AP EURO CHAPTER 14

Impact of European Settlement on Indigenous People

Before Columbus's arrival, the Americas were inhabited by thousands of groups of indigenous peoples. Their patterns of life varied widely. The history of human settlement in the Americas was so long and complex that many cultures had risen and fallen by the time of Columbus's voyage. These included the abandoned city of Cahokia that at its peak in the twelfth century held a population of up to 10,000 people and the palaces and cities of ancestors of the Maya in the Yucatán peninsula, whose regional capital of Chichén Itzá thrived around the same period. Their lives were radically transformed by the arrival of Europeans. Two hundred thousand Spaniards immigrated to the New World. These men carved out vast estates called haciendas in temperate grazing areas and imported Spanish livestock. The Spanish erected huge plantations to supply sugar to the European market. Silver was discovered in present-day Bolivia and Mexico. To work the cattle ranches, sugar plantations, and silver mines, the conquistadors first turned to the indigenous peoples. The Spanish quickly established the encomienda system, in which the Crown granted the conquerors the right to employ groups of Native Americans as laborers or to demand tribute from them in exchange for providing food and shelter. The Spanish were supposed to care for the indigenous people under their command and teach them Christianity; however, it was a form of exploitation only one level removed from slavery. The new conditions and hardships imposed by conquest and colonization resulted in native population losses. The major cause of death was disease. The inhabitants of the New World fell victim to smallpox, typhus, influenza, and other illnesses. Another factor was overwork. Native workers died in staggering numbers. Forced labor diverted local people from agricultural work, leading to malnutrition, reduced fertility rates, and starvation. Women forced to work were separated from their infants, leading to high infant mortality rates. Malnutrition and hunger in turn lowered resistance to disease. Finally, many indigenous peoples also died through outright violence in warfare. Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit missionaries who accompanied the conquistadors and other European settlers played an important role in converting indigenous peoples to Christianity. In areas with small Spanish populations, the friars set up missions for a period of ten years. Jesuits in New France also established missions far distant from the centers of French settlement. Behind its wooden palisades, a mission might contain a chapel, a hospital, a mill, stables, barns, workshops, and residences from which the Jesuits traveled to spread the word of God. Missionaries' success in conversion varied. In Central and South America, large-scale conversion forged enduring Catholic cultures in Portuguese and Spanish colonies. One Franciscan missionary estimated that he and his colleagues baptized between 4 and 9 million indigenous people in New Spain. These suggest the extensive Christianization under way among the native population. Galvanized by their opposition to Catholicism and fueled by their own religious fervor, English colonizers also made efforts to convert indigenous peoples. On the whole, however, these attempts were less successful, in part because the English did not establish wholesale dominance over large native populations as did the Spanish. Conversion entailed a complex process of cultural exchange. Catholic friars were among the first Europeans to seek understanding of native cultures and languages as part of their effort to render Christianity comprehensible to indigenous people. Christian ideas and practices in the New World took on a distinctive character. The pattern of devastating disease and population loss occurred everywhere Europeans settled. It is important to note, however, that native populations and cultures did survive the conquest period, sometimes by blending with European incomers and sometimes by maintaining cultural autonomy. For colonial administrators, the main problem posed by the astronomically high death rate was the loss of a subjugated labor force to work the mines and sugar plantations. Thus was born an absurd myth, and the new tragedy of the transatlantic slave trade would soon

The Problem of Christopher Columbus - Knowledge - Religion - Object of his first voyage - Bahamas - Cuba

