Atlantic Worlds Exam 1 Notes PDF

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Lecture notes for lectures 1-10 for Prof. Stanwood...

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Atlantic Worlds I Notes 8/28 (Class 1): Europe in the age of Marco Polo ● Introduction ○ Marco Polo ■ Venetian merchant; went to China ● Europe and the World ○ World Island ■ European knew they weren’t in the center of the universe and the East was more central ■ Europe was expanding and “obsessed” with Asia - opening Asian markets, expanding political power and more ○ Feudalism ■ Vassals offered services to lords for protection, lords to other lords and kings. ○ The Great Khan ● Mediterranean Expansion ○ Cosmopolitanism ■ Get out and get to know the world and world wisdom ○ Venice ■ Strategic positioning favored maritime trading ○ Genoa ■ Venice rivals, dominated Western markets but shifted East ○ Venice and Genoa were the main Italian states that pushed expansion (Venice to the East and Genoa to the West) ○ Crusades ■ Reconquest of the Holy Lands: Religious, political and economic motives ○ Louis IX ○ Convivencia ■ Iberian peaceful state pre-Reconquista ○ Reconquista ■ Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Muslims by Christians ○ Ferdinand and Isabella ● Looking Toward the Orient ○ Rusticello of Pisa ■ Prisoner with Marco Polo, turned him into a romance ○ John Mandeville ■ Land of Wonders, contrast to Europe ○ Ottoman Empire ■ Buffered the new Ming China, conquered great masses of land near the

Mediterranean ■ Venice and Genoa last power due to unavailability of Eastern markets ■ Spain and Portugal gain power and lead the charge for another route to the East → Atlantic Ocean ● Reoriented Europe

9/4 (Class 2): Encounters with Africa ● Introduction

○ “Dark Continent” ■ Lacking civility (European culture) ● European Impressions and African Realities ○ “Mysterious” aspect, exotic ■ Black = “evil” (Biblical explanation: unholy, non-christian); ■ White = “good”, christian ○ Subsaharan Africa ■ Early source of slaves for Europeans ● Slaves sold by muslims ○ Dualism ■ Black = evil, unholy, non-Christian → Biblical explanation ■ White = good, Christian ○ Timbuktu ■ Trade center of Africa at the time ■ Part of the Songhai Empire ○ Prester John ■ Imaginary white, Christian king in Africa ■ Fictitious version of the Ethiopians ○ Ethiopia ■ Old, Christian kingdom; isolated from the rest of the Christian world ■ Reestablished contact with the outside Christians (whites) to form an antimuslim coalition ○ Songhai Empire ■ Very rich due to gold ○ Leo Africanus ■ Account of African reality in Timbuktu ● Europeans had never reached Timbuktu when this was written ● African Interactions ○ Dom Henrique ■ Funded explorations around the world ○ Gil Eanes ■ First explorer to surpass Cape Bojador ○ Nuno Tristão ■ Slave trader killed while trying to capture slaves ■ Portuguese realized they couldn’t conquer the Africans by force ○ São Jorge da Mina (Elmina) ■ First Portuguese trade settlement (NOT COLONY) ● Also sent catechists ○ Kingdom of Kongo ■ Converted to Christianity

■ Saw economic, belic, and spiritual returns; lead to meaningful cultural exchange and mutually-beneficial trade ○ Diogo Cão ○ Manikongo Nzinga a Nkuwu (João I) ■ Took Dom João I’s name after his conversion to Christianity ○ Prince Kasuta (Afonso) ○ Syncretism ■ Incorporation of local features to better serve the local faith ● Ex: black Jesus ● Toward the Slave Trade ○ Trans-Saharan Slave Trade ■ New source of labor ● Started off with prisoners of war, then moved on to traditional slavery in small-scale raids ○ Canary Islands ■ Sugar plantations that were sourced with slave labor

9/9 (Class 3): America on the Eve of Contact ● Introduction ○ Precolumbian America ■ Rich and developed cultures ■ Drastic changes come after discovery, more than Asia & Africa

