chapter 24 Flashcards
What was Dona Maria’s mother tongue?
Nahuatl (the principal language of the Aztec empire)
What was Dona Maria’s original name?
Malintzin
What languages was Dona Maria able to communicate in that enabled Hernan Cortes and his Spanish soldier to serve their linguistic and diplomatic services?
Spanish, Maya, Nahuatl
What other name did Dona Maria earn because of her role in aiding Hernan Cortes’s invasion of the Aztec empire?
La Malinche, or the traitor
- betrayed her people by collaborating with the Spanish
How did Dona Maria die?
After giving birth to her daughter, sometime around 1527
What two aspects of indigenous societies were Europeans able to exploit in their arrival in the Americas?
divisions between indigenous peoples and the effects of epidemic diseases that devastated native societies
Where was the first site of interaction between European and American peoples?
The Caribbean (where the Spanish arrived)
What indigenous group was most prominent in the region when Spanish mariners arrived in the Caribbean?
the Taíno (AKA Arawaks)
From where did the Taíno’s ancestors come from?
Sailed in canoes from the Orinoco River valley in South America to the Caribbean islands
Where did Christopher Columbus and his immediate followers make the base of Spanish operations in the Caribbean?
Hispaniola
What fort did Spanish settlers establish on the island of Hispaniola (which eventually became the capital of the Spanish Caribbean)?
Santo Domingo
Without the silks or spices that they’d originally anticipated from the Caribbean, what did the Spanish settlers resort to as their means of making a living?
Gold mining
Recruitment of labor from the ranks of the Taíno (since the Spanish were too few in number to mine gold) came through an institution called what?
the “encomienda”, which gave Spanish “encomenderos” (“settlers”) the right to compel the Taíno to work in their mines or fields
In return for labor, what did the encomenderos provide for their workers?
Assumed responsibility to look after their workers’ health and welfare, encouraged conversion to Christianity
What was the effect of the Spanish’s conscripted labor of the Taíno?
Encomenderos didn’t treat Taíno well, severely punished if they didn’t meet quota, Taíno occasionally organized rebellions, but no match against Spanish weapons
- social disruption and physical abuse brought decline to Taíno populations
What epidemic disease broke out after 1518 and hastened the decline of indigenous populations like the Taíno especially in the Caribbean?
smallpox
What Taíno cultural elements survived after being devastated by smallpox epidemics?
“canoe”, “hammock”, “hurricane”, “barbecue”, “maize”, and “tobacco” (all deriving from Taíno words)
Why did the Spanish eventually leave the Caribbean behind?
When they located rich sources of silver in Mexico and Peru, the Caribbean became the backwater of the Spanish empire
In the 1640s, French, English, and Dutch settlers flocked to the Caribbean with what intention?
To establish plantations
While the Caribbean islands lacked precious metals, they offered ideal conditions for…?
Cultivation of cash crops, particularly sugar, and later tobacco
What does “conquistadores” translate to?
“conquerors”
Between 1532 and 1533 who, alongside his followers, toppled the Inca empire in Peru?
Francisco Pizarro
Who was the last Aztec emperor?
Cuauhtémoc, the last nephew and son-in-law of Motecuzoma II
In search for gold in the American mainland, Hernán Cortés made his way from _______ on the Gulf coast to the island city of ________, the Aztec capital.
Veracruz; Tenochtitlan
In 1521, Cortés…and tortured Cuauhtémoc before executing him in 1525
starved the city of Tenochtitlan into surrender
What advantages did Cortés’s Spanish army have over the Aztecs?
Their advanced weaponry, divisions amongst indigenous peoples of Mexico, the aid of Dona Maria (who helped forge alliances with people who resented domination by the Mexica), native allies, smallpox epidemics
How large was Francisco Pizarro’s force (how many soldiers)?
about 600
What major dispute were Pizarro’s forces able to take advantage of upon their arrival in Peru (to wreak havoc on the Inca empire)?
two brothers from the Inca ruling house, Huascar and Atahualpa disputed
What do historians believe help explain how Francisco Pizarro’s tiny force was able to topple the Inca empire?
- Many subjects of the Inca empire despised the Incas (for tax collection) and put up little resistance to Pizarro’s forces
- Smallpox had already taken a heavy toll on Andean populations, even before Pizarro’s arrival
- Pizarro faced more threats from Spanish interlopers than from native peoples
By 1533, what had Francisco Pizarro’s forces accomplished?
Took over the Inca capital at Cuzco
What did the Spanish call Mexico (one of their two centers of authority in the Americas)?
New Spain
What did the Spanish call Peru (one of their two main centers of authority in the Americas)?
New Castile
Who governed the Spanish’s two main centers of authority in the Americas (Mexico and Peru)?
a viceroy, who was responsible to the king of Spain
What was the capital of Mexico?
Mexico City (built on top of Tenochtitlan)
What was the capital of Peru?
