James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson
Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage
Susan M. Hartmann
The American Promise
A History of the United States
Fifth Edition
CHAPTER 2
Europeans Encounter the New World,
1492-1600
Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's
I. Europe in the Age of Exploration
A. Mediterranean Trade and European Expansion
1. Discovery of new trade routes and new lands
•
From the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, goods traveled overland from Asia and Africa and
then funneled into Europe through Mediterranean trade routes dominated by Italian cities; the vitality
of these routes offered few incentives to look for alternatives.
•
2. Bubonic plague (Black Death)
3. European Exploration
Black Death caused some people to take greater risks; exploration promised fame and fortune;
monarchs sponsored journeys in hopes of gaining territory and subjects; innovations like movable
type and navigational instruments like compasses, hourglasses, the astrolabe, and the quadrant were
known by many people but first used by Portuguese.
B. A Century of Portuguese Exploration
1. Reconquest
• cooperated with Spain to expel Muslims from Iberian Peninsula; religious zeal justified expansion into
what the Portuguese viewed as heathen lands.
•
•
2. Prince Henry the Navigator
most influential advocate of expansion; collected information on sailing techniques and geography
and pushed explorers to find new trade routes to find gold and items for trade.
3. Caravel
4. Discovery of new sea route to Asia
Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; ten years later, Vasco da Gama
sailed all the way to India; this allowed the Portuguese to obtain goods from the East Indies and sell
them at lower prices since they did not have to pay Mediterranean merchants; broke the old
monopoly.
II. A Surprising New World in the Western Atlantic
A. The Explorations of Columbus
1. Christopher Columbus and Felipa Moniz
• married Moniz; her father had been raised in the household of Prince Henry the Navigator
• Columbus gained access to maps and information about sailing the Atlantic; believed Earth was
round, but he dramatically underestimated the distance west to Asia (2,500 miles vs. 11,000
miles).
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
2. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand
Spanish monarchs financed Columbus’s voyage west after Portugal, Spain, England, and
France turned him down
they saw small potential loss, but big potential gain in financing the trip.
3. San Salvador and the Tainos
ships the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria landed on a Caribbean island about 300 miles north of
Cuba in 1492
Columbus claimed it for Isabella and Ferdinand; named it San Salvador in honor of Jesus Christ
called people “Indians,” believing he was in the East Indies
the people called themselves Tainos; Columbus knew he made a monumental discovery but
was disappointed by the Tainos’ lack of riches; Ferdinand and Isabella, however, were
overjoyed with the news of Columbus’s discovery, and he joined the ranks of the nobility.
4. Treaty of Tordesillas
Portuguese and Spanish monarchs negotiated the treaty in 1494
drew an imaginary line 1,100 miles west of the Canary Islands
land discovered west of the line belonged to Spain, land to the east belonged to Portugal; Spain
sent Columbus back, and he found his sailors had terrorized the Tainos and sexually abused
their women; the Tainos killed the sailors in response; foreshadowed what would happen
between Native Americans and Europeans in the future.
II. A Surprising New World in the Western Atlantic
B. The Geographic Revolution and the Columbian Exchange
1. Further exploration after Columbus
• monarchs hurried to claim new land;
• John Cabot sailed to find a Northwest Passage to the Indies in 1497
• landed at Newfoundland, went back to England, but was never heard from
again after he returned to the New World
• Spanish expedition accompanied by Italian businessman Amerigo Vespucci
landed on the northern coast of South America in 1499
• Portuguese Pedro Álvars Cabral accidentally made landfall in Brazil while en
route to the Indian Ocean.
•
•
•
•
•
•
2. Ferdinand Magellan
Sponsored by King Charles I of Spain, Magellan led an expedition to
circumnavigate the globe in 1519; crossing the Pacific took four months
Magellan was killed by Philippine tribesmen, but a remnant of his expedition
made it back to Spain
left no doubt that America was separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean and
that sailing west to India was inefficient.
