Download THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CREATING A NATION AND A SOCIETY

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
CREATING A NATION AND A SOCIETY
NASH  JEFFREY
HOWE  FREDERICK DAVIS  WINKLER  MIRES  PESTANA
7th Edition
Chapter 2: Europeans and Africans
Reach the Americas
Pearson Education, Inc, publishing as Longman © 2006
BREACHING THE ATLANTIC

1469: Ferdinand and Isabella
married, uniting Aragon and Castile
and launching Spain into its golden
age
–

Columbus made four voyages to the
Americas between 1492 and 1504
Portuguese extended their influence
along the west coast of Africa and to
East Asia
THE COLUMBIAN VOYAGES

Christopher Columbus was the son of a
poor Genoese weaver who married into
a family of Lisbon merchants with
contacts at court
–
–
–
Claimed distance from Europe to Japan
sailing west was 3,500 miles not
contemporary estimates of 10,000 to 12,000
miles
After 10 years trying to get financing,
Columbus was backed by Isabella and sent
west with three small ships and about 90 men
After 70 days at sea, land was sighted and
landfall was made 12 October 1492
THE COLUMBIAN VOYAGES

Columbus named the land San Salvador and
believed he had reached Asia
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–

Second Voyage: more than 1200 Spaniards in 17
ships
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
Explored Caribbean for 10 weeks
After landing on Hispaniola and Cuba, returned to Spain
with cinnamon, coconuts, gold, kidnapped natives and a
glowing report of discovered lands
Captured 1,600 Taínos on Hispaniola and took 550 to
Spain as slaves (only 350 survived the voyage)
Columbus died in 1506 still believing he had
discovered a route to Asia
THE COLUMBIAN VOYAGES

1497: Vasco de Gama, sailing for
Portugal, became the first
European to sail around the tip of
Africa
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Picked up East Indian pilot who guided
him across Indian Ocean in 1498
Allowed the Portuguese to colonize the
region and reach modern Indonesia
and southern China by 1513
By 1500 had captured African gold
trade
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT DURING
THE ERA OF RECONNAISSANCE

Commercial center of Europe shifted away from
the ports of the Mediterranean to Atlantic ports,
and in the process magnified religious conflict
–

Movement to return the Christian church to the purity
of early Christianity
Martin Luther initiated Protestant reformation
with its stress on inward faith over outward acts
–
Doctrine of “justification by faith” did not threaten
church until 1517 when attacked sale of indulgences
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT DURING
THE ERA OF RECONNAISSANCE

Pope used money from sale of indulgences to build St
Peter’s in Rome and Luther nailed 95 arguments
against indulgences and called for true repentance and
not false short cuts
–
–
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Printing (invented less than 70 years earlier) allowed for rapid
distribution of ideas
Germans responded to Luther’s call for abandonment of all
sacraments except baptism and communion
Luther also urged clergy to marry and railed against tyranny of
clergy over laity
Translated Bible into German so all people could read
Called on German princes to assume control over religion in
their states
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT DURING
THE ERA OF RECONNAISSANCE

Luther nailed 95 arguments against indulgences and
called for true repentance and not false short cuts
–

Printing (invented less than 70 years earlier) allowed for rapid
distribution of ideas
Germans responded to Luther’s call for abandonment
of all sacraments except baptism and communion
–
–
–
Luther also urged clergy to marry and railed against tyranny of
clergy over laity
Translated Bible into German so all people could read
Called on German princes to assume control over religion in
their states thus challenging the Pope’s authority
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT DURING
THE ERA OF RECONNAISSANCE

John Calvin, a Frenchman, published an
appeal in 1536 for every Christian to form a
direct, personal relationship with God
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God had saved certain souls at random before
Creation and damned the rest
Could not alter predestination only struggle to
understand and accept God’s saving grace if he
chose to impart it
One should behave as one of the elect
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT DURING
THE ERA OF RECONNAISSANCE

Calvin proposed reformed Christian
communities structured around the elect few
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–

Communities of “saints” must control the state not
the other way around
Elected bodies of ministers and dedicated
laymen, called presbyteries, were to govern the
church—first put into practice in the city-state of
Geneva in the 1550s
Sixteenth-century monarchs initially regarded
attacks on the Catholic church with horror
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT DURING
THE ERA OF RECONNAISSANCE

