Unit One: Pre-Columbian America

The Change in European Culture

Crusades

• During the Middle or Medieval ages in Europe, Europeans isolated themselves from the rest of the world.

• The Europeans cut off most trade with other parts of the outside world and only focused on their own small kingdoms.

• This isolation changed when Pope Urban II commissioned the Crusades (Holy Wars) to retake Jerusalem (Holy Land) from the Muslim Infidels.

Crusades

Crusades’ Effect on Europe

• While the Crusaders were in the Holy Land, they were introduced to new forms of clothing, food, religions, cultures, and etc.

• The greatest effect of the Crusades was a reintroduction of spices and other foods to Europe known as the Taste Revolution.

• The want for Asian spices and the wealth that came from selling them led many people to end their isolation and open trade routes back to the West.

Black Plague • Another major change in Europe came in

the from of a massive plague (wide spread disease).

• The Black Plague (Death) came from Asia and spread across Europe killing almost 2/3rds of the population.

• The Plague caused people to question the Catholic Church (Pope), their station (place) in society, and led to a general change in European society sparking the Renaissance.

Curse of God

The Renaissance • The Renaissance (rebirth in knowledge) led to

political, religious, artistic, and cultural change in Europe.

• During the Renaissance Europe’s small kingdoms developed into modern Nation (a group of people with a similar ethnic group, language, or religion) States (an area of land with defined boarders) ran by Kings.

• A new political change developed with the courtier (educated men who ran the King’s affairs) developed in the Book of the Courtier by Balthazar Castiglione.

How to Fund a War • With the development of the modern nation/state

also came the introduction of gunpowder to Europe.

• As the new nation/states with their “modern” armies with cannons and muskets began to fight each other, kings needed to find ways of funding “their” wars.

• The Kings borrowed money from the nobles and banks giving people more power in the government, but also led to some monarchs to start looking outward for new sources of funding to become less dependant on the people.

Setting Sail • Due to the search for new ways of funding war,

trading profits, and the dangerous nature of overland trade routes, monarchs began to look to sea travel.

• Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal opened a Nautical (Naval) academy to train young sailors how to efficiently use the Astrolabe, Compass, Caravel ship, and Charts (maps) for open sea voyages.

• Prince Henry wanted to find an all sea route to the Gold Coast of Africa and the Spice islands of the East Indies.

Nautical Instruments

Astrolabe

Compass

Caravel

Ship

1490 Chart

(Map) of Africa and

Europe

Rounding Africa • The Portuguese traveled along the West

Coast of Africa mapping the coast and establishing way stations and colonies on their search for a sea route to the East.

• Bartholomeu Dias was the first European sailor to find the tip of Africa (Cape of Good Hope) in 1488.

• Vasco de Gama used Dias’s route to make the first all sea voyage from Europe (Portugal) to Asia (India) between 1497 -1499.

Economic Colonization

• Off the coast of Africa and the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain) is a group of Islands known as the Fortunate Isles (the Azores, Madeira, and Canary).

• The Portuguese found that after they subdued the native populations most notably the Guanches (Canary Islands), they could use them to grow cash crops (crops grown for the sole purpose to make money). The crop most grown was sugar.

Spain • Portugal was not the only nation searching for

wealth and power on the Iberian Peninsula. • The nation/state of Spain was created by

combining the kingdoms of Ferdinand (Aragon) and Isabel (Castile) to complete the Reconquista (the reclaiming of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims).

• Automatically Spain and Portugal came into conflict with each other over the Fortunate Isles and the right to claim new lands for their respective nations.

Treaty of Tordeillas • After Columbus’s discovery of the New

World in 1492 the two dominant Catholic nations came into conflict over the ability to explore, claim, and subjugate new territories.

• To answer the question Pope Alexander VI wrote the Treaty of Tordeillas signed by Spain and Portugal in 1494 that placed a line of demarcation at 60 W where Portugal received the right to explore, claim, and subjugate any lands East of the line and Spain any lands to the West.

Justification of Enslavement

• As Spain conquered the new world it enslaved the Native people, and as Portugal had the right to Africa they became involved in the African slave trade; but the question is how do Christians justify the enslavement of human beings?

• The first was the Great Chain of Being which was the belief that the world’s peoples were not equal, but rather a vertical chain (ladder) with the best at the top (Europeans) and lesser people as the chain went down.

Justification of Enslavement• The Great Chain of Being developed an

idea of one race (group of people) being better than another for any reason known as racism.

• The reason Europeans were like this was because monarchs had made the people ethnocentric (only concerned with one’s own race) to make them have a sense of loyalty, identity, and pride in the new nation/state known was nationalism.

Justification of Enslavement

• Two separate ideas developed to subjugate (enslave) the Natives and Africans.

• The idea of a Just War ( a defensive war with the ability to use any force necessary and the right to enslave the people by God) was used against the Natives.

• The idea of the Curse of Ham in the Bible (Genesis 9:21-27) was used by the Catholic Popes stating that all Africans were decedents of Ham, so they were cursed by God (black skin) and able to be enslaved.

The Renaissance to Reformation

• Another cultural change developed in Europe around the age of discovery known as the protestant reformation.

• Around 1440 Johannes Gutenberg invented the Printing Press making books cheaper and more accessible to people in general.

• Gutenberg printed “how to books” but mostly printed the bible in the people’s own language (vulgate) allowing them to read, interpret the bible, and question church teachings (dogma).

• The Gutenberg bibles in conjunction with new religious leaders led to the development of the Protestant Reformation.

The Protestant Reformation

• The Protestant Reformation was a religious movement against the abuses of power and religion by the Catholic Church.

• The Protestant Reformation began around 1517 due to the efforts of a monk named Martin Luther.

• Martin Luther became angry at the Catholic Church for its selling of indulgences (a way to remove sin), simony (selling of church offices), plurality (holding more than one church position), and other actions seen as corrupt.

The Protestant Reformation

• The “defining” moment of the Protestant Reformation was when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety Five Theses (list of complaints about the church) to the church door.

• Martin Luther eventually broke from the Catholic Church starting his own faith known as Lutheranism with the basic belief that salvation (belief in Jesus Christ) is the only way to be redeemed and go to heaven.

The Protestant Reformation

• After Martin Luther’s break from the Catholic Church many other groups started their own Protestant Sects (smaller parts of a larger group).

• John Calvin started the sect of Calvinism based on the idea of Predestination (people are chosen at birth whether they go to heaven or hell) with French followers of the faith being called Huguenots.

The Protestant Reformation• The Anabaptists were a sect who rejected

outside government and believed in a person being baptized (lowered and raised in water) after confessing salvation to enter the church.

• Menno Simons was a large founder of the Anabaptists with his sect known as Mennonites.

• The King of England Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church starting the Anglican Church, so he could diverse his first wife for not producing a male heir.

The Protestant Reformation

• The Catholic Church out of fear of the Protestant religions and the lose of laity (church members), they started the Counter Reformation to fix the problems of the Church.

• The Catholic Church deemed all people who were Protestants heretics (people who teach against dominant church beliefs) which led to conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Europe.

The Wars of Religion

• In Europe the Wars of Religion developed causing the two dominant sects of Christianity Catholic and Protestant to kill one another.

• The Wars of Religion and a general intolerance of outside religions led many people to look outside of Europe for a safe haven (place of safety) to worship, which was the New World (America).