Unit 1: Colonization of the New World

Unit 1: Colonization of the New World

  • Shortest APUSH unit.

  • No DBQs, some MCQs.

  • Remember overall themes and regions of North America.

AP Sub-Topics

  • Native American societies.

  • European Colonizers' motivations, arrivals, colonization, native relations in the Americas.

  • The Columbian Exchange and New World economics.

  • Trade, labor, slavery, & caste in colonial systems.

Native American Societies

  • Diverse societies influenced by resources, land, and climates.

  • Traded with each other.

Regional Examples

  • Pueblo People:

    • Agricultural.

    • Grew the "3 sisters": beans, squash, maize.

    • Advanced irrigation.

    • Urban centers.

  • Great Basin/Plains Tribes:

    • Nomadic.

    • Hunted buffalo.

  • Pacific Tribes:

    • Permanent settlements.

    • Traded fish, especially salmon.

  • Northeast Iroquois:

    • Agricultural.

    • Communal longhouses made of timber.

  • Mississippi River Valley People:

    • Agricultural.

    • Traded throughout waterways.

    • 10k-30k people.

    • Centralized government led by chieftains.

    • Example: Cahokia, which was rich in soil but collapsed due to politics.

Ancient Native American Origin + Migration

  • Bering Strait Land Bridge:

    • During the end of the Ice Age, lower sea levels created a land bridge from Asia to America.

    • Around 20,000 BC.

    • After glacial recession, groups migrated south & east for warmer climates.

    • Developed unique ways of life, cultures, and languages independently.

Agriculture

  • Began around 9,000 - 5,000 years ago.

  • Mesoamericans domesticated corn which allowed population growth due to its nutritional value and ease of harvesting.

  • The Three Sisters: Corn, beans, and squash.

  • Farming produced surpluses compared to hunting allowing for specialization in religion, militia, and the arts.

Key Aspects of Native American Societies

  • Long-distance trading routes, often primarily via waterways.

  • Matrilineal dominance.

  • Importance of kinship networks, often temporary and understood in relation to kinship/community.

  • Systems of slavery: slave/captive trading as a component of indigenous power dynamic.

  • Native Cultural Diversity.

  • Ex: Pacific salmon fishers vs. Plains buffalo hunters impacted food supply.

  • Local resources contributed to architecture. Ex: Iroquois longhouses vs. Pacific cedar houses.

  • Agricultural societies with food surpluses could sustain huge population growth and hold feasts, developing social structure, culture, and traditions.

  • Hundreds of languages were spoken by the time Europeans came.

European Motivations for Exploration

  • Unification in Europe:

    • Development of nations → increased nationalism → need for expansion → needed military and financial administrations + mercantilism.

    • European countries looked for wealth in Asia via trade.

  • The Search for New Trade Routes:

    • Italy controlled trade with Asia through the Mediterranean.

    • Portugal and Spain looked for a direct route through the Atlantic in hopes of landing in India.

  • Portuguese Innovation:

    • Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal invested in research and technology.

    • Portuguese sailors perfected the astrolabe (a tool to calculate latitude) and the caravel (a ship for ocean exploration).

    • Trading posts funded further European exploration + checkpoints into Asia

  • Colonization Training Grounds: Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands.

  • Colonization:

    • Agriculture.

    • Tropical conditions for sugar production → first large-scale cultivation of sugar by slaves.

    • Population devastation to Natives.

    • Start of Euro-Africa slave trade

Spanish Conquest

  • Spain wanted wealth and spread of Christianity.

  • Columbus promised the Spanish crown gold and enslaved laborers upon his return.

  • Later, Spain aggressively extracted wealth from the Caribbean → beginning of Spanish conquistadors.

Overthrow of Aztec and Incan Empires

  • Aztec:

    • Enlisted Native allies and translators.

    • Spaniards entered Tenochtitlan peacefully using persuasion.

    • Captured Emperor Montezuma.

    • Used Montezuma to control Aztec gold and silver reserves and mines.

    • Siege cut off food and fresh water.

    • Smallpox rampaged.

  • Incas:

    • Unrest between Incas and conquered groups left them vulnerable to invaders.

    • Disease killed half the population, including the emperor and his family.

    • Spanish deceived Incan rulers.

    • Took control of the empire.

    • Seized the capital city, Cuzco, in 1533.

Colonial Rule

  • Royal appointees oversaw territory of landed estates & extraction of gold/silver.

  • Many people from Spain migrated, most single men.

Spanish Casta System

  • Classes based on "purity of blood”.

  • Spanish men tried marrying noble/wealthy natives to consolidate social standing and unionize the parties.

  • Complex ethnic classification that also dictated limitations on religious occupations.

  • Casta system: A hierarchical social ordering system based on the degree of Spanish blood a person had. The more Spanish blood, the higher the status.

  • Ultimately, it failed because there were not enough Spanish people so they were doomed to get faded out, was hard to account for Africans, and complexity made it hard to keep track of people’s ethnicities.

