Advanced Placement Advanced Placement Chapter 1:Chapter 1:

World’s Collide: Europe, World’s Collide: Europe, Africa and America 1450 Africa and America 1450

to 1620to 1620By Neil HammondMillbrook High School

The Shaping of North The Shaping of North AmericaAmerica

• Some 225 million years ago, a single supercontinent contained all the world’s dry land

• Over time, enormous chunks of this mass drifted away to form the continents and oceans we know today

The Shaping and Peopling of The Shaping and Peopling of North AmericaNorth America

• Great Ice Age – 2 million years great ice sheets blanketed much of Northern Europe, Asia and the Americas

• The glacier’s advance and retreat shaped the geography of the continent

• Some 35,000 years ago, the glaciers caused sea levels to drop, exposing a land bridge in the area of the present day Bering Sea. Nomadic Asian hunters crossed that bridge for about 250 centuries

The Land Bridge theory is only one theory of how the Americas were settled

The Peopling of North The Peopling of North AmericaAmerica

• As the glaciers retreated, these early Americans slowly moved Southward and Eastward, eventually reaching modern day South America

• By 1492, perhaps 54 million Native Americans inhabited the two American continents (low estimate 8 million…high estimate 100 million)

The Peopling of North The Peopling of North AmericaAmerica

• Over the centuries, Native Americans developed into countless tribes, evolved more than 2,000 languages and developed many diverse religions and cultures

• The Incas (Peru) and Aztecs (Mexico) developed stunningly sophisticated civilizations based on the cultivation of maize

The Earliest AmericansThe Earliest Americans

• The Inca and Aztec civilizations were impressive, but they lacked large draft animals and simple technology such as the wheel

• The spread of corn cultivation goes a long way to explaining development of Native groups (it reached the eastern coast about 1000 AD)

• The Iroquois in the 16th C created the closest North American approximation to the Aztecs and Incas

• But most native peoples of North America lived in small, scattered and impermanent settlements in 1492

Indirect Discoverers of the Indirect Discoverers of the New WorldNew World

• Norse seafarers had chanced upon North America about 1000 AD.

• They landed at a place in present day Newfoundland• They were not backed by strong nation state, so

their settlements were abandoned

Indirect Discoverers of the Indirect Discoverers of the New WorldNew World

• From the 11th to 14th centuries, tens of thousands of crusaders tried to retake Christian holy lands away from Muslims

• Crusaders acquired a taste for the exotic delights of Asia

• Such delights were expensive in Europe because they had to be transported great distances

Indirect Discoverers of the Indirect Discoverers of the New WorldNew World

• The Crusades represent the first stirrings of an expansionary Europe

• Goods that had been virtually unknown in Europe were now craved:– Silk for clothing , drugs for aching flesh, perfumes for

unbathed bodies, colorful draperies for drab castles and spices - especially sugar – for preserving and flavoring food

• These Eastern luxuries were expensive because of the great distances they traveled and the many middlemen that handled them. European consumers and distributers were naturally eager to find a less expensive route to the riches of the Asia or to develop alternate sources of supply.

Europeans Enter AfricaEuropeans Enter Africa• European appetites were

further whetted when Marco Polo, an Italian adventurer, returned to Europe in 1295 and began telling tales of his nearly twenty-year sojourn in China

Although the evidence for Marco Polo ever actually visiting China is sketchy, his book, with its descriptions of rose tinted pearls and golden pagodas, stimulated European desires for a cheaper route to the treasures of the east

Europeans Enter AfricaEuropeans Enter Africa• Before 1450,

Europeans refused to sail southward along the West African coast because they not get home against the prevailing northerly winds and south flowing currents

• By 1450, Portuguese mariners had overcome those problems:– 1) Caravel– 2) Use of trade

winds

From Africa, Europeans had to sail west and catch the trade winds that would eventually return them home. So, they had to sail AWAY from Europe to get back to Europe…pretty counterintuitive

Europeans Enter AfricaEuropeans Enter Africa• 1) The world of Sub-Saharan

Africa opened up for Europeans

• 2) The Portuguese set up trading posts along the African shore

• 3) The Portuguese colonized the African coastal islands of Madeira, the Canaries, São Tomé and Principe

• Sugar plantations on these islands needed labor, so these colonies became tied to the African slave trade. About 40,000 African slaves were transported to these islands from 1450 to 1500

• 1488 Diaz rounded the tip of Africa

• 1498 Vasco de Gama reached India

The Significance of 1492The Significance of 1492• The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to

Isabella of Castille began the process of unifying Spain

• This process was brutally completed in 1492 with the expulsion of Muslim “moors” from Granada

• The newly unified Spain were eager to beat the Portuguese to the wealth of the Indies. To the South and East, Portugal controlled the African coast and thus controlled the gateway to the eastern route to India; Spain, therefore, looked westward…

The World Known to Europe, The World Known to Europe, 14921492

Columbus Comes Upon a Columbus Comes Upon a New WorldNew World

• Enter Columbus. He hadpersuaded Ferdinand and Isabellato outfit him with three ships

• On October 12, 1492 Columbusand his men sighted an island in the Bahamas

• Columbus’s sensational achievement masks the fact that was a successful failure. He had not found a western route to the Indies…he had in fact bumped in to an enormous land barrier blocking his path. For decades afterwards, explorers strove to get around it or through it. Even when later explorers knew about North and South America, many still searched for a Northwest Passage to Asia.

When World’s Collide…When World’s Collide…

• 1) New World plants revolutionized the Old World economy and diet

• 2) The “biological expansion” of Europe– Animals (horses, pigs, cattle)– Plants (Kentucky bluegrass, dandelions, daisies)– Diseases (Yellow fever, Smallpox and malaria)

When World’s Collide…When World’s Collide…• The retreat of the glaciers led to the

disappearance of the land bridge. The North American continent was isolated from the rest of the world

• Most of the Old World “childhood diseases” had disappeared from the Native American societies, but that meant that Native Americans had no resistance after 1492

• Perhaps as many as 90% of Native Americans perished. Within 50 years of the Spanish arrival, the population of Taino Indians in Hispaniola had gone from 1 million to about 200 people

The Spanish ConquistadoresThe Spanish ConquistadoresGradually, Europeans realized the potential riches of the lands they had discovered

The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) gave the lion’s share of the lands to Spain

Spain became the dominant exploring and colonizing power of the 1500s. Spanish conquistadores fanned out across the Caribbean and eventually onto the mainland American continents

Principal Early Spanish Explorations

and Conquests

• The Islands of the Caribbean served as the bases for the invasion of South and Central America

The Spanish ConquistadoresThe Spanish Conquistadores Balboa, 1513 hailed as the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean

• Magellan 1519-22 circumnavigated the globe

• Ponce de Léon and Coronado searched, looking for gold

• Pizarro crushed the Incas of Peru in 1532

• By 1600, Spain was swimming in New World silver

•1) Price revolution in Europe

•2) Stimulated international trade with Asia