Fluent Essays

Please answer 2 of the 4 questions listed below. You MUST respond with a thoughtful, well-written paragraph. Make sure to answer all parts of the question and to not just provide a brief answer, but to also explain your answers. You must write 150 words PER QUESTION. Responses shorter than 120 words will be penalized.  2. What was the Columbian Exchange and how did it impact the Americas and Europe? What was "exchanged" between these areas? How did these exchanges benefit and/or damage the Americas and Europe? Explain.  3. Compare Spanish, English, and French exploration and colonization. How were did their motivations and settlements differ? How did their interactions with and treatment of natives differ? Explain. The Spanish conquistadores and colonial empire This article was adapted from "Santa Fe, New Mexico." OpenStax College, US History. OpenStax CNX. 2016. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/precontact-and-early-colonial-era/spanish-colonization/a/pueblo-uprising-of-1680 Conquistadores and Spanish colonization Columbus’s discovery opened a floodgate of Spanish exploration. Inspired by tales of rivers of gold and timid, malleable native peoples, later Spanish explorers were relentless in their quest for land and gold. The Spanish Golden Age By 1600, Spain had reaped substantial monetary benefits from New World resources. Gold and silver began to connect European nations through trade, and the Spanish money supply ballooned, which signified the beginning of the economic system known as capitalism. The new riches ultimately created mass inflation and economic distress. However, Spain gained creative capital from their new global reach. Riches poured in from the colonies, and new ideas poured in from other countries and new lands. The Habsburg dynasty—who ruled over the territories of Austria, the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, and Spain—encouraged and financed a blossoming Spanish Renaissance culture, both  in the colonies  and in Spain. Pueblo uprising in Santa Fe Having found wealth in Mexico, the Spanish looked north to expand their empire into the land of the Pueblo people. The Spanish expected present-day New Mexico to yield gold and silver, but they were mistaken. Instead, they established a political base in Santa Fe in 1610, naming it the capital of the Kingdom of New Mexico. It became an outpost of the larger Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain, headquartered in Mexico City. As they had in other Spanish colonies, missionaries built churches and forced the Pueblos to convert to Catholicism, requiring native people to discard their own religious practices entirely. They focused their conversion projects on young Pueblos, drawing them away from their parents and traditions. The Spanish demanded corn and labor from the Pueblos, but a long period of drought impeded production, escalating tension in Santa Fe. The Pueblo also suffered increased attacks on their villages by rival native groups, which they attributed to the Spanish presence. Popé, a Pueblo leader and medicine man led a response to the persecution and violence—a return to native customs. He popularized the idea that “when Jesus came, the Corn Mothers went away.” This was a succinct way of describing the displacement of native traditions by the culture and religion of the Spanish. Taos Pueblo served as a base for Popé during the uprising. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons In 1680, the Pueblo launched a coordinated attack on the Spanish. Pueblos, Navajos, and Apaches from the region congregated and planned to strike Santa Fe when the Spaniards were low on supplies. They laid siege to the city for nine days and cut off the Spanish water supply. The uprising, also known as Popé’s Rebellion, killed over 400 Spaniards and drove the remaining 2,000 Spanish settlers south toward Mexico. Participants in the rebellion also destroyed many mission churches in an effort to diminish Catholic physical presence on Pueblo land. Pueblo historian Joe S. Sando calls the movement “the first American revolution.” The Pueblo reestablished their religious institutions and a government of their own for the next 12 years of independence. However, as droughts and attacks by rival tribes continued, the Spanish sensed an opportunity to regain their foothold. In 1692, the Spanish military returned and reasserted their control of the area. Longterm effects of Native American resistance Although the Spanish regained Santa Fe from the Pueblos, their missionary vision was somewhat compromised by the sentiment stirred up during the uprising. Many Pueblo quietly resisted Catholicism and folded their own cultural practices into norms instituted by the Spanish. This produced religious syncretism—the amalgamation of the distinct religious cultures of the Pueblos and the Spanish. The Spanish also slowly decreased their labor demands and the harsh practices of the  encomienda system . Over the course of the next few centuries, Pueblo and Spaniards intermarried. Pueblo customs