RAHHH APUSH UNIT 1 AP REVIEW

English textile industry emerges

• 1500

• Merchants bought wool from the owners of estates and sent it to landless peasants in small cottages to spin and weave into cloth

• The government aided textile entrepreneurs by setting low wage rates and helped merchants by giving them monopolies in foreign markets

• Elizabeth I practiced mercantilism– by encouraging textile production, she reduced imports and increased exports → favorable balance caused gold and silver to flow into England, stimulating further economic expansion

• This increased trade also boosted import duties, swelling the royal treasury and the monarchy’s power

Henry VIII

• 1509-1547

• When the pope refused to annul his marriage to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, Henry broke with Rome and placed himself at the head of the new Church of England

Church of England

• 1534

• Founded by Henry VIII

• The CoE maintained most Catholic doctrines and practices, but Protestant teachings increasingly gained influence

Philip II

• 1556-1598; ruler of Spain

• Determined to root out challenges to the Catholic Church wherever they appeared

• Continued to spend his American gold and silver on religious wars, a policy that diverted workers and resources from Spain’s fledgling industries; led to the serious economic decline of Spain

Elizabeth I

• 1558-1603; ruler of England

• Approved a Protestant confession of faith

• Supported a generation of English seafarers who took increasingly aggressive actions against Spanish control of American wealth, such as Francis Drake

• Imposed English rule over Gaelic-speaking Catholic Ireland, where soldiers brutally massacred thousands

  • Prefigured the treatment of Native Americans in America

• Practiced mercantilism– by encouraging textile production, she reduced imports and increased exports → favorable balance caused gold and silver to flow into England, stimulating further economic expansion

• Significance: Elizabeth’s mercantile policies had laid the foundation for overseas colonization, granting England the merchant fleet and wealth needed to challenge Spain’s control of the West

Jamestown

• 1607

• James I granted to the Virginia Company of London all the lands from present-day NC to southern NY

• The colonists expected to demand tributes from the Native population and search out valuable commodities like pearls and gold

• The all-male force without farmers fared poorly in their new environment, settling on a swampy peninsula

  • The settlers refused to plant crops and lacked access to fresh water; most quickly died off

• Failed to dominate the local Native American population

• Scarce towns deprived settlers of community

• Families were scarce– there were few women, and marriages often ended with the early death of a spouse

• Pregnant women were especially vulnerable to malaria, and many mothers died after bearing a first or second child

Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec

• 1608

• Traded with Montagnais, Micmacs, Ottawas, and Ojibwas

• The Hurons gave the French access to furs that were greatly in demand in Europe

• Champlain offered manufactured goods in exchange– kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, bread, and guns

Slavery in the Chesapeake

• 1619

• Slavery began slowly

• Initially, some Africans were able to escape bondage since English common law did not acknowledge chattel slavery

  • Some were freed as a result of baptism, others purchased their freedom, and some won their freedom in the courts

• Social mobility ended with the collapse of the tobacco boom

• The low  price of tobacco prompted planters to make it as cheaply as possible– black labor was cheaper than white labor

• As more African workers were imported, white settlers grew more race-conscious

• Other leading legislators progressively distinguished English from African residents by color rather than religion; they increasingly made slavery a permanent and hereditary condition

House of Burgesses

• 1619

• Could make laws and levy taxes, although the governor and the company council in England could veto its acts

• Created by the Virginia Company

Plymouth Colony

• 1620

• A group of Pilgrims and other migrants from England traveled to America aboard the Mayflower

• Formed the Mayflower Compact, which used the Pilgrims’ self-governing religious congregation as the model for their political structure

• A system of representative self-government, broad political rights, property ownership, and religious freedom of conscience was established

Tobacco boom

• 1620-1660

• John Rolfe found a West Indian strain of tobacco that flourished in VA soil and fetched a high price in England

• Taxes on imported tobacco bolstered the royal treasury

• Tobacco was a land-intensive crop that used lots of nutrients and exhausted the soil, so VA settlers took more and more land from the Indigenous population

  • Taking new land was easier than caring for the land they already had

• Powhatan accused the English of coming “not to trade but to invade my people and possess my country”

