Worlds Collide:
Background:
1. Looking for trade routes to Asia and more people to Christianize
2. By the late 1400s several European monarchs had consolidated their
kingdoms and were competing for domination of the lucrative trade with
Asia. Growing Christian militancy between Catholics and Protestants.
Advances in seafaring technology. Alliance between empire and
capitalism.
3. CC called them Indios; Indonesia. America named for Amerigo Vespucci
as he knew the difference
4. Became a precedent for expansion into Africa, Asia, and Australia
5. Catastrophic for Indians, windfall for Europeans
North America:
1. No great empires like those in Mexico and Peru
2. North American groups were decentralized which helped Europeans gain
a foothold
3. By the time Jamestown was established, Spain had been in the Americas
for a century and a half but had not explored northward until 50 years
after Columbus (1539 –de Soto from Cuba and died in 1542 near the
Mississippi; 1540 -de Coronado left Mexico toward Santa Fe –found no
gold) France sent Cartier who traded with Indians near the St. Lawrence
River
4. NA was the home of between 7 and 10 million people; across the Bering
Straits 20 to 30,000 years ago; spoke some 300 languages; lived in
villages
5. Societal Groupings (most linked by trade):
 Anasazi: irrigation; corn, beans and squash; drought caused migration
–AZ and NM; forefathers of Acoma, Hopi, and Zuni; encountered
Coronado who called them Pueblo Indians
 Plains: seminomadic Cheyenne, Arapaho, Pawnee, and Sioux
 Mississippians: more settled; agricultural surplus resulted in
hierarchical social order and dense settlement –Cahokia (30,000)
 Eastern Woodland: Micmacs and Algonquians –Cartier; semipermanent villages; fishing. Exception: Iroquois; NY and PA; 1450
formed a political confederacy that suppressed tribal feuds, enforced
territorial claims and developed elaborate rituals; territory was
positioned between French and English claims
 Northwest: lived undisturbed until the late 18th century
6. Contrasts between Europeans and Indians:
 Nature and religion: Nature was infused with spiritual forces rather
than separate from them –Animism; created stable relationship with
the environment
 Land and property: had territorial boundaries but worked land
collectively; success of the group more than the individual
 Gender roles: matrilineal –power from the mothers side; divorce
simple and children remained with the mother; women cultivated the
crops and men hunted
 Political organization: small political units; democratic in nature
 Europeans were monotheists; missionary in nature; others were
infidels
 Dominated nature in which humans were on top of the hierarchy
 Land was to be closed in and owned by individuals; economic and
political success rested on land ownership
 Patrilineal –men dominated women and controlled households;
Catholics forbid divorce
 Governments were hierarchical with monarchs
Great Britain:
1. In 1500 was politically and economically too weak to challenge Spain; 3
million in population; Henry VIII broke with Rome (he and EI) –
centralized the monarchy’s bureaucracy, regularized the Crown’s
relationship with Parliament, and courted urban merchants as allies
against landed nobles. Between 1530 and 1650, England’s population
doubled creating surplus labor. Elizabeth I encouraged ‘privateering’ in
return for a share of the plunder; took around 1/3 of all gold heading for
Spain –money helped finance the colonies
2. Defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588
3. What was left in the new world was land: New England –furs, timber and
fish; Virginia –tobacco (Spanish tobacco from the West Indies); Barbados
and Jamaica –sugar (most profitable)
4. Conquering indigenous peoples: professed to get along when they were
vulnerable; use of Indian labor diminished by disease; copied Spanish
plantation system from the Caribbean using Africans (went from
indentured to slaves –mostly from the Dutch)
5. Colonization:
British established ‘settler colonies’ dominated by whites
(model derived from experiences in Ireland in the 1500s –including
prejudice against ‘others’ and colonization through migration and
settlement). 700,000 settlers in 1600s –spurred by the enclosure
movement, religious persecution, and dislocations due to civil war
between royalists and parliament; by 1700 had removed most Indians east
of Mississippi; used urban merchants, private investors, and loyal
landowners to support colonization –Private joint-stock groups such as the
Massachusetts Bay and Virginia Companies and individual proprietors
such as Lord Baltimore and Wm. Penn led to domination by family farms
and businesses (some 2/3s of settlers were indentured); led to economic
opportunities and a foundation for representative government. Local
leaders enjoyed autonomy but after 1688 (Glorious Revolution) colonies
placed directly under the crown; few intermarriages
Spain had ‘exploitation colonies’ with fewer than 250,000 settlers; built
missions to convert Indians and allowed the blending of Catholicism with
indigenous religions; used encomienda system similar to feudalism; many
intermarriages
Columbian Exchange: (Ecological Imperialism?)
1. Mutual transfer of diseases, plants, and animals
2. CC on his 2nd expedition brought horses, cattle, sheep (wool), dogs,
chickens, goats, sugar cane, onions, and banana trees.
3. Furs (which fueled the Anglo-French rivalry), timber and fish went to the
Old World
4. Disease: smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, and diphtheria (Indians had
TB). 50 years after Columbus 500,000 in Hispaniola reduced to 2,000;
smallpox killed 50% Aztecs; 50-90% of Indians in Caribbean and Mexico
dead within 100 years (Black Death took 30% in Europe); cholera,
malaria, and yellow fever were byproducts of the slave trade; disease
moved inland ahead of settlers (1600 influenza contracted from French
sailors killed 80% of Pennacooks allowed the Pilgrims to land -1630s
small pox reduced the Iroquois by 50% -before L and C smallpox killed
half of Indians between Mississippi and Rockies) Exception: white sailors
gave syphilis to Indians (on the East coast, CC men took it back to
Europe). By 1750 more slaves than Indians.
5. Food: From the New World came corn and potatoes (staple food for
Ireland), beans, squash, peppers,
tomatoes, peanuts, manioc –caused surge in population. From the Old
World came wheat, rice, sugar, coffee, tobacco and hard liquor. Pigs
(portable meat) and horses (changed the life of plains Indians –increased
population; became nomadic and women’s status declined; wars among
tribes –practice help them fend off white settlers better than eastern tribes
Importance:
Five long range changes were set in motion by the Columbian voyages.
 First: the voyages initiated a redistribution of the world’s population.
Several million voluntary European immigrants flocked to the
Americas; at least 10-12 million involuntary enslaved Africans
relocated on the west side of the Atlantic, overwhelmingly to South
America and the Caribbean; and indigenous peoples experienced
catastrophic losses.
 Second: the arrival of Europeans led to the rise of the first transoceanic empires in world history.
 Third: the Columbian voyages sparked a world-wide commercial
expansion and an explosion of European capitalist enterprise.
 Fourth: the voyages led in time to the planting of English settlements
where ideas of representative government and religious toleration
would grow and, over several centuries, would inspire similar
transformations in other parts of the world.
 Fifth: at a time when slavery and serfdom were waning in Western
Europe, new plantation economies were emerging in the Americas
employing forced labor on a large scale. NCH