● Origins ○ Bering Strait Theory ■ Ancient peoples migrated between 12 and 20k years ago, when there was a “land bridge” connecting Asia and North America ○ Coastal Route Theory ■ They went down the coast of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest by boats ● Precolumbian Empires: The Valley of Mexico ○ Mesoamerica ■ 2500BC; ■ Sources of food: maize, squash ○ Olmecs ■ 1st great Empire: 1200 - 100BC ■ Math, astronomy; influenced Mayans/Pictographic writing ○ Teotihuacan ■ City: 750 - 150BC ○ Toltecs ○ Aztecs (Mexica) ■ Heirs to the Toltecs; Known warriors ■ Formed the “triple alliance” and left their secluded island ○ Tenochtitlan ■ Aztec capital; engineering feat; good education; pessimism ○ Huitzlipochtli ■ Aztec Sun God: Could end Earth (abandon our civilization) at the end of 52-year cycle; sacrifices ● Precolumbian Empires: The Andean Highlands ○ Trade connections ○ Cuzco ■ Center of Inca/Quechua culture ○ Inca Empire ■ Diplomatic conquerors ○ Inka Yupanqui (Pachakuti) ■ Exiled himself from Cuzco and began his own Empire ○ Tawantinsuyu (Land of Four Quarters) ○ Thupa Inka ■ Great Conqueror ○ Wayna Qhapaq ■ Killed several brothers ○ Machu Picchu ○ Quipus ■ Communication system by ropes and knots in theme ● North American Peripheries

○ Mesoamerican Lifestyles in North America ○ Chaco Canyon (Anasazi) ■ 1100 - 1200s: Seed of the Pueblo peoples ○ Cahokia (Mississippians) ■ Just outside St. Louis ● Both these locations fell to European discovery ● The First Encounters ○ Leif Ericson ■ Contact with America before Columbus

9/11 (Class 4): The Spanish Conquest ● Introduction ○ Great Man Theory ■ The Spanish conquered the new world by sheer force of personality. By this theory, men like Columbus and Cortez are heroic figures, who do things on their own. ● None of these men acted on their own. In fact, they also weren’t particularly talented, but lucky, and had help along the way. ■ How could entire empires fall to a few hundred men if they weren’t

inferior? ○ Contingency ● From Contact to Conquest ○ Christopher Columbus ■ From Genoa, Italy. A skilled mariner. Columbus went “shopping around” for work. Spanish royal family were the ones who hired his work and gave credit to his “crazy theories” ■ Columbus “shrank the Earth by a ⅓”, which would, according to him, make it possible to travel West and hit land without dying. ■ His real prize was the finding and claiming for the crown of Spain of Hispaniola (“Spanish Island”). ○ Taino Indians ■ Eager to trade and communicate with the Spanish. ■ Columbus said he could made the Indians accept Spanish Rule and Christianity, and still believe China was nearby. ○ Quisqueya/Ayiti/Hispaniola ○ Nicolas de Ovando ■ Next governor of Hispaniola, after Columbus. ■ Hardlined against the Taino Indians ○ Encomienda ■ Distributed the labor of Indians to different Spanish conquerors, Ovando, of course, getting the majority of it. ■ A system that led to massive exportation. ● The Conquest of Mexico ○ Diego de Velazquez ■ 1519: Viceroy of Cuba, highest official in the region. ■ Eager to make new discoveries and bring glory to his name ○ Hernan Cortes ■ Utterly untrustworthy, clearly wanted all the glory to himself ■ Took 500 spanish soldiers to explore inland Mexico ■ Found a number of people who had been imprisoned by the Mayan people. ○ Malintzin (Dona Marina) ■ Prisoner of the Mayans. Originally from Tenochtitlan ○ Tlaxcala ■ Cortes fashioned an alliance with the independent people of Tlaxcala, who really hated the Aztecs. ■ “This is a way that maybe we can increase our own power” - Tlaxcalans ○ Bernal Diaz del Castillo ■ Wrote the ‘best’ account of the conquest - Prof. Stanwood said ○ Moctezuma II

