age of exploration and new encounters
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Age of exploration and new encounters in the Americas.TRANSCRIPT
Age of Explora-on & New Encounters
• What influenced people to explore distant places?
• Traveling to distant lands involved overcoming the fear of confron-ng unknown obstacles such as the great sea monsters that where believed lived within the depths of the oceans.
Why Colonize?
• Mercan-lism, is the philosophy which held that the purpose of a colony was to make the mother country stronger and more self-‐sufficient.
• Demands for raw materials.
• Need for markets.
• Commerce, Chris-anity, Civiliza-on.
Colonial Powers
Spanish Empire
The Reconquest
• Although Chris-ans and Muslims struggled intermiNently to control Iberia, from about 718 to 1492, the most ac-ve years were between 850 and 1250.
• During this -me, Chris-an knights and seNlers pushed south from their ini-al redoubt in the mountains of northern Spain.
Mesquita, Cordova
• In 1479, the marriage of Queen Isabela and King Fernando united the kingdoms of Cas-le and Aragon, and in 1492, they conquered the last Moorish kingdom, Granada.
• Conveniently, the Chris-ans saw their triumph as evidence that their God ac-vely supported their cause, a belief that they carried into baNle against the na-ve civiliza-ons of the Americas
• Because of its expulsion of the Muslims in Spain and its discovery of the New World, the Spanish crown was granted extraordinary privileges by the papacy.
• Thus, the Spanish conquest undoubtedly was fueled by a desire for status and wealth, but it was legally jus-fied by its Chris-an mission-‐-‐the saving of souls.
La Alhambra, Granda
• With three ships an fewer than ninety men, Columbus sailed first to Canary Islands. He set forth again in early September with an year’s provisions. Aber sailing for three thousand nau-cal miles, on October 12, 1492, Columbus and his men sighted an Island in the chain later named the Bahamas.
Christopher Columbus Arrival to What he Believed Was the West Indies
Indigenous Popula-on in the Americas
• The hemisphere’s indigenous popula-on at the moment of contact in 1492 was probably between thirty-‐five and fiby-‐five million.
The Encounter of Two Worlds
In 1492, Columbus landed in what are now the islands of the Caribbean. When he could not find sufficient gold and wealth, he turned to trading slaves. In 1495 he rounded up 1,500 Tainos (Arwaks), selec-ng 500 of the best specimens, and set sail to Spain. Only 300 na-ves survived.
• In his second voyage of 1493, Christopher Columbus introduced cane plants to the Caribbean. Columbus knew that sugar and slavery were inseparable and that tremendous profits could be goNen from sugar.
• By the early sixteenth century the sugar industry thrived on Santo Domingo, then on Cuba, and soon aber on Puerto Rico.