Faith, Fortune, and Fame

1. Faith, Fortune, and Fame European Expansion, 1450-1700

2. Faith, Fortune, and Fame The Big Picture Spanish and Portuguese Exploration Stuart Dynasty in England Tudor Dynasty in England English, French, and Dutch Exploration African Slave Trade Golden Age of Piracy 1500 1600 1700

3. The World Imagined The Lure of the “East” Vasco da Gama: In 1498, four Portuguese ships led by the explorer Vasco da Gama set sail from Europe to round the Southern tip of Africa and head toward India. The harsh weather of the southern Atlantic—cold rain and violent storms—brutalized the crew, who celebrated when the ships finally turned northeast into the Indian Ocean. They stopped on the East African coast to resupply their water and food, and ate some strange fruits that nearly poisoned them. Yet the managed to at last arrive in the India near the city of Calicut on May 20, 1498. Da Gama returned to Portugal with a cargo worth sixty times the cost of the expedition. Da Gama had changed the face of East/West trade in one fell swoop.

4. The World Imagined • The Lure of the “East” • Alternate Routes: Europeans started to look for alternate trade routes that avoided the war-torn areas. They were inspired by old accounts of eastern journeys, like those of Marco Polo (1254-1324), who had written vivid accounts of China. The geography of these old works were wildly incorrect (for example, Marco Polo believed that Japan was 1,500 miles east of China). These accounts also exaggerated the botanical and biological features of these lands, which helped to fire European imaginations about the East.

5. The World Imagined • The Lure of the “East” • Eastern Trade: Europeans had long coveted good from the “East,” luxury items from the far off lands of China and India. They viewed any Far Eastern land—including Japan—as “China,” while any land in South and Southeast Asia was considered “India.” • Luxury: Eastern goods were equated with luxury: silks, fine carpets, pottery, precious jewelry, and even furniture (the word “sofa,” for example, comes from the Arabic word for “bench,” which is “suffah”). • Spices: But Europeans perhaps craved Eastern spices even more than other luxury items. European food was relatively bland, and in desperate need of the intense spices of the East: cloves, cinnamon, coriander, and pepper were all in great demand. These had come overland through Muslim and Byzantine territories, but in the 1400s, warfare made overland travel difficult, greatly increasing the cost.

6. The World Imagined Imagined Peoples Ever since the classical period, people had circulated accounts of strange races of people who lived outside of the Mediterranean region. Some had dog-heads, some had no head at all but had their faces on their torsos, cyclopses with one eye, and “sciopods” with one foot. The works containing these accounts derived from classical sources like Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 C.E.). They had been copied and embellished over and over again across centuries.

7. The World Imagined Ptolemy’s Map • Ptolemy’s Geography: During the 1400s, Europeans acquired the Geography of Ptolemy (ca. 100 – ca. 178). This geographical guide was translated from the Greek and widely reprinted by use of the recently invented printing press. • Ptolemy’s Worldview: This ancient philosopher thought the world was made up of three continents—Europe, Africa, and Asia—and two oceans—the Indian and Western. The map is surrounded by figures of the winds, which were so important to sailing. He mad two big mistakes: he thought land covered three-fourths of the Earth’s surface, greatly underestimating the size of the oceans; and he thought the earth was one-sixth the size it was. It was thus not surprising that many explorers thought their journeys would be shorter than they were. Not surprisingly, Europe and the Mediterranean were at the center of his map (“Eurocentric”).

8. The World Imagined Ptolemy’s Map (a 1467 copy)

9. The World Discovered Fame, Fortune, and Faith: The Drive to Explore • The Context: Explorers wished to capitalize on Europe’s desire for Eastern goods and bring back wealth for themselves and their sovereigns. Rulers in the 1500s were looking for ways to pay for their expensive wars, and the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 increased the price of spices since the Turks imposed heavy taxes on them. • The Drive to Explore: Potential wealth motivated explorers, some had other incentives. Converting new people to Christianity played a role; Christianity in the 1400s and 1500s felt besieged with the Muslim conquests. The Reformation also played a factor, with Catholics looking for new places to convert, and Protestants looking for places where they could practice their faith unmolested.