• The rising demand for tobacco prompted a forty-year economic boom in the Chesapeake

Indian War of 1622

• 1622, VA

• Opechancanough fiercely resisted English proposals to place Native American children in schools to be brought up in Christianity

• He was determined to drive all English settlers out of America

• Opechancanough nearly succeeded, killing nearly one-third of the English population

• The English retaliated by seizing the fields and food of their Native neighbors, selling captured warriors into slavery

VA becomes a royal colony

• 1624

• Shocked by the violence during the Indian War of 1622, James I made VA a royal colony

• Now the king and his ministers appointed the governor and a small advisory council, still retaining the House of Burgesses but stipulating that the king’s Privy Council must ratify all legislation

• The King decreed the legal establishment of the Church of England, meaning that the residents had to pay taxes to support its clergy

MA Bay Colony

• 1630

• Puritan exodus– led by John Winthrop

• Winthrop sought land for his children and a place in Christian history for his people– delivered the sermon “A city upon a Hill”

  • “We must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill… the eyes of all people are upon us”

• Founded through a joint-stock company (the Massachusetts Bay Company)

• Colonists transformed the company into a representative political system with a governor, council, and assembly

• Ensured rule by the goldyl by limiting the right to vote and hold office to men who were church members

• Puritanism was established as the state-supported religion

• Placed power in the congregation of members– many embraced predestination, but others hoped for a conversion experience

Maryland

• 1634

• Home to another tobacco-based economy

• Charles I was secretly sympathetic toward Catholicism and granted lands bordering the Chesapeake Bay to the Catholic aristocrat Lord Baltimore

• Maryland then became a refuge for Catholics, who were persecuted in England

• Many Catholics and artisans and laborers who were Protestant established St. Mary’s City

• Maryland became home to religious tolerance, although anti-catholic agitation by Protestants persisted

  • Baltimore then passed the Toleration Act (1649) in response, granting all Christians the right to follow their beliefs and hold church services

• The settlers later elected a representative assembly and insisted on the right to initiate legislation, which Baltimore grudgingly granted

Puritan-Pequot War

• 1636

• Because of their alliance with the Dutch, the Pequots became a thorn in the side of English traders

• A series of violent encounters began in 1636 and escalated until 1637, when a combined force of MA and CT militiamen, accompanied by Narragansett and Mohegan warriors, attacked a Pequot village and massacred many

• In the months that followed, the New Englanders drove the surviving Pequots into oblivion and divided their lands

Roger Williams and Providence

• 1636

• To maintain God’s favor, the MA Bay magistrates purged their society of religious dissidents, including Williams

• Williams opposed the decision to establish an official religion and praised the separation of church and state; he advocated toleration; questioned the seizure of Native land; and argued that political magistrates could not control spiritual lives

• Williams later settled outside of Boston and obtained a corporate charter from Parliament for a new colony (RI) with full authority to rule themselves

• No legally established church in RI; individuals could worship God as they pleased

Beaver Wars

• 1640s

• These Iroquois campaigns drastically altered the map of northeastern NA as they razed villages, killing many residents and taking many more captive

• In the 1660s, New France committed to an all-out war against the Iroquois

• The Five Nations were eventually defeated– a minority converted to Catholicism, and the remaining forged a new alliance with the Englishmen who had taken New England

Puritan Revolution in England

• 1642-1659

• Charles I repudiated certain Protestant doctrines

• Puritans were prominent in Parliament, and Charles later dissolved Parliament, hoping to work on his own agenda

• Charles’s archbishop soon began to purge Protestant ministers

• English Puritans joined the Scots, demanding religious reform and parliamentary power

  • The Scots had the Church of England prayer book imposed upon them

• The Puritan triumph in England was short-lived– popular support for the Commonwealth ebbed after Cromwell took dictatorial control

• Following Cromwell’s death, moderate Protestants and a resurgent aristocracy restored the monarchy and the hierarchy, placing Charles II on the throne

• Significance: For the Puritans in America, the restoration of the monarchy committed them to their lives in America, showing them that they could no longer return

