Transcript AP US History - West Orange

AP US History
Ch. 1: New World Encounters
I. Native American Histories before Conquest

America first became inhabited some twenty
thousand years ago when small bands of nomadic
Siberian hunters chased large mammals across the
land bridge between Asia and America. During this
long migration, the people who became known as
the American Indians escaped some of the most
common diseases of humankind, such as smallpox
and measles, but their children and grandchildren
lost the immunities that would have protected them
agains such diseases.
Routes of the First Americans
A. The Great Transformation: Food,
Climate, and Culture

During the thousands of years before the
arrival of the Europeans, the continents of
North and South America experienced
tremendous geologic and climate changes.
As the weather warmed, the great mammals
died off, and the Indians who hunted them
turned increasingly to growing crops, bringing
about an Agricultural Revolution.
B. Mysterious Disappearances

Agriculture allowed Indians to concentrate in
large numbers in urban complexes, such as
Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and Cahokia
in Illinois. By the time Europeans reached
these areas, the great urban centers had
disappeared, either because of climate
changes or overcrowding.
Chaco Canyon in New Mexico
Cahokia in Illinois
C. Aztec Society

In central America, the Aztecs settled in the
fertile valley of Mexico and conquered a large
and powerful empire, which they ruled
through fear and force.
Aztec Ruins: Temple of the Sun
D. Eastern Woodland Cultures

Elsewhere, along the Atlantic coast of North
America for example, Native Americans lived
in smaller bands and supplemented
agriculture with hunting and gathering. In
some cases, women owned the farming
fields, and men the hunting grounds.
Eastern Woodland Indian Tribes Map
Eastern Woodland Indians
II. The Indians Discover a New World

The arrival of Europeans profoundly affected
Native Americans, who could be said to have
entered a new world.
A. Creative Adaptations

Native Americans were not passive in their
dealings with the Europeans. They eagerly
traded for products that made life easier, but
they did not accept the notion that Europeans
were in any way culturally superior, and most
efforts by the Europeans to convert or
“civilize” the Indians failed.
Trade between Europeans and Indians
B. Dependency: Trade and Disease

Wherever Indians and Europeans came into
contact, the Indian population declined at a
rapid rate due to diseases like small pox,
measles, and typhus. The rate of
depopulation along the Atlantic coast, from
death or migration westward, may have been
as high as 95 percent. An entire way of life
disappeared.
III. West Africa: Ancient & Complex
Societies

Contrary to ill-informed opinion, sub-Saharan
West Africa was never an isolated part of the
world where only simple societies developed.
As elsewhere, West Africa had seen the rise
and fall of empires, such as Ghana or
Dahomey. West Africa had also been heavily
influenced by the coming of Islam. The
arrival of Europeans was just the latest of
many foreign influences that helped shape
African culture.
Cont…

The Portuguese came first, pioneering the sea lanes
from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa in the fifteenth
century. They found profit in gold and slaves,
supplied willingly by native rulers who sold their
prisoners of war. The Atlantic slave trade began
taking about 1,000 persons each year from Africa,
but the volume steadily increased. In the eighteenth
century, an estimated five and one-half million were
taken away. Altogether, Africa lost almost eleven
million of her children to the Atlantic slave trade.
Before 1831, more Africans than Europeans came
to the Americas.
IV. Europe on the Eve of Conquest

The Vikings discovered America before
Columbus, but European colonization of the
New World began only after 1492 because
only then were the preconditions for
successful overseas settlement attained.
These conditions were the rise of nationstates and the spread of the new
technologies and old knowledge.
A. Building New Nation-States

During the fifteenth century, powerful
monarchs in western Europe began to forge
nations from what had been loosely
associated provinces and regions. The “new
monarchs” of Spain, France and England
tapped new sources of revenue from the
growing middle class and deployed powerful
military forces, both necessary actions in
order to establish outposts across the
Atlantic.
B. Technical Knowledge

Just as necessary to colonization was the
advance in technology, especially in the art of
naval construction. The lateen sail allowed
ships to sail into the wind, better techniques
were devised for calculating position at sea,
ancient scientific works were reexamined and
the printing press disseminated the new
knowledge rapidly.
Lateen Sail
V. Making Sense of a New World

Spain was the first European nation to meet all of
the preconditions for successful colonization. After
hundreds of years of fighting Moorish rule, she had
become a unified nation-state under Ferdinand and
Isabella. In 1492, the year made famous by
Columbus’ discovery of America, Spain expelled her
Jews and Muslims in a crusade to obliterate all nonChristian elements in Spanish life. Spain had also
experienced the difficulties of colonization in her
conquest of the Canary Islands before turning her
attention to America.
A. Calculating Risks and Rewards

Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa in 1451,
typified the questing dreamers of the 15th century.
He believed it was possible to reach the Orient, the
goal of all adventurers, by sailing westward from
Europe. Undeterred by those who told him the
voyage would be so long that the crews would
perish from lack of food and water, Columbus finally
persuaded Queen Isabella to finance his
exploration. Although Columbus found in America a
vast treasure-house of gold and silver, he had
expected to find the great cities of China, and even
after four separate expeditions to America, he
refused to believe he had not reached the Orient.
Cont…