Columbus was very knowledgeable about the sea. He had worked as a mapmaker, and he was familiar with fifteenth-century Portuguese navigational developments and the use of the compass as a nautical instrument. His successful 33 day voyage to the Caribbean owed a great deal to his seamanship. Columbus was also a deeply religious man. He witnessed the Spanish conquest of Granada and shared fully in the religious and nationalistic fervor surrounding that event. Columbus understood Christianity as a missionary religion that should be carried to all places of the earth. Columbus wanted to find a direct ocean trading route to Asia. Rejected for funding by the Portuguese and by Ferdinand and Isabella, the project won the backing of the Spanish monarchy in 1492. Inspired by the stories of Mandeville and Marco Polo, Columbus dreamed of reaching the court of the Mongol emperor, the Great Khan. Based on Ptolemy's Geography and other texts, he expected to pass the islands of Japan and then land on the east coast of China. Columbus's small fleet left Spain and landed in the Bahamas, which he christened San Salvador. Columbus believed he found some small islands off the east coast of Japan. He gave natives some beads pronouncing them delighted with these gifts and eager to trade. In a letter he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus described the natives as handsome, peaceful, and primitive people. Believing he was in the Indies, he called them "Indians,". Columbus concluded that they would make good slaves and could easily be converted to Christianity. From San Salvador, Columbus sailed southwest, believing that this course would take him to Japan or the coast of China. He landed instead on Cuba. Deciding that he must be on the mainland near the coastal city of Quinsay, he sent a small embassy inland with letters from Ferdinand and Isabella and instructions to locate the grand city. The landing party found only small villages. Confronted with this disappointment, Columbus apparently gave up on his aim to meet the Great Khan. Instead, he focused on trying to find gold or other valuables among the peoples he had discovered. The sight of Taino people wearing gold ornaments on Hispaniola seemed to prove that gold was available in the region. In January, confident that its source would soon be found, he headed back to Spain to report on his discovery. News of his voyage spread rapidly across Europe. Over the next decades, the Spanish would follow a policy of conquest and colonization in the New World, rather than one of exchange with equals. On his second voyage, Columbus forcibly subjugated the island of Hispaniola and enslaved its indigenous peoples. On this and subsequent voyages, Columbus brought with him settlers for the new Spanish territories, along with agricultural seed and livestock. Columbus himself, however, had limited skills in governing. Revolt soon broke out against him and his brother on Hispaniola. A royal expedition sent to investigate returned the brothers to Spain in chains. Columbus was cleared of wrongdoing, but the territories remained under royal control.

The Portuguese Overseas Empire - How Portugal Went Overseas - Prince Henry - Objectives of Portugal - Next establishment - Diaz / da Gama - Lisbon

For centuries Portugal was a small, poor nation whose principal activities were fishing and subsistence farming. Yet Portugal had a long history of seafaring and navigation. Blocked from access to western Europe by Spain, the Portuguese turned to the Atlantic and North Africa, whose waters they knew better than other Europeans. Winds blowing along their coast offered passage to Africa, its Atlantic islands, and, ultimately, Brazil. In the early phases of Portuguese exploration, Prince Henry played a leading role. A nineteenth-century scholar dubbed Henry "the Navigator" because of his support for the study of geography and navigation. Although he never participated, Henry's involvement ensured that Portugal did not abandon the effort despite early disappointments. The objectives of Portuguese exploration policy were military glory, the conversion of Muslims, and a quest to find gold, slaves, and an overseas route to the spice markets of India. Portugal's conquest of Ceuta, an Arab city in northern Morocco, marked the beginning of European overseas expansion. Under Henry's direction, the Portuguese began to settle the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores. They founded the first African commercial settlement at Arguin in North Africa. By the time Henry died, his support for exploration was vindicated by sugar plantations on Atlantic islands, the arrival of enslaved Africans in Portugal, and access to gold. The Portuguese next established trading posts and forts on the gold-rich Guinea coast and penetrated into the African continent all the way to Timbuktu. Portugal controlled the flow of African gold to Europe. The Portuguese pushed farther south down the west coast of Africa. Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip, but storms forced him to turn back. Vasco da Gama succeeded in rounding the Cape while commanding a fleet of four ships in search of a sea route to India. da Gama reached the port of Calicut in India. He returned to Lisbon loaded with spices and samples of Indian cloth. He failed to forge trading alliances with local powers, and Portuguese arrogance ensured the hostility of Muslim merchants who dominated the trading system. da Gama proved the possibility of lucrative trade with the East via the Cape route. Lisbon became the entrance port for Asian goods into Europe, but this was not accomplished without a fight. Muslim-controlled port city-states had controlled the rich spice trade of the Indian Ocean, and they did not surrender. The Portuguese used a combination of bombardment and diplomatic treaties to establish trading forts at Calicut, Malacca, Hormuz, and Goa, laying the foundation for Portuguese imperialism.

