The Atlantic World1492-1800

The Voyages of Columbus prompted a worldwide exchange of everything from religious and political

ideas to new foods and plants. The vast wealth to be had from colonizing the Americas sealed the fate of

millions of Native Americans and Africans. Europeans forced them to toil in gold and silver mines, as well as

on huge tobacco and sugar plantations.

The Atlantic World

I. Spanish Conquests in the Americas

II. Competing Claims in North America

III. The Atlantic Slave Trade & Columbian Exchange

I. Spanish Conquests in the Americas

The voyages of Columbus prompted the Spanish to carve out the first European colonies in the

Americas. As a result, throughout the Americas, Spanish culture, language, and descendants are the

legacy of this period.

A. Columbus’ Voyage Paves the WayOn August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus’ fleet, the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria sailed out of Palos Harbor, Spain.On October 12, 1492, the crew sighted land, an island in the Bahamas.Thinking he had successfully reached the East Indies, Columbus called the surprised inhabitants who greeted him, los indios, or “Indians”

A. Columbus’ Voyage Paves the Wayexerpt from Columbus’s journal“At daybreak great multitudes of men came to the shore, all young and of fine

shapes, and very handsome. Their hair was not curly but loose and course like horse-hair. All have foreheads much broader than any people I had hitherto seen. Their eyes are large and very beautiful. They are not black, but the color of the inhabitants of the Canaries. I presented them with some red caps, and strings of glass beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats where we were, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for the articles we gave them. In fact, they accepted anything and gave what they had with the utmost good will. I was very attentive to them, and strove to learn if they had any gold. Seeing some of them with little bits of metal hanging at their noses, I gathered from them by signs that by going southward or steering round the island in that direction, there would be found a king who possessed great cups full of gold” After seeing two or three villages he concluded, “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased.”

A. Columbus’ Voyage Paves the WayColumbus kidnapped ten to twenty-five Arawaks and returned to Spain with parrots, gold trinkets, and other exotic items.The Spanish monarchs provided Columbus with 17 ships, 1,500 men, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs for a second voyage.Columbus would return to the Americas three more times, not as an explorer, but as an empire builder.

A. Columbus’ Voyage Paves the WayWhen Columbus returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, cotton – whatever they wanted.To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment such as cutting off ears or noses.Columbus instituted a system of forced labor, called the encomienda system.This system would become official Spanish policy throughout the Americas.

A. Columbus’ Voyage Paves the Way

As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, many Arawaks chose suicide.

Columbus sent the first slaves across the Atlantic to Spain.

The island of Haiti had a population between 1,100,000 and 3,000,000 when Columbus arrived in 1492.

By 1516, only 12,000 remained.

A. Columbus’ Voyage Paves the WayBecause the Native Americans died, this led to the massive slave trade the other way across the Atlantic, from Africa.The trade began in Haiti and would become the site of the first large-scale revolt, when blacks and Indians banded together in 1519.The uprising lasted more than a decade and was finally brought to an end by the Spanish in the 1530s.

A. Columbus’ Voyage Paves the Way

Thus, what is the significance of Columbus’s voyages?Is Columbus a hero who discovered America, opened up a New World, and is one of the greatest explorers in history?Is Columbus one who revolutionized race relations in the modern world including: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the trans-atlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass?We understand Columbus and all European explorers and settlers more clearly if we treat 1492 as a meeting of three cultures, rather than a discovery by one.

B. Other Explorers Take to the Sea

Over the next two centuries, other European explorers began sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.In 1500, Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral reached the shores of modern-day Brazil and claimed the land for his country.In 1519, Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian in the service of Spain, traveled to South America. The continents of the Western Hemisphere would come to be named America in honor of him.

B. Other Explorers Take to the SeaIn 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan led the boldest exploration yet.With about 230 men and five ships, Magellan sailed around the southern end of South America and into the mysterious water of the Pacific.The fleet sailing for months without seeing land. Food supplies soon ran out.Magellan became involved in a local war in the Philippines.Out of Magellan’s original crew, only 18 men and one ship arrived back in Spain in 1522 – nearly three years after they had left.Ferdinand Magellan and his crew were the first persons to circumnavigate, or sail around, the world.

C. Spain Builds an American Empire

A series of Spanish explorers known as conquistadors, or conquerors, began looking to claim new lands for Spain.

Lured by rumors of vast lands filled with gold and silver, conquistadors carved out colonies in regions that would become Mexico, South America, and the United States.

In 1519, a Spaniard named Hernando Cortes landed on the shores of Mexico.