10. The World Discovered New Technologies and Travel • Navigation Instruments: Europeans need strong navigational tools for their new maritime endeavors, especially when sailing out of sight of land. At night a quadrant could be used by aligning it with the North Star, providing the ship’s latitude. During the day, sailors could use astrolabes to measure the height of the sun, or use it to determine the height of a known star at night. By the 1500s, mapmakers (also called cartographers) could graphically document their travels with some accuracy (earlier explorers like the Vikings lacked this skill). • Improved Ships: Portuguese caravels of the sixteenth century were a big improvement over the old Mediterranean galleys. The innovation that made the biggest difference for long-distance journeys was the triangular lateen sail, that could be adjusted to capture changing winds. The old square sails of the galleys could only capture wind coming from directly behind the ship. Without banks of oars, ships could be made more solid to withstand rough Atlantic seas, and could also house cannon below deck.

11. The World Discovered New Technologies and Travel Dutch engraving Caravel of three caravels from the 1500s

12. The World Discovered New Technologies and Travel Quadrant Mariner’s Astrolabe

13. The World Discovered The Portuguese Race for the East 1450-1600 • Avoiding the Turks: In 1498, Vasco da Gama’s route around Africa to trade directly with India was an attempt to “cut out the middleman,” who happened to be the Ottoman Turks, who had come to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean and charge tariffs on goods passing through their territory. • Portugal’s Early Explorations: Beginning in 1418, Prince Henry the Navigator sponsored annual voyages to explore the West African coast. Bartholomeu Dias continued Henry’s work by rounding the tip of Africa in 1488, but had to turn back due to a mutinous crew. • Vasco da Gama (ca. 1460 – 1524): He set off with four ships to complete what Dias had failed to so. He succeeded and returned with his ships filled with spices worth 60 times the cost of the voyage. On his second voyage, he brought kegs of gunpowder, which the Indians valued far more than the trifles he had brought before.

14. The World Discovered The Portuguese Race for the East 1450-1600 • Trading Outposts: The Portuguese scored spectacular successes in opening up trade with the East. They discovered that India was not the only source of spices, with the Moluccas islands (known as the “Spice Islands”) being a source of cloves and other fragrant plants. In these and other locations, the Portuguese set up trading posts across the East, in which Europeans lived peacefully in small settlements among the native population. Portugal had undermined Muslim domination of eastern trade trifles he had brought before.

15. The World Discovered Spain’s Westward Discoveries, 1492-1522 • Columbus: A sailor and shipbuilder from Genoa, Italy, believe that Ptolemy’s map was accurate—that China could be reached by the untried route across the Western Ocean, just over the horizon. He visited Portugal in 1476 to learn about that country’s maritime practices. His imagination was filled with ideas from the account of Marco Polo’s journey and the Geography of Ptolemy. • Proposed Journey: He proposed a western journey to the Portuguese king, but was rejected as a vague dreamer. He then took his idea to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The queen was impressed, and made him an admiral in 1492 and funded his expedition. Spain had fallen behind its neighbor in exploration, so Columbus may have offered a way to catch up.

16. The World Discovered Spain’s Westward Discoveries, 1492-1522 • Columbus’s Discoveries: Columbus embarked on a journey with three ships—the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María—and landed on a small Caribbean island in October (one of the Bahamas). Upon landing, he claimed the land for Spain and put a royal standard in the ground, noting that the natives did not seem to mind (ignoring the language barrier). Columbus made four voyages between Spain and the New World between 1492 and 1502, during which he created settlements on several Caribbean islands and visited the coasts of South America and Central America.

17. The World Discovered Spain’s Westward Discoveries, 1492-1522 • Columbus’s Mismanagement: On the third voyage, he brought Spanish women to insure a permanent presence. But Columbus proved to be a poor manager of the lands he discovered. A report of a revolt in the colony brought a judge from Spain, who brought Columbus back in chains. He was released and allowed to make a fourth voyage, but he never received the wealth he dreamt of. • Misconception: Columbus never thought he had discovered an entirely new part of the world. To his death, he clung to the idea that he had discovered Asian islands, reflected in the misnomer that he gave the natives: “Indians.”

18. The World Discovered Spain’s Westward Discoveries, 1492-1522 • Treaty of Tordesillas: Spanish and Portuguese explorers came into conflict in their explorations, so the monarchs of the two countries asked the pope to divide the world into two spheres. In 1494, the pope decided that the dividing line would be 370 leagues (about 1,200 miles) west of the Cape Verde islands off the coast of West Africa. The Portuguese received the right to everything east of the land (including a part of South America now known as Brazil), while the Spanish everything west of it (little did they know it was a much better deal!). Of course indigenous people were not consulted.