Many local princes adopted some form
of the reformed faith
–

King Henry VIII of England was most
important follower—broke from Catholic
Church and formed Anglican Church with
himself as its head
Countries most effected by
Reformation—England, Holland, and
France—were slow in trying to colonize
the New World, so Protestantism did
not gain as early a foothold in the
Americas as Catholicism
THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF
AMERICA



From 1492 to 1518 only modest attempts were made
at settlement
Three decades after 1518 became decades of
conquest
Spanish:
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Nearly exterminated native peoples of the Caribbean
Islands
Toppled and plundered the great Aztec and Inca empires
Gained control of territories 10 times as large as homeland
Discovered fabulous silver mines
Built an oceanic trade
THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF
AMERICA

Portuguese:
–


Concentrated mostly on building an eastward
oceanic trade to southeastern Asia
1493: the Pope had drawn a north-south line
300 miles west of the Azores, dividing the
Spanish and Portuguese spheres
1494: in the Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal
obtained Spanish approval to move the line
270 leagues farther west (no one knew at the
time this would give Portugal claim to Brazil)
CARIBBEAN EXPERIMENTS


Columbus’s second voyage to the New World in 1493
established the first Spanish colony in the Americas (in
present-day Santo Domingo)
The 3 million Taínos on the island, like thousands of
native peoples who followed, encountered subjugation,
biological disease, and ecological changes to the
environment after their encounter with Spain
–
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
Spanish left means of propagating European crops, livestock
and weeds
Spanish used military force to subdue Indians and turn them
into captive labor
Similar fate befell people of Puerto Rico in 1508 and
Cuba in 1511
CARIBBEAN EXPERIMENTS

Spanish diseases touched off a biological holocaust
that killed most of the Native Americans on these
islands within a single generation
–
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
Some Taíno women married Spanish men and produced the
first mestizo society
By 1550 Taíno ceased to exist as a distinct people
Spanish immigration to Caribbean, underway by 1510,
was closely followed by importation of African slaves
for sugar plantations
–
Over the course of the sixteenth century, over a quarter of a
million Spaniards, mainly young men, came to the Americas
THE CONQUISTADORS’
ONSLAUGHT AT TENOTICHTITLÁN


Within a single generation after the death of
Columbus, Spain had conquered most of
South America (except Brazil), Central
America and the southern parts of North
America from present-day Florida to
California
Spain was motivated by religion, nationalist
pride, and dreams of personal enrichment
THE CONQUISTADORS’
ONSLAUGHT AT TENOTICHTITLÁN

1519 Cortés left from Cuba with 11 ships,
550 Spanish soldiers, several hundred native
Cubans, some enslaved Africans, and horses
and attacked the Aztec capital
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After a four month siege, took the capital
Aided by horses, firearms and smallpox epidemic
in 1520
Also aided by support from local people who had
been oppressed by Aztecs and by Nahuatl
woman, Malinche, who acted as interpreter
Within two years had destroyed Aztec empire
THE CONQUISTADORS’
ONSLAUGHT AT TENOTICHTITLÁN

Over next few decades, Spanish extended their
dominion over the Mayan people of the Yucatán,
Honduras, and Guatemala
–

Francisco Pizarro marched into Peru with 168 men
and toppled the Incan Empire which had been
riddled by smallpox and weakened by violent internal
divisions
–

Aided by disease
Captured Incan capital in 1533
Spain launched further expeditions into Chile, New
Granada (Colombia), Argentina, and Bolivia in the
1530s and 1540s
THE GREAT DYING

Spanish contacts with the natives of the Caribbean,
central Mexico, and Peru in the early sixteenth century
triggered a biological epidemic of smallpox
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
Of 1-3 million Taínos on Hispaniola, less than 1000 survived
Of 15 million inhabitants in central Mexico, nearly half died in
15 years
In Valley of Mexico in heart of Aztec empire where population
was 15-3 million before Spanish arrival, by 1600 only 70,000
survived
Native Americans lacked immunity to most diseases
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Geographic isolation
Lack of domesticated animals
THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