The English conquer New Netherland

• 1664

Bacon’s Rebellion

• 1675-1676

• Grew out of a conflict with neighboring native Americans– highlighted the way that a land-intensive settler colony created friction with Indigenous populations

• Economic and political power in VA was in the hands of a small circle of men who amassed land, slaves, and political offices; through headrights and royal grants, they controlled nearly half of all the settled land in VA

  • Land is money in the tobacco trade

  • Berkely bought off allies with leand grants and tax exemptions, and those allies appointed their friends to legal offices

• Indentured servants in trouble– more difficult to get land, and without land, they couldn’t vote to change their situation; they also confronted low tobacco prices

• The House of Burgesses took the vote away from landless freemen, who constituted half the adult white men

• Most Native Americans lived on treaty-guaranteed territory along the frontier, where poor whites wanted to settle → called for the expulsion of Native Americans there

• When their demands went ignored by Berkeley, who wanted a trading relationship with their Native neighbors, a vigilante band of militiamen attacked a nearby settlement of Susquehannocks

• The Susquehannocks retaliated by attacking outlying plantations and killing three hundred whites

• Berkeley proposed a series of frontier forts to deter intrusion, which was seen as passive and a waste of taxpayer dollars

• Bacon emerged as the leader of the rebels

  • He previously held a position on the governor’s council, but was shut out of his inner circle and differed with Berkeley on Indigenous policy

  • When Berkeley refused to grant Bacon a military commission, Bacon mobilized his neighbors and attacked any Native Americans

• Once victorious, Bacon’s army forced the government to hold legislative actions– the newly elected House enacted far-reaching reforms that curbed the powers of the governor and council and restored voting rights to landless freemen

• Bacon issued a “Manifesto and Declaration of the People” that demanded the removal of Native Americans and an end to the elites

• After Bacon suddenly died, the rebel forces fell apart and Berkeley took his revenge

• Significance: Virginia planters switched from indentured servants, who became free after four years, to slaves, who labored for life

  • Wealthy planters progressively made common cause with poorer whites, while slaves became the most exploited and low-ranking residents of VA

Metacom’s War/King Philip’s War

• 1675-1676

• By the 1670s, Europeans in New England outnumbered Native Americans by 3 to 1

• The Wampanoag leader Metacom/King Philip realized that the prospects for coexistence looked dim, concluding that the English had to be expelled

• Metacom forged a military alliance with the Narragansetts and Nipmucks and attacked white settlements throughout New England

• The fighting continued until Metacom’s forces ran out of gunpowder and the MA Bay government hired Mohegan and Mohawk warriors

• Carnage– 20% of the English towns in MA were destroyed and nearly 5% of the adult population died

• Native American losses were worse– from famine and disease, death in battle, and sale into slavery, about one-quarter of their population died

• Many surviving Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and Nipmuks moved west, intermarrying with Algonquian tribes

Pueblo Revolt

• 1680

• Spanish soldiers and Franciscan missionaries had attempted to dominate the Indigenous communities in Pueblo County, demanding tribute, labor, and forced conversions to Catholicism with fierce repression

• The Spanish were distrusted and hated

• Pope, a religious leader, organized a complex military offensive against the Spanish

• Pope drew on warriors from two dozen pueblos across several hundred miles, orchestrating an uprising that liberated the pueblos

• However, under the leadership of Vargas, the Spanish returned and recaptured Santa Fe and reclaimed most of the pueblos

• Spanish colonists eventually reduced their labor demands

Columbian Exchange

• The movement of diseases and people across the Atlantic

• Foods of the Western Hemisphere– especially maize, potatoes, manioc, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes– significantly increased agricultural yields and population growth in other continents

• European livestock transformed American landscapes– Europeans brought cattle, swine, horses, oxen, chickens, and honeybees

• Europeans also brought wheat, barley, rye, and rice

Pilgrims

• Religious separatists– committed Protestants who had left the Church of England

Anne Hutchinson

• Held weekly prayer meetings for women and accused various Boston clergymen of placing undue emphasis no good behavior

• Denied that salvation could be earned through good deeds– denied the existence of a “covenant of works” and instead advocated a “covenant of grace”