He died in poverty and disgrace after having lived
to see his discovery claimed by another, Amerigo
Vespucci, for whom America is named. As a further
cruel irony, the all-water route to the East Indies that
Columbus hoped to find was actually discovered by
Vasco de Gama, who sailed from Portugal around
the southern tip of Africa. The net result of his
efforts had been frustration and ignominy for
Columbus; however, he paved the way to world
power for Spain, which claimed all of the New World
except for Brazil, conceded to Portugal by treaty in
1494.
Amerigo Vespucci
B. Conquistadores

To expand Spain’s territories in the New World, the
Crown commissioned independent adventurers to
subdue new lands. For God, glory, and gold they
came. Within two decades they decimated the
major Caribbean islands, where most of the Indians
died from exploitation and disease. The Spaniards
then moved onto the mainland and continued the
work of conquest. Hernan Cortes destroyed the
Aztec Empire in 1521 and the conquest of South
America followed in the next two decades.
Hernan Cortes
C. From Plunder to Settlement

The Spanish crown kept her unruly subjects in
America loyal by rewarding the conquistadores with
large land grants that contained entire villages of
Indians (the encomienda system). As pacification of
the natives progressed, the Spanish Crown limited
the autonomy of the conquistadores by adding layer
upon layer of bureaucrats, whose livelyhoods
derived directly from the Crown and whose loyalty
was therefore to the officials who ruled America from
Spain.
Cont…


The Catholic Church also became an integral part of the
administrative system and brought order to the empire
by protecting Indian rights and by performing mass
conversions. By 1650, about half a million Spaniards
immigrated to the New World. Since most were
unmarried males, they mated with Indian or African
women and produced a mixed-blood population that was
much less racist than the English colonists who settled
North America.
Spain’s empire proved to be a mixed blessing. The
great influx of gold and silver made Spain rich and
powerful, but set off a massive inflation and encouraged
the Spanish Crown to launch a series of costly wars in
Europe
VI. The French Claim Canada

France lacked the most important
precondition for successful colonization, the
interest of the Crown. French kings sent
several expeditions to America, most notably
that of Samuel de Champlain, who founded
Quebec in 1608, and even established an
empire in America that stretched along the St.
Lawrence River, through the Great Lakes,
and down the Mississippi, but the French
Crown made little effort to foster settlement.
VII. The English Enter the Competition

England had as valid a claim to America as
Spain, but did not push colonization until the
late sixteenth century, when it, too, achieved
the necessary preconditions for transatlantic
settlement.
A. Birth of English Protestantism

England began to achieve political unity under the
Tudor monarchs who suppressed the powerful
barons. Henry VIII strengthened the Crown even
further by leading the English Reformation, an
immensely popular event for the average men and
women who hated the corrupt clergy. Henry’s
reason for breaking with the Pope was to obtain a
divorce, but he began a liberating movement that
outlived him. During the reign of Queen Mary,
Protestants were severely persecuted, but the
Reformation could not be undone.
Bloody Mary
B. Militant Protestantism

The Protestant Reformation had begun in 1517 in
Germany when Martin Luther preached that humans
were saved by faith along, as a gift from God, and
not through the sacraments and rituals of the
Church. Other Reformers followed, most notably
John Calvin, who stressed the doctrine of
predestination, the belief that humans could do
nothing to change their fate in the afterlife. The
Reformers shattered the unity of the Christian world
and religious wars broke out all over Europe.
C. A Woman in Power

Elizabeth II, the second daughter of Henry
VIII, inherited the crown in 1558 and ruled
England successfully for nearly fifty years.
She avoided a religious civil war by
reconciling her subjects to an established
church that was Protestant in doctrine, but
still Catholic in many of its ceremonies.
When the Pope excommunicated her in
1570, she became more firmly attached to
the Protestant cause.
D. Religion, War and Nationalism

Spain, the most powerful European nation at the
time, was determined to crush Protestantism in
Europe. In retaliation, English “seadogs”
attacked the Spanish in the Caribbean. By
1588, the king of Spain decided to invade
England and launched the famous Armada.
England’s providential victory over the great fleet
convinced the English people that they had a
special commission from God to preserve the
Protestant religion.
VIII. Irish Background for American
Settlement

Each nation took along its own peculiar
traditions and perceptions for the task of
colonizing America. For the English, Ireland
was used as a laboratory in which the
techniques of conquest were tested.
A. English Conquest of Ireland

The English went into Ireland convinced that
theirs was a superior way of life. The Irish, of
course, disagreed and refused to change
their own ways.
B. English Colonization Sparks Brutality

When the English seized Irish land by force,
the Irish resisted. The English resorted to
massacres of women and children. In
Ireland, men like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir
Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Grenville
learned the techniques of colonization that
they would later apply in America.
IX. An Unpromising Beginning

Although England had the capacity for
transatlantic colonization by the late sixteenth
century, its first efforts were failures.
A. Roanoke Mystery

Sir Walter Raleigh began England’s
colonization of America in 1584 when he sent
a fleet to colonize Roanoke in North Carolina.
The effort failed, despite Raleigh's continued
attempts to reinforce it, and by 1600 there
were no English settlements in the Western
Hemisphere.
B. Dreams of Possession

Despite Raleigh’s failure, Richard Hakluyt
kept English interest in America alive by
tirelessly advertising the benefits of
colonization. He did not mention, however,
that those English people who went to
America would encounter other peoples with
deterrent dreams about what America should
be