Europe sets sail

1. Europe sets sail How did Europeans create a global world

2. Tradition-Bound Europe • Peasants lived in small agricultural villages surrounded by open fields divided into narrow strips cultivated by different families. • The community dictated the crops to grow and schedule that everyone in the community agreed to follow. • This cooperative farming was a necessity in exchange for “tillage rights”(work the land, share the profit, for a place to live) that turned peasants into surfs. • Survival meant constant labor with primitive wooden tools and very low crop yields.

3. Tradition-Bound Europe • Marriages were arranged as transactions of property with the wife submitting to her husband’s will in all matters and surrendering any property that she might inherit. • When the husband dies, the widow usually received a “dower” (1/3 of family’s wealth) to live out her life on. • In most regions fathers gave all of their property and land to the eldest son (“primogeniture”).

4. Tradition-Bound Europe • Early Europeans were “pagans” who worshipped nature spirits. • After the spread of Christianity by the Romans, those still practicing these customs were increasingly labeled heretics. • Once Christianity became dominant “heresies” were punishable under codes of laws.

5. Renaissance • The Crusades exposed educated nobles from Europe to Arabic learning and Eastern luxuries. • This began a period of cultural exchange that would result in the upper classes of merchants and nobles being exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking. • This resulted in the formation of republics where moneyed elites ruled their city-state in place of a king or prince. • “Civic humanism” was an ideology that praised public service and helped to shape the conceptions of government loyalty as a virtue.

6. Exploration • This centralized approach to power and wealth lead to increased maritime exploration. • Regular travel to the West Africa and Arabia became a prominent force in building wealth and political power. • Portuguese traders arose as a dominant economic force as merchants importing spices and luxury items. • In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. • In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached East Africa and India following this root and an established network of forts along the African coastline.

7. Exploration • Quickly the Portuguese and Dutch replaced Arabs as the primary traders and exporters of goods from Asia. • This was facilitated by the increased dependence on slavery and slave trading with African kingdoms across Africa. • Africans were exchanged by African kings for “prestige goods” imported from Europe and Asia.

8. Spain • After the “reconquista” (or total reconquering) of the Islamic controlled parts of Europe using Catholicism to build a sense of “Spanishness” thousands of Jews and Muslims were expelled or forcibly converted. • This new sense of solidarity and conquest saw an increase in exploration that would seek to find new passages to end Portuguese and Dutch domination over trade. • An ambitious and daring mariner from Genoa with inaccurate information volunteered to set sail and find an alternative route to Asia.

9. Go west • Early European explorers were actually seeking a more direct passage to Asia. • This passage would allow Europeans to acquire silks and spices. • After some European explorers realized they were not in the Orient, they sought the Northwest Passage. • The Northwest Passage was a waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to Asia. • A result of the European “discoveries” of “new” lands in America and the Far East was to find raw materials for manufacturing.

10. The northwest passage

11. “Discovering” the Americas Columbus

12. Christopher Columbus • Columbus was an Italian explorer who sailed for Spain. • Columbus first landed in the Americas in San Salvador. • Columbus named the native inhabitants “Indians” because he thought that he was near India. • However, modern archeological research suggests that Vikings were actually the first Europeans to reach North America traveling the coast of northern Canada down into the northeastern U.S. • Leif Erickson

13. Spanish tide • Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, St. Augustine, FL is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United States. • Along with Ponce de Leon who explored the area that would become Florida, these Spaniards were called Conquistadors. • The Spanish policy towards Native Americans included: conversion to Christianity, coercion to accept Spanish rule, and enslaving them to provide a cheap source of labor. But the Spanish weren’t alone.

14. Columbian Exchange • In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien (Panama) and became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. • By 1506, Hernan Cortes had conquered the Aztex empire and destroyed its civilization. In 1519, he also defeated the Mayans when he learned of the size of these empires and the wealth that was in them to plunder. • Combined with superior weapons, conquistadors also had disease on their side, which decimated Native American populations. • Spain began awarding “encomiendas” or royal grants giving them legal control over land to cultivate and export goods back to Europe.

15. Enter England • In 1517, Martin Luther, a German monk and professor published his “Ninety-five Theses” condemned the Church for practices like “indulgences” (certificates to pardon sinners from punishment in the afterlife) afforded the wealthy and elite in Europe. • Luther also performed the first translation of the bible copying it from Latin to German to make it more accessible to the public. • In 1536, John Calvin published his “Institutes of the Christian Religion” that argued for “predestination,” the idea that G-d chooses certain people before they are born and punish the rest with sin.

16. Enter England • These new religious and philosophical ideals encouraged England to pursue its own path of exploration. • In England merchants began to purchase raw materials and send it to the peasants as “outwork” to have it processed from raw materials into finished goods. • This model evolved into a state-aided “mercantile” system that encouraged textile production and required increased raw materials to keep up with demand for goods at home and as exports. • The first English settlement in the North America, Jamestown, was claimed by John Smith for the Virginia Company in 1497who was seeking access to raw materials in the New World.

17. English Expansion • The influx of gold and silver into the European markets from America created an economic upheaval known today as the “Price Revolution.” • This also created a new class of person, the “Yeomen,” who made up the first recorded middle class existing socially somewhere between gentlemen and peasants. • This move away from dependence on subsistence farming and peasants as the only source of labor, resulted in the “enclosure acts” that allowed land owners to remove peasants from their land to fence it in and begin raising grazing animals on a larger scale.

18. English Expansion • This all resulted in many displaced people who were persuaded into signing contracts known as “indentures” that sold their labor for a time period in exchange for transportation to America and board. • This system while not slavery created a group of peoples who sometimes had problems paying off their debt to their financers or had no place to go after obtaining their release and, thus, stayed in a work-exchange position for longer than agreed upon. • In 1654, John Casor, a black indentured servant, became the first legally recognized slave in Colonial America when his black “owner” held him past his term.

19. Developing economy • Tobacco

20. Make the connection • Write 2 to 3 sentences on a half-sheet of paper explaining what might have happened if Americans had not abandoned the indenture system in favor of slavery and place it on my desk as you leave.