American History I
Notes from 1/23/01
"New World Encounters" We first talked about the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. According to most archeologists, the first migrants came to North America about 30,000 years ago. These were small, nomadic tribes who crossed the "land bridge" between Asia and America during a period in our earth’s history when large glaciers covered much of that area. These Asiatic peoples slowly trickled into North America, during a period lasting several thousand years. Because this migration was a slow trickle instead of a mass exodus, the result was a large number of Native American tribes scattered throughout North and South America, each one having its own language, customs and traditions.
About 4,000 years ago, many Native American civilizations began to undergo an "agricultural revolution." During this time, they developed more sophisticated methods of cultivating crops. As they shifted from hunting/gathering to farming, they could establish more permanent communities and develop more complex cultures. The Aztecs, Incas and Mayans are good examples of this.
In the northeast, Native Americans did not generally practice as intensive an agriculture. The so-called Eastern Woodland Cultures relied on a mix of farming, hunting and gathering to survive. Tribes like the Massachusetts, Mahican, Powhatan and Tuscarora tended to form small villages during the summer months but disband for winter.
The most important point to remember from our discussion on Native Americans prior to Columbus’ voyage is that they were extremely diverse. With 300 – 350 different languages, distinct traditions and cultures, and scattered throughout North and South America, there is very little that all of these tribes shared in common. European settlers to the New World during the 16th and 17th centuries will often fail to recognize these differences. Moreover, in New England and Virginia, where English settlers would first arrive in the early 1600's, rivalry and competition among the tribes would make them easier to conquer and exploit. Attempts to unify across tribal lines to resist white encroachment would be sporadic at best, and largely unsuccessful.
I then discussed the factors leading up to the Age of Discovery. New technologies were vital to European exploration and expansion, beginning in the 15th century. The Portuguese were the first to be aided by technologies borrowed from other societies, such as the Arab caravel (a type of sailing ship) and the Chinese compass. Astrolabes, quadrants and sextants allowed navigators to approximate the altitude of heavenly bodies, enabling them to determine their own latitude at sea. Moreover, as Renaissance scholars "re-discovered" the writings of the ancient Greeks, they renewed their interests in cartography (map making). Greek cartographers who had been largely forgotten during the Middle Ages, such as Ptolemy (c. 90-168 C.E.), were now being read again, although this meant that Europeans of the 15th century would have a lot of the same misconceptions about the continents and the size of the earth as their predecessors had.
Besides the advances in technology and the rediscovery of ancient manuscripts, new forms of business enterprise, such as joint stock companies, were important in fueling the age of discovery. These companies could raise vast sums of capital from investors, and were eventually granted rights to settle, manage and defend proprietary colonies.
During the Renaissance that a stronger and more sophisticated middle class began to emerge in Europe's growing towns and cities. These people demanded more luxury goods from Asia, particularly spices and silks. For centuries, the way goods got from Asia to Europe was over land. This was known as the "Silk Road."
But this took a long time, and the journey was very dangerous for traders. For this reason, many people began wondering whether they could reach China and India by sea instead. During the early 1400's the Portuguese made several attempts to reach India by sailing around the African continent. In so doing, they established a number of trading posts along the west African coast, and began to import African slaves to Europe. (Slavery had existed in western civilization from time immemorial, and in ancient societies had been the bedrock of the economy. What was new about slavery after the 15th century was the nearly exclusive reliance on sub-Saharan Africa as a source of slaves, and the gradual justification of African slavery on racial grounds. I discussed the role of local kings and chiefs in facilitating this African slave trade; the Portuguese relied on local authorities to conduct the raids, often into the interior of Africa, from which able-bodied captives would be sold into slavery.) However, at least initially, the African slave trade was incidental to Portuguese exploration; their primary motivation remained the search for a water route to Asia. In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias, sailing for Portugal, rounded the southern tip of Africa, but was forced to turn back before reaching the Indian subcontinent.
Meanwhile, a Genoese (Genoa, Italy) sea captain, Christopher Columbus, convinced Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain that the water route to Asia was westward. (By the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon [r. 1479-1516] to Isabella of Castille [r. 1474-1504], Spain had become a powerful, unified country. Hence, another ingredient in understanding why Europeans were able to "reach out" during the 15th century -- political centralization.)
Of course, Columbus greatly underestimated the westward distance to Asia, and did not know that North and South America (and the Pacific Ocean) stood between the Atlantic and China. However, his "discovery" of the New World in 1492 would turn out to be an even more important development than finding a route to Asia. It led to a series of explorations, and, ultimately to the European settlement of the New World. Columbus himself made 3 subsequent journeys to the western hemisphere (the last in 1502-04), during which he searched for gold. As Spanish viceroy in the Caribbean he sought the enslavement of native or Amerindian peoples, which the Spanish crown approved. For a number of reasons (primarily disease and resistance), enslavement of these native populations was largely unsuccessful and the Spanish and Portuguese would eventually look to Africa as a source of forced labor for the New World.
Columbus died in 1506, still believing he had reached Asia. (In 1498, Vasco da Gama, reached India by sailing around Africa, enhancing Portugal's position; only after Ferdinand Magellan's ill-fated circumnavigation of the globe [1519-22] did Europeans realize their distance from Asia.)
The early period of European exploration was dominated by the Spanish and Portuguese. These two countries viewed the New World as a source of mineral wealth and other riches, and sought to divide the North and South America between themselves. However, neither country would be able to stop subsequent exploration and settlement by the French, Dutch and particularly the English. That's where the Protestant Reformation comes in, which I discuss on 1/25.