■ Aztec emperor ■ Often portrayed as a pushover, when what he did was what any Aztec leader would do - showered Cortes with gifts, to display what his people had (“show off”) ○ Panfilo de Narvaez ■ Will come back a couple lectures from now ○ “La Noche Triste” ■ Aztecs were taking part in a religious service, Spanish decided to slaughter them. ○ Cuauhtemoc ■ New emperor - after Moctezuma. Was captured by the Spanish. As he begged for Cortes to kill him, the Spaniard chose to keep him alive as something of a “puppet ruler” ■ Cortes gave himself a new name - Marques del Valle, and implemented the Encomienda system. ● The Conquest of Peru ○ Francisco Pizarro ■ 1532: Pizarro is a minor official in the Spanish empire, in Panama. Biting his time, looking for a way to get rich. ■ Pizarro decided he would try to raise money to go on an expedition a couple hundred miles South, and become the new Cortes by conquering the Inca empire. ○ Atahualpa ■ Inca emperor ■ Trying to consolidate his authority by defeating a rival. ■ Met Pizarro when travelling to a Spa town - where the royalty would go to “relax”. Pizarro immediately demanded Atahualpa’s surrender. ■ Was put on trial and executed for treason against his brother. ○ The conquest of Peru took 30 years of hard fighting - it was a vast empire, and the Spanish wouldn’t send a lot of people to fight there. ○ Diego de Almagro ■ Pizarro’s 2nd in command, decided he would have the glory to himself. Rebelled against Pizarro and got him assassinated. ○ The conquest of Peru was in some ways even more definitive than the conquest of Mexico. ● Explanations ○ Technology ■ The spanish had stuff that the Aztecs and Incas didn’t have - Gunpower, steel (swords), horses (were not really very good in places like Tenochtitlan). These technological advancements made it so that a few

number of Spaniards could defeat a significantly larger number of Aztecs and Incas. ○ Religion ■ Aztecs believed Cortes to be a returning god - the angry sun god, which they were afraid would end the World. This theory probably isn’t right. ○ Alliances ■ Had a lot more merit. Spanish used alliances with natives as a way to divide & conquer the New World. “Spanish and a lot more Indian Allies conquering different groups of natives”. ○ Disease ■ Spanish brought the diseases of the Old World to the New. They did the most damage and changed the whole calculus of fighting for the Aztecs and Incas, and allowed the Spanish to do things they were never able to do in Africa.

9/16 (Class 5): Death and Disease ● Introduction ○ Disease and Conquest ■ Diseases were unpredictable, death rate was higher. ■ Disease is a large part of what made conquest possible. ● Virgin Soils ○ Epidemiological isolation ■ Very little contact with extra-american world ■ No exposure to epidemic diseases ■ Americans were generally healthier than europeans ○ Plague ■ Black death killed 33% of people in urban Europe ● Did not threaten society ■ Plagues spreading allowed immunities to develop ○ Immunities

○ Influenza ■ Not particularly deadly to Europeans at the time, but devastating for people who didn’t have immunity ○ Measles ■ Most people got measles as children, also not particularly deadly to Europeans ○ Smallpox ■ Most important in the contamination of Native Americans ■ Highly contagious disease that spreads through the air ■ Starting symptoms similar to influenza, after a couple weeks people started to get small “dots” on bodies ■ Killed one out of three contaminated ■ 1st recorded smallpox epidemic hit Hispaniola in 1518 ○ 1st record of people getting sick around 1510 ■ By 1518, population of Hispaniola was down from hundreds of thousands of people to 20.000 ● By 1535, population was 0. Not all people died, some fled to neighboring islands ■ Spaniards had to start bringing workers from Europe ● Invisible Allies ○ Mayans ■ First people to suffer from spreading of germs, got diseases from germs coming from shipwrecks encountered ○ Cuitlahuac ■ Took over from Montezuma. Very important time for Aztecs: New emperor, diseases... ○ Wayna Qhapaq ■ Died from smallpox: about the same time it hit Mexico, it was hitting the Incas as well ■ When Pizarro arrived, he encountered the Incas in unprecedented circumstances ○ Tisquantum (Squanto) ■ Was the last of his village, the only one left ■ 1614: Kidnapped by English sailors ■ Taken to the Port of Malaga and sold off to slavery ■ Some priests bought him out of slavery, he convinced them to let them go back to England ■ Died from disease ● Assessing the Evidence ○ Low counters (Alfred Kroeber) ■ Estimated about 8.4 million people lived in the Hemisphere at the time