19. The World Discovered Spain’s Westward Discoveries, 1492-1522 • Amerigo Vespucci: This accomplished author and diplomat who worked for Florence’s Medici family set off on a voyage that took him to South America. He took careful navigational notes and wrote vivid letters back to his patrons. His writings were widely published and immensely popular among the European elite. Vespucci and other European scholars realized that this was a new land mass, and a famous map published in 1507 by the German cartographer Marin Waldseemüller that labeled the new continent “America” in honor of Vespucci’s popular travel writings.

20. The World Discovered Spain’s Westward Discoveries, 1492-1522 • Circumnavigating the Globe: After Vespucci, people began to set out to purposely explore the new continent. One was the Spaniard, Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1517), who trekked across the Isthmus of Panama to become the first European to see Pacific in quite some time. Balboa’s journey inspired Ferdinand Magellan (ca. 1480-1521), who set sail westward for Spain in 1519 to sail around the world, and discovered the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. He crossed into the Pacific Ocean (which he named), and his crew braved the vast expanse of that ocean. In 1521, Magellan was killed while interfering with a local war in the Philippine islands. His navigator nonetheless managed to bring the survivor back to Spain by way of the Indian Ocean, and the remaining ship was packed with enough spices to pay for the journey.

21. Exploration and Conquest: Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

22. The World Discovered The Northern Europeans Join the Race, 1600-1650 • Northern Europeans: Northern European countries generally ignored the Treaty of Tordesillas, starting their own explorations. • Settlements in Canada: Starting in 1534, Frenchman Jacques Cartier led three voyages down the St. Lawrence River, exploring what is now Canada. One early attempt to settle near what is now Quebec failed, but in 1600, Samuel de Champlain (ca. 1567-1635) succeeded in create the permanent settlement at Quebec City, signing treaties with local natives.

23. The World Discovered The Northern Europeans Join the Race, 1600-1650 • Dutch Colonies: The Dutch set up trading posts in the Spice Islands off the coast of Southeast Asia. They set up a way station at the tip of South Africa to resupply ships going to the Spice Islands and India. They also set up a colony across the Atlantic on the tip of Manhattan Island in the 1620s, and settled the Hudson Valley. • English Colonies: The English created a permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and then did so in New England in the 1620s and 1630s, eventually seizing “New Netherlands” from the Dutch, renaming it “New York” in the late 1600s. By 1700, about 250,000 English colonists lived along the Atlantic coast of North America.

24. European Expansion, ca. 1700

25. Confrontation of Cultures The Original Americans South of the Rio Grande • Agriculture: Around 5,500 B.C.E., tribes of people in central Mexico developed agriculture, which allowed large settled populations to become established. Differing topographies and growing seasons slowed the expansion of agriculture, taking about 3,500 years for maize (corn) to reach the southern farmlands of what is now the United States. • Growth of Empires: Agriculture allowed big empires to grow in Central and South America, including the Maya, Aztec, Inca, and others. These mostly relied on the cultivation of maize, a derivative of a grass plant that was easy to grow and high nutritious. The Incas supplemented maize with a crop native to the Andes, the potato, which grew well in the harsh, high altitude areas much better than maize.

26. Confrontation of Cultures The Original Americans South of the Rio Grande • Empire Building: The Maya, Inca, and Aztecs built magnificent cities, roads, and temples, most in the form of large step pyramids. These are even more remarkable when we know that these were created without wheels, or for the most part without power from domesticated animals (The Incas had domesticated the llama, but it was not an effective beast of burden since wheeled carts or wagons did not exist). • Aztec Empire: The center of the Aztec empire was the city of Tenochtitlan, built on an island in the middle of a lake (now filled in, a great plain in the heart if Mexico City). The Aztec called themselves Meshica, and practiced a form of human sacrifice to Aztec gods who threatened destruction if they were not appeased with human blood. These sacrifices greatly angered the Aztec’s subject peoples, who were the victims. The Spaniards would use this animosity in their effort to overthrow the Aztecs.