C. Spain Builds an American EmpireAfter marching for weeks through difficult mountain passes, Cortes and his force of roughly 600 men finally reached the magnificent Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.The Aztec emperor, Montezuma II agreed to give the Spanish a share of empire’s gold supply, believing Cortes was a god.Not satisfied, Cortes forced the Aztecs to mine more gold and silver.The Aztecs rebelled against the Spanish intruders and drove out Cortes’ forces.The Spaniards struck back and conquered the Aztecs in 1521.

C. Spain Builds an American EmpireReasons for the Spanish victory:1. Superior weapons – Aztec arrows were no match for the Spaniards’ rifles and cannons.2. Cortes enlisted the help of various native groups – Some natives hated the Aztec and their harsh practices, including human sacrifice.3. Disease killed hundreds of thousands – Measles, mumps, smallpox, and typhus were just some of the diseases Europeans had brought with them to the Americas.In time, European disease would truly devastate the natives of central Mexico.

C. Spain Builds an American Empire

In 1533, another conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, conquered the mighty Inca Empire in South America.Pizarro and his army of about 200 met the Inca ruler Atahualpa.Atahualpa brought several thousand mostly unarmed men for the meeting.The Spaniards crushed the force and kidnapped Atahualpa.Atahualpa offered to fill a room once with gold and twice with silver in exchange for his release.However, after receiving the ransom, the Spanish strangled the Inca king.Demoralized by their leader’s death, Pizarro conquered the Inca without a struggle.

C. Spain Builds an American Empire

C. Spain Builds an American Empire

The Spanish also conquered the Maya in Yucatan and Guatemala.

By the middle of the 16th century, Spain had created a wide reaching empire.

C. Spain Builds an American EmpireOne area of South America that remained outside of Spanish control was Brazil.Clearing out huge swaths of forest land, the Portuguese built giant sugar plantations.Along the way, the Portuguese – like the Spanish – conquered Native Americans and inflicted thousands of them with disease.Also, like the Spanish, the Portuguese enslave a great number of the land’s original inhabitants.

C. Spain Builds an American EmpireBy 1540, after building an empire that stretched from Mexico to Peru, the Spanish looked to the land that is now the United States.Finding little gold, Spain assigned mostly priests to explore and colonize the future U.S. and northern Mexico.Spanish priests worked to spread Christianity and pushed for better treatment of Native Americans.

C. Spain Builds an American EmpireIn particularly, they criticized the pattern of labor that emerged under the encomienda system.“There is nothing more detestable or cruel,” Dominican monk Bartolome de Las Casa wrote, “than the tyranny which the Spaniards use toward the Indians for the getting of pearl riches.”The Spanish government abolished the encomienda system in 1542.

II. Competing Claims in North America

Spain’s colonization efforts did not go unnoticed. Other European nations soon became interested in obtaining their own

valuable colonies across the Atlantic.

A. Explorers Establish New France

France penetrated the heart of North America.In 1608, France laid claim to the area they called Quebec in modern day Canada.By 1700, the French claimed the Mississippi River basin calling it Louisiana.France’s primary economic activity was fur trade.

B. The English Settle the AmericasThe first English arrive at Jamestown off the coast of Virginia in 1607.The settlers numbered more than 100.More interested in finding gold than planting crops, they soon fell victim to their harsh surroundings.During the first few years, seven out of ten died of hunger, disease, or fighting with the Native Americans.Despite the difficult start, the Jamestown became England’s first permanent settlement.

B. The English Settle the Americas

In 1620, the Pilgrims founded a second English colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Persecuted for their religious beliefs in England, these colonists sought religious freedom.

C. The Fight for North America

As they expanded their settlements in North America, the nations of France, England, and the Netherlands battled each other.

After years of skirmishes and war, the English gained control of much of the continent.

C. The Fight for North AmericaAs in Mexico and South America, the arrival of Europeans in the present-day United States had a great impact on Native Americans.European colonization brought mostly disaster for the lands’ original inhabitants, as many fell to disease and warfare.French and Dutch settlers developed a mostly cooperative relationship with Native Americans in an effort to establish a fur-trading empire.

C. The Fight for North AmericaEnglish colonies, however, seized more and more land for their growing population and to grow more tobacco.As a result, tensions between the two groups rose.The English settlers also considered Native Americans heathens – people without a faith.Over time, many Pilgrims viewed Native Americans as agents of the devil and a threat to their godly society.Native Americans developed a similarly hard view toward the white invaders.

C. The Fight for North AmericaJust as had happened in Mexico and Peru, diseases devastated the native population.From South Carolina to Missouri, nearly whole tribes fell to smallpox, measles, and other diseases.One effect of this loss was a severe shortage of labor in the colonies.European colonies from South America to North America would soon turn to another group: Africans, whom they would enslave by the millions.

III. The Atlantic Slave Trade & Columbian

Exchange

The global exchange of goods permanently changed Europe, Asia,

Africa, and the Americas.