Chapter 2: The Rise of the Atlantic World (1400-1625)

African and European Backgrounds

Christopher Columbus - Italian explorer who claimed the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas for the king and queen of Spain

West Africa and western Europe were being transformedo Developing a market society

European’s population doubled in sizeo It’s distribution of wealth and power shifted

New modes of thought and spirituality undermined established beliefs and knowledge

West Africa: Tradition and Change

The trans-Saharan caravan trade stimulated the rise of grassland kingdoms and empireso The richest grassland states were in West Africa

Lots of gold Mali - A leading power in the West African savanna during the 14th and 15th centuries

o Timbuktu was the cultural center in Mali

Mali’s Muslim rulers imported brass, copper, cloth, spices, manufactured goods, and Arabian horses

o Exports were gold and slaves

Europeans switched their currency to gold, so their demand for gold went upo This brought thousands of newcomers from the savanna and Central Africa to the region

later known Africa’s Gold Coast

Kongo - The most powerful and highly centralized kingdom along the African Coast in the 15th century

Rulers of smaller kingdoms depended largely on their ability to persuade

West African viewed marriage as a way for extended families to forge alliances for mutual benefit

West African wives generally maintained lifelong links with their own families

A driving force behind marriage in West Africa was the region’s high mortality rate from frequent famines and tropical disease epidemics

Children contributed to a family’s wealth by increasing its food production and the amount of land it could cultivate

Men usually married more than one women for more children to help out

In coastal rainforests, West Africans grew crops like yams, sugar cane, bananas, okra, and eggplant, among other foods, as well as cotton for weaving cloth

In the grasslands the staff of life was grain supplemented by cattle raising and fishing

Cowry shells served as the medium of exchange currency if they didn’t have gold

West African religions emphasized the importance of believers’ continuous revelations as source of spiritual truth

The ivory, cast iron, and wood sculptures of West Africa were used in ceremonies reenacting creation myths and honoring spirits

European Culture and Society

Renaissance - An era of intense artistic creativity in Europe after the Middle Ages

Renaissance creativity was partly inspired by intense social and spiritual stress

Gender, wealth, inherited position, and political power defined every European’s status, and few lived outside the reach of some political authority’s taxes and laws

Most Europeans – about 75 percent – were peasants, frequently driven to starvation by taxes, rents, and other dues owed to landlords and Catholic Church officials

Deforestation deprived peasants of wild foods and game, whose food sources disappeared with deforestation|

Some English writers viewed overseas colonies as places where the unemployed, landless poor could find opportunity, thereby enriching their countries rather than draining resources

Joint-Stock Company - A business corporation that amassed the capital through sales of stock to investors

Religious Upheavals

Europe was home to Christians, Muslims, and Jews in 1400

For more than three centuries, European Christians conducted numerous Crusades against Muslims in Europe and the Middle East, and Muslims retaliated with “holy war”

o Turned into wars of conquest

The Church had assumed the authority to grant extra blessings, or “indulgences”, to repent sinners

o Indulgences became popular

In 1517, German monk Martin Luther openly attacked the practice of indulgenceso The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated himo His revolt led to the Protestant Reformation

Protestant Reformation - A movement led by Martin Luther in the 16th century in which people split from the Catholic Church

Luther’s search for salvation convinced him that God bestowed salvation not on the basis of worldly deeds, but solely to reward a believer’s faith

John Calvin was a protestant reformer as wello Believed in predestination

Predestination - God already had planned who was going to heaven or hell. You couldn’t change where you were going

Catholic/Counter-Reformation - The movement in the 16th century within the Catholic Church to reform itself as a result of the Protestant Reformation

The Reformation in England (1533-1625)

King Henry VIII persuaded Parliament to pass a series of acts in 1533-1534 dissolving his marriage and proclaiming him supreme head of the Church of England (Anglican Church)

Under Edward VI (Henry’s son) the church veered sharply toward Calvinismo Mary I tried to restore Catholicism, in part by burning several hundred Protestants at

the stake

Puritans - Militant Calvinists who insisted that membership in a congregation be limited to those who had a conversation experience and that each congregation be independent for other

congregations and of the Anglican hierarchy

Puritanism appealed primarily to the small but growing number of people in the “middling” ranks of English society