27. Indigenous Peoples and Empires in the Americas, ca. 1500

28. Confrontation of Cultures Original Northern Americans • The Southwest: In North America, the Pueblo and Navajo peoples of the dry, desert Southwest created systems of irrigation to grow maize, and built large adobe structures that resembled apartment buildings in some places. • Great Plains and Northern Forest: The peoples of these areas did not rely as much on settled agriculture, but more on hunted game, and in coastal areas, fishing. • Cahokia: Along the Mississippi Valley, there were some settlements, like the mound-building people of Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, which had a population between 15,000 and 38,000 inhabitants by 1,250 C.E. The people of Cahokia relied mainly on trade. The largest mound that they built—probably a religious temple of some sort—was 100 feet high and 1,000 feet long.

29. Confrontation of Cultures Early Contacts • Cortes: Spanish settlers had heard rumors of massively wealthy cities on the mainland. Hernando Cortes (1485-1547) took 600 soldiers and sailed across the Gulf of Mexico in search of gold in 1519. Once ashore, people told him of wealthy empire inland, the Aztecs. He soon gained the skills of a gifted native linguist, a young woman named Malinche (alson known as Dona Marina), who spoke four different Indian languages and easily picked up Spanish. She converted to Christianity and bore Cortes a son, and served as an adviser and guide.

30. Confrontation of Cultures Early Contacts Cortes and Malinche meeting Montezuma in Tenochtitlan

31. Confrontation of Cultures Conquest of the Great Empires, 1520-1550 • Aztecs Conquered: The center of the Aztec empire was the city of Tenochtitlan, which was a 250 mile march inland for Cortes and his men. There, they met Montezuma II (1502-1520). With the help of 100,000 neighboring people, Cortes schemed to overthrow the Aztecs. Even with gun powder, armor, and fierce dogs, it took over a year for Cortes to subdue the Aztecs. In 1522, Cortes declared the Aztec Empire “New Spain,” making it a colony under his personal rule.

32. Confrontation of Cultures Conquest of the Great Empires, 1520-1550 • Incas Conquered: The Incan Empire fell to another conquistador, Francisco Pizarro (ca. 1475-1541), in a campaign that begun in 1532. the Incan royal house had just finished a five-year civil war when Pizarro and his small force landed. The new Incan leader, Atahualpa, came to a meeting with Pizarro unguarded, and was seized. Pizarro offered a ransom of gold, which the Incas paid. When Pizarro got his gold, he killed his hostage. Incas fought fiercely against the hated Spaniard, but were eventually subdued, creating a new part of the Spanish empire to compliment New Spain to the North: New Castile, centered in Peru.

33. Confrontation of Cultures Conquest of the Great Empires, 1520-1550 • Germs: How did these small bands of conquistadors capture whole empires? Gunpowder, steel swords, armor helped, and better organization (including written messages that helped communications), but the biggest ally of the Spanish was disease. • Lack of Domesticated Animals in the New World: Amerindians were an isolated population that had no contact with diseases common in the rest of the world, especially the ones that evolved from contact between people and domesticated animals: measles, tuberculosis, flu, whooping cough, and the deadliest one: smallpox. Europeans had developed a degree of immunity to these diseases over the centuries, while the Amerindians had absolutely none. Disease followed the colonists everywhere, killing off huge portions of the Indian population.

34. Confrontation of Cultures North American Contacts • Northern Spread of Disease: In North America, disease arrived before the actual Europeans did, spread through Indian trading networks. What the actual population of North America was before contact is almost impossible to estimate, but by the time settlers arrived, it was obviously greatly reduced from what it had been before the Spaniards landed. Environmental historians believe that the vast natural abundance that colonists encountered (like the great buffalo herds of the Great Plains) was in part due to the fact that so much of the human population had been wiped out.

35. Confrontation of Cultures Life and Death Under European Rule, 1550-1700 • Enforced Labor: Columbus had desired to enslave the Indians, but Queen Isabella rejected the idea. Instead, she proposed a system called encomienda, in which conquistadors had the right to extract a measured amount of labor from the Indian population in exchange for protection and conversion to Christianity. Needless to say, the conquistadors greatly abused this system, and it disappeared by the end of the 1500s. In its place came the systems in which Amerindians had to work a fixed number of days a year, usually for a plantation called a hacienda. Conditions under these contracts were very harsh.