Life in the Colonies

Many factors helped to shape life in European colonies, including geographical location, religion, indigenous cultures and practices, patterns of European settlement, and the cultural attitudes and official policies of the European nations that claimed them as empire. Colonial settlements were hedged by immense borderlands where European power was weak and Europeans and non-Europeans interacted on a more equal basis. Women played a crucial role in the creation of new identities and the continuation of old ones. The first explorers formed unions with native women, through coercion or choice, and relied on them as translators and guides and to form alliances with indigenous powers. As settlement developed, the character of each colony was influenced by the presence or absence of European women. Where women and children accompanied men, as in the British colonies and the Spanish mainland colonies, new settlements took on European languages, religion, and ways of life that have endured, with input from local cultures, to this day. Where European women did not accompany men, as on the west coast of Africa and most European outposts in Asia, local populations largely retained their own cultures, to which male Europeans acclimatized themselves. It was not just the availability of Englishwomen that prevented Englishmen from forming unions with indigenous women. English cultural attitudes drew strict boundaries between "civilized" and "savage," and even settlements of Christianized native peoples were segregated from the English. This was in strong contrast with the situation in New France, where royal officials initially encouraged French traders to form ties with indigenous people, including marrying local women. Assimilation of the native population was seen as one solution to the low levels of immigration from France. Most women who crossed the Atlantic were Africans, constituting four-fifths of the female newcomers before 1800.18 Wherever slavery existed, masters profited from their power to engage in sexual relations with enslaved women. One important difference among European colonies was in the status of children born from such unions. In some colonies, mostly those dominated by the Portuguese, Spanish, or French, substantial populations of free people of color descended from the freed children of such unions. In English colonies, masters were less likely to free children they fathered with female slaves. The mixing of indigenous peoples with Europeans and Africans created whole new populations and ethnicities and complex self-identities. In Spanish America the word mestizo — métis in French — described people of mixed Native American and European descent. The blanket terms "mulatto" and "people of color" were used for those of mixed African and European origin. With its immense slave-based plantation agriculture system, large indigenous population, and relatively low Portuguese immigration, Brazil developed a particularly complex racial and ethnic mosaic.

Causes of European Expansion - Revival - Spices - Religion - Explore - Columbus / Gama / Cortes - Young men / Government - Life at sea - Why they joined - At home

Religious fervor was another important catalyst for expansion. The passion and energy ignited by the Christian reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula encouraged the Portuguese and Spanish to continue the Christian crusade. Overseas exploration was a transfer of the crusading spirit to new non-Christian territories. Since the remaining Muslim states were too strong to defeat, Iberians turned their attention elsewhere. Combined with eagerness to earn profits and to spread Christianity was the desire for glory and the urge to chart new waters. Scholars described the European discoveries as a manifestation of Renaissance curiosity about the physical universe. The detailed journals many voyagers kept attest to their wonder and fascination with the new peoples and places they visited. Christopher Columbus was a devout Christian who was increasingly haunted by messianic obsessions in the last years of his life. His own motives were to serve God and His Majesty, to give light to those who were in darkness and to grow rich as all men desire to do. When the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached the port of Calicut, India and a native asked what he wanted, he replied, "Christians and spices." The bluntest of the Spanish conquistadors, Hernando Cortés, announced as he prepared to conquer Mexico, "I have come to win gold, not to plow the fields like a peasant." Young men's voyages were made possible by the growth of government power. The Spanish monarchy were in a position to support foreign ventures. In Portugal explorers looked to the monarchy, Prince Henry the Navigator in particular, for financial support and encouragement. Monarchs shared a mix of motivations, from the desire to please God to the desire to win glory and profit from trade. Competition among European monarchs and between Protestant and Catholic states was an important factor in encouraging the stream of expeditions that began. Ordinary sailors were ill paid, and life at sea meant danger, overcrowding, and hunger. For months at a time, 100 to 120 people lived together. A lucky sailor would find enough space on deck to unroll his sleeping mat. Horses, cows, pigs, chickens, rats, and lice accompanied sailors on the voyages. Men chose to join these crews to escape poverty at home, to continue a family trade, or to find better lives as illegal immigrants in the colonies. Many orphans and poor boys were placed on board as young pages. Women also paid a price for the voyages of exploration. Left alone for months or years at a time, and frequently widowed, sailors' wives struggled to feed their families. The people who at home had a powerful impact on the process. Royal ministers and factions at court influenced monarchs to provide or deny support for exploration. The small number of people who could read served as a rapt audience for tales of fantastic places and unknown peoples. One of the most popular books of the time was The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which was a firsthand account of the author's travels in the Holy Land, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India and his service to the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and the Mongol Great Khan of China. While fictional, these tales of cannibals, one-eyed giants, men with the heads of dogs, and other marvels convinced audiences through their vividly and persuasively described details. Christopher Columbus took a copy of Mandeville and the equally popular and more reliable The Travels of Marco Polo on his voyage.