Casta Description

  • Peninsulares: Spanish-born Spaniards

  • Criolles: Spaniards born in America

  • Mestizos: Native-Spanish offspring

  • Mulattoes: African-Spanish offspring

  • Africans: People brought over from Africa

  • Natives: People from North and South America

Columbian Exchange

  • The transfer of people, animals, plants, and diseases from Europe and the Americas.

  • The Americas’ calorie-rich crops revolutionized Old World agriculture and spawned a worldwide population boom.

  • Maize, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, various squashes, chiles, and manioc became essential in diets in Europe, Asia, & Africa.

  • Europeans introduced domesticated animals (like pigs and horses) to the Americas, which had a lasting impact on Native American life - now they can hunt on horses!

From Americas to Europe

  • Tomatoes, potatoes, maize, turkeys, syphilis, and wealth.

From Europe to Americas

  • Wheat, rice, soybeans, pigs, cattle, horses, African slaves, and DISEASE.

Meanwhile in Europe…

  • France and England were in turmoil from the Reformation - millions died in religious conflicts.

  • Spain’s rivals used the Black Legend to frame their own colonization as humanitarian.

Black Legend

  • An anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic propaganda piece criticizing Spain for its sins in the New World.

  • Characterized Native Americans as simple people with simple lives that were thrown into labor and death by Spanish greed.

  • Later, English settlers would use this to justify their own settlements.

French Fur Traders

  • The French went through Northwest Passage into the Great Lakes region, later moving towards the Mississippi River and New Orleans ALSO QUEBEC

  • Fur trade = they ended up forming more healthy alliances with the Natives

  • The Huron people had such a close relationship with the French that some even converted to Christianity

Dutch Arrival

  • Netherlands recently got independence from Spain

  • The Dutch were some of the most advanced capitalists, and thus engaged in slave trade

  • Found New York for the Dutch, chartered the Dutch West India Company, and established colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America.

  • Manhattan was a launching pad to support its Caribbean colonies and attack Spanish trade.

Labor Shortages

  • Slaves were imported.

  • Slaves were used to build New York.

  • Some got “half-freedoms” and wages.

Portuguese Arrival

  • Colonized Brazil for sugar and slave trade.

  • Mortality on sugar plantations was high, so many new slaves had to be imported → led to a deeper connection between Brazil and Africa

The English Arrive

  • Growing enthusiasm for colonization

Reasons for English Colonization

  • Protestant Reformation: Elizabeth I took the crown, Golden Age followed

  • Economic expansion: mercantilism, new markets, & advanced trading → econ up!

  • Population growth: Pop almost doubled, and there was not enough land and wealth to house/sustain everyone. There was an extreme poverty and homelessness crisis :(

  • Christianity: they wanted to spread it

  • Spanish rivalry: Black Legend, the English wanted to prove they were better

  • "Discourse on Western Planting": Richard Hakluyt talked about religious reasons for colonialism. The Spanish were doing it in a way that was brutal and in sins, he thought that English interference would be the only Catholic salvation in the New World

Destruction of Spanish Armada

  • Spain launched the largest invasion in history to destroy the British navy and depose Elizabeth. Failed.

  • Saved England and secured English Protestantism, also opened the seas to English expansion and paved the way for England’s colonial future

Unit 1 Summary

  • Ironically, the English would become crueler to Native Americans than the Spanish were.

  • Native Americans’ lack of machines, metalwork, gunpowder, Christianity, written language, material wealth, and private property became a central justification for European conquest and colonization.

  • Europeans painted this difference in cultures as “barbaric” and justified the uprooting of indigenous communities as “saving them from savagery”.

Spanish Colonization

  • In 1492, the Spanish crown wanted to control and extract wealth from Native lands.

  • Christopher Columbus pioneered the Spanish domination of South America

  • Spanish conquistadors, motivated by wealth, glory, and Catholic conversion, conquered the Aztec and Inca empires in South America

  • Spanish priest and Native sympathizer Bartolomé de las Casas asserts in his 1542 Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies that the Spanish used the Christian faith to excuse and fuel their violence.

  • Spanish conquistadors’ cruelty resulted in the infamous Black Legend of Spanish Colonization, an anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic propaganda piece criticizing Spain for its sins in the New World.

French and Dutch Colonization

  • Like the Spanish, the French and Dutch brought Christianity and European legal systems, technology, family relations, and economy to the New World.

  • In order to avoid a Black Legend 2.0, the French and Dutch took less violating approaches to American settlement

  • New France emphasized fur trade > conquering/settlement

  • Relied on friendly relations with Native Americans. In order to keep the peace, the French in the New World respected Native religions, though they promised indigenous peoples full French citizenship if they converted to Catholicism.

  • The Dutch emphasized profit > conquering/settlement

  • Having recently won independence from Spain, the Netherlands employed two freedoms not recognized anywhere else in Europe: freedom of religion and freedom of the press.

The Columbian Exchange

  • The largest factor contributing to European success

  • Christopher Columbus brought the deadly European disease of smallpox → decimated hundreds of thousands of Natives and contributed to the success of Spanish colonization

  • But because of smallpox, colonizers switched from enslaving natives to importing slaves from Africa to work on their plantations → Atlantic slave trade and were superior due to European weaponry and smallpox