36. Confrontation of Cultures Life and Death Under European Rule, 1550-1700 • Amerindian Mortality: Spaniards demanded labor to work in mines and plantations, and made themselves incredibly wealthy. For example, Indian labor was used to extract massive amounts of silver from the Potosí mine in what is now Bolivia. Many workers perished in the inhumane conditions in the mine; they worked underground for most of the week, and had to provide their own food. • Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566): Not everyone accepted this brutality. A Dominican friar, Bartolomé de Las Casas, wrote a powerful account called The Tears of the Indians, which detailed Spanish cruelties. While disease was probably the biggest culprit, this harsh treatment played a role in the devastation of Indian populations. The Caribbean went from 6,000,000 Taino natives before 1492 to only a few thousand fifty years later. Peru fell from 1,250,000 in 1570 to 500,000 in 1620, while 24 million natives died in Mexico from 1519 to 1605. Dwindling populations led the Spaniards to a new source of labor: Africans.

37. Confrontation of Cultures The African Slave Trade • Sugar Plantations: In the 1400s, sugar grew in Egypt and North Africa, but was scarce and expensive. Europeans began to grow it on islands in the Mediterranean and also the Atlantic islands, like the Canary Islands. Sugar was brought to the Caribbean in the 1500s, and became a highly profitable crop. The intense harvest required a huge amount labor, and in 1532, the first shipment of African slaves departed for plantations in Brazil and the West Indies. • African Slaves: By 1650, 7,000 slaves had made the crossing, hitting 14,000 by 1675. Most Africans brought to North America came from the Caribbean, not directly from Africa, and were a relatively small number.

38. Confrontation of Cultures The African Slave Trade • Impact in Africa: Slavery had always been a part of African warfare and society, but the European demand stepped up the practice, causing great instability and destructive competition between competing tribes. Africans help to facilitate the European trade, and by 1700, about 30,000 slaves a year were brought across the Atlantic. • Palmares: Escaped slaves in Brazil formed a community in the jungle called Palmares, which the Portuguese attacked in 1692.

39. Confrontation of Cultures • Gathering Souls in the New Lands • Converting Souls: Conversion was certainly a goal of many early explorers and conquerors, who brought missionaries who employed many strategies to bring the natives into the fold. Conversion generally did not lead to better treatment of natives. • Virgin of Guadalupe: an indigenous convert named Juan Diego had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who appeared to him at Guadalupe in Mexico, commanding him to build a church, and miraculously brought out-of-season roses to the bishop to prove his claim. This site became a major pilgrimage site, and attracted many natives to the faith.

40. Confrontation of Cultures • Gathering Souls in the New Lands • Missionaries: Christian missionaries traveled around the world, even to China, in their quest to convert. The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) traveled to China, carefully studying the language, and tried to convert Emperor Wanli (r. 1573-1620), bringing him gifts of mechanical clocks and other devices. Ricci won the respect of the emperor, but no conversion. The Chinese thought Christian belief in one god was too restricting. • Christianity Transformed: As Christianity spread, it was transformed by local populations, such as in Haiti, where it was combined with African spiritual practices to create Voudoun, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, Santeria.

41. The World Market and Commercial Revolution High Prices and Profits: Trading on the World Stage • Inflation: European countries, especially northern ones like the Netherlands, experienced a vast improvement in quality of life, with exotic luxuries arriving from all over the world. But it came at a price: skyrocketing inflation. European population increased, causing a greater demand for goods, and an influx of gold and silver from the New World—especially Spanish silver—drove the cost of these goods up. In the 1500s, for example, the price of cereal grains increased fivefold, and manufactured goods increased three times over.

42. The World Market and Commercial Revolution • The Rise of Commercial Capitalism • Capitalist ideas • Joint-stock companies ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

43. The World Market and Commercial Revolution • Mercantilism: Controlling the Balance of Trade • Economic nationalism • Economic regulations ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

44. The World Market and Commercial Revolution • The Growth of Banking • State banks ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

45. The World Market and Commercial Revolution • The Danger of Overspending: Spain Learns a Lesson ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

46. The World Market and Commercial Revolution • Redefining Work Roles • Women’s work • Leaving the workforce ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

47. The World Market and Commercial Revolution • Piracy: Banditry on a World Scale, 1550-1700 • Early privateers • Pirate life ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

48. The World Transformed • European Culture Spreads • Plants • Population mixing ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

49. The World Transformed • European Culture Transformed • New foods • New stimulants • Tobacco ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

50. The World Transformed • A New Worldview • Scientific observations • Mercator maps ©2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.