1. The Age of Exploration, 1450-1650

2. Essential Question
What motivated Europeans to explore? What did they encounter in these new discovered places? What facilitated exploration?

3. Motives – the 3 “G’s”
God
Gold
Glory

4. More Motives
government sponsorship
Renaissance curiosity
spices

5. Which motive played the most important role?
TPS

6. Technology cannon caravel (vs. galley) magnetic compass astrolabe
improved maps; portolans
galley
caravel

7. Portugal takes the lead!
1415 – Portugal takes Ceuta, Morocco
Prince Henry “the Navigator”

8. Explorers-Get your study guide out!!
Discovery
Bartholomew Diaz
1488 – round Cape of Good Hope (S. Africa)
Christopher Columbus
1492 – reach W. Indies in “New World”
Vasco de Gama
1498 – reach India by sailing around southernmost tip of Africa
Pedro Alvares Cabral
1500 – claim Brazil for Portugal en route to India
Amerigo Vespucci
– explore S. America & first to realize “New World” was separate from Asia
Ferdinand Magellan
– first circumnavigation of the world
Hernando Cortés
1519 – conquest of Aztecs in Mexico
Francisco Pizarro
– conquest of Incas in Peru

12. Chris Columbus: good or bad?
Good (old scholarship)
Bad (new scholarship)
- discovered the New World
- hero (has his own US holiday)
- so influential that the history of the Americas before 1492 is “pre-Columbian”
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
- not the first to “discover” the New World
- exploitation of indigenous peoples
In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus stole all he could see.

13. Columbian Exchange

14. Spain’s golden age (16th c.)
Major cause: gold & silver from New World
Why it ended: price revolution = inflation
Debate over reason for inflation:
Unable to keep up with rising demand
pop.  (demand )
new American colonies (demand )
expulsion of Jewish & Muslim farmers/businessmen (supply )
Influx of American silver bullion
Price revolution spreads to all Europe ( )

15. Mercantilism economic system, ca. 1500-1800 or 1776
wealth is based on nation’s supply of gold
exports > imports
colonies exist for benefit of mother country
quinto = Spanish Crown receives 1/5 of precious metals mined in South America

17. EQ: What was the impact of European conquest on the peoples and ecologies of the New World?
Units
Period One
Exploration

19. Spanish colonial administration
16th c. Spanish New World possessions divided into 4 viceroyalties, or administrative divisions

20. Spanish colonial administration

21. Spanish Advantages Over Natives
So how did a few hundred Spaniards defeat millions of natives?
superior military technology
horses
armor
Guns & cannons
rivalries between native groups kept them from cooperating
disease decimated the native population and destroyed their religious faith systems

22. The Spanish Empire
Spain developed an American empire stretching from Northern California to South America
Managing the Empire
Split empire into provinces, each governed by a viceroy
Council of the Indies set up in Spain to oversee the viceroys

23. Spanish Caste System

24. Competition
Spain’s rivals (primarily England and France, but also the Dutch Republic, Portugal, and even Sweden) began to show an interest in creating their own American empires

25. Dutch Colonies, 17th c.

26. Slavery Under Spanish
Encomienda system: Spanish Crown granted conquerors the right to forcibly employ groups of Indians in exchange for providing them shelter, food and Christian teaching.
In 1542, Spain outlawed enslavement of natives, but it was too late – many had already died and the abuses continued anyway
Natives were forced into a form of serfdom after 1542
By the 1530s, Spanish had begun importing African slaves to replace native ones

27. The Catholic Church in America
The Catholic Church’s Jesuit priests helped control the native population
Forcibly converted natives to Christianity
Worked to destroy native cultures and religious practices and replace it with Spanish

28. Sugar & Slavery  demand for sugar in 15th c.
sugar plantations est. 1st in Atlantic islands close to Europe  African slaves brought in
later this pattern was transferred to the Caribbean

29. Triangular Trade

30. Assignment
Columbian Exchange Reading and Questions