I. Native American Worlds
A. The First Americans
1. The first people to live in the Western Hemisphere were
migrants from Asia; most came between 13,000 B.C. and 11,000 B.C. across a land bridge connecting Siberia and
3. Around 6000 B.C. the ancestors of the Navajos and the Apaches
crossed the
4. For centuries, Native Americans were huntergatherers;
they developed horticulture around
3000 B.C.
5. Agricultural surplus led to populous and wealthy
societies in
1. The flowering of civilization began among the Mayan
peoples of the
2. An elite class claiming descent from the gods ruled
Mayan society and lived off the goods and taxes of peasant families. Beginning around
A.D.
800,Mayan civilization declined. 3. A second major Mesoamerican civilization
developed around the city of
5. By A.D. 1500, Tenochtitlán
had grown into a metropolis of over 200,000 inhabitants, and the Aztecs posed a
formidable challenge to any adversary.
1. The Indians north of the
2. Clan leaders resolved feuds and disciplined
individuals, but because clan leaders were not as coercive, they had less power
than the Mayan and Aztec nobles.
3. Some tribes exerted influence over their immediate
neighbors through trade or
conquest; by
A.D. 100, the Hopewells
had spread their influence
through
4. For unknown reasons the
6. The advanced farming technology of Mesoamerica spread
into the
7. By A.D. 1350, overpopulation, disease, and warfare over
fertile bottomlands led to the decline of the Mississippian civilization.
8. Horticulture was a significant part of the lives of the
women of the eastern
10. By A.D. 1500, there were no great Indian empires left
to lead a military campaign against the European invasion.
II. Traditional European Society in 1450 A. The Peasantry 1. There were only a few large cities in
2. Cooperative farming was a necessity, and most farm
families exchanged their surplus farm products with their neighbors or bartered
it for local services.
3. Most peasants yearned to be yeomen, owners of small
farms that provided a marginally comfortable living, but few achieved that
goal. 4. As with the Native American
cultures, many aspects of European life followed a seasonal pattern; even
European birth patterns appear to have been seasonal.
5. Mortality rates among the peasants were high; life
consisted of little food and much work. 6.
The deprived rural classes of
1. In the traditional European social order, authority came
from above; kings and princes lived in splendor off the labor of the peasantry. 2. Collectively, noblemen had the power to
challenge royal authority; after A.D. 1450, kings began to undermine the power of
the nobility and create more centralized states.
3. The peasant man ruled his women and children; his power
was codified in laws, sanctioned by social custom and justified by the teachings
of the Christian Church.
4. The inheritance practice of primogeniture forced many
younger children to join the ranks of the roaming poor; there was little personal
freedom or individual fulfillment for these peasants.
5. Hierarchy and authority prevailed because they offered
a measure of social stability; these values shaped the American social order
well into the eighteenth century.
1. The Roman Catholic Church served as one of the great
unifying forces in Western European society; the Church provided a bulwark of
authority and discipline.
2. Christian doctrine penetrated the lives of peasants; to
avert famine and plague, Christians offered prayer and
turned to priests for spiritual guidance.
3. Crushing other religions and suppressing heresies among
Christians was an obligation of rulers and a task of the new orders of
Christian knights.
4. Between A.D. 1096 and 1291, successive armies of
Christians embarked on Crusades;Muslims
were a prime target of the crusaders. 5.
The Crusades strengthened the Christian identity of the European population and
helped broaden the intellectual and economic horizons of the European
privileged class.
III. Europe Encounters Africa and the
1450–1550
A. The Renaissance
1. Stimluated by the wealth and
learning of the Arab world and the reintroduction of Greek and Roman texts,
2. A new ruling class of moneyed elite—merchants, bankers,
and textile manufacturers—created the concept of civic humanism. This concept
celebrated the public expression of virtue and public service.
3. Works by artists such as Michelangelo, Palladio, and da Vinci were part of a flowering of artistic genius.
4. Following Niccolò Machiavelli’s
advice in The
Prince (1513), an alliance of monarchs, merchants, and royal
bureaucrats challenged the power of the agrarian nobility.
8 Chapter 1 Worlds Collide:
Europe, Africa, and
5. The increasing wealth of the monarchical nation-state
propelled
6. Because Arabs and Italians dominated trade in the
Mediterranean, Prince Henry of
7. By the 1440s the Portuguese were the first Europeans engaged
in the African slave trade.