started to shape—and continue to heavily influence—New Mexican culture. French exploration This article was adapted from Challenges to Spain's Supremacy. OpenStax College, US History. OpenStax CNX. 2016 .https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/colonial-america/early-english-settlement/a/french-and-dutch-exploration Spanish successes in the Caribbean attracted the attention of other European nations. Like Spain, France was a Catholic nation and committed to expanding Catholicism around the globe. In the early sixteenth century, it joined the race to explore the New World and exploit the resources of the Western Hemisphere. In 1534, navigator Jacques Cartier claimed northern North America for France, naming the area around the St. Lawrence River New France. Like many other explorers, Cartier made exaggerated claims about the area’s mineral wealth and was unable to send great riches back to France or establish a permanent colony. Map of the region explored by Jacques Cartier. Image credit:  Wikimedia Commons Samuel de Champlain made great strides for French exploration of the New World. He explored the Caribbean in 1601 and the coast of New England in 1603 before traveling farther north. In 1608 he founded Quebec, and he made numerous Atlantic crossings as he worked tirelessly to promote New France. Unlike other imperial powers, France—through Champlain’s efforts—fostered especially good relationships with native peoples as they expanded westward. He learned that becoming friendly with the native people was essential to successful trade. Champlain explored the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, and eventually made it to the Mississippi River. The French made an alliance with the Hurons and Algonquians; Champlain even agreed to fight for them against their enemy, the Iroquois. Engraving showing a battle between the Algonquians, the French, and the Iroquois. Samuel de Champlain, engraving depicting French soldiers fighting with the Algonquians and Hurons against the Iroquois, c. 1609. Image credit:  Wikimedia Commons The French were primarily interested in establishing commercially viable colonial outposts, so they created extensive trading networks throughout New France. They relied on native hunters to harvest furs, especially beaver pelts, and to exchange these items for French goods, like glass beads. The French also dreamed of replicating the wealth of Spain by colonizing the tropical zones. After Spanish control of the Caribbean began to weaken, the French turned their attention to small islands in the West Indies; by 1635 they had colonized two, Guadeloupe and Martinique. Though it still lagged far behind Spain, France now boasted its own West Indian colonies with lucrative sugar plantation sites and African slave labor. Dutch colonization Dutch entrance into the Atlantic World is part of the larger story of religious and imperial conflict in the early modern era. In the 1500s, Calvinism, one of the major Protestant reform movements, began to take root in the Spanish Netherlands and the new sect desired its own state. Holland was established in 1588 as a Protestant nation, but would not be recognized by Spain until 1648. Determined to imperil Protestantism, King Philip of Spain assembled a massive force of over thirty thousand men and 130 ships, and sent this giant navy, known as the Spanish Armada, towards England and Holland. But the skilled English navy and a maritime storm destroyed the fleet in 1588. The defeat of the Spanish Armada was only one part of a larger but undeclared war between Protestantism and Catholicism. Quickly, the Dutch inserted themselves into the Atlantic colonial race. They distinguished themselves as commercial leaders in the seventeenth century, as their mode of colonization relied on powerful corporations: the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1602 to trade in Asia, and the Dutch West India Company, established in 1621 to colonize and trade in the Americas. While employed by the Dutch East India Company in 1609, the English sea captain Henry Hudson explored New York Harbor and the river that now bears his name. Like many explorers of the time, Hudson was actually seeking a northwest passage to Asia and its wealth (that's why he was employed by the Dutch East India Company instead of the Dutch West India Company), but the wealth of coveted beaver pelts alone provided a reason to claim it for the Netherlands. The Dutch named their colony New Netherlands, and it served as a fur-trading outpost for the expanding and powerful Dutch West India Company. They expanded in the area to create other trading posts, where their exchange with local Algonquian and Iroquois peoples brought the Dutch and native peoples into alliance. The Dutch became a commercially powerful rival to Spain--Amsterdam soon became trade hub for all the Atlantic World. Columbian Exchange: Spreading Ideas, and Diseases, for Good and Ill By David Christian, Big History Project, adapted by Newsela staff Published:06/14/2016 For centuries, societies in