Notes on Early Globalization: The Atlantic World, 1492–1650

2.1 Portuguese Exploration and Spanish Conquest

• Context: The Atlantic World (1492–1650) is the story of global migration driven by European rulers’ ambitions for wealth, power, and religious influence.
• Opening scene (Columbus era): Ferdinand II of Spain sits on his throne directing attention to Columbus’s landing; Arawak density suggested by natives towering over Spaniards; Columbus’s voyage ignited rivalries and continuous wars among European powers.
• Outcomes of early globalization:
  • Spain achieved early preeminence with a far-flung empire and wealth from the Americas.
  • Native Americans suffered dramatic population losses from new diseases and European arrogance (view of themselves as God-appointed conquerors and Christians).
• Key concepts:
  • Early globalization and the Atlantic World as the first phase of globalization, initiating contact among Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans.
  • Religious motivations intertwined with conquest and colonization.

2.1 Portuguese Exploration

• Prince Henry the Navigator (Portugal) spearheaded Africa/Atlantic exploration in the 1400s.
• Maritime strategy: eastward route to Africa; established a foothold that supported trade empire building in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
• Atlantic outposts and empire-building: Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Azores, Madeira; these outposts served as debarkation points for further journeys.
• Expansion along coasts:
  • West African coast to the Congo; along the western coast of India; eventually to Brazil on the eastern coast of South America.
  • Trading posts in China and Japan.
• Strategic advantage: control of nautical trade routes via island/coastal ports enabled a global trading network, even without massive continental holdings.
• Impact on labor/slavery:
  • Portuguese traders encountered and helped catalyze the African slave trade via labor demand for sugar on Atlantic islands.
  • Sugar plantations on Atlantic islands fueled the slave trade and became a labor-intensive economic model.
• Elmina Castle (São Jorge da Mina) established in $1482$ on the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana):
  • Fort functioned as a fortified trading post; later a holding pen for enslaved Africans during the interior-to-coast transport.
  • By the sixteenth century, the dungeon housed enslaved people awaiting transport; the upper floors housed traders’ activities.
• Enslaved labor and commodity chains:
  • Enslaved Africans from interior Africa were traded, brought to Europe/Americas, and used for labor on sugar plantations.
  • Slavery expanded with European exploration, transforming the Atlantic World into a massive sugar-plantation complex.
• Summary: Portuguese expansion established the blueprint for Atlantic trade networks and slave labor, shaping the global economy.

2.1 Spanish Exploration and Conquest

• Spanish foundations and motivations:
  • The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in $1469$ united Catholic Spain and set the stage for overseas expansion.
  • Reconquista completed in $1492$; Catholic unity strengthened, enabling overseas ventures to spread Catholicism and gain commercial advantage.
  • Columbus, though Italian, sailed for Spain; believed a westward route to India could expand trade and spread Christianity.
• Funding and fleet:
  • Columbus received support in $1492$ and sailed with three ships: the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.
  • Spanish rulers understood the competitive race with Portugal; the westward route was part of a broader strategy to outpace Portugal.
• Columbus’s landfall and naming:
  • Landfall on an island in the Bahamas on $October 12, 1492$; then to Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti).
  • Initial misperception of Asia led to the term Indios for Taíno natives; Columbus’s arrival triggered royal patronage and, later, more voyages.
• Probanzas de mérito (proofs of merit):
  • Columbus’s 1493 probanza de mérito described discovery and wealth potential, intended to secure royal patronage and funding.
  • Copies sent to the Crown and Santángel; spread across Europe to inspire excitement about the New World.
• Early outcomes and reinforcements:
  • Columbus’s voyages established Spain’s first settlement on Hispaniola and motivated later European exploration.
  • Amerigo Vespucci explored the South American coast (1499–1502) and realized the New World was not Asia; his accounts fueled widespread European interest.
• Naming: Waldseemüller’s 1507 map popularized the name "America" from Vespucci’s first name; the name stuck.
• Papal and geopolitical legitimization:
  • Papal decrees by Pope Alexander VI in $1493$ and the earlier papal grant to Portugal in the $1480s-1490s$ shaped claims along the Atlantic world.
  • Treaty of Tordesillas (proposed by King João II of Portugal and Spain) in $1494$ drew a north–south line: lands west of the line belonged to Spain; east to Portugal.
  • Cantino World Map ($1502$) reflected these claims and discoveries, illustrating the era’s geographic knowledge and perceptions.
• Cortés, Pizarro, and the conquest of major empires:
  • Cortés arrived in the Yucatán; entered Tenochtitlán (Mexico City) in $1519$; hosted Moctezuma; sought riches and power, using alliances with native groups such as the Tlaxcalans (up to $200,000$ fighters).
  • The siege, fall of Tenochtitlán, and renaming to Mexico City occurred by $1521$; Cortés’s actions sparked extensive Native alliances and resistance.
  • Pizarro’s campaign prodded south: captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in $1532$; executed him in $1533$; founded Lima, Peru in $1535$; assailed by rival Spaniards and later killed in $1541$.
  • Other explorers: Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (1540–1542) searched for Quivira; his expedition traversed present-day U.S. Southwest but found little gold and returned bankrupt by $1542$.
  • Hernando de Soto (1539–1542) explored southeastern North America (Florida to the Mississippi); died in $1542$; survivors returned to Mexico City.
• The Spanish Golden Age (Siglo de Oro):
  • The flow of New World riches fueled a flourishing of Spanish art and literature; the Habsburg dynasty sponsored painters, poets, and architects.
  • Cervantes’s Don Quixote (two volumes: $1605$ and $1618$) explored chivalric imagination vs. reality; Velázquez’s Las Meninas (painted $1656$) and El Greco as Spanish Renaissance icons.
  • The Cervantes Project and Velázquez’s portrait illustrate Spain’s cultural renaissance connected to imperial wealth.
• Language and interpretation:
  • The conquest literature (probanzas) contains biases and exaggerations designed to win patronage; historians must critically assess the source's context and motives.
• Reflection and discussion prompts:
  • What do Columbus’s probanzas reveal about Spanish objectives in the New World?
  • How might such letters influence European readers new to the Americas?
• Visuals referenced:
  • Figure 2.4: 16th-century map of Hispaniola; Figure 2.3: Elmina Castle; Figure 2.7: Las Meninas; Figure 2.6: Coronado’s path; Figure 2.5 Cantino World Map.