Lima (originally hoped to make Cuzco the capital, but location with elevation was unideal, moved to Lima where it was accessible to Spanish shipping)
Who were the viceroys?
king’s representatives in the Americas, wielded considerable power
How did the kings of Spain ensure their viceroys would not build personal power bases and become independent?
Subjected them to the review of courts known as “audiencias” staffed by university-educated lawyers
What did the audiencias do?
- heard appeals against viceroys’ decisions and policies
- had the right to address their concerns directly to the Spanish king
- conducted reviews of viceroys’ performance at the end of their terms
How did Spanish administration in the Americas look like? Why was it more ragged?
- transportation and communication difficulties limited the ability of viceroys to supervise their territories
- local administration fell to audiencias or town councils
- took long time for Spanish monarchy to respond to American affairs, usually unproductive communication/orders
- viceroys found ways to procrastinate instituting kings’ orders
What is a viceroyalty (from Google because the textbook is so helpful!)?
entity, territory, jurisdiction headed by a viceroy (well that was obvious)
Why did Spanish rule prompt the establishment of cities?
- whilst income was derived from agricultural production, colonists preferred to live in cities
- territory expanded under Spanish rule, Spanish imperial authority built dense network of bureaucratic control based in recently founded cities
From where did administrators in Lima oversee affairs?
Panama, Concepción, and Buenos Aires
In 1494, Spain and Portugal signed what treaty that divided the world along an imaginary north-south line 370 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands?
the Treaty of Tordesillas
What did the Treaty of Tordesillas assert?
Spain could claim any land west of that north-south line, so long as it was not already under Christian rule, and Portugal gained the same rights for lands east of the line
With the Treaty of Tordesillas, where was Portugal permitted to establish territory?
Along the northeastern part of the South American continent, Brazil
How did Portuguese interest in Brazil increase?
Entrepreneurs establishing of profitable sugar plantations on the coast
Who was a Portuguese mariner who stopped briefly in Brazil en route to India, only to not display much interest in the land in 1500?
Pedro Alvares de Cabral
What were some defining characteristics of Spanish and Portuguese cities in the Americas?
- churches and cathedrals
- portuguese and spanish = languages of government, business, and society
- indigenous life persisted beyond urban districts
What indigenous languages still flourish throughout much of Latin America?
Nahuatl in Mexico, K’iché in Guatemala, Guraní in Paraguay, and Quechua in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia
Where did French settlers establish colonies in 1604 and 1608?
Port Royal (Nova Scotia) and Quebec
What colonies did English migrants found in 1607 and 1630?
Jamestown and the Massachusetts Bay Colony
New York was originally a ________ settlement before it was seized by the English and rechristened New York
Dutch (it was called New Amsterdam before)
English settlers primarily established colonies along the ______ ______ of the present-day United States of America
east coast
What was life like in the early European settlements in North America?
- relied heavily on provisions sent from Europe
- did not expect to cultivate food crops, hoped to sustain communities by producing valuable commodities
Who played larger roles in funding French and English colonial efforts?
private investors, able to retain much more control over their colonies’ affairs than their Iberian counterparts
Although English colonies were always subject to royal authority, what else did they do to govern their colonies?
Maintained their own assemblies and influenced the choice of royal governors (no viceroys or audiencias in North American colonies)
How did the indigenous peoples of North America live differently than the large centralized states of the Aztec and Inca empires?
- didn’t live in densely populated societies
- many practiced agriculture, but most relied on hunting
- moved their villages in pursuit of game
- didn’t claim ownership of bounded territories, regularly migrated between well-defined regions
What were some languages spoken amongst indigenous peoples of North America?
Algonquian, Iroquois, or Lakota
About how many European migrants moved to North America during the 17th century?
150,000, including French, German, Dutch, and Irish migrants
How did European settlement affect the lives of indigenous peoples?
staked out farms and excluded the indigenous peoples who frequently visited the lands during the course of their migrations–took the fertile farmland
How did European migrants justify their claims to American lands?
- negotiating treaties with the peoples whose lands they colonized
- said that they made productive use of the land, whereas native peoples merely used it as a hunting park
A combination of what forces reduced indigenous population of North America in early modern times?
Epidemic disease and violent conflict
How did conflicts between French and English settlers and indigenous peoples differ from the campaigns of conquest carried out by the conquistadores in Mexico and Peru?
English settlers negotiated rights to American lands by treaty, but native peoples did not appreciate the fine points of English law
Between 1600 and 1800, about how many English, French, German, Dutch, Irish, and Scottish migrants crossed the Atlantic and sought to displace native peoples as they pursued economic opportunities?
one million
Relations between individuals of what ancestry soon led to the emergence of mestizo populations?
American, European, and African ancestry
Migrants to the Iberian colonies were overwhelmingly what gender?
Men
What percent of Spanish migrants were men?
85 percent of
Why did Spanish and Portuguese migrants increasing enter into relationships with indigenous women, giving rise to a mestizo society?
There were small numbers of European women who migrated to the Americas–mostly men who migrated from Europe