Europe and the Atlantic World (1400-1600)

Expanding Europeans proclaimed it their mission to introduce Christianity and “civilization” to the savages and pagans of alien lands.

o Outcomes of the new imperialism were: Transatlantic slave trade Colonization of the Americas

Portugal and the Atlantic (1400-1500)

Tiny Portugal led the way in overcoming impediments to long-distance oceanic travel

Renaissance new learning helped sharpen Europeans’ geographic sense

Prince Henry – The Navigatoro By Henry’s death, Portugal was exporting substantial quantities of gold and slaves from

south of the Sahara Portugal showed western Europeans a way around Africa to Asia

The “New Slavery” and Racism

Many Africans were enslaved because of indebtedness

Portuguese traded guns with the Africanso African soldiers would use the weapons to get more slaves for the Portuguese

New Slavery - Form slavery initiated by Portugal where African slaves were forced to work on sugar plantations and were subjected to new extremes of dehumanization

The unprecedented magnitude of the trade resulted in a demographic catastrophe for West Africa and its peoples

o African slaves were subjected to new extremes of dehumanizationo They were thought of now as property instead of lower class

Race was now the ideological basis of the new slaveryo Europeans justified enslaving blacks as their Christian duty

To the Americas and Beyond (1492-1522)

Columbus’s imaginations led him to conclude that Europeans could reach Asia more directly by sailing westward across the Atlantic rather than around Africa and across the Indian Ocean

The Treaty of Tordesillas drew a line in the mid-Atlantic, dividing all future discoveries between Spain and Portugal

America was named after Amerigo Vespucci

Spain Conquistadors (1492-1536)

Tainos and other Native Americans in the Caribbean colonies died off in shockingly large numbers from smallpox, measles, and other imported diseases

o To replace the dead Indians the colonists enslaved more Africans to do the labor

Hernán Cortés enlisted the support of enemies and discontented subjects of the Aztecs in a quest to conquer that empire

The Colombian Exchange

Colombian Exchange - The widespread exchange of animals, plants, germs, and peoples from Europe, Africa, and the Americas

Footholds in North America (1512-1625)

Spain’s Northern Frontier

Most of Spain’s horses died from arrow wounds while their livestock scattered

St. Augustine, Florida - City in Florida where Spain established the first lasting European post in North America in 1565

New Mexico - The Spanish colony in the upper Rio Grande Valley

Encomiendas - Grants awarding Indian labor to wealthy colonists

France: Colonizing Canada

New France - Areas in North America under French colonial rule

England and the Atlantic World (1558-1603)

England had two objectives in the Western Hemisphere in the 1570’s.o To find the northwest passage to Asia and discover gold on the wayo To singe the king of Spain’s beard by raiding Spanish fleets and ports

Failure and Success in Virginia (1603-1625)

James I signed a truce with Spain in 1604

Virginia - colony on the James River

Tobacco emerged as Virginia’s salvationo Virginia exported large amounts to a newly emergent European market

Indentured Servants - Young men and women who were given free passage to America with shelter, food, and clothing in exchange for labor from 4-7 years

Serious problems Virginia faced in 1622:o Local officials systematically defrauded the shareholders by embezzling treasury funds,

overcharging for supplies, and using company laborers to work their own tobacco fieldso Despite massive immigration, the colony’s population continued to experience an

appallingly high death rateo Relations with Native Americans steadily worsened after Powhatan died

New England Begins (1614-1625)

In 1620 Thomas Weston sent over 24 families in a small leaky ship called the Mayflowero The expedition leaders were Separatist Puritans who had withdrawn from the Church of

England and fled to the Netherlands to practice their religious freelyo The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Bay (Massachusetts), north of Virginia Company’s grant

Plymouth - Colony established by English immigrants, half of which were Puritans

Squanto showed the colonists how to grow corn, using fish as fertilizer (Thanksgiving)

A “New Netherland” on the Hudson (1609-1625)

The Dutch built an empire stretching from Brazil to South Africa to Indonesia, and played a key role in colonizing North America

Henry Hudson sailed up the river later named for him, traded with Native Americans, and claimed the land for the Netherland

New Netherland - Dutch colony in America