3. Columbian Exchange
Transatlantic trade of goods launched by Columbus’s expedition
Spaniards brought to the New World Christianity, iron, horses, firearms,
sailing ships; also unknowingly brought smallpox, measles, and deadly
diseases; ancient American goods (corn and tobacco), people, ideas, and
even diseases (syphilis) made the return trip back.
III. Spanish Exploration and Conquest
A. The Conquest of Mexico
1. Hernán Cortés
• Had experience in the New World fighting in the conquest of Cuba and elsewhere in the
Caribbean
• in 1504, he led an expedition of about six hundred men to investigate rumors of a wealthy
kingdom on the mainland.
2. Malinali (“Marina”)
• A gift to Cortés from a Tobasco chief; she spoke several languages and served as Cortés’s
translator; Cortés would not have been able to communicate without her; Spaniards called her
Marina; she knew many languages because her step-father had sold her as a slave to Mayanspeaking Indians. Malinali was also Cortés’s mistress and bore him a son.
•
•
•
•
•
3. Emperor Montezuma and the riches of Tenochtitlán
emperor Montezuma feared the Spaniards were led by the god Quetzalcoatl
Marina told Cortés this so they dressed in regalia, played horns, and displayed swords
Cortés marched inland to find Montezuma, who welcomed him on November 8, 1519
Montezuma showed Cortés the riches of the city; Cortés took Montezuma hostage and hoped
to rule through a puppet government
Montezuma was killed by an unknown assailant during a revolt; the Mexica mounted a ferocious
assault on the Spaniards, who fled to Tlaxcala, a stronghold of enemies of the Mexica.
4. Cortes invades and conquers Mexica
• With the help of Indian allies, Cortés returned to the
Mexican capital in the spring of 1521
• conquered Tenochtitlán by August; succeeded due to
several advantages: they were using weapons of iron
and steel against weapons of stone, wood, and copper
• smallpox arrived with Cortés and decimated the Mexican
population
• Spaniards also sought total victory in war, while the
Mexicans only sought surrender; key point is that Cortés
could exploit the tensions between the Mexica and the
people they ruled in their empire; exploited Indians
III. Spanish Exploration and Conquest
B. The Search for Other Mexicos
1. Tales of wealth
2. Francisco Pizarro
• Conquered the Incan empire in Peru in 1532; Pizarro and his men captured the Incan emperor
Atahualpa, who gave the Spaniards a ransom of gold equal to half a century of precious metal
production in Europe; the Spaniards killed Atahualpa in spite of the ransom.
•
•
•
3. de Soto, Coronado, and Cabrillo
Tales of wealth attracted more conquistadors; in 1539, Hernando de Soto tried to find another
Peru in the North
landed in Florida and searched for riches in southeastern North America; died of a fever in 1542
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado searched for the mythical Seven Cities of Cíbola, which turned
out to be a small Zuñi pueblo of about a hundred families; Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo died in an
attempt to find wealth along the coast of California in 1542.
C. Spanish Outposts in Florida and New Mexico
1. Menéndez and the founding of St. Augustine
• St. Augustine was founded in 1565, the first permanent European settlement in what became
the United States; by 1600, it was the only remaining Spanish beachhead on the North
American Atlantic shore.
2. Oñate and the founding of New Mexico
• Oñate and about 500 people settled present-day New Mexico in 1598
• soldiers planned to mutiny, and relationships with Indians deteriorated; Indians in
the Acoma pueblo revolted; Oñate suppressed the rebellion, killing 800 men,
women, and children; no peace or stability in region; many of his settlers returned
to Mexico after another pueblo revolt in 1599.
III. Spanish Exploration and Conquest
D. New Spain in the Sixteenth Century
1. New Spain and Spanish domination of the Western
Hemisphere
• New Spain was more interested in colonization than other powers
that mostly wanted to trade or deal with domestic issues; allowed
Spain to become the dominant European power in the Western
Hemisphere during the sixteenth century.