B. West African Society and Slavery 1. Most West Africans
farmed small plots and lived with extended families in small villages that
specialized in certain crops; they traded goods with one another.
2. West Africans spoke many different languages and formed
hundreds of distinct groups, the majority of which lived in hierarchical societies
ruled by princes.
3. Most peoples had secret societies that united people
from different lineage and exercised political influence.
4. Their spiritual beliefs were varied; some were Muslim,
but most recognized a variety of deities.
5. At first, European traders had a positive impact on the
West African peoples by introducing new plants, animals, and metal products and
by expanding the African trade networks.
6. Inland trade remained in the hands of Africans because the death rate
among Europeans was often 50 percent a year due to disease. 7. A small portion ofWest
Africans were trade slaves, mostly war captives and criminals sold from one
kingdom to another.
8. Europeans soon joined the West African’s
long-established trade in humans; by
1700, Europeans
shipped hundreds of thousands of
slaves to American plantations.
C. Europe Reaches the
1. While they traded with the Africans, the Portuguese continued
to look for a direct ocean route to
2. Bartholomew Días sailed
around the southern tip of Africa in 1488, and ten years later Vasco da Gama reached
3. In 1502,Vasco da Gama’s ships outgunned Arab fleets; the Portuguese
government soon opened trade routes from Africa to
6. Christopher Columbus, a Christian and Genoese sea
captain, set sail on August 3, 1492, with the support of Spanish monarchs,
Ferdinand and Isabella, and financially backed by Spanish merchants.
7. In addition to searching for riches, Ferdinand and
Isabella wanted
8. On October 12, 1492,
9. Although
1. To encourage adventurers to expand its American empire,
the Spanish crown offered plunder, landed estates, titles of nobility, and
Indian laborers in the conquered territory.
2. In 1519, Hernán Cortés and
his fellow Spanish conquistadors landed on the Mexican coast and overthrew the
Aztec empire.
3. Moctezuma, the Aztec ruler,
believed that Cortés might be a returning god and allowed him to enter the
empire without challenge; the empire’s collapse was mainly due to internal rebellion
and death by disease.
4. In the late 1520s the Spanish conquest entered a new
phase when Francisco Pizarro overthrew the Inca empire in
7. The Spanish invasion of the
8. Native Americans lost part of their cultural identity;
a new mestizo, or mixed-race, culture emerged.
9. Indians who resisted assimilation lacked the numbers or
the power to oust Spanish invaders; for the original Americans, the
consequences of the European intrustion were tragic
and irreversible.
IV. The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of
2. Over the centuries the Catholic Church became a large
and wealthy institution, controlling vast resources and political power throughout
3. Martin Luther publicly challenged Roman Catholic
practices and doctrine with his Ninety-five Theses; the document
condemned the “sale of indulgences” by the Church. 4. Luther argued that people could be saved
only by grace, not good works. He dismissed the need for priests to act as
intermediaries between Christians and God and downplayed the role of
high-ranking clergymen and popes by naming the Bible the ultimate authority in matters
of faith.
5. As peasants mounted violent social protests of their
own, Luther urged obedience to established political institutions and condemned
the teachings of religious dissidents more radical than him.
6. The Peace of
(1536), Protestant John Calvin preached predestination —
the idea that God determines who will be saved before they are born. 8. Despite widespread persecution, Calvinists
won converts all over
9. When the pope denied his request for a marriage annulment,
King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and created a national Church
of England.
10. Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I, combined Lutheran and
Calvinist beliefs. Angered by
11. Other radical Protestants called themselves Puritans; they
wanted to purify the church of “false” Catholic teachings and practices. B. The Dutch and the English Challenge
2. To protect their Calvinism and political liberties, the
seven
3. In 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed out to reimpose Catholic rule in
4. As Spanish government and economy struggled, the
5.
7. By 1600 the success of merchant-oriented policies helped
to give the English and the Dutch the ability to challenge
C. The Social Causes of English Colonization 1. The “Price
Revolution,” major inflation, caused social changes in
3. As the influence of the House of Commons increased, rich
commoners and small property owners had a voice; this had profound consequences
for English and American political history.
4. Due to enclosures and inflation, many peasants lost the
means to earn a living and were willing to go to
5. This massive migration to