History 105 Tamu Exam 1 PDF

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History 105 TAMU Chapter 1: A New World 1. What were the patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?  Approximately 10 million men, women, and children who crossed from the old world to the new world between 1492 and 1820, the vast majority, about 7.7 million, were African Americans.  The new world had become the site of many forms of unfree labor, including indentured servitude, forced labor, and one of the most brutal and unjust systems, plantation slavery.  About 9,000 years ago, at the same time that agriculture was being developed in the Near east, it also emerged in modern day Mexico and the Andes, and then spread to other parts of the Americas, making settled civilizations possible.  The Hemisphere contained cities, roads, irrigation systems, extensive trade networks, and large structures such as the pyramid-temples whose beauty still inspires wonder.  With a population close to 250,000, Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico, was one of the world’s largest cities.  It’s population of perhaps 12 million was linked by a complex system of roads and bridges that extended 2,000 miles along the Andes mountain chain.  No society north of Mexico had achieved literacy (although some made maps on bark and animal hides). Their “backwardness” became a central justification for European conquest.  Indian societies had perfected techniques of farming, hunting, and fishing, developed structures of political power and religious belief, and engaged in farreaching networks of trade and communication.  Around 3,500 years ago, before Egyptians built the pyramids, Native Americans constructed a large community centered on a series of giant semicircular mounds on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi river in present-day Louisiana.  More than a thousand years before Columbus sailed, Indians of the Ohio River valley, called Mound builders, by the eighteenth-century settlers who encountered the large earthen burial mounds they created, had traded across half the continent.  After their decline, another culture flourished in the Mississippi river valley, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, fortified community with between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants in the year 1200.  It stood as the largest settled community in what is now the U.S until surpassed in population by New York and Philadelphia around 1800.  In the arid northwestern area of present-day Arizona, the Hopi and Zuni and their ancestors engaged in settled village life for over 3,000 years.  During the peak of the regions culture, between the years 900 and 1200, these peoples built great planned towns with large multiple-family dwellings in local canyons, constructed dams and canals to gather and distribute water, and conducted trade with groups as far away as central Mexico and the Mississippi River Valley.

After the decline of these communities, probably because of drought, survivors moved to the south and east, where they established villages and perfected the techniques of desert farming.  In eastern North America, hundreds of tribes inhabited towns and villages scattered from the Gulf of Mexico to present day Canada.  Tribes frequently warred with one another to obtain goods, seize captives, or take revenge for the killing of relatives.  In the Southeast, the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw each united dozens of towns in loose alliances. In present-day New York and Pennsylvania, five Iroquois peoples- the Mowhawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondagaformed Great leagues of peace, bringing a period of stability to the area.  Indian identity centered on the immediate social group- a tribe, village, chiefdom, or confederacy.  Spiritual power, they believed, suffused the world, and sacred spirits could be found in all kinds of living and inanimate things-animals, plants, trees, water, and wind.  In all Indian societies, those who seemed to possess special abilities to invoke supernatural powers-shamans, medicine men, and other religious leaders- held positions of respect and authority.  Indians saw land as a common resource, not economic commodity. There was no market in real estate before the coming of Europeans.  Generosity was among the most valued social qualities, and gift giving was essential to Indian society.  Membership in a family defined women’s lives, but they openly engaged in premarital sexual relations and could even choose to divorce their husbands.  Indian women owned dwellings and tools, and a husband generally moved to live with the family of his wife.  Europeans tended to view Indians in extreme terms. They were regarded either as “Noble savage,” gentle, friendly and superior in some ways to Europeans, or uncivilized and brutal savages. 2. How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?  Indians did not define freedom as individual autonomy or tie it to the ownership of property-two attributes important to Europeans.  The modern notion of freedom as personal independence had little meaning in most Indian societies, but individuals were expected to think for themselves and did not always have to go along with collective decision-making.  Christian Liberty, however, had no connection to later ideas of religious toleration; a noting that scarcely existed anywhere on the eve of colonization. 

3. What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?  The European conquest of America began as an offshoot of the quest for sea route to India, China, and the islands of the East Indies, the source of the silk, tea, spices, porcelain, and other luxury goods.  Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng led seven large naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean. After 1433 the government ended support for long distance maritime expeditions.

