The Age of Exploration

Life Found on Mars!

Unbelievable but true: This recent photo from the unmanned space exploration to Mars shows conclusive proof that savage, almost humanlike, alien life-forms exist among the rich mineral deposits on the surface of Mars.

Barack Obama Wants You: Eager to be the first to make contact with the newly discovered aliens, the United States Government has sanctioned the first privately owned space vehicles to make the journey to Mars. Volunteers are wanted for the first manned missions to Mars.

Would you volunteer for the mission? Yes or No? ___________Why/Why not? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What sort of people do you suppose would volunteer for this kind of mission?___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What would they have to gain? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What, if anything could go wrong? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What technological advances would have to occur before this could actually happen?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Exploration and Navigation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3fYF6YvesA

The biggest reasons for the Age of Exploration: “The 3G Theory”

1. Desire for spices, and the profit from selling and trading them. Expanding economies of Europe and increased trade in Asia, led to the need for new raw materials. (GOLD)

2. Competition between European powers. The Desire to be first to explore and conquer new places for their country (GLORY)

3. To diffuse (spread) Christianity Protestantism (England + Holland) Catholicism (Spain, Portugal + France). (GOD)

The search for spices

• During the Middle Ages, the Crusaders who fought the Muslims in the Middle East learned of spices, and brought them back to Europe.

• The Europeans wanted cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and most of all pepper to spice and preserve meat, make perfume(s).

• The chief source of spices was the Moluccas (in modern day Indonesia) which they called the Spice Islands.

The Muslim Situation• Europeans wanted spices.• Following the fall of Constantinople (it became

Istanbul), Europe no longer had their “gateway to the East.”

• Trading over land was expensive and dangerous.

• Muslims and Italian sailors controlled the trade by sea.

• Other European sailing powers (England, France, Spain and Portugal) wanted in on the riches of the spice trade, but had to find a way to get there.

Improved technology leads to better sailing techniques…

• European cartographers (mapmakers) created much better maps and charts of the sea and its currents.

• Europeans mastered the use of the astrolabe, an instrument developed by the Greeks and mastered by the Muslims, to determine their latitude at sea.

• The caravel, a ship that combined European body styles with Muslim triangular sails and Chinese rudders, made ships much faster and able to travel farther.

Portugal• By the 1400s, Portugal

was strong enough to expand into Muslim controlled North Africa.

• Prince Henry, known as “Henry the Navigator,” hoping to spread Christianity and find Muslim gold, began a school for cartographers, sailors and captains at Sagres.

Portugal (continued)

• In 1487, Bartolomeu Diaz, rounded the southern tip of Africa. He ended the myth that the sea was full of monsters, and it gave hope to those who wished to sail to India. He named the tip of Africa the “Cape of Good Hope.”

Bartolomeu Diaz

Cape of Good Hope

Portugal (continued)

• In 1497, Vasco da Gama led four ships around the southern tip of Africa, and on his next voyage, made it to the port of Calicut, in western India.

• The spices he brought back sold at 3000% of the money he put into it.

• His sailors paid a heavy price, they discovered scurvy, a disease caused by lack of vitamin C.

Vasco da Gama

Spain• An Italian sailor from Genoa

wished to sail for Portugal. He had an idea that since the world was round, a relatively new concept at the time, that if he sailed westward, that he would reach India faster. His name was Christopher Columbus.

• Portugal refused to sponsor him, so he got help from the Spanish King Ferdinand and his wife Isabella, who were famous for expelling the Muslim Moors from Spain.

Ferdinand and Isabella sponsor the voyages of Columbus.

Spain (continued)

• Columbus made two huge errors:– Underestimating the size of the

world greatly– Not knowing that two continents

lay in his way• He had three ships… the Nina, the

Pinta, and the Santa Maria. He sailed west and ran into the islands of the Caribbean. Since he thought he was in the Indies, he called the people he found there “Indians.”

Naming the “New World”

• In 1507 a German cartographer read reports of a “new world” written by an Italian sailor named Amerigo Vespucci. He labeled the region “America” after Vespucci. The region that Columbus had found became known as the West Indies.

The Grande Exchange• Introduced to the Americas:1. DISEASES: rapidly devastated human populations that had no

resistance to Old World Diseases, killing 50-90% of native populations; 50 epidemics in Valley of Mexico 1519-1820 often carried to villages by other natives, arriving before actual contact with Spanish

• smallpox, measles, whooping cough, bubonic plague, malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, influenza

2. ANIMALS: no large mammals in Middle America; introduced new means of transportation/labor horse became indispensable to plains Indians; new food sources

• horses, pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, rats (spread disease, decimated native small animals)

• adapted quickly • competed with Indians for food • destroyed vegetation

The Grande Exchange (continued)Brought to the Americas:3. PLANTS:• sugar cane - harmed both man and environment; forbearer of plantation

system with slave labor and the initial assault on tropical rainforests; – from 1650 until beginning of 20th century, Caribbean region was the world's

center of cane sugar; worldwide demand – changed ethnic make up of much of Latin America

• grains - wheat, millet, barley, sorghum, rice; adapted well to many areas, enhanced native diets

• chick peas (garbanzos), soybeans • fruit - peaches, pears, oranges, melons, limes, bananas • vegetables - onions, radishes, salad greens, yams, peas, leeks, parsley • European clover, grasses, many other plants widely used in our modern