Colonial Administration

Spanish conquistadors claimed the lands they had "discovered" for the Spanish crown. The Spanish government acted to impose its authority and remove that of the original conquerors. The House of Trade, located in Seville, controlled the flow of goods and people to and from the colonies, while the Council of the Indies guided royal policy and served as the highest court for colonial affairs. The crown divided its New World possessions into two administrative divisions: New Spain, with the capital at Mexico City, and Peru, with the capital at Lima. Two new ones added in the eighteenth century were New Granada, with Bogotá as its administrative center, and La Plata, with Buenos Aires as the capital. Within each territory, the imperial governor exercised broad military and civil authority as the direct representative of Spain. They presided over the audiencia, a board of twelve to fifteen judges that served as his advisory council and court of appeal. At the local level, officials called corregidores held judicial and administrative powers. The Portuguese adopted similar patterns of rule, with India House in Lisbon functioning like the Spanish House of Trade and royal representatives overseeing its possessions in West Africa and Asia. To secure the vast expanse of Brazil, the Portuguese implemented the system of captaincies, hereditary grants of land given to nobles and loyal officials who bore the costs of settling and administering their territories. The Crown secured greater power over the captaincies, appointing royal governors to act as administrators. The captaincy of Bahia was the site of the capital, Salvador, home to the governor general and other royal officials. France and England initially entrusted their overseas colonies to individual explorers and monopoly trading companies. By the end of the seventeenth century, the French crown had successfully imposed direct rule over New France and other colonies. The king appointed military governors to rule alongside intendants, royal officials possessed of broad administrative and financial authority within their intendancies. In the mid-1700s, reform-minded Spanish king Charles III adopted the intendant system for the Spanish colonies. England's colonies followed a distinctive path. Drawing on English traditions of representative government its colonists established their own proudly autonomous assemblies to regulate local affairs. Wealthy merchants and landowners dominated the assemblies, although even common men had more say in politics than was the case in England. Up to the mid-eighteenth century, the Crown found little reason to dispute colonial liberties in the north, but it did acquire greater control over the wealthy plantation colonies of the Caribbean and tobacco-rich Virginia.

Technology and the Rise of Exploration - The Caravel - Ptolemy's Geography - Magnetic Compass - Humans

Technological developments in shipbuilding, weaponry, and navigation paved the way for European expansion. Most seagoing vessels had been narrow boats called galleys, propelled by slaves or convicts manning the oars. Though well suited to the placid waters of the Mediterranean, galleys could not withstand the rough waters of the Atlantic. This as well as population losses caused by the Black Death, forced the development of a new style of ship that would not require much manpower to sail. The Portuguese developed the caravel, a small, light, three-mast sailing ship that held more cargo. Its triangular lateen sails and sternpost rudder made the caravel a more maneuverable vessel that could dominate larger vessels. Around 1410 Arab scholars reintroduced Europeans to Ptolemy's Geography. Written by a Hellenized Egyptian, the work synthesized the geographical knowledge of the classical world. Ptolemy's work provided improvements over medieval cartography, depicting the world as round and introducing the idea of latitude and longitude. It also contained crucial errors. Ptolemy showed the world as much smaller than it is, so that Asia was not distant from Europe to the west. Cartographers fashioned new maps that combined classical knowledge with the latest information from mariners. The magnetic compass enabled sailors to determine their direction and position at sea. The astrolabe, an instrument invented by the ancient Greeks and perfected by Muslim navigators, was used to determine the altitude of the sun and other celestial bodies. Much of the new technology that Europeans used on their voyages was borrowed from the East. Gunpowder, the compass, and the sternpost rudder were Chinese inventions. The lateen sail, which allowed European ships to tack against the wind, was from the Indian Ocean trade world. Advances in cartography drew on tradition of Judeo-Arabic mathematical and astronomical learning in Iberia. Assistance to Europeans came from humans. The famed explorer Vasco da Gama employed an Indian pilot to guide his expedition from the East African coast to India.