• Declared that God revealed divine truth directly to individual believers

• Hutchinson advocated radical gender equality

• Hutchinson was found guilty of holding heretical views and exiled; she then followed Williams to Rhode Island

Indentured servants

• The prospect of owning land continued to lure settlers– most of whom were young men

• Indentured servitude contracts bound them to work for a master for four or five years, after which they would be free to marry and work for themselves

• Indentured servants were a bargain if they survived the voyage and their first year– servants could produce five times their purchase price in the first year

• Many masters ruthlessly exploited servants, forcing them to work long hours, beating them irrationally, and withholding permission to marry

• Female servants were especially vulnerable to abuse

• Few escaped poverty– only one-quarter of men achieved their quest for property and respectability

African American slaves (Barbados)

• Sugar production devoured laborers, so black workers were constantly imported, eventually outnumbering whites nearly 3 to 1

• Slave owners developed a code of force and terror to keep sugar flowing and maintain control of the black majority that surrounded them

Virginia Company of London

• A joint-stock corporation that pooled the resources of many investors, spreading the financial risk widely

• Encouraged immigration by allowing individual settlers to own land, granting 100 acres to every freeman and more to those who imported servants

Powhatan

• Was willing to treat the English traders as potential allies who could provide valuable goods, but Powhatan expected tribute from the English in exchange

• Expected Jamestown to become a dependent community within his chiefdom

The Dutch

• While fighting for independence from Spain and Portugal, the Dutch seized Portuguese forts in Africa and Indonesia and sugar plantations in Brazil

• These conquests gave the Dutch control of the Atlantic trade

The Iroquois

• Granted political authority to councils of leaders

• Included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, who banded together to form the Iroquois

• One of the most powerful Native American groups in the Northeast

• Had matriarchal societies– women were influential in local councils, although men served as sachems, made war, and conducted diplomacy

• Despite the deleterious effects of colonization, they were able to capitalize on their strategic location in NY to dominate the region between the French and Dutch colonies

• Obtained guns from Dutch merchants at Fort Orange and inflicted terror on their neighbors– razed villages, killing many residents and taking many more captives

• Gradually pushed into New England, south to the Carolinas, north to Quebec, and west via the Great Lakes

Puritans

• Considered their presence in America to be divinely ordained

• Believed that their church should embrace all, but strongly emphasized predestination, making it hard for them to accept that Native Americans could be counted among the elect

• New England Puritans consciously rejected the feudal practices of English society

• Many came from middling families in East Anglia, had no desire to live as tenants of wealthy aristocrats, or submit to oppressive taxation

• Vowed to live close together in self-governing communities

• Although land was widely owned, it was not equally distributed; however, all families received some land and most adult men had a vote in the town meeting

• For farmers and thousands of other ordinary settlers, New England proved to be a new world of opportunity

New France

• French Catholic missionaries went out into Indigenous communities, mastering Indigenous languages and coming to understand, and sometimes respect, Indigenous values

• Many Native Americans initially welcomed the priests, but when prayer to the Christian god did not protect them, they grew skeptical

• New France became an expansive center of fur trading and missionary work but languished as a farming settlement

• Few people immigrated here

  • Louis XIV drafted tens of thousands of men into military service and barred Huguenots from immigrating to New France, fearing they might win converts and take control

  • Migrants to New France faced an oppressive, aristocracy and church-dominated feudal system

• The French eventually claimed a vast inland arc, from the St. Lawrence Valley through the Great Lakes and down the course of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (reached LA)

• A network of about two dozen forts grew up in the Great Lakes and Mississippi rivers– were used as bases of operations and trading centers

New Netherland

• Founded by the Dutch through the West India Company

• The new colony did not thrive– the Dutch Republic was too small to support immigration

• The West India Company granted large tracts of land to wealthy Dutchmen who promised to populate them– largely unsuccessful

• It was largely ignored by the West India Company after the conflict with the Alconquians

• The governor ruled in an authoritarian fashion, alienating the colony’s diversity

• Consequently, the residents of New Netherland offered little resistance when England invaded the colony– later became New York