Spanish ships brought:
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Grains: wheat, rye, barley, oats
Fruits: cherries, peaches, pears, lemons, oranges, melons,
and grapes
Vegetables: radishes, salad greens, onions
Herd animals: cattle, goats, horses, burros, pigs and sheep
Weeds and animal pests, not intentional but still destructive
Animals, not controlled by predators, overproduced
and overgrazed, leading to desertification and
destroying local environments
THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

Spanish ships brought back to Europe:
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Pumpkins, pineapples, squash, peanuts, beans,
Guinea pigs, turkeys, llamas and alpacas
Most transformative imports were:
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Tomatoes, which became a staple of European
cuisine
Potatoes, which quadrupled yield in calories per acre
and contributed to population increase
Maize, which became a staple in Spain, Greece and
the Balkans and spread to Africa and China as early
as the 1550s (New World sweet potato also reached
China)
SILVER, SUGAR, AND THEIR
CONSEQUENCES


Silver was found abundantly in the New World,
especially in South America
Native labor (along with some African slaves)
was coerced into mining the metal for the
Spanish
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Highly organized native societies were allowed to
control their own communities but were expected to
meet huge labor drafts for mining
By 1660s, had extracted more than 7 million
pounds of silver, tripling the entire European
supply
SILVER, SUGAR, AND THEIR
CONSEQUENCES
Price Revolution:
 Prices doubled between 1550 and 1600 and rose
another 50% in the next half century
 Farmers and merchants did well but artisans, laborers
and landless agricultural workers suffered as wages
failed to keep up with prices
 Brought a major redistribution of wealth and increased
the number of people living in poverty helping build
pressure to immigrate to the Americas
 Rising prices stimulated commercial development and
intensified changes toward capitalism
SILVER, SUGAR, AND THEIR
CONSEQUENCES


Portuguese staked their fortunes on sugar
production in Brazil
Lowland sugar planters scattered the native
population and imported platoons of slave
laborers
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By 1570 were producing nearly 6 million pounds
of sugar annually
By 1630s number had risen to 32 million pounds
Sugar revolutionized the tastes of Europeans
and stimulated the slave trade
SILVER, SUGAR, AND THEIR
CONSEQUENCES



Sugar production moved from Brazil to
Caribbean Islands
In the early seventeenth century, England,
Holland and France, challenged Spain and
Portugal in the Caribbean
Sapped Spain’s strength through:
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Contraband trading with Spanish settlements
Piratical attacks on Spanish treasure fleets
Out-right seizure of Spanish-controlled islands
SPAIN’S NORTHERN FRONTIER


Northern borderlands of New Spain—
present-day Florida, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California and the Gulf region—
were third in importance behind Mexico and
Peru and the Caribbean Islands
Spanish introduced horses and cattle, both of
which were tough on the grasslands and
cleared the way for an invasion of European
weeds and less nutritious grasses
SPAIN’S NORTHERN FRONTIER


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1515 & 1521: Juan Ponce de Léon’s expeditions to
Florida
1526: Lucas Vasques de Ayllón created a short lived
settlement in South Carolina
For next half century, Spaniards planted small
settlements along the coast as far north as
Chesapeake Bay
1539-1542: Hernán de Soto led a military expedition
into the homelands of the Creek and Choctaw, going
as far west as eastern Texas, without finding gold and
silver he sought
–
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Cut brutal swath across area
De Soto died enroute and remnants of the expedition limped
back to Mexico
SPAIN’S NORTHERN FRONTIER



1559: Marched into gulf region and enslaved Native
Americans
1565: sought to secure Florida by building a fort at St
Augustine and evicting French 40 miles to the north
1540-1542: Francisco Vásquez de Coronado explored
American southwest with several hundred Spanish
soldiers, a number of Africans and a baggage train of
1,300 friendly Native Americans, servants and slaves
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Opened much of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado to
Spanish control
Got as far north as Great Plains
SPAIN’S NORTHERN FRONTIER