Later Explorers - Amerigo Vespucci - Treaty of Tordesillas - Magellan - Magellan's conflicts - What Magellan's voyage did - Spain's rivals - French exploration

The Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci realized what Columbus had not. In a letter titled Mundus Novus (The New World), was the first document to describe America as a continent separate from Asia. In recognition of Amerigo's bold claim, the continent was named for him. To settle competing claims to the Atlantic discoveries, Spain and Portugal turned to Pope Alexander VI. The resulting Treaty of Tordesillas gave Spain everything to the west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic and Portugal everything to the east. This arbitrary division worked in Portugal's favor when an expedition led by Pedro Alvares Cabral, en route to India, landed on the coast of Brazil, which Cabral claimed as Portuguese territory. The search for profits determined the direction of Spanish exploration. With insignificant profits from the Caribbean compared to the enormous riches that the Portuguese were reaping in Asia, Spain renewed the search for a western passage to Asia. Charles V of Spain sent the Portuguese mariner Ferdinand Magellan to find a sea route to the spices of the Moluccas off the southeast coast of Asia. Magellan sailed southwest across the Atlantic to Brazil, and after a long search along the coast he located the treacherous straits that now bear his name. The new ocean he sailed into after a rough passage through the straits seemed so calm that Magellan dubbed it the Pacific, from the Latin word for peaceful. He soon realized his mistake. His fleet sailed north up the west coast of South America and then headed west into the immense expanse of the Pacific toward the Malay Archipelago. Terrible storms, disease, starvation, and violence devastated the expedition. Magellan had set out with a fleet of five ships and around 270 men. Sailors on two of the ships attempted mutiny on the South American coast. The trip across the Pacific took ninety-eight days, and the men survived on rats and sawdust. Magellan died in a skirmish in the islands known today as the Philippines. Only one ship returned to Spain from the east by way of the Indian Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Atlantic in 1522. The voyage took close to three years. This voyage revolutionized Europeans' understanding of the world by demonstrating the vastness of the Pacific. The earth was clearly much larger than Columbus had believed. It also demonstrated that the westward passage to the Indies was too long and dangerous for commercial purposes. Spain abandoned the attempt to oust Portugal from the Eastern spice trade and concentrated on exploiting her New World territories. Spain's European rivals set sail across the Atlantic during the early days of exploration in search of a northwest passage to the Indies. John Cabot, a Genoese merchant living in London, undertook a voyage to Brazil, but discovered Newfoundland. He returned and reconnoitered the New England coast. These forays proved futile, and the English established no permanent colonies in the territories they explored. News of the riches of Mexico and Peru later inspired the English to renew their efforts, this time in the extreme north. Martin Frobisher made three voyages in and around the Canadian bay that now bears his name. Frobisher hopefully brought a quantity of ore back to England with him, but it proved to be worthless. Frenchman Jacques Cartier made several voyages and explored the St. Lawrence region of Canada, searching for a passage to the wealth of Asia. His exploration of the St. Lawrence was halted at the great rapids west of the present-day island of Montreal; he named the rapids "La Chine" in the belief that China lay just beyond. When this hope proved vain, the French turned to a new source of profit within Canada itself: trade in beavers and other furs. French traders bartered with local peoples, who maintained control over their trade goods. French fishermen also competed with Spanish and English ships for the teeming schools of cod they found in the Atlantic waters around Newfoundland. Fishing vessels salted the catch on board and brought it back to Europe, where a thriving market for fish was created by the Catholic prohibition on eating meat on Fridays and during Lent.

