Week Two: Chapter Thirteen Summary

-early modern era was an age of EMPIRE

• significant Euro colonies: Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, and Dutch
• "new societies arose as Native Americans, Europeans, & Africans came in sustained contact with one another for the first time in history"

European Empires In The Americas

-Spanish: focused on Caribbean -> mainland to defeat Aztecs/Incas

-Portuguese: along coast of present day Brazil

-British/French/Dutch: eastern coast of North America

The European Advantage

-countries on Atlantic Rime of Europe are closer to Americas

• knew wind, map making, navigation, sailing techniques, and ship design

-powerfully motivated

• desire for grain, sugar, meat, and fish = larger land base to support economic expansion
• competing states

-states and trading companies = effective mobilization of resources

-seafaring technology allowed transportation with ease

-ironwork, gunpowder weapons, horses

-divisions in local societies

• some Aztecs actually helped Cortez conquer Mexican domination

-germs and diseases

North Americans had no immunities

The Great Dying

-In Aztec & Inca Empires, long isolation from Afro-Eurasian world/lack of domesticated animals = absence of acquired immunities to Old World diseases(smallpox, yellow fever,etc)

-up to 90% of populations died/practically vanished

The Colombian Exchange

-Great Dying created labor shortage -> Africans took over it

-Euros & Africans brought germs, plants, and animals

• wheat, rice, sugarcane, etc. shaped diet and way of life
• horses, cattle, et. made ranching economies, cowboy culture, hunting

-women lost roles as food producers as warrior cultured emerged

-crops(corn,potatoes,etc) spread in Eastern Hemisphere

• calories pushed 60mil. people in 1400 to 390mil in 1900

-tobacco and chocolate used around the world

-enormous network of communication, migration, trade, disease, transfer of pants/animals

-changing global balance of power = Western Euros to central/commanding role on world

Comparing Colonial Societies In The Americans

-Euros used mercantilism(govts served economic interests by encouraging exports and accumulating bullion)

-Spain had few good to sell

-North American & African women were transferred, used as slaves, experienced sexual violence and abuse

-Spanish men married elite Native women

• women could collect large land territories

In The Lands of Aztecs and Incas

-Encomienda: legal system granted some Spanish settlers local natives for labor, gold, etc

-Hacienda system directly employed natives

-Social Order:

• Spaniards, Mestizos, and Indians
• Spaniards: mean at the top/few women so less role
• Mestizos: mixed races/looked down on
• separated into castes
• Indians: bottom/abused/used for labor/ women had no chance for anything

Colonies of Sugar

-occurred in Brazil(ruled by Portugal) & British/French/Dutch turned Caribbean territories into highly productive sugar colonies

-massive use of African slave labor

• horrendous conditions
• women in fields subjected to same treatment as men
• separated from families

-lots of mix races but still racism in Brazil

-N.A. slaves had somewhat less harsh treatment & reproduce themselves but Brazil had many more free slaves