Spain

• The Aztec and Inca empires were essential to the accumulation of Spanish wealth

• Vast amounts of silver poured across the Pacific Ocean to China, where it was minted into money

• The gold that had formerly honored Aztec and Inca gods now flowed into Spain

• Although the crown initially benefited enormously from all this wealth, in the long run, ruinous inflation was triggered

• Between 1500 and 1650, at least 350,000 Spaniards migrated to Mesoamerica and the Andes

Spanish colonies

• Racial intermixing led to the casta system

• Spaniards initially congregated in cities, but they gradually moved into the countryside, creating large estates (haciendas) and regional networks of market exchange

• Suppressed Indigenous religious ceremonies and texts, and converted Natives to Christianity en masse

• Catholicism was transformed– Catholic parishes took their form from Indigenous communities; Native American ideas and expectations reshaped Church practices; and new forms of Native Christianity emerged in both regions

Brazil’s sugar plantations

• Each plantation had its own milling operation, combining backbreaking agricultural labor with milling, extracting, and refining processes

• Because Indigenous populations kept dying from disease, planters turned to African slaves

The Caribbean

• English, French, and Dutch sailors all looked for a permanent toehold

• Settled on St. Kitts, the Lesser Antilles, etc.

• Colonists experimented with many cash crops, including tobacco, indigo, cotton, cacao, and ginger

• Many planters later shifted to sugar cultivation, like Brazil

Plantations

• Although plantations were initially small freeholds, the logic of plantation agriculture soon encouraged consolidation

• Large planters amassed as much land as they could and experimented with new forms of labor and discipline that maximized their control over production

Chattel slavery

• The ownership of human beings as property

Mercantilism

• A system of state-assisted manufacturing and trade

  • Also stated that there was a finite amount of wealth in the world– if one country got richer, all the rest got poorer

  • Measured wealth in silver and gold

Encomiendas

• Granted by the Spanish Crown to leading conquistadors; allowed them to claim tribute in labor and goods from Indigenous communities

  • Set the pattern that prominent men controlled vast resources and monopolized Indigenous labor

  • Value of grants enhanced by the discovery of gold and silver deposits in Mexico and the Andes

Casta system

• As racial intermixing occurred in the Spanish colonies, a complex racial hierarchy developed

• Mestizos (Spaniard-Indigenous); mulattos (Spaniard-African); Zambo (Indigenous-African)

Headright system

• Guaranteed 50 acres of land to anyone who paid the passage of a new immigrant to VA

• By buying additional indentured servants and slaves, the colony’s largest planters also amassed ever-greater claims to land

Domestication of maize begins

• 6000 BC

• Maize was cultivated into a nutritious plant with a higher yield per acre than the staple cereals of Europe

• Significance: The resulting agricultural surpluses encouraged population growth and laid the foundation for wealthy, urban societies in Mexico and Peru, and later in the Mississippi Valley and the southeastern woodlands of NA

Mississippian culture

• 1000-1350

• Maize spread here around 800 AD, prompting the development of a large-scale northern Native American culture

• Maize brought greater urban density and more complex social organization

Crusades

• 1097-1291

• Christian rulers were obligated to suppress false doctrines, fighting against other religions such as Islam

• Christian armies aimed to reverse the Muslim advance in Europe and win back the holy lands where Christ had lived

• Significance: largely social impacts rather than military victories

  • Intensified persecution of Jews and their expulsion from European countries

  • Introduced Western Europe to new trade routes

  • Crusaders encountered sugar for the first time

  • Introduced Europe to a wider world

Renaissance

• 1300-1450

• Merchants from Italy began to push their way into the Arab-dominated trade routes in the Mediterranean

• Trading in Alexandria, Beirut, and other eastern Mediterranean ports, Italians carried the luxuries of Asia into European markets

• The profitable commerce created wealthy merchants, bankers, and textile manufacturers who expanded trade, lent money, and spurred technological innovation in silk and wool production

• Italians ruled their city-states as republics governed by merchant coalitions

• Italians celebrated civic humanism– praised public virtue and service to the state

