Transcript Three Worlds Meet

Three Worlds Meet
American Beginnings
Europeans
Europe
Native Americans
North America
1492
West Africans
Africa
Native Americans
North America
Native American
• Diverse societies
• Shared cultural patterns:
Religious beliefs - spirits
Land use - source of life not
possession
Social organization family/clan/task (age, gender,
status)
• Established trade routes
"When we dig roots, we make little holes.
When we build houses, we make little
holes...We shake down acorns and
pinenuts. We don't chop down the trees.
We only use dead wood [for fires]....But
the white people plow up the ground,
pull down the trees, [and ...the] the trees
says , 'Don't. I am sore. Don't hurt me.'"
-Wintu Woman
West African Societies
Africa
West African
Societies,1490's
• TRADE - Sahara Highway
• Spread of Islam
• Arrival of Portuguese
• Plantations (Príncipe and Sāo
Tomé) and slaves
• Beginnings of slave trade
West African
Societies,1490's
• Thriving trade
• Diverse cultures
• Rich, well-ordered states
West African
Societies,1490's
• Trans-Sahara trade =money and power
Ghana>Mali>Songhai (Timbuktu)
• Niger River and Niger River Delta
• Rainforest
Kongo
Benin
West African
Societies,1490's
• Family and government
• Religion
• Livelihood
• Slave Labor
European Societies
Europe
European Societies, 1490's
• Age of Exploration
• Prince Henry the Navigator,
Portugal
• European expansion
Social Order
• Social Hierarchy
• European families - nuclear
family
Christianity
• Roman Catholic Church > Pope
=spiritual and political power
• Suffer on Earth=rewards in
heaven/ salvation
• Spread the Word! Missionaries
• Defend the Word! Crusades
Increase in trade,
money to merchants
Crusades
Weakened nobles,
strengthened monarchs
Weakened Pope's power
Europe is split!
Catholics vs. Protestants
Reformation
Early 1500's
Increased rivalries
among countries
Protestants to colonies
Seeking religious freedom
Political
Social
Changes in
Western Europe
Economic
Cultural
Transatlantic Encounters
1492
Columbus
• Aug. 3, 1492 - depart Spain
(Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria)
• Oct. 12, 1492 - arrive
• Met Taino people
"It would be unnecessary to build...[a fort
here] because these people are so simple
in deed of arms...If Your Highness order
either to bring all of them to Castile or to
hold them as captivos [slaves] on their
own island it could easily be done,
because with about fifty men you could
control and subjugate them all, making
them do whatever you want."
-Christopher Columbus
Why explore?
• Gold!
• Land
• God
Spain moves in
• Spain thrilled, 3 more voyages
funded
• Colonization
• Resistance and Conquest
• Death & Disease
Impact on Native Americans
• Methods of Colonization
•Plantation System
•Forced Labor
•Weapons
•Resistance
•Conquest
•Disease
In this series of drawings from an Aztec
codex, or book (c. 1575), a
medicine man takes care of an Aztec with
smallpox, a deadly disease
brought to the Americas by Europeans.
The Slave Trade Begins
• Slave Labor Force
•African Losses
The Impact on Europeans
• Columbian Exchange
•National Rivalries
•Treaty of Tordesillas
A New Society is Born
• Columbus ordered to leave
•Columbus > Chain of Events
•Settlement
•Colonization
•Cultural transplants
•New Society