:
*Columbus – 1492 – 4 voyages – Bahamas
*His “discovery” linked 4 continents: 1. Europe provided the Markets 2.Africa furnished the labor 3. The Americas offered raw
materials
*Conquistadores - independent adventurers – 1490s and early 1500s – plundered villages, slaughtered men, and captured women
*Caribbean – Cuba (1511), Hispaniola, Jamaica (1508), Puerto Rico; Central America – 1511; Mexico – 1517 - Cortes (Aztecs)
*Claimed all of the New World for Spain – except for Brazil (this was much more than they could handle)
*Settlements in South and Central America and later what is present day Southwest U.S and North to California
Settlements:
*Mostly single males (late 20s); Few women
*Came from poor regions in Spain
*Initially not interested in permanent societies in the New World
*The Spanish had built a series of forts along the Florida coast to protect the Gulf Stream sea lanes used by the convoys carrying
wealth from their New World colonies
*More permanent settlements later began to develop as Spain tried to secure their new world domain
*St. Augustine – 1565 – oldest continually inhabited European settlement in the future US (N of Mexico) – the Spanish destroyed a
French Huguenot colony just north of St. Aug
*Santa Fe 1609 – present day New Mexico – no major gold mines found in New Mexico, but the Spanish established a special
missionary project there – small scale agriculture and sheep raising – not prosperous
*Mission at San Antonio 1718 – later known as the Alamo; California missions 1769-1813
*Spanish colonial establishments were larger and richer than their English rivals
Treatment and Interaction with Natives:
*Indian labor was exploited – Indian communities were a labor force for mines, plantations, and ranches
*The Encomienda system rewarded Spanish conquistadors w/ Indian villages and labor in exchange for legal protection and religious
guidance; colonial lords were given the right to the labor of a community of Indians – it was supposed to be a reciprocal
relationship, with the lord protecting the Indians as well as exploiting them, but in practice it amounted to another form of slavery
*Catholic missions were established – Dominican and Franciscan Monks (they pushed for better treatment of the Natives)
*Franciscans of New Mexico insisted that Indian people accept European cultural norms
*Bartolome de las Casas – catholic priest – pushed for the reform of the treatment of Indians – wrote The Destruction Of the Indies
(1552) – blaming the Spanish for the death of millions of Indians
*Major Pueblo revolts (late 1600s) caused the Spanish to realize they could not prosper in N. Mexico in constant conflict w/ natives.
*The relationship changed, and Spain allowed Natives to own land, practice tribal rituals, and intermarry
*They eventually fused with the Natives through marriage and tolerance (‘frontiers of inclusion”) - rather than shunning and isolating
them as their English adversaries would do – “frontiers of exclusion”
*More tolerant of racial differences than the English
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France
Motives:
*Find NW Passage
*Wealth
*Spiritual – convert Natives to Christianity
*Huguenot (French Protestants) refuge – mid 1500s due to the Protestant Reformation
Exploration and Claims:
*1500s – Unsuccessful search for the NW Passage (1534 – Cartier)
*The French were navigating the St. Lawrence River in pursuit of the fur trade
*1608 - Samuel Champlain founded Quebec
*1642 – Montreal founded as a missionary and trading center
*Early 1700s – settled New Orleans and other settlements along the Mississippi River Valley
Settlements:
*Mostly Men – although France did encourage the settlement of families in Acadia (Port Royal) and the colony of Canada along the
St. Lawrence River
*Coureurs de bois – “runners of the woods” - forest runners – fur traders
*No initial permanent colonies or towns – small settlements with small populations
*Established trading posts
*Set up missionaries: Jesuits and Recollects
Treatment and Interaction with Natives:
*Viewed natives as necessary economic partners – forged alliances with the Huron Indians, joined against in fighting their traditional
enemies, the Five Nation Iroquois Confederacy
*French were dependent on Native trappers and hunters
*They lived with Natives, and took native wives
*They studied local cultures and learned to speak their language
*Called “frontiers of inclusion”
*Jesuit missions (1625) – introduced Christianity as a supplement to the Indian way of life (as opposed to the Spanish)
Dutch
Motives:
*Protect their standing as a leading trading nation
*Establish permanent trading posts in the New World
*Search for the NW Passage
Exploration and Claims:
*1609 – Henry Hudson (Eng) – laid claim for the Dutch in present day NY State
*Called it New Netherland – main town called New Amsterdam (present day Manhattan Island
Settlements:
*Permanent settlements established in 1624
*Settled with entire families
*Large tracts of land (feudal estates) were given to “patroons” or landlords
*Encouraged many different ethnic groups to settle here – especially from N. Europe (Sweden, Finland, and Germany)
*Small population
*Weak leadership
English (early settlement and exploration – mid to late 1500s)
Motives:
*Competition in Trade
*Crowded cities due to the practice of “enclosure”
*Defense against Spanish Catholics – in Ireland and the New World
Exploration and Claims:
*1560s – Walter Raleigh and Humphrey Gilbert – colonized and overtook Ireland, they viewed the Irish as “savages” and inferior
*1560s - English Sea Dogs – Francis Drake – led devastating and lucrative raids against Spanish New World ports and fleets
*1584-87 - Sir Walter Raleigh establishes the Roanoke colony on the mid-Atlantic coast – Later known as the Lost Colony
Treatment and Interaction with Natives and Settlement Notes:
*See regional/individual colony notes
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The Columbian Exchange
*Things new to Europeans from the New World:
Iguanas, rattlesnakes, tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, pumpkins, sweet
potatoes, peppers, syphilis, vanilla, chocolate, cotton,
*Things introduced to the New World by Europeans:
Cattle, swine, sheep, horses, sugar cane, bananas, germs that caused smallpox, yellow
fever, and malaria, rice, coffee, domesticated animals
The Destruction of the Indians
*Warfare, famine, lower birth rates, and epidemic disease knocked out a majority of the Indian
American population.
*The primary factor in the decimation of native peoples was epidemic disease, brought to the
New World from the Old.
*In the 18th century (1700s) the colonial population overtook North America’s Indian
populations
*By the twentieth century (1900s) the native population had fallen by 90 percent
Conclusions (The Big Picture)
The European colonization of the Americas opened with Columbus’s voyage in 1492. For
Indian people, assaulted by invasion and disease, the consequences were disastrous. First
in the Caribbean, then most spectacularly in Mexico, the Spanish succeeded in
constructing the world’s most powerful empire on the backs of Indian and imported
African laborers. The New World colonies of Spain were characterized by a great deal of
intermarriage between the mostly male colonists and native women; in this sense they
were communities of “inclusion.”
Inspired by the Spanish success, in the second half of the sixteenth century both the
French and the English attempted to colonize the coast of North America but by the
century’s end had not succeeded in establishing any lasting communities. Instead, a very
different kind of colonial encounter was taking place in Northeast North America, one
based on commerce rather than conquest. In the next century the French would turn this
development to their advantage in Canada. Along the mid-Atlantic coast in Virginia,
however, the English would put their Irish experience to use, pioneering an altogether new
kind of American colonialism.
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