• This economic revolution slowly spread to northern and western Europe

Portuguese trade along West and Central Africa

• For the smaller states clustered along the West African coast, merchandise originating in the world beyond the Sahara was scarce and expensive; they also had limited markets for their own products

• A new coastal trade with Europeans offered many West African peoples a welcome alternative

Christopher Columbus

• Reached America in 1492

• Columbus believed that the Atlantic Ocean was a narrower channel of water separating Europe from Asia

• Persuaded Genoese investors and Ferdinand and Isabella to accept his theories and finance a western voyage to Asia

• Columbus disembarked in the present-day Bahamas, claimed the islands for Spain, then explored the neighboring Caribbean islands, demanding tribute from the local peoples

• Columbus attempted to convert the Native Americans he encountered

• Although the Spanish monarchs supported three more voyages, he failed to find golden treasures or great kingdoms, and his death went virtually unnoticed

Vasco da Gama reaches India

• 1497-1498

• Portuguese sailors continued to look for an Atlantic route to Asia

• Although da Gama was raided in India, he returned with a highly profitable cargo of cinnamon and pepper

• Da Gama then returned to India with fighting vessels that defeated the Arab fleets

• The Portuguese government then set up fortified trading posts for its merchants at key points around the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, and China

• Significance: The Portuguese replaced the Arabs as the leaders in Asian commerce

Cabral and Brazil

• 1500

• Portuguese commander Cabral and his fleet found Brazil on their way to India

• For several decades, Native Americans supplied most of the labor for sugar plantations, but were gradually replaced by African Americans

• Brazil became the leading producer of sugar and a devourer of African lives

• Significance: Introduced the plantation system to the Americas

Protestant Reformation

• 1517

• Martin Luther condemned the Church for its corrupt practices in his Ninety-five Theses

• Luther downplayed the role of the clergy as mediators between God and believers and said that Christians must look to the Bible, not to the Church, as the ultimate authority in matters of faith

• Luther translated the Bible into German for more to read

• Luther’s criticisms triggered a war between the Holy Roman Empire and the northern principalities in Germany, and the controversy between the Catholic Church and radical reformers spread throughout much of Western Europe

• Significance: The split between Catholic and Protestant nations did much to shape the colonization of the Americas

  • Catholic powers (Spain, Portugal, and France) sought to win souls in America for the Church

  • Protestant nations (England and the Netherlands) viewed the Catholic Church as corrupt and exploitative and hoped to create godly communities attuned to the true gospel of Christianity

Aztec Empire

• 1519-1521

• Hernán Cortés led an army of 600 to the Aztec empire

• Gathered allies among Native peoples who chafed under Aztec rule

• Moctezuma, the ruler of Tenochtitlan, initially welcomed Cortés with great ceremony

• Cortés soon took the emperor captive, and after a long siege, he and his men captured the city

• The conquerors cut off the city’s supply of food and water, causing great suffering and eventually toppling the empire

• Brought disease with them– a massive smallpox epidemic ravaged Tenochtitlan

Incas conquered

• 1532-1535

• By the time Pizarro arrived, half of the Inca population had already died from European diseases

• Pizarro killed Atahualpa and seized his wealth, fully completing the conquest by 1535

Portuguese expansion

• As a young soldier in the Crusades, Prince Henry of Portugal learned about the trans-Saharan trade in gold and slaves

• Henry sought a maritime route to the source of this trade in West Africa and founded a center for oceanic navigation

  • Made improvements in sailing technology (designed a better-handling vessel known as the caravel)

• With these improvements, the Portuguese sailed far into the Atlantic, where they discovered and colonized the Madeira and Azore islands

• Sailed to sub-Saharan Sierra Leone in 1435 to exchange salt, wine, and fish for African ivory and gold

• Portuguese and Castilian mariners and monarchs worked together to finance trading voyages

• Later discovered the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and Sao Tome, all of which became laboratories for the expansion of Mediterranean agriculture

Portuguese slave trade

• Portuguese merchants exploited and redirected the existing African slave trade by establishing fortified trading posts where they bought gold and slaves from African princes and warlords