2.2 Religious Upheavals in the Developing Atlantic World

• Core theme: The Protestant Reformation reshaped Europe and the Atlantic World; Catholic Spain faced Protestant rivals (Netherlands, England, etc.) and sought to defend Catholic hegemony abroad.
• Martin Luther (Figure 2.8):
  • 1517: Luther published The Ninety-Five Theses, criticizing indulgences, church taxation, and Latin-only worship; called for Bible translation into vernacular languages.
  • Luther’s reforms split Christianity and sparked the Protestant Reformation, leading to new denominations (Lutheranism).
• John Calvin (Figure 2.8):
  • 1535: Calvin fled France; promoted predestination and the Bible as sole authority; established a Bible commonwealth in Geneva; spread to Netherlands and Scotland.
• Protestantism in England:
  • 1526: William Tyndale translated the Bible into English.
  • 1530s: Henry VIII broke with Rome, establishing the Church of England with himself as head; marriage to Catherine yielded multiple religious shifts; Anne Boleyn’s execution; Jane Seymour’s son Edward VI; Mary I’s Catholic restoration; Elizabeth I’s Protestant settlement (1558 onward).
  • Puritans emerged within the Church of England, seeking further reforms; later many Puritans emigrated to the Americas (1620s–1630s) seeking religious liberty.
• Religious war and competition:
  • Spain (Catholic) vs. Protestant powers (England, Netherlands) fueled long-standing hostilities (e.g., the Spanish Armada of $1588$; English/Dutch reactions in $1589-1604$).
  • The Armada’s defeat underscored evolving naval power and Protestant resistance to Catholic hegemony.
  • By the early seventeenth century, Protestant states (England, Dutch Republic) were challenging Catholic Spain in the Atlantic world.
• St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572):
  • A violent Catholic attack on Huguenots in France; symbolized the era’s religious violence and intolerance.
• Implications for the Atlantic World:
  • Religious conflicts spurred colonization as a means to secure safe havens for Protestant groups (e.g., English Puritans in New England: Plymouth, 1620; Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630).
  • Protestant and Catholic rivalries shaped imperial alignments and colonization strategies across the Atlantic.