It fell to Portugal, far removed from the overland route to Asia, to begin exploring the Atlantic. Taking advantage of new long distance ships known as caravels and new navigational devices such as the compass and quadrant, the Portuguese showed that it was possible to sail down the coast of Africa and return to Portugal.  Portuguese established plantations on the Atlantic islands, eventually replacing the native populations with thousands of slaves shipped from Africa- an ominous precedent for the New World.  Traditionally, African slaves tended to be criminals, debtors, and captives in war.  At least 100,000 African slaves were transported to Spain and Portugal between 1450 and 1500.  King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to sponsor Columbus on his journey to the Americas.  Their marriage in 1469 had united the warring kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. In 1492, they completed the Reconquista- the “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors, African Muslims who had occupied of the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. 4. What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?  The Transatlantic flow of goods and people is sometimes called the Columbian Exchange. Plants, animals, and cultures that had evolved independently on separate continents were now thrown together.  Products introduced to Europe from the Americas included corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, and tobacco, while people from the old world brought wheat, rice, sugarcane, horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep to the New.  Europeans also carried germs previously unknown to the Americas.  The Indian population suffered catastrophically by the diseases of smallpox, influenza, and measles. Never have encountered these diseases, Indians had not developed antibodies to fight them.  The result was devastating, 20 million to fewer than 2 million. The Indian population reached its lowest point around 1900, at only 250,000. 5. What were the Chief features of the Spanish empire in America?  Spain had established an immense empire that reached from Europe to the Americas and Asia.  Authority originated with the king and flowed downward through the councils of the Indies-colonial administration, and then to viceroys.  The Catholic Church often played a major role in the administration of the Spanish colonies.  The large scale of Africans was unnecessary; instead they forced Indians to work in gold and silver mines.  The Spanish king ordered wives to the colonists, but the population of the Spanish women were low. In 1514, they approved marriages between the Indians and the Spanish called Mestizos.  The government established the repartimiento system, whereby residents of Indian villages remained legally free and entitled to wages, but were still required to perform a fixed amount of labor each year.  Legend- the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. Day One Lecture: American Encounters 1/22/2016 

1. Three different models for understanding of the europen expansion and Transformation of the New World (Conquest model, Holocaust model, and encounter model)  14th and 15th century  The Conquest model is the oldest historical model for the understanding of the expansion and transformation of the New World.  The conquest model tells a story of heroic adventures, missionaries, soldiers, who bring home the victory.  In doing so, opens up a vast virgin continent to the economic development.  The obvious problem of course is Eurocentric, its racist, offensive, and it only tells one side of the story.  Traditionally the telling of the history has always featured, that the winner tells the history.  The Holocaust Model is focusing on the terrible expansion for the Native Americans, and for Africans.  At the time of the first contact between western Europeans and the Americans, the estimates fun anywhere from 70-100 million people.  Perhaps fewer or more, and we know that the consequences of contact, exploration, settlement, colonization, was catastrophic for the native Americans.  With the first 100 years of initial contact many historical people argue that 80 million Native Americans perished.  One historian has characterized this as the American Holocaust because of the genocide that happened to the European contact.  Diseases were the primary cause of death to the Native Americans. Small pox, influenza, flu, and measles.  It was not purposeful; the Native Americans didn’t have the antibodies to fight of and protect them.  If we are using the term “Holocaust” to describe the impact on terms of those deadly diseases, what are we inferring?  That there was purpose and intent.  The Europeans are aware of the Native Americans getting ill, but they lack the knowledge of the germs.  Many Europeans are going to attribute it to the hands of providence, when English puritans come to Massachusetts bay, they don’t find many Native Americans. They exclaimed that God had cleared the Way for them, but the reality was that they killed them with their diseases.  Regardless of how capable the Europeans were to spreading the disease, they were going to still conquer the Indians one way or another, by killing them if they had to.  40 years after the puritans had come, they surrounded an Indian village and killed everybody in the village and probably killed hundreds.  There are some evidence that suggest that at least in the American west in the 19th century that there is at least one well documented instant, where an army post quite purposely and consciously distributed one incidence among 1 group of native Americans who lived nearby were infected with small pox. This could be an early instance of biological warfare.

For the most part, the horrific loss of life that follows the introduction to these diseases, there is no clear intent to do this.  The Holocaust model has one great virtue; it enforces us to confront the enormous tragedy that is part of the Spanish and American era. It is an incredibly devastating human tragedy. This model forces us to come to terms to what happen.  One of the failings of the holocaust model is that deals and depicts African slavery, that there is a connection between the native Americans loss of life and the introduction of African slavery in America.  The Europeans were expecting the Indians to work for them, as Native American population were diminishing, they turn to Africa and replace to Indians.  Over the course of the 15th and 19th century that 20 million Africans were enslaved and brought to the Americas.  When we talk about an American Holocaust we are talking about two events, the horrific loss of life of Native Americans, the destruction Native American culture and we are also talking about African slavery.  Another major failing the Holocaust model is that it depicts both Native Americans and Africans only as victims; Native Americans are the victims of losing life. Africans are victims of a monstrous institution of human slavery.  The Encounters Model this is the most appealing model because it tells a story of European expansion and the openings of the Americas and the transformation of Africa. It tells a story that emphasizes three groups of people: Europeans, Africans and Native Americans. They recognize that they all had different cultures and views.  The Encounters model, the importance of it is it vouched that the story of the Americas is a complex story involving a diverse group of people. It also strives to include Africans and Native Americans as groups that contributed and not victims of the expansion of the new world.  Native Americans had two ways of dealing with murder, One-Way is called The cover the death: the family of the murderer had to pay compensation. and something to raise the dead: where the family of the deceased is presented with a slave.  The Colombian exchange refers the exchange of plants, animals, culture and disease between Europeans, Native Americans And Africans.  The Europeans that come here are introduced to corn, maize, potatoes, and tomatoes.  The Europeans will bring sugarcane, domestic livestock.  The most tragic exchange is the introduction of disease. Chapter 2: Beginnings of English American 1. What were the main contours of English Colonization in the 17th Century?  The English Government granted charters to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, authorizing them to establish colonies in North America at their own expense.  Both ventures failed, in 1585, Raleigh dispatched a fleet of five ships with some 1oo colonists to set up a base on Roanoke Island, off the New Carolina coast. 