Pueblo peoples

• Located in the Arid southwest

• Developed impressive farming settlements despite the hostile environment– developed irrigation systems to manage scarce water

• Built sizable villages and towns of adobe and rock often molded to sheer canyon walls

• Although extended droughts and soil exhaustion caused the largest settlements to collapse, smaller communities still dotted the landscape when the first Europeans arrived

Aztecs

• Utilized their dense population, productive agriculture, and an aggressive bureaucratic state to maintain power

• Controlled fertile valleys in the highlands of Mexico

• Merchants forged trading routes that crisscrossed the empire

• Trade and tribute brought gold, textiles, turquoise, obsidian, tropical bird feathers, and cacao to Tenochtitlan

• Aztecs subjugated most of central Mexico

• Believed that ritual murders sustained the cosmos– sacrificed captured enemies

Incas

• Utilized their dense population, productive agriculture, and an aggressive bureaucratic state to maintain power

• Ruled through a king claiming divine status and a bureaucracy of nobles

• Consisted of subordinate kingdoms that had been conquered, and tribute flowed from local centers of power to the imperial core

Comanches

• A group of Plains peoples who became expert raiders with the help of horses

• Traded for weapons, food, clothing, and other necessities

• Eventually controlled a vast territory, becoming one of the region’s most formidable peoples

Sioux

• Gradually moved west from the Great Plains and Rockies to dominate a vast territory ranging from the Mississippi River to the Black Hills

• Very successful thanks to horses

• A confederation of seven distinct peoples

European peasants

• Family life: lived in poverty and constantly labored

  • Men governed families– once married, an Englishwoman assumed her husband’s surname, submitted to his orders, and surrendered the right to her property

  • Fathers often bestowed all their land on their eldest son (primogeniture)-- forced many younger children to join the ranks of the roaming poor

  • Poverty corroded family relationships– many children and daughters were “helped to die” so that others would have enough to eat

• Half of all peasant children died before the age of twenty-one

• Most drew on strong religious beliefs

• Manorial system:

  • Most lived in small villages surrounded by fields farmed cooperatively by different families

  • Farming rights were given in exchange for labor on the lord’s estate, an arrangement that turned peasants into serfs

  • Serfs would eventually be freed from the obligation to labor for their farming rights and begin producing surpluses that created local market economies

• Life followed the seasons– harvest, planting, etc.

Isabella I and Ferdinand II

• Renaissance rulers who saw unity and foreign commerce as the keys to power and prosperity

• Married in an arranged match to combine their Christian kingdoms

• Completed the centuries-long reconquista, the campaign by Spanish Catholics to drive Muslim Arabs from the European mainland

• Used Catholicism to build a sense of “Spanishness”; prosecuted suspected Christian heretics and expelled or forcibly converted thousands of Jews and Muslims

• Sought trade and empire by subsidizing the voyages of Columbus

Europe after the Renaissance

• Artisans came to dominate Europe’s growing cities and towns

• The rise of commerce favored the power of kings at the expense of the landed nobility

  • Kings established royal law courts that eclipsed the manorial courts controlled by nobles; built bureaucracies that helped them centralize power; forged alliances with merchants and urban artisans

  • Monarchs allowed merchants to trade throughout their land; granted privileges to guilds or artisan organizations that regulated trades; and safeguarded commercial transactions, encouraging domestic manufacturing and foreign trade

• Kings extracted taxes from towns and loans from merchants

Sudanic peoples

• Located at the eastern end of West Africa and gradually traveled westward

• Domesticated cattle and cultivated sorghum and millet

• Gradually developed a distinctive style of pottery, began to grow and weave cotton, and invented copper and ironworking techniques

• Had its own traditions of monotheism distinct from those of Christians, Muslims, and Jews

• Ghana Empire

  • Appeared sometime around AD 800; formed by the Sudanic peoples

  • Capitalized on the recently domesticated camel to pioneer trade routes across the Sahara to North Africa, where Ghana traders carried the wealth of West Africa

  • Consisted of smaller vassal kingdoms

  • Relied on military might to control their valuable trade routes

• Mali empire

  • Arose around AD 1200; formed by the Sudanic peoples

  • Consisted of smaller vassal kingdoms

  • Relied on military might to control their valuable trade routes

• Songhai Empire

• For many centuries, the primary avenue of trade for West Africans passed through the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires

  • Gold, copper, salt, and slaves brought from the south to the north across the Sahara, then returned with textiles and other products

Cahokia

• The forefront of Mississippian culture

• At its peak, Cahokia had about 10,000 residents, and including satellite communities, the region’s population was 20,000 to 30,000

• Built mounds for various functions– included burials, bases for ceremonial buildings, royal homes, etc.