1598: Don Juan de Oñate led 129
soldiers, 500 Spanish settlers and 10
Franciscan friars into land occupied
by some 60,000 Pueblo Indians
For the next 80 years, Franciscans
tried to graft Catholicism onto Pueblo
culture by building churches on the
edge of native villages
–
Little resistance as long as content to
overlay Native American culture with
veneer of Catholicism because Pueblos
found advantage to Spanish military
protection against Apaches and
appreciated access to Spanish livestock
ENGLAND LOOKS WEST



By late sixteenth century, England had the
necessary conditions to propel her overseas
During the early seventeenth century,
English, as well as the Dutch and the French,
began overtaking Spanish and Portuguese
Between 1604 and 1640 the English planted
several small colonies in the Caribbean
–
Planted tobacco and sugar
ENGLAND CHALLENGES SPAIN

England was the slowest European power to begin
expansion in the New World
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Only voyages of John Cabot gave them any claims to area
Were interested in fish
Between 1524 and 1535 Cartier and Verrazano
surveyed the area for the French seeking a water
passage to India
Changes in the late sixteenth century propelled the
English overseas:
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Rising production of wool cloth sent merchants looking for new
markets after 1550
Population growth and rising prices depressed the economic
conditions of ordinary people and made them willing to
emigrate in search of opportunity
ENGLAND CHALLENGES SPAIN

Under Elizabeth I (1558-1603) tensions
between Protestant England and Catholic
Spain worsened
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Pope excommunicated Elizabeth in 1571 and
absolved her subjects from paying her allegiance
Anti-Protestant Spanish actions
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1560s King Philip II of Spain had sent 20,000 troops
into the Netherlands to suppress Protestantism
1572: helped arrange massacre of thousands of
French Protestants
ENGLAND CHALLENGES SPAIN

Anti-Spanish English actions:
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By 1580s, Elizabeth was providing covert aid to Dutch
resistance and Spain vowed to punish her
1585: Elizabeth sent 6000 English troops to Netherlands
1586: Sir Francis Drake, who had been raiding Spanish
shipping, bombarded St Augustine, looted the city and started
an epidemic among the Indians
1588: Philip sent a Spanish armada of 130 ships,
30,000 men and 2,400 artillery pieces to crush England
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Two week battle resulted in defeat of Spanish with remnants of
their crippled fleet blown out to sea by a “Protestant” wind
THE WESTWARD FEVER

The opportunities of the New World began to
permeate all levels of English society in the 1580s
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

Encouraged by Richard Hakluyt and his nephew of the
same name who advertised life in the Americas and what it
offered to each group in society
England’s first effort at colonization occurred in
Ireland where it extended control in a series of brutal
campaigns in the 1560s and 1570s
England’s first attempts at American colonization
were weak and unprofitable
THE WESTWARD FEVER

Began with small settlements:
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1583 in Newfoundland
1585-1588 in Roanoke Island off North Carolina coast
(colonists had vanished by 1591)
1604 and 1609 failed to establish colony in Guiana
1607 attempt to settle in Maine lasted one year
1607 established colony in Virginia (Jamestown)
1612 established colony in Bermuda
British colonial ventures had the Queen’s blessings
but, unlike Spanish and Portuguese attempts, not
her money
THE WESTWARD FEVER

English success depended on merchant adventurers
soliciting wealth and support of prospering middle
class
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Originally mainly drawn to West Indian tobacco
production—St Christopher (1624), Barbados (1627), Nevis
(1628), Montserrat (1632), and Antigua (1632)
In addition to financing, colonies needed colonists
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80,000 left England as a result of changing economic
conditions between 1600 and 1640
Over the next 20 years, another 80,000 left
Decline of wool market in 1618 as a result of renewed
European religious wars encouraged further emigration
Religious persecution and political considerations also
contributed to decisions to leave
ANTICIPATING NORTH AMERICA

Early English settlers had developed dual image of
Native Americans
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Gentle people who eagerly received Europeans—a
reflection of actual friendly receptions, of European vision of
New World as an earthly paradise, and of desire to trade
Savage and hostile people; crafty, loathsome half-men—
drawn from violent Spanish accounts and Indian possession
of land coveted by new settlers
English could overcome land problem by either
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Claiming they would share the land and in exchange offer
Indians access to a higher civilization and Christianity
Portraying Indians as savage brutes who disqualified
themselves from rightful ownership of the land
AFRICAN BONDAGE