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In A discourse concerning Western Planting, written in 1584, the protestant minister and scholar Richard Hakluyt listed 23 reasons why Queen Elizabeth I should support establishing colonies. In the 16th and 17th centuries, landlords sought profits by raising sheep for the expanding trade in wool and introducing more modern farming practices such as crop rotation. While many landlords, farmers, and town merchants benefited from the Enclosure movement, as this process was called, thousands of persons were uprooted from the land.

2. What challenges did the early English settlers face?  John Smith imposed a regime of forced labor on company lands; he said, “ He that will not work, shall not eat.”  The Virginia Company realized that for the colony to survive, it would have to abandon the search for gold, grow its own food and find a marketable commodity.  Instead of retaining all the land for itself, the company introduced the head right system, awarding 50 acres of land to any colonist who paid for is own or another’s passage. 3. How did Virginia and Maryland develop in their early years?  House of Burgesses became the first elected assembly in colonial America  The destruction caused by the Uprising of 1622 fundamentally shifted the balance of power in the colony.  Kin James I considered Tobacco harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs and issued a spired warning against it. Tobacco became a substitute for gold in Virginia.  In English colonists, married women possessed certain rights before the law, including a claim to dower rights, of one third of her husband’s property in the event that he died before she did. 4.What made the English settlement of New England distinctive?  The early history of that region is intimately connected to the religious movement known as Puritanism, which arose in England late in the 16th century.  Puritans came in search of liberty, especially the right to worship and govern themselves in what deemed a truly Christian manner.  John Winthrop, the colony’s governor, distinguished sharply between kinds of liberty. Natural Liberty (acting without restraint, liberty to do evil) and Moral Liberty (liberty to that only which is good).  Pilgrims were the first puritans to immigrate to America.  In September 1620, the mayflower, carrying 150 settlers and crew, embarked from England.  Mayflower Compact, in which the adult men going ashore agreed to obey “just and equal laws,” enacted by representatives of their choosing.  The Great Migration was when five ships sailing from England in 1629 and by 1642; some 21,000 puritans had immigrated to Massachusetts. 5. What were the main sources of discord in Early New England?

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To counteract the attraction of Indian life, the leaders of New England encouraged the publication of captivity narratives by those captured by Indians. The most popular was The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson, who was seized with other settlers and held for three months until ransom during the Indian War in the 1670s. The Half-way Covenant in 1662 tried to address this problem by allowing for the baptism of and a kind of “half way” membership for grandchildren of those who emigrated during the great migration. Overtime, the document came to be seen as embodying the idea of English Freedom that the king was subject to the rule of law, and that all persons should enjoy security of person and property. Day two Lecture: The English New World 1/25/16 The story of the English New world with protestant reformation the idea of a protestant reformation is a basic split between the Christian churches. The classic reformation is at the beginning of the story of English expansion to the Americas. The English king who is most recognized for beheading his wives and starting the English church, which was King Henry, The eighth. It is his sexual over indulgence that leads to the break with the Roman Catholic Church and the creation of the English Church. He had married Spanish women first in 1509 and after 20 years of marriage, he had grown tired of her and he claimed that she could not bear him a son. He wanted a divorce and at that period, once you got married, that’s it. H petitions the pope, but the pope said no. Henry the eighth will repute the Roman Catholic Church and establish the English church. He left her in 1529 and moves to take English church lands. He wanted the land for the revenue, which would help him consolidate England. There are four important consequences that break up the Roman Catholic Church. The first consequence is the birth of Elizabeth I. She is going to become queen of England in 1558 and has a long reign till 1603. She is considered the greatest monarch in English history. England triumph at land, see, and in the human spirit. Through her reign there were important steps taken for English Expansion. The second consequence a long period of intermittent warfare between England and Spain. This period of warfare, is carried out by the English largely by see dogs, who were privateers, individuals who sailed around the globe and engaged in acts of piracy, but were sanction and had the blessing of queen Elizabeth. The 3rd consequence was the coming of the puritans and other religious reforms. They wanted to purify the English church, by getting rid of a lot of various practices such as the wearing of the priest investments, kneeling during prayer time, and lightening of vocal candles.

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The 4th Consequence of Henry’s break with the Roman Catholic Church, had to do with a period of economic change and transformation that comes to England at the end of the 16th century. Henry gets a lot of land from the churches and...