history ch. 1 – Flashcards

• There were about 70 million people in the Americas combined when Columbus landed in 1492 that was about equal to the population of Europe.

• The first migrants may have arrived over 40,000 years ago, traveling from central Siberia and slowly making their way to southern South America. These people and subsequent migrants from Eurasia, probably traveled across a land bridge that emerged across what is now the Bering Strait.

• At first , they mainly subsisted by hunting the mammoths, bison, and mainly subsisted by hunting the mammoths, bison, and other large game. They had efficient hunting tools, which probably contributed to over hunting, which along with climate change led to the extinction of many large game species. • Climate change which transformed the landscape which gave large game less food also • Led them to having to form an agricultural way of life to compensate

• 40000 years ago

What did the Indians trade? • They not only exchanged material goods, but also marriage partners, laborers, ideas, and religious practices. Valuable goods, such as copper from the Great Lakes area and shells from the Gulf of Mexico, have been discovered at archaeological sites far from their places of origin.

• No Native American adaptation was more momentous than the domestication of certain plants and the development of farming. Between 9000 to 10000 years ago. Agriculture in the Americas may have developed as early as it did in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, china, and India.

• Women's status improved, because of their roles as principle farmers • The adoption of agriculture further enhanced the diversity of Native • American societies that developed over centuries within broad regions, or culture areas- within each area, inhabitants shared basic patterns of subsistence and social organization, largely reflecting the natural environment to which they had adapted.

• Artic and SubArtic: Moved seasonally to fish or hunt whales, seals, and other sea animals and, in the brief summers, gather wild berries. • Crees and other peoples followed migrating herds of caribou and moose • Along the Northwest Coast and the Columbia River Plateau, lots of natural resources permited native peoples to prosper without farming. Fish for salmon and eat edible plants • In present day Cali hunter gatherers would collect and eat acorns

• The Aztec empire expanded trough military conquest, driven by a quest for sacrificial victims and tribute payments of gold, food, and handcrafted goods from hundreds of subject communities. But as they empire grew, it became increasingly vulnerable to internal division. Neighboring peoples submitted to the Aztecs out of fear rather than loyalty

• Around 1200, the climate of the Southwest grew colder, making it more difficult to grow enough to feed the large population. Food scarcity may have set village against village and encouraged attacks by outsiders. Villagers probably resorted to cliff dwellings for protection as violence spread in the region. • Their descendants include the Hopis and Zunis, as well as other Puebloan peoples in the desert Southwest.

• Mississippian culture began to decline in the thirteenth century, perhaps due to an ecological crisis. Cahokia's population may have outstripped it's food supply, and a series of hot, dry summers created further hardship.

• In the Northeast, the Iroquois and Hurons moved from dispersed settlements into fortified villages. Both the Hurons and the Iroquois formed confederacies that were intended to diminish internal conflict and increase their collective spiritual strength. Among the Iroquois, five separate nations -the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas- joined to create the Great League of Peace and Power around the year 1450 • Formed alliences and shifting centers of trade and political poer

• Empires rose and fell, and new ones took their place. Large cities flourished and disappeared. Periods of warfare occasionally disrupted the lives of thousands of individuals. The Europeans' arrival, at the end of the fifteenth century, coincided with a period of particular instability, as various Native American groups

• In the three centuries after 1492, six out of every seven people who crossed the Atlantic to the Americas were Africans.

• Extending from the southern edge of the sahara Desert toward the equator and inland for nearly 1000 miles • On the whole a sparsely settled region • Densely inhabited communities • Several clung to the coast, but several important cities lay well inland

• Family connections were exceedingly important, helping to define each person's place in society • Children especially cherished, because of high rate of infant mortality • Men who could afford to do so had more than one wife, increasing their chances of having surviving offspring • Also emphasized links with extended family; groups of families formed clans that further extended an individual's kin ties within the village • Religious beliefs magnified the powerful influence of family on African life • Ideas and practices focused on themes of fertility, prosperity, health, and social harmony. • Many believed ancestors acted as medatiors between the living and the dead • Believed spiritual forces suffused the natural world • Preserved their faith through oral traditions, not written texts • Islam began to take root in the tenth century

• Slaves. Chronic under population in many parts of West Africa had led to the development of slavery as a way to maintain control over scace and valuable laborers.

• African law recognized slaves, rather than land, as the main form of private property. Most slaves within Africa lost their freedom because they were captured in war, but others had been kidnapped or were enslaved as punishment for a crime.

• Europeans lived in states organized into more rigid hierarchies than could be found in most parts of North America or West Africa, with the population divided into distinct classes • At the top were the monarchs who, along with the next rank of aristocrats, dominated government and owned most of the land, receiving rents and labor services from farmers and rural artisans. Next, in descending order, came prosperous gentry families, independent landowners, and, at the bottom, landless peasants and laborers

• The monarchs of Spain, France, and England successfully asserted royal authority over their previously fragmented realms, creating strong state bureaucracies to control political rivals

• He believed that the church had become too insistent on the performance of good works. He called for a return to what he understood to be the purer beliefs of the early church, emphasizing that salvation came not by good deeds but only by faith in God. • Reformation- his ideas became known as this, because it was a challenge to the Catholic Church. • People with drew from the catholic church, started reading the bible

• Many German princes were discontented with imperial authority. Many of these princes also supported Luther. When the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V tried to silence them, the reformist princes protested. From that point on, these princes -and all Europeans who supported religious reform - became known as Protestants

• The Reformation fractured the religious unity of Western Europe and spawned a century of warfare unprecedented in its bloody destructiveness. • Protestants fought Catholics in France and the German states.

