The Columbian Exchange

• Dramatically transform both sides of the Atlantic

• The disease would wipe out native populations

• Food would cause a European Population boom

• Spain would grow rich from the Aztec and Inca empires

• Portugal France, Netherlands, and England would race to usurp Spain’s position

Spanish America

• Spain would begin to explore the United States

• Tuan Ponce de Leon arrived in Florida in 1513 and decimated the native population, never finding any great wealth

• Spain constantly fought with Florida’s natives and other Europeans, expelling Huguenots (French Calvinists) and leading to the burning of St. Augustine by Sir Francis Drake

• Spaniards attempted to duplicate the encomienda system

• Apalachee tribe (Florida-Georgia Border to the Gulf of Mexico) grew corn and crops and would trade with the Western anchor of the mission system with St. Augustine

• 1598: Tuan de Onate would expand into New Mexico, slaughtering the Pueblo city of Acoma, killing half of its population, cutting a foot off males and enslaving the remaining women and children

• Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest in 1610 never became successful, but those who moved exploited locals and destroyed their population

• Spanish shifted strategies to mission work, especially the Franciscan order, which was used to establish a presence in Rio Grande and California

Spain’s Rivals Emerge

• The Reformation and religious violence in France would throw the European world into chaos

• Spanish would inspire investment in exploration and conquest, lead to criticism of their treatment of natives, and advocate for the religious benevolence and conversion of other European powers

France

• France would subsidize exploration and would lead to many searching for the Northwest Passage, a sea route to Asia

• French colonization developed through private trading companies

• Fur trade would set the future pattern of French colonization and Quebec would become the foothold for New France

• French traders would focus more on cooperation with natives to maximize trapping skills and few French settled in New France, though Huguenots attempted to emigrate

• France would create beneficial relationships with natives, including creating more cooperative missions, interracial marriage and Huron conversion to Christianity

• The Iroquois would pish Algonquian speakers towards French territory creating a middle ground in the Great Lakes Area and leading to the adoption of customs by both sides until English and American setters swarmed the area

Dutch

• The Netherlands was a small maritime nation with great wealth, recently broken away from the Hapsburgs and became one of the freest nations

• Dutch would experience great religious freedom, would expand colonially through skilled merchants and sailors and extensive financial resources, while power remained with the very few who would advance the slave trade

• Commissioned Henry Hudson to find the Northwest Passage and instead claimed modern-day New York (New Amsterdam) using it as a platform to support its Caribbean colonies and attack Spanish trade

• Dutch were determined not to repeat Spanish atrocities and fashioned guidelines under Hugo Grotius, claiming natives had the same rights as Europeans and therefore bought the land from the Munsee people

• Dutch would seek profit and would use wampums as currency (Shell heads, valued as a ceremonial and diplomatic commodity)

• Patroon system - wealthy landlords paid tenants to work their land

• Land disputes would lead to deteriorating relations

• Labour shortages lead to the company importing enslaved Africans to build the new Amsterdam

• Dutch slavery was less exploitative than American systems and would have some freedoms, such as wages and “half-freedom” However slavery would remain dominant

Portuguese

• Portugal would square off with Spain in the division of South America under the Treaty of Tordesillas

• The sugar and slave trade would power Portuguese colonization in Brazil

• Jesuit missionaries would bring Christianity to Brazil but would ix with African and native spirituality due to the steady influx of workers

English

• Elizabeth 1 would kick off the golden age of England

• English mercantilism would also supply consumers and labourers

• Increasing populations, rising land prices, and stagnating wages would lead to mass poverty

• English support of colonization was drawn from the glory of evangelizing the New World

• A Christian enterprise, a blow to Spain, economic stimulus and social safety all beckoned to England

• English merchants and companies would pave the way forward with colonization

• State-sponsored piracy (“privateering”) was used to harass Spanish ships and would lead Spain to send the Spanish Armada

• England would destroy the fleet opening the seas to England’s colonial future

• England would colonize through violence, seizing land, and pushing out inhabitants

• English colonization would occur slowly with many colonies failing

• Virginia company would hope to find new trading commodities

Jamestown

• Established along the James River in present-day Virginia

• Arrived in the Powhatan Confederacy, artificial land to hunt and planted many crops

• Disease and starvation would destroy the gentlemen who had moved there

• John Smith would take charge and be saved from death by Pocahontas

• Powhatan would gain much from the English outpost: ax-heads, kettles, and guns

• English would continue to die: lost supplies, deteriorating relations, and cannibalism

• Englian’s first colony was a disaster with few profitable commodities

• Tobacco would become a major exported good and would save Virginia

• Colonists and indentured servants would come in droves

• Headright policy: Anyone who came to Virginia received 50 acres + 50 acres/immigrant they paid for

• 1619: House of Burgesses - a limited representative body of white landowners

• Powhatan would die and be succeeded by his brother Pechancanough who attacked the colonists, who retaliated many times over

• English felt a sense of superiority and entitlement

• The rise of distinct races would lead to the creation of American slavery

• Early slavery would allow freedom after several years

New England

• Puritans would shape many aspects of New England history

• Puritans followed the Calvinist doctrine and believed the Chruch of England did not distance itself enough from Catholicism

• King Charles 1 would be an enemy to Puritans and would have during the Great Migration to New England created an example of a Greater England

• Family groups would mostly arrive, replicating their home environments and not using large-scale agriculture

• No evidence that Puritans would have opposed slavery

• Modest prosperity shared among colonists would become characteristic of New England

• Puritans did not have to deal with powerful natives, due to disease

• Puritans would fail in their mission to create a utopia

• Prosperity led to a population increase, more diversity, religious pluralism, jeremiads, and lamenting the fall of New England would become characteristic of Puritan literature