2. The “royal fifth” and the system of encomienda
• monarchy allowed conquistadors to keep all loot, giving the crown
one-fifth, the “royal fifth,” of what they confiscated; encomienda
empowered conquistadors to rule Indians; Spanish encomendero
owned the town and thus received the tribute the town previously
paid to the Mexican empire; the encomendero was supposed to be
responsible for Indians’ well-being, guarantee order and justice, and
convince Indians to convert to Christianity.
3. Repartimiento replaces encomienda
• Encomenderos overworked and abused Indians
• believed they were superior and therefore had the right
to use Indians as slaves; a few Catholic missionaries,
including Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, protested the
brutal treatment
• the Spanish monarchy replaced encomienda with the
repartimiento
• limited labor an encomendero could command to fortyfive days per year from each adult male
• did not, however, challenge the principle of forced labor
or prevent encomenderos from cheating, mistreating,
and overworking Indians.
4. Intermarriage creates sharp social hierarchy
• Most settlers were poor young men of common lineage who came
directly from Spain
• men vastly outnumbered women, which meant that Europeans
never made up more than 1 or 2 percent of the total population; also
meant Spanish men often married Indian women or used them as
concubines
• hierarchy; from highest to lowest: peninsulares (natives of Spain),
creoles (children born in the New World to Spanish men and
women, together with peninsulares constituted 1 to 2 percent of
population), mestizos (children of Spanish men and Indian women, 4
to 5 percent of population), and Indians (the overwhelming majority)
of the population.
III. Spanish Exploration and Conquest
E. The Toll of Spanish Conquest and Colonization
1. Demoralization of Indian society
• 1560, Indian civilizations had been conquered, their leaders
overthrown, their religion held in contempt, and their people
forced to work for Spaniards.
2. Virulent epidemics
• had no immunity to measles, smallpox, and respiratory illnesses; by 1570,
the Indian population of New Spain had fallen about 90 percent from what it
was when Columbus arrived.
3. Labor shortage and the importation of African
slaves
• Indian deaths depleted the labor supply; in response, colonists
began to import African slaves; only 15,000 slaves were
imported from Africa before 1550; 36,000 imported from 1550
to1600.
IV. The New World and Sixteenth-Century Europe
A. The Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Response
1. Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation
• publicized his criticisms of the Catholic Church in 1517; he preached a
doctrine known as “justification by faith”: Christians could only obtain
salvation by having faith in God, not by giving money to the church, following
orders of priests, or participating in church rituals
• also argued the Bible was more important than the Church; charged that
Catholic Church was fraudulent.
2. Anti-Reformation monarchs
• Charles V and his son and successor Philip II pledged to exterminate
Luther’s Protestant heresies; they used wealth of Spain’s New World empire
to defend orthodox Catholic faith against Protestants, Muslims, Jews, or
other nations.
3. New Spain’s effect on the Spanish economy
• New Spain’s wealth made Spain rich and powerful, but the
monarchs’ expenses for constant warfare outstripped their
revenues
• they raised taxes, exempting the nobility and therefore putting
the burden of taxation of the poor; they also borrowed heavily
from European bankers. As a result, Spain ended up far in debt by
the end of the century;
B. Europe and the Spanish Example
1. Expansion of European influence
2. Failed expeditions
• 1524, France sent Giovanni da Verrazano to the Atlantic Coast to
search for a Northwest Passage
• the search failed; in 1535, Jacques Cartier sailed up the St.
Lawrence River; Cartier established a colony in 1541, but it came to
nothing; England tried to find a Northwest Passage again in 1576
• Martin Frobisher of the Cathay Company hoped to open trade with
China
• he believed he found gold, but it was worthless ore; Cathay
Company collapsed, and the English interests turned South
• Sir Walter Raleigh organized an expedition to settle Roanoke Island
off the coast of present-day North Carolina; when he sent settlers to
the area two years later, they all disappeared, leaving only the word
Croatoan in a tree; by the end of the century, England had no New
World beachhead.