• The conquerors of this empire attributed their success to their military superiority and God's approval of their imperial ambitions • In reality, it was the result of a complex set of interactions with native peoples as well as an unanticipated demographic catastrophe.

• Merchants especially sought access to Asian spices like pepper, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg that added interest to an otherwise monotonous diet and helped preserve foods. • Wealthy Europeans paid handsomely for small quantities of spices, making it worthwhile to transport them great distances.

• Iberian shipbuilders perfected the caravel, a ship whose narrow shape and steering rudder suited it for ocean travel • Ship designers combined square sails ( good for speed) with triangular lateen sails, which increased maneuverability • European mariners adopted two important navigational devices - the magnetic compass ( first developed in china) and the astrolabe 9 Introduced to Europe by Muslims from Spain) - that allowed mariners to determine their position in relation to a star's known location in the sky

• Columbus tried to convince Ferdinand and Isabella that his plan suited Spain;s national goals. If he succeeded, Spain could grow rich from Asian trade, send Christian missionaires to Asia (a goal in keeping with the religios ideals of the Reconquista), and perhaps enlist the Great Khan of China as an ally in the long struggle with Islam. • The Spanish monarchs kept Columbus wiaing nearly seven years until 1492 when the last Muslim stronghold at Granada fell to Spanish forces - before they gave him their support.

• Gold? • Indians as slaves?

• Its experience with the Reconquista gave it a religious justification for conquest (bringing Christianity to nonbelievers) and an army of seasoned soldiers conquistadors eager to seek their fortunes in America now that the last Muslims had been expelled from Spain. • In addition, during the Reconquista and the conquest of the Canary Islands, Spain's rulers developed efficient techniques for controlling newly conquered lands that could be applied to New World colonies.

• In 1519, Hernan Cortes and 600 soldiers - light-skinned strangers who inspired the Indian messenger to rush to Moctezuma - landed on the coast of Mexico. • By 1521, Cortes and his men had conquered the powerful Aztec empire, discovering riches beyond their wildest dream.

• In 1532, Francisco Pizarro and 180 men, following rumors of even greater riches than those of Mexico, discovered the Inca empire high in the Peruvian Andes. • The Spaniards arrived at a moment of weakness for the empire. A few years before, the Inca ruler had died, probably from smallpox, and civil way had broken out between two of his sons. The victor, Atahualpa, was on his way from the empire's northern provinces to claim his throne when Pizarro intercepted him. Pizarro took Atahualpa hostage and despite receiving a colossal ransom a roomful of gold and silver - had him killed. The Spaniards then captured Cuzco, eventually extended control over the whole empire, and established a new capital at Lima.

• The failure to find gold and silver halted Spain's attempt to extend its empire to the north. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish maintained just two precarous footholds north of Mexico

• An exaggerated story according to which a fanatical Catholic Spain sought to spread its control at any cost. • Created by protestant Europeans

• In 1492, the Spanish crown, determined to impose religious conformity after the Reconquista, expelled from Spain all Jews who refused to become Christians. The refugees included many leading merchants who had contributed significantly to Spain's economy. The remaining Christian merchants, now awash in American riches, saw little reason to invest in new trade or productive enterprises that might have sustained the economy once the flow of the New world treasure diminished

• Spain's long-term economic decline was just one of many consequences of the conquest of the new World. In the long run, the biological consequences of contact - what one historian has called the Columbian exchange - proved to be the most momentous. The most catastrophic result of the exchange was the exposure of Native Americans to Old World diseases.

• Curiosity and confusion • Indians cut themselves with Columbus swords because they had never seen them before • Fainted at sound of cannon • Read page 24 for more info

• 1494, solved conflicting claims of Portugal and Spain. The treaty drew a north-south line approximately 1.100 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain received all lands west of the line, while Portugal held sway to the east. This limited Portugal's sugar plantations worked by slave labor. But the treaty also protected Portugal's claims in Africa and Asia, which lay east of the line.

• In 1497, King Henry VII sent John Cabot, an Italian mariner, to explore eastern Canada on England's behalf. But neither Henry nor any of his wealthy subjects would invest the funds necessary to follow up on Cabot's discoveries. For nearly half a century, English contact with America was limited to seasonal voyages of fishermen who lived each summer in Newfoundland, fished for cod offshore, and returned to England in autmn. • The lapse in English activity in the New World stemmed from religious troubles at home

• The English transferred their assumptions above Irish "savage" to Native Americans. Englishmen in America frequently observed similarities between Indians and the Irish. Second, the Irish experience influenced English ideas about colonial settlement. English conquerors set up " plantations" surrounded by palisades on seized Irish Lands. These plantations were meant to be civilized outposts in a savage land.

• They all disappeared, they may have moved to the mainland and intermarried with local Indian. • One historian has speculated that they survived until 1607 when Powhatan Indians, angered by the appearance of more English settlers, killed them. • The actual fate of the "Lost Colony" at Roanoke will probably never be known.

• The experience of Roanoke should have tempered that enthusiasm, illustrating the difficulty of establishing colonies.