2.3 Challenges to Spain’s Supremacy

• Emergence of rival powers:
  • England, France, and the Dutch Republic established Atlantic presences; none matched Spain’s gold/silver empire, yet they claimed strategic positions (Caribbean islands, northeastern North America).
• English exploration and colonies:
  • Early seedings: Henry VII commissioned John Cabot in $1497$; fishing off the North American coast became a sustained activity.
  • Roanoke (1570s–1580s): Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1584 attempt to settle Roanoke (off present-day North Carolina) failed; the colony disappeared by $1590$ (the “Lost Colony”).
  • Privateering: Elizabeth I supported privateers (e.g., Francis Drake, $1573$ looting of Spanish treasure; ongoing privateering contributed to English-Spanish conflict).
  • Jamestown: 1606–1607 foundation by the Virginia Company; Jamestown established in $1607$ on the James River; early hardships included disease, famine, and conflict with Native tribes; 38 survivors from the initial 144 settlers by the first winter.
  • Bermuda voyage: 1609 shipwreck led to English claim on Bermuda; implied expansion and resilience.
  • Caribbean colonies: St. Christopher (1624), Barbados (1627), Nevis (1628), Montserrat (1632), Antigua (1632) grew as cash-crop economies; sugar became a central product and slave labor a defining feature.
• English religious/migration dynamics:
  • Puritans sought to escape England’s conformity and established New England colonies (1620 Plymouth; 1630 Massachusetts Bay Colony);
  • The Mayflower Compact (1620) represented early self-governance and cooperative governance in the Plymouth voyage.
• French exploration and settlements:
  • Jacques Cartier (1534–1541) claimed northern North America as New France; three voyages to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River; failed to establish a lasting settlement due to resistance and planning issues.
  • Samuel de Champlain (1603–1608 and beyond) founded Quebec in 1608; created extensive alliances with Huron and Algonquins against Iroquois; promoted French colonial presence around Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, and Mississippi.
  • French relations with Native peoples emphasized alliances and fur trade (beaver pelts) and created European-Native networks of exchange.
  • Caribbean French colonies (Pom: Guadeloupe, Martinique) by $1635$ developed sugar plantations with enslaved labor.
• Dutch colonization:
  • Dutch Republic (1581) emerged as a Protestant power; commerce-driven colonization with corporate backing (Dutch East India Company, $1602$; Dutch West India Company, $1621$).
  • Henry Hudson (1609) explored New York Harbor and the Hudson River; sought a northwest passage; fur trade with Algonquian and Iroquois peoples; claimed New Netherlands (New Amsterdam, Manhattan) and Fort Orange (Albany).
  • Caribbean outposts: Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, St. Martin, St. Eustatius, Saba; Dutch fur-trade networks solidified competitive Atlantic position.
• Overall significance:
  • Competition among European powers reshaped territorial claims and colonization patterns in the Atlantic World; small colonies contributed to shifts in global power dynamics.

2.4 New Worlds in the Americas: Labor, Commerce, and the Columbian Exchange

• Core themes:
  • European labor needs and systems of coerced labor (encomienda) and slavery shaped colonial economies.
  • Mercantilism and commodification defined economic policy and global exchange; colonies provided raw materials to enrich the mother country; trade restrictions promoted national wealth building.
  • The Columbian Exchange connected the Atlantic World through the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases, with wide-ranging ecological and demographic consequences.
• Labor systems:
  • Encomienda: legal rights to native labor granted to conquistadors in reward for service and the spread of Catholicism; often brutal exploitation.
  • Tlaxcalan alliance: Tlaxcalans aided Cortés, illustrating native groups’ agency and strategic cooperation in European conquest.
  • Bartolomé de Las Casas: Dominican friar who initially participated in encomiendas but later advocated humane treatment; issued New Laws to curb encomienda and slavery in the mid-16th century; his writing inspired the Black Legend and later debates about cruelty in conquest.
  • Las Casas’s A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542) documented brutality toward Native peoples; his rhetoric contributed to the Black Legend trope.
• Slavery and the African diaspora:
  • Africans became a central labor force in the Americas, especially in sugar and tobacco production; the Portuguese pioneered the transatlantic slave trade through West African slave ports (e.g., Elmina Castle, $1482$).
  • By $1550$, enslaved Africans on Hispaniola numbered around $50,000$; slavery expanded across the Atlantic, reshaping economies and social structures.
  • Enslaved Africans faced brutal, dehumanizing conditions; resistance manifested in various forms; enslaved labor helped finance colonial economies and European imperial projects.
• Mercantilism and colonial economy:
  • Mercantilism: belief that nations held a finite amount of wealth (gold and silver) and should maximize exports while restricting imports; colonies existed to supply raw materials and strategic resources.
  • Colonial mercantilism relied on: colonies rich in raw materials, cheap labor, loyalty to the mother country, and control of shipping routes; trade with other nations was restricted.
• Commodification:
  • The conversion of native resources into monetary commodities; example: chicha (Inca corn beer) was used as ritual substance before the Spanish commodified it; this shift reflected broader economic transformation and the rise of capitalist practices in the Americas.
• The Columbian Exchange:
  • Two-way transfer across the Atlantic: plants, animals, and diseases moved between the Old and New Worlds.
  • Major commodities and crops:
  • Sugar: central to Caribbean economies; sugar cultivation and refining became a defining feature of the Atlantic economy; sugar’s importance often paralleled today’s oil in economic impact. Sugar production spread to the Caribbean islands and tropical zones.
  • Tobacco: valued cash crop; spread globally; used for ritual and medicinal purposes in Native societies; tobacco’s European adoption helped fuel global trade.
  • Chocolate (cacao): cacao seeds; used by Mesoamericans as currency and as a beverage (xocolatl); European adoption transformed chocolate into a courtly luxury and later a mass commodity.
  • Other crops and animals: pigs, horses, cows, chickens introduced by Europeans; Old World animals adapted well and reshaped ecosystems and labor.
  • Diseases: Indigenous populations suffered devastating losses due to diseases such as smallpox, measles, and chickenpox; lack of immunity contributed to demographic collapse.
  • Demographic and cultural effects: mourning wars among Iroquois and other groups surged as communities faced high mortality; European ideas about property, religion, and science spread alongside goods and ideas.
• Key figures and ideas:
  • The Black Legend: European rivals depicted Spaniards as uniquely brutal; this narrative was used to justify their own colonial ventures while masking similar abuses by others.
  • The shift toward empiricism: as explorers observed the natural world, there was a gradual shift from biblical authority to empirical observation as a basis for knowledge.
• Summary and synthesis:
  • European powers used a mix of conquest, colonization, and trade policies rooted in mercantilism to expand their empires.
  • Labor systems, including encomiendas and African slavery, underpinned colonial economies and caused immense human suffering.
  • The Columbian Exchange reshaped global diets, economies, and ecologies—while also spreading devastating disease to Indigenous populations.
  • The Atlantic World was a dynamic arena of competition among Spain, Portugal, England, France, and the Dutch Republic, with religious motives often intertwined with political and economic objectives.