At least 96 million Africans were brought
to the Americas in the four centuries after
Columbus
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
Millions more perished on voyage over
Nearly as many were traded across the
Sahara to Red Sea and Indian Ocean slave
markets from 650 to 1900
Without African labor, European colonies
would not have flourished as they did
North America was fringe area of slave
trade
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10,000 came in seventeenth century
350,000 came in eighteenth century
THE SLAVE TRADE


The African slave trade began as an attempt to fill
a labor shortage in the Mediterranean world
Portuguese merchants were the first European
slave traders following decades of trade by the
Arabs and Moors
–

Portuguese were merely new trading partner who could
provide guns, horses, copper and brass, and textiles
Slavery had long been part of African life with
wars being fought to capture slaves
THE SLAVE TRADE
Sugar transformed the slave trade
 Sugar production spread from islands off coast of
Africa to Brazil and the Caribbean
 When in seventeenth century, craving for sugar
reached powerful levels, so did competition for
control of Caribbean islands and the trading forts
on the African coast
 African kingdoms, eager for European trade,
fought each other to supply whites
THE SLAVE TRADE



In seventeenth century, Dutch replaced the Portuguese as
major slave supplier
– English took over control of the trade in the 1690s
In the eighteenth century, 6 million Africans were sold to the
Americas
Once established on a large scale, Atlantic slave trade
changed slave recruitment in Africa
– When criminals and “outsiders” could not meet demand,
African kings, armed with European guns, waged war against
their neighbors
– By 1730, Europeans were supplying 180,000 weapons a
year, spreading kidnapping and organized violence while
strengthening the most militarily effective kingdoms
THE SLAVE TRADE


Three-quarters of the slaves transported to English
North America came from the part of western Africa
between the Senegal and Niger Rivers and the Gulf
of Biafra
Young men between 10 and 24 were preferred over
women
– Reflected European preference for field hands
– Reflected the preference of African raiding parties
to keep women who were chief agriculturalists and,
in matrilineal and matrilocal societies were too
valuable to be sacrificed
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

After capture, Africans endured a forced march to
the coast
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Once at the coast, were confined in fortified
enclosures on the beach and inspected before sale
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Many attempted suicide or died from exhaustion or hunger
Traders often branded their purchases before ferrying them
to the ships
Many attempted to leap over and drown themselves rather
than leave their homeland
On board ships, slaves were crowded together like
corpses in coffins
–
Refusal to take food was so common, captains developed a
method of force feeding that involved flogging and hot coals
to the lips and, if necessary, a mouth wrench
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE


Slaves rebelled on one-tenth of slave ships
Trip took four to eight weeks and one of every
seven captives died in route
–
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Many others arrived deranged or dying
Overall relocation averaged six months from time
of capture to arrival at the plantation of the colonial
buyer
SLAVERY IN EARLY SPANISH
COLONIES

Thousands of slaves were already in North America
having come with fifteenth-century Spanish explorers
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
Morrocon-born Estevan was indispensable to Coronado’s
expedition in the Southwest
While Spanish-owned slaves worked as field hands
and in fort and church construction, they were also
valuable as soldiers, guides, and linguistic gobetweens with Native American people
–
–
Had little of the caste-like character it developed in the
English colonies
The frequent crossing of blood among Spaniards, Native
Americans and Africans contributed to the greater flexibility
of Spanish slavery
DISCOVERING US HISTORY
ONLINE
1492: An Ongoing Voyage
http://www.lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/intro.html

The European Voyage of Exploration
http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/

Jamestown
http://www.virtualjamestown.org/images/white_debry_html/introduc
tion.html

Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier
http://international.loc.gov/intldl/eshtml/

The Columbus Doors
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/COLUMBUS/colhome.html

Florida History Timelines
http://palmm.fcla.edu/fh/outline/outline.html

DISCOVERING US HISTORY
ONLINE
Sir Francis Drake
http://www.mcn.org/2/oseeler/drake.htm

John Cabot
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/cabot.html

Africans in America
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr2.html

African American Odyssey: Slavery—the Peculiar Institution
http://www.lepg.org/index.html

Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries
http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/slavedata/index.html

Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy
http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave/