○ High Counters (Henry Dobyns) ■ Estimated about 112 million people lived in the Hemisphere at the time ○ 50 million seems to be a more accurate estimate ○ Hernando de Soto ■ Found large, complex civilizations when travelling Southeastern North America ■ Spanish came and left, their diseases stayed and killed ○ Winter Counts ● The Question of Responsibility ○ “Killing millions of people ‘by accident’ doesn’t make it right” ○ Because of conquest, these diseases that would have killed a lot of people killed even more ○ Some Europeans celebrated the death of Native Americans, because it “cleared the land” for them. ○ Jeffrey Amherst ■ One of the commanders in America during the 7 years war ■ Conversations about artificially breaking out Smallpox to kill the enemy

9/18 (Class 6): Indian Labor and Global Trade ● Introduction ○ The spanish model of colonialism depended on the natives being there ■ Despite the population losses, there were still enough Indians to make the Spaniards money ○ Bullion: Both gold and silver - the measure of wealth in most societies ■ No obvious reason why Europeans were so obsessed with gold & silver most of it had to do with scarcity and aesthetics ● Precious Metals and Spanish American Society ○ Silver & Gold ■ First thing that Spaniards looked for upon arrival in the New World ○ Encomienda System ■ Main source of labor in Spanish America. ■ Problem: Mexican encomienda system weren’t adequate for mining ● Mines were far from civilizations, which made mining difficult and expensive ○ Zacatecas ■ 1500s: Shift from Gold to Silver in mexico ■ One of the great mining centers in Mexico

■ Took 100 years to achieve its potential ● Potosi (“The High Place”) ○ One main difference between Mexico and Andes ■ Incas were already miners, mined much more extensively than Aztecs ○ Far from the only place that produced precious metals, but one of the most famous ones ■ Silver mines - story of Potosi begins with a silver vein, in a plateau of very high altitude ■ Apparently Incas had known there was silver there, but hadn’t mined it because it was remote to them ○ Huayras ■ Smelting oven made by the Quechuas ■ Made it possible for the spanish to get on this vein and mine the silver ■ Reportedly 15,000 Huayras in 1545, 40,000 by 1571 ■ Led to the population of Potosi to boom

○ Mita system ■ Labor tax: 1/7 of the population of working men men sent off once a year to complete a project; moved throughout empire ■ Not slavery - people not owned by the State ■ Spanish used mita system combined with encomienda system ○ Potosi was not built to last, it was built to be a classic “boom town” - Spanish would mine the “only thing” Potosi produced (Silver), and “abandon” it ● Following the Silver ○ Callao ■ Port city right next to Lima - center of Spanish political power ■ Where silver was transported to from Panama ○ Isthmus of Panama ■ Silver was boarded onto ships, which sailed North to the Isthmus of Panama ○ Havana ■ After crossing the Isthmus, silver was loaded onto ships in Havana to be sent overseas to Europe ■ 1555: Man named _ raided Havana ○ Treasure Fleet ■ Ships should not travel alone, but should convoy from Havana for safety ■ Would go off together, once a year from Havana to Seville ○ Piet Heyn

■ 1628: Was able to raid 16 ships and stole enough metals to fund Dutch army on a war against Spain for 8 months ○ Casa de Contratacion (Seville) ■ Most of the treasure fleets made it to the Casa de Contratacion in Seville ○ Quinta royal (royal fifth) ■ 20% of metals went to the treasury of Spain ● Bullion and the World Economy ○ Price Revolution ■ Prices started to go up, alarming to the ordinary citizens ■ Belief that the State with the most bullion had the biggest share of the global wealth