Early French and English Settlement in the New World - Roanoke - Settlement on New England - English settlements -

The Spanish and the Portuguese dominated settlement in the New World. The first English colony was founded at Roanoke in 1585. After a three-year loss of contact with England, the settlers were found to have disappeared; their fate remains a mystery. The colony of Virginia, founded by a private company of investors at Jamestown in 1607, struggled in its first years and relied on food from the Powhatan Confederacy. The colony gained a steady hold by producing tobacco for a growing European market. Settlement on the coast of New England was undertaken for different reasons. Radical Protestants sought to escape Anglican repression in England. The small and struggling outpost of Plymouth, founded by the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower, was followed by Massachusetts, a colony of Puritans that grew into a prosperous settlement. Religious disputes in Massachusetts itself led to the dispersion of settlers into the new communities of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Catholics acquired their own settlement in Maryland and Quakers in Pennsylvania. English settlements merely hugged the Atlantic coastline. At Jamestown English expansion undermined prior cooperation with the Powhatan Confederacy; disease and warfare with the English led to drastic population losses among the Powhatans. The haphazard nature of English colonization led to conflicts of authority within the colonies. As the English crown grew more interested in colonial expansion, efforts were made to acquire the territory between New England in the north and Virginia in the south. This would allow the English to unify their holdings and overcome French and Dutch competition on the North American mainland. French navigator and explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the first permanent French settlement at Quebec. Although the population of New France were small, the French were energetic traders and explorers. The French ventured into much of modern-day Canada and the United States. French traders forged relations with the Huron Confederacy, a league of four indigenous nations that dominated a large region north of Lake Erie, as a means of gaining access to hunting grounds and trade routes. French explorer René-Robert Cavelier LaSalle descended the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, opening the way for French occupation of Louisiana. While establishing their foothold in the north, the French acquired new territories in the West Indies. These islands became centers of tobacco and then sugar production. French ambitions on the mainland and in the Caribbean sparked a century-long competition with the English. European involvement in the Americas led to profound transformation of pre-existing indigenous societies and the rise of a transatlantic slave trade. It also led to an acceleration of global trade and cultural exchange. Over time, the combination of indigenous, European, and African cultures gave birth to new societies in the New World. In turn, the profits of trade and the impact of cultural exchange greatly influenced European society.

Spanish Conquest in the New World - Hernando Cortes - Mexican Empire - Cortes arrives to Mexico - Cortes' alliance - Montezuma

