Chapter 1- Meeting of Cultures Flashcards
(45 cards)
Tenochtitlan
-Aztec capital
-built on site of present-day Mexico City
-1500: population over 100,000
-Significance: larger than any European city at the time,
complex public buildings equal in size to
Egypt’s pyramids
Chaco
-tribe of the Chaco Canyon: Southwest
-pueblos: stone and adobe terraced structures that resembled apt buildings in later eras
-Significance: used large irrigation systems to farm with
their dry lands,
constructed towns that became centers of
trade, religious rituals, and crafts
Cahokia Algonquin
-major city that resulted due to trade
-near present-day St. Louis
- 1200: population of 40,000
-Significance: great complex of large earthen mounds
first largest language group
Iroquois Confederation
- emerged mid-15th century
- now upstate NY
- northern nations of Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk
- had links with Cherokees and Tuscaroras in Carolinas and GA
- Significance: 2nd largest language group
Muskogean
- southeast
- Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles
- Significance: 3rd largest language group
Commercialism
- one of the related incentives for Europe top start looking West
- reawakened by population growth after Black Death
- affluent landlords were eager to purchase goods from distant regions, which created a new merchant class to meet the demand
Nationalism
- second incentive for Europe looking West
- new government: stronger with new monarchs, centralized nationals courts, armies and tax systems
Black Death
- bubonic plague of 1347
- began in Constantinople
- killed about 1/3 of Europe
- devastated its limited economy
Prince Henry the Navigator
- 15th century Portuguese maritime man
- interest: west coast of Africa not sea route to Asia
- goals: start Christian empire on WC in Africa and find gold
- did not achieve himself, but his mariners achieved feats
Bartholomeu Dias
-1486: rounded the tip of Southern Africa (Cape of Good Hope)
Vasco Da Gama
-1497-1498: made it all the way around the cape to India
Pedro Cabral
-1500: under his command, on the next voyage to India, was blown off his southernly course went west and happened on the coast of Brazil
Christopher Columbus
- born and raised in Genoa, Italy, but obtained his seafaring experience in Portugal
- Goals: reaching Asia by going west based on the misconceptions of the world being smaller than it is, Asia was longer eastward and the Atlantic was narrow enough to cross
- After being rejected by Spain, went to Portugal where Queen Isabelle gave him 3 ships to set out in on August of 1492
- thought on straight course for Japan, but ten weeks later ended up on an island in Bahamas, then encountered Cuba and called it China
- a year later, went from Caribbean to northern coast of South America, and concluded he was on an island off the coast of China
- A.K.A Admiral of the Ocean
- very religious
- ended his life in obscurity
Ferdinand of Aragon & Isabelle of Castile
- 15th century, two most powerful regional rulers had wed
- produced the strongest monarchy in Europe
- wanted to demonstrate strength by sponsoring commercial ventures
- obeyed church: made colonies only Catholic
- supported Christopher Columbus’ voyage
Amerigo Vespucci
- Florentine merchant
- a member of a later Portuguese voyage who wrote vivid descriptions of the lands they visited and who recognized the lands as a new continent
- America named after him
Conquistadores
- wanted the wealth of the New World
- did anything they could to achieve the wealth, such as destroying tribes and cities, destroying documents, strategically killing the elites in order to control the rest
- brought over the smallpox, influenza, chicken pox and measles
Francisco Pizarro
- Spaniard conquistador
- 1532-1538: conquered Peru and revealed to the Europeans the wealth of the Incas
Hernando de Soto
- Spaniard
- Pizarro’s one-time deputy
- 1539-1541: led several expeditions west through Florida and became the first white man known to have crossed the Mississippi River
Francisco Coronado
- Spaniard conquistador
- 1540-1542: traveled north from Mexico into to now New Mexico in a search for gold and jewels, but opened the Southwest to Spanish settlement
Spanish Empire
- The first stage was the age of discovery and exploration, which began with Columbus, the second stage was the age of the conquistadors, in which disease decimated the Indians, and the third stage began when Spain declared the Ordinances of Discovery banned the most brutal military conquests.
- The first Spaniards to arrive in the New World only wanted to get rich, and they did, for 300 years, make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation.
- After the conquistadors, other Spaniards wanted to go to the New World for other reasons, like agriculture, and made settlements for themselves that would permanently alter the landscape and social structure.
- Spain also made the colonies Catholic and only Catholic. The most common settlement was missions, which their primary mission was to convert Natives to Catholicism.
- Did not do as well as other settlements because of there rigid trade options, the strict rules, the only monarchy-led governing, the non-permanent way of settling down
- had the most intermarriage of the natives and Europeans than others
- started out not as powerful in the seafaring expeditions, but soon became the largest empire
Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia”
- published in Latin in 1516
- translated to English 35 years later
- described a mythical, but perfect society on an imaginary island supposedly discovered by a companion of Amerigo Vespucci in the waters of the New World
Mercantilism
- new concept of economic life of England that the nation as a whole was the principle actor in the economy not the individuals in it
- believed economic health depended on extracting as much as wealth as possible from foreign lands and exporting as little as possible from home
- enhanced the position of the new merchant capitalists because heir ventures were thought to benefit the whole nation
- thrived at first with the wool trade and the great cloth in Antwerp
- 1550’s started to crash and overseas colonies seemed to be the answer
Richard Hakluyt
- Oxford clergyman and English propagandist for colonization
- argues colonies would not only create new markets for English goods, they would also help alleviate poverty and unemployment by siphoning off the surplus population
Protestant Reformation
- began in Germany in 1517 when Martin Luther openly protested the beliefs and basic practices of the Roman Catholic Church
- one of the incentives for England to colonize