Key Terms

• Black Legend
• Calvinism
• Columbian Exchange
• commodification
• encomienda
• Hispaniola
• indulgences
• joint stock company
• mercantilism
• mourning wars
• Pilgrims
• Separatists
• smallpox
• sugarcane
• tanning and/or other related terms (contextual)

Figures and Illustrations Mentioned

• Figure 2.1: Columbus’s voyage and its reception in Europe; depiction of Ferdinand II and the Arawak encounter.
• Figure 2.2: Portuguese colonization of Atlantic islands and European expansion routes; Spain’s rise to dominance in the $1500s$.
• Figure 2.3: Elmina Castle, West Africa; its use as a holding pen for enslaved Africans.
• Figure 2.4: Sixteenth-century map of Hispaniola; depiction of navigation and colonial aims.
• Figure 2.5: Cantino World Map ($1502$): overview of world geography and territorial claims.
• Figure 2.6: Coronado’s path through the American Southwest.
• Figure 2.7: Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez ($1656$).
• Figure 2.8: Martin Luther portrait; Luther’s role in the Reformation.
• Figure 2.9: Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada defeat.
• Figure 2.10: Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (historical depiction).
• Figure 2.12: Champlain engraving depicting alliances with Native groups.
• Figure 2.13: Amsterdam as a global trade hub; Dutch wealth in the 1600s.
• Figure 2.14: Kingsborough Codex image illustrating encomienda abuses.
• Figure 2.16: Aztec depiction of smallpox impact.

Review Questions (from the original text)

1) Which country initiated the era of Atlantic exploration? $ext{A. France B. Spain C. England D. Portugal}$
2) Which country established the first colonies in the Americas? $ext{A. England B. Portugal C. Spain D. the Netherlands}$
3) Where did Christopher Columbus first land? $ext{A. Hispaniola B. the Bahamas C. Jamestown D. Mexico}$
4) Why did the authors of probanzas de méritos choose to write in the way that they did? What should we consider when we interpret these documents today?
5) Where did the Protestant Reformation begin?

Summary of Key Points (Condensed)

• Portugal opened the door to Atlantic exploration; Spain quickly followed and expanded into the Americas, driven by wealth, power, and religious motives.
• The Reconquista and the unification of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella facilitated overseas expansion and Catholic crusading in the New World.
• The Spanish and Portuguese often used force, alliances with Native peoples, and religious justification to expand their empires.
• The Protestant Reformation reshaped Europe and the Atlantic world, intensifying rivalries and encouraging colonization as a refuge for religious reformers.
• English, French, and Dutch colonization developed alongside Spanish/Portuguese dominance, contributing to a diversified Atlantic World.
• Mercantilism and commodification structured European colonial economies, with colonies supplying raw materials and serving as markets for finished goods.
• The Columbian Exchange transformed global agriculture, diets, and ecosystems, while bringing devastating diseases to Indigenous populations and spurring massive demographic changes.
• Encomienda and African slavery became central labor systems in the New World, with Las Casas advocating reform and highlighting brutal treatment.
• The era culminated in a shifting balance of power in Europe and the Americas, setting the stage for ongoing global interactions.