The Spanish sent an exploratory expedition from their post in Cuba to the mainland under the command of the brash and determined conquistador Hernando Cortés. Cortés was to launch the conquest of the Mexica Empire. Its people were later called the Aztecs, but now most scholars prefer to use the term Mexica to refer to them and their empire. The Mexica Empire was ruled by Montezuma II from his capital at Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City. Larger than any European city of the time, it was the heart of a sophisticated civilization. Cortés landed on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The Spanish camp was visited by unarmed Mexica leaders bearing lavish gifts and news of their great emperor. Impressed with the wealth of the local people, Cortés began to exploit internal dissension within the empire to his own advantage. The Mexica state religion necessitated constant warfare against neighboring peoples to secure captives for religious sacrifices and laborers for agricultural and building projects. Conquered peoples were required to relinquish products of their agriculture and craftsmanship to pay tribute to the Mexica state through their local chiefs. Cortés forged an alliance with the Tlaxcalas and other subject kingdoms, which chafed under the tribute demanded by the Mexica. A combined Spanish-Tlaxcalan force occupied the city of Cholula, the second largest in the empire and its religious capital, and massacred many thousands of inhabitants. Strengthened by this display of power, Cortés made alliances with other native kingdoms. With a few hundred Spanish men and some six thousand indigenous warriors, Cortés marched on Tenochtitlán. Montezuma refrained from attacking the Spaniards as they advanced toward his capital and welcomed Cortés and his men into Tenochtitlán. Montezuma relied on the advice of his state council. Montezuma's hesitation proved disastrous. When Cortés took Montezuma hostage and tried to rule the Mexica through the emperor's authority, Montezuma's influence over his people crumbled. Spanish forces massacred Mexica warriors dancing at an indigenous festival. This act provoked an uprising within Tenochtitlán, during which Montezuma was killed. The Spaniards and their allies escaped from the city and began gathering forces against the Mexica. Cortés laid siege to Tenochtitlán at the head of an army. Spanish victory in August 1521 resulted from its superior technology and the effects of the siege and smallpox. After the defeat of Tenochtitlán, Cortés and other conquistadors began the systematic conquest of Mexico. Over time, a series of indigenous kingdoms gradually fell under Spanish domination, although not without decades of resistance. More surprising than the defeat of the Mexica was the fall of the remote Inca Empire. Perched more than 9,800 feet above sea level, the Incas were isolated from North American indigenous cultures and knew nothing of the Mexica civilization or its collapse. Like the Mexica, the Incas had created a civilization that rivaled that of the Europeans in population and complexity. To unite their vast and well-fortified empire, the Incas built an extensive network of roads, along which traveled a highly efficient postal service. The imperial government, with its capital in the city of Cuzco, taxed, fed, and protected its subjects. At the time of the Spanish invasion the Inca Empire had been weakened by an epidemic of disease, possibly smallpox. Even worse, the empire had been embroiled in a civil war over succession. Francisco Pizarro, a conquistador of modest Spanish origins, landed on the northern coast of Peru on May 13, 1532, the very day Atahualpa won control of the empire after five years of fighting. As Pizarro advanced across the steep Andes toward Cuzco, Atahualpa was proceeding to the capital for his coronation. Like Montezuma in Mexico, Atahualpa was aware of the Spaniards' movements. He sent envoys to invite the Spanish to meet him in the provincial town of Cajamarca. His plan was to lure the Spanish into a trap, seize their horses and ablest men for his army, and execute the rest. With an army of some forty thousand men stationed nearby, Atahualpa felt he had little to fear. Instead, the Spaniards ambushed and captured him, collected an enormous ransom in gold, and then executed him in 1533 on trumped-up charges. The Spanish now marched on the capital of the empire itself, profiting once again from internal conflicts to form alliances with local peoples. When Cuzco fell in 1533, the Spanish plundered immense riches in gold and silver. As with the Mexica, decades of violence and resistance followed the defeat of the Incan capital. Struggles also broke out among the Spanish for the spoils of empire. Nevertheless, Spanish conquest opened a new chapter in European relations with the New World. It was not long before rival European nations attempted to forge their own overseas empires.

The Columbian Exchange

The migration of peoples to the New World led to an exchange of animals, plants, and disease. European immigrants to the Americas wanted a familiar diet, so they searched for climatic zones favorable to those crops. Everywhere they settled, the Spanish and Portuguese brought and raised wheat with labor provided by the encomienda system. Native Americans had no animals for food. They did not domesticate animals for travel or use as beasts of burden, except for alpacas and llamas in the Inca Empire. Columbus introduced horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, pigs, chickens, and goats. The horse enabled the Spanish conquerors and native populations to travel faster and farther and to transport heavy loads. Disease brought by European people and animals was perhaps the most important form of exchange. The wave of catastrophic epidemic disease that swept the Western Hemisphere after 1492 can be seen as an extension of the swath of devastation wreaked by the Black Death in the 1300s, first on Asia and then on Europe.

Sugar and Slavery

Throughout the Middle Ages slavery was deeply entrenched in the Mediterranean, but it was not based on race; many slaves were white. How, then, did black African slavery enter the European picture and take root in the Americas? In 1453 the Ottoman capture of Constantinople halted the flow of white slaves from the eastern Mediterranean to western Europe. The successes of the Iberian reconquista also meant that the supply of Muslim captives had drastically diminished. Cut off from its traditional sources of slaves, Mediterranean Europe then turned to sub-Saharan Africa, which had a long history of internal slave trading. As Portuguese explorers began their voyages along the western coast of Africa, one of the first commodities they sought was slaves. In 1444 the first ship returned to Lisbon with a cargo of enslaved Africans; the Crown was delighted, and more shipments followed. While the first slaves were simply seized by small raiding parties, Portuguese merchants soon found that it was easier to trade with local leaders, who were accustomed to dealing in slaves captured through warfare with neighboring powers. From 1490 to 1530 Portuguese traders brought hundreds of enslaved Africans to Lisbon each year, where they eventually constituted 10 percent of the city's population.