9/23 (Class 7): The Atlantic Renaissance ● What was the Renaissance? ○ Petrarch ■ Literature ○ Dante Alighieri ■ Literature ○ Michelangelo ■ Artist ○ Leonardo da Vinci ■ Both an artist and general thinker ○ Niccolo Machiavelli ■ Most famous name in terms of Political Theory ○ Humanism ■ A return to the source - Go back to the original documents to figure out what authors meant ■ Humanists were linguists ○ Vulgate Bible ■ Late Roman translation of the Greek & Hebrew bible ○ Johann Gutenberg ■ Movable type printing press invention - all of these “new” philosophies could be circulated much more widely to many more people ● The Renaissance and Discovery ○ José de Acosta

■ Jesuit Thinker, Originally from Spain, lived in Peru ■ Felt cold in the Equator - “What can I do but laugh at Aristotle’s meteorology...” ○ Michel de Montaigne ■ Rejected the label of barbarism ■ Called for empirical investigation instead of a blind sense of authority ■ Listed some of native Brazilians’ habits, and compared them to some of the things he didn;t like about his country: liked the simplicity of the natives. ○ André Thevet ■ Frenchman who became a priest and managed to travel to much of the world through patrons who funded his voyages. ■ Masterwork: Cosmographie Universelle (Universal Cosmography) ● Made a lot of it up, but there was something that was perhaps revolutionary: “Only when you see things with your own eyes you can verify it is true” ● Visual Representations ○ Nudity ○ Cannibalism ○ Amerigo Vespucci ○ Jan Mostaert ○ Tupi Indians ○ Guillaume Le Testu (Dieppe School) ○ Theodore de Bry ○ Hans Staden ○ John White

9/25 (Class 8): The Atlantic Reformation ● Introduction ○ Martin Luther ■ Complaints about the Catholic Church ■ Knew about conquerors, but this didn’t motivate him to start the “revolution” ● The European Reformation ○ St Peter’s Basilica ■ Early 1400: Pope Nicolas V decided to tear down St Peter’s Basilica and ordered the construction of a new cathedral ○ Indulgence System ■ Allowed ordinary people to pay money so that the Pope could help them to get to the saints, who would help with their lives - “in general” ● Sold to help build the new Basilica ■ Martin Luther did not like this - academic disputes on the system of indulgences ● A few years after this, Luther had completely broken with the Roman church, which (basically) divided the Western faith in two ○ Sola fide, sola gratia, sola scripture (faith, grace, scripture) ■ Sola fide: Going to heaven comes from faith, not from good acts ■ Sola gratia: God’s grace is a free gift to you - not because of anything you’ve done ■ Sola scriptura: All the pronouncements of the Church after the bible was written was not binding ● Undermined the Catholic church at the time, challenged most beliefs ○ Antichrist ■ Luther: The Pope is a servant of satan who tricks people to believe he is christ-like

● “People believed they were serving Christ when they were actually serving satan” ■ Contrast: Christ washing feet vs. Pope having feet washed ○ Magisterial Reformation ■ Movements from priests to other leaders who backup Luther and protect him ■ For the most part, princes chose the religions of Kingdoms ○ Holy Roman Empire ○ Peasants’ Revolt (1525) ■ Struck southern parts of what is now Germany - Ordinary people became attached to protestantism ■ Luther was very scared about this ■ Catholic church became more militant ● Catholic Militancy in the New World ○ New World was quite naturally a scenery for this dispute ○ Papal Donation (1493) ■ Split up the world between his two favorite catholic rulers: Kings of Spain and Portugal ■ Controversial at the time, even to other Catholic monarchs, who didn’t see why they didn’t benefit from the agreement ○ Treaty of Tordesillas ■ Between Spain and Portugal ○ Charles V ■ Holy roman empire ruler, from the Hapsburg family ■ Close to a Monarch, had many territories ■ Defender of Catholicism ○ Society of Jesus ■ Jesuits, new order of educators, missionaries - an order to maintain Catholic rule all over the world ○ Inquisition ■ Medieval practice - if someone was not being orthodox, they would be inquired about it ■ Mostly targeted at former Jews and Muslims ■ Portuguese and Spanish set out new inquisitions in their colonies, to make sure that Luther’s followers would not be able to convert them ● Protestant Colonialism ○ Bartolomé de Las Casas ■ Talked on and on abo...