American landscape • weeds - Kudzu (legume brought for forage from Japan - has taken over in

the Gulf and South Atlantic US) 4 INSECTS:• Asian cockroaches, Japanese beetle, Dutch elm disease, Killer bees, Gypsy

moth

The Grande Exchange (continued)Brought to the Americas:5. TECHNOLOGIES:• Alphabet/ writing • iron-edge tools -didn't shatter like those made of obsidian by Indians • farming equipment - plow; drastically changed agricultural practices • wheel • gunpowder • ranching - changed landscape; walled ranches with tile roofs, adobe brick buildings

surrounded by corrals and pastureland; cowboys, gauchos • Other new institutions

– towns - relocated Indians from their land into villages and towns; changed building patterns that used wood and charcoals; led to more deforestation

– government structures/policies; encomienda - system that gave the right to a conquistador to collect tribute from Indians

– religion (Catholic) 6. PEOPLE:• Spanish, Portuguese - main colonizers of Middle and South America • Africans - necessary as native population decreased; worked on plantations;

eventually replaced Indians as the dominant ethnic group in the Caribbean; infused much of their culture into many areas of the Americas

• British, Irish, French, Germans, Dutch, Asians, Indians (from India)

The Grande Exchange (continued)• Brought Back to Europe:PLANTS: maize (corn) from Mexico

– introduced in Africa and south of equator as early as 1550 – fed Africans that provided the manpower for American plantations – grows where rainfall was sufficient in S. Europe, especially important to Greeks and Serbs – led to population growth necessary to provide labor for industrialization

• potato from Peru – basic food for people all over the world; no other single crop has played such a decisive

role – N. Europe potatoes dominated the diet of the poor in the 19th/20th century. This in turn

contributed to population growth which led to industrialization of Germany and Russia Maize (corn) and potatoes had a fundamental advantage over the different sorts of grain in Europe - they produced more calories per acre, feeding up to 4 times as many people.

• sweet potatoes • tomatoes

– adapted well to Mediterranean climate – vitamin content supplemented diet – what would Italian food be without tomatoes?

• healing plants – quinine from Peruvian bark – Ipecac from Amazon roots – today some 500 prescription drugs derived from American herbs, other plants

Line of demarcation- The Treaty of Tordesillas

• Portugal and Spain fought over who got what in the Americas… finally Pope Alexander VI stepped in and ordered both Catholic monarchs to settle the problem.

• On June 7, [1494], the Spanish and the Portuguese signed a treaty to divide the world in two. The dividing line ran through the Atlantic with Spain gaining lands to the west including all the Americas. Brazil was granted to Portugal. The eastern half including Africa and India was given to Portugal.

Circumnavigating the Globe• In 1519, a minor Portuguese noble named

Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain with five ships and hundreds of men.

• He discovered the Strait of Magellan, and sailed into the Pacific –he named it because it means “peaceful”- Ocean.

• He faced several mutinies, and was murdered in the Philippines.

• In1522, one ship and 18 sailors returned to Spain, and were credited with being the first to sail all the way around the globe, or circumnavigate it

Voyage of Magellan

Spain (continued)“Cortez the Killer”

• In 1520, Hernan Cortez (also spelled Cortes) and his conquistadors went to the “new world” in search of gold. They found the Aztec Empire in what is today Mexico.

• With the use of guns, and with the help of the fact that the Aztecs had no immunity to the diseases (smallpox) the Spaniards carried, the Aztec Empire was almost completely eliminated.

Spain (continued)

Spain (continued)

Spain (continued)

• Soon after Cortez, Francisco Pizarro followed. He went to South America to what is now Peru. He destroyed the Inca culture for their gold.

• Spain sent ships back and forth to the new world to take the gold home and make themselves the richest nation in the world. These ships came to be known as the Spanish Armada.

Pizarro destroys the Inca Empire

Encomienda

Encomienda System• A hierarchical social order emerged with the

Indians and slaves at the bottom, the mestizos and mulattos in the middle and the Europeans and their descendants at the top. Royal protection of the Indian was generally ineffective. Because Spaniards and creoles looked down on manual labor, they developed several labor systems to force Indians to work for Spanish landowners.

The English, Dutch, and French in the “New World”

The English, Dutch, and French in the “New World” (continued)

• French Captain Jaques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River and established the area now know as Quebec (Canada).

Francis Drake• Eager to get into the

race for new land and glory, Queen Elizabeth sends out explorer Sir Francis Drake, who becomes the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe.

Sir Francis Drake (continued)

The English, Dutch, and French in the “New World” (continued)

• The Northern European countries spread Protestantism to the “New World.”

• England sent protestants looking for religious freedom to what is now the U.S.

• France settled in the areas founded by Cartier, most notably, Quebec.

• Cash crops• Mercantilism

What plant is this?

French seaport at the height of Mercantilism in the 17th century

The English, Dutch, and French in the “New World” (continued)

• Like the Spanish encomienda system who used the slave labor of the Aztec and Mestizo people, the Northern Europeans wished to plant cash crops which required lots of labor.

• Europeans began plantation systems in the Caribbean and the Americas which has destroyed the economies of the people who first lived there, as well as destroyed the enviornment

• African slaves were imported (slavery was based on race).

• Both leave behind a rigid class system that lasts for generations.

Trade in Africa• Made possible by

outposts established along the coast.

• Slave ports.

• Trade in slaves, gold, and other products with peoples of the interior.

Triangular Trade

• Linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

• Traded in slaves, sugar and rum.

• Europe also mined precious metals (gold and silver) from the new world to give it wealth and power like the world has never known.

The Middle Passage

Trade in Asia

• Colonization was done by small groups of merchants who obtained the rights from the monarch.

• Dutch East India Company

• British, Portuguese, and Dutch trading companies invest heavily in trade in the east.

The Dutch East India Company

-joint stock company

-still exists today