APUSH Period 1 Review

I used Heimler’s History videos for these notes so feel free to follow along as you watch the video! If you find this helpful, I have notes for some other units on APUSH so go check those out as well :)

The natives of the American continent were diverse people who had diverse societies based on the environments in which they lived. 

Chesapeake, southern, middle, new england 

SUPER DIVERSE

• Native Americans in the coastal regions constructed fishing villages

• Others lived more hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyles

• Some congregated magnificent cities and built massive empires 

Pueblo - in today’s Utah and Colorado. 

• Farmers, were a settled population which spent their time farming and harvesting crops like beans, squash, and maize. 

• Used an irrigation system, which took water from rivers to water their own crops. 

• Built small urban centers- cliff dwellings 

Great basin/great plains region- 

• Nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 

• Wandered the great plains hunting buffalos to get the resources to live

• Organized themselves into small egalitarian kinship bands. 

• Ex: Ute

Along coastal regions/ NW coast & California

• Developed permanent settlements due to the abundance of fish, and small game of diversity of plant life. 

• Ex: Chumash 

  • They built villages capable of sustaining nearly a thousand people and participated in regional trade networks that went up and down the coasts. 

• Similar to Chumash, the Chinook 

  • Built extensive plank houses which housed whole families and kinship groups

Northeast

• Iroquois

  • Farmers, who planted crops such as Maize.

  • They lived communally in longhouses constructed from the abundant timber that was available in the area

  • How did this impact their society?

Mississippi River Valley

• Farmers, due to the rich soil found in the region 

• Participated in trade up and down the main waterways found in the region

• Ex: Cahokia

  • Civilization containing 10,000-30,000 people

  • Had a centralized government led by a powerful chief.

The natives of American developed distinct and increasingly complex societies and those societies were affected and shaped by the environment in which they lived

• They utilized vast trading networks stretching from south america to north america

WHY DID EUROPEANS COME???

• So from the 1300s to 1400s, the European kingdoms were changing significantly

  • Going through a process of political unification which they were developing more stronger, centralized states which were governed by monarchs

  • This led to the growing upper class which wanted luxury goods from asia, but the trade routes were governed by muslims, which made the trade impossible for them

  • So, they sought other trading networks to obtain those luxurious goods from asia.

    • Portuguese established trading posts around the world such as Africa. “Trading-post empire”, and eventually gained a strong foothold in the Indian ocean trade network. 

    • By developing and deploying new maritime technologies (maritime=sea) devoted to trade

After the successes of the Portuguese, Spain went ahead and jumped into the maritime game as well.

• During this time Spain had just finished the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the north african muslim wars

  • Consequences: 

  • This inspired the Spanish to spread catholic christianity

  • The new power brought by this led them to seek more economic opportunities in the east. 

  • Christopher Columbus: approved by Ferdinand and Isabelle, CC went on his voyage across the atlantic ocean, eventually landing in the Caribbean. 

  • Upon his arrival back to spain, the story of the new world spread across Europe and fierce competition began amongst european nations (France and England) to explore these lands

  • Columbus’ landing brought the two hemispheres together, marking a massive turning point in history. 

  • Columbian Exchange

    • The transfer of people, animals, plants, and diseases from the east to the west and from the west to the east.

    • Food: 

      • From the Americas, foods like potatoes, tomatoes, and maize transferred over to Europe

      • From Europe to the Americas: wheat, rice, and soybeans

    • Animals: 

      • From Americas: Turkeys

      • From Europe: cattles, pigs, horses

    • Gold and Silver was found in the Americas and transferred over to Europe

      • Hernan Cortez

    • People

      • Europeans made permanent homes in the Americas and introduced enslaved Africans to the continents

    • Disease

      • When Europeans arrived, they brought smallpox with them

      • This disease was entirely new to the native populations in America, meaning that they had no immunity to it. 

        • As a result, huge numbers of their population were decimated by the disease- on some islands, whole populations were nearly distinguished.

      • Europeans, during their travels picked up syphilis, which the Europeans argued that they got it from the natives

    • Wealth from the Americas to Europe

      • Led to a profound societal and economic shifts in european states. 

      • Prior to this, the society in European states were organized by the system of feudalism

        • Under this system, peasants worked and lived on a noble’s land in exchange for the noble’s protection

      • The influx of wealth had the impact of shifting feudalism into a more capitalistic system, an economic system based on private ownership and free exchange

      • Contributing to the rise of capitalism was the rise of joint-stock companies to fund exploration

        • They were a limited liability organization in which a plurality of investors pooled their money to fund a venture, if the venture failed, then no one suffered the consequences entirely, but if succeeded, everyone shared the profits

SPAIN COLONIZATION

• The spanish realized that it wasn’t the extraction of precious metals that would get them super mega rich, but it was agriculture that would make them super mega ultra-rich. 

• So in order to get that agriculture moving and blowin’ they introduced the encomienda system

  • It was a colonial labor system in which the Spanish, AKA encomenderos, enslaved native people to farm and mine in the Americas.

  • This system benefitted for a while, but they started getting problems… 

    • They found trouble keeping the natives subservient and enslaved-they escaped

    • Natives continued dying in massive numbers due to the spread of smallpox 

  • To solve this problem the Spanish imported African laborers! 

    • They were less likely to escape due to not knowing the geographical features

    • And! They were immune to European diseases due to the trading networks that have been established between Europe and Africa for years!

  • And… They fundamentally reordered the society that was there… 😣

    • Caste system categorized people in the Americas based on their racial ancestry

      • Penensulares (spanish born in spain)

      • Criollos (Spanish born in the americas)

      • Castas (Several subdivisions)

      • Mestizos (Spanish & native american blood), Mulattoes (Spanish and African blood)

      • Africans

      • Native Americans… Europeans looked down on the natives

  • Despite these bad relations, Natives and Europeans adapted each others customs that benefitted them…!

ENGLISH COLONIZATION

• Natives taught the English how to hunt in the forest and cultivate maize

• Englished introduced the natives to iron tools and weapons

• However, the relationship between them was brutal and just not it… 😡

  • Europeans developed elaborate systems of belief that had them justify their mistreatment of the natives

    • Many spaniards believed that natives were just intellectually less than human, allowing them to dull out the harsh punishments and the harsh treatments

      • Ex: Sepulveda: was a priest that argued that native americans were indeed less than human, and that they actually benefitted from the harsh labor conditions

    • But! There were priests that opposed this kind of views…! 😀

      • Ex: Las Casas: He actually spent time among the natives and came to see their humanity as worthy of defense! He persuaded the kingdom to pass laws, ending the slavery of the natives. (repealed by wealthy nobles)

    • They also developed beliefs to justify the exploitation of African laborers, derived from the Bible.

      • They claimed that when Noah cursed Ham’s son in Genesis, that the dark skin became the mark of Ham, because Africans were destined to be slaves in the first place… (that is not what the Bible said, but that’s how they read it 😡)