• Had a powerful ruling class and a priesthood that worshipped the sun

• Declined after 1350– speculated causes include ruinous warfare, made worse by environmental changes

Eastern Woodlands

• Adopted maize agriculture from the Mississippian-influenced peoples of the Southeast but did not adopt other Mississippian characteristics

• Spoke Algonquian and Iroquoian; shared related languages and lifeways but were divided into dozens of distinct societies

• Most occupied villages built around fields of maize, beans, and squash during the summer, and dispersed into smaller groups to hunt, fish, and gather throughout the rest of the year

• Women tended crops, gathered plants, and oversaw affairs within the community, while men were responsible for activities outside the community, including hunting, fishing, and warfare

• Regularly set fires to clear underbrush and open fields, making it easier to hunt

• Many were chiefdoms– one individual claimed authority

• Some were paramount chiefdoms– numerous communities with their own local chiefs banded together under a single, more powerful ruler

• Some chiefs had strictly local power– lived in small, independent communities

• Groups further north were strictly hunters and gatherers and had smaller and more mobile communities

Great Lakes

• Dominated by Algonquian-speaking peoples

• Included the Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomis– collectively thought of themselves as a single people (the Anishinaabe)

  • Also had clan identities and crosscut tribal affiliations

• Used birchbark canoes to capitalize on the extensive network of lakes and rivers– very mobile

• Traveled long distances to hunt and fish, to trade, or to join in important ceremonies or military alliances

• “Political power and social identity took on multiple forms”

Great Plains

• Vast and arid steppes

• Dominated by small, dispersed groups of hunter-gatherers

• Horses were especially influential– introduced in the late 1500s

  • Native Americans on horseback were more formidable hunters and opponents in war

  • Many groups leveraged their control of horses to gain power over their neighbors

• Groups without horses remained foot-borne and became impoverished in comparison to their more mobile neighbors

Pacific Coast

• Inhabited by hunter-gatherers

  • Gathered acorns and other nuts and seeds, caught fish and shellfish, and hunted game

• Subdivided into dozens of small, localized groups and spoke at least a hundred distinct languages

• The diversity of languages and cultures discouraged intermarriage; kept societies independent

• Many groups shared common characteristics, including stratified hierarchies

• Some groups nurtured strong warrior traditions

• Crafted oceangoing canoes, built large longhouses, and constructed totem poles

The Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and Sao Tome

• Discovered by the Portuguese during their Atlantic explorations

• Planters transformed local ecosystems to experiment with a variety of cash crops such as wheat, wine grapes, dye plants, livestock, and occasionally sugar

• The Portuguese enslaved a few thousand Africans each year to work on sugar plantations on these islands

Native American trade

• Expansive trade networks tied together regions and carried valuable goods hundreds and even thousands of miles

• Indigenous groups traded food and raw materials, tools, ritual artifacts, and decorative goods

• Regional trade networks allowed Native Americans to share resources

  • For instance, nomadic hunters from the southern plains conducted annual trade fairs with Pueblo farmers, exchanging hides and meat for maize, pottery, and cotton blankets

  • Coexistence between farmers and hunters

• Rare and valuable objects often traveled longer distances– seashells, bear claws, eagle feathers, etc.

• Significance: trade enriched diets, enhanced economies, and allowed the powerful to set themselves apart with luxury items

Civic Humanism

• Praised public virtue and service to the state

  • Significance: Over time, this tradition profoundly influenced European and American conceptions of government

  • Prominent in Italy

Counter-Reformation

• A movement from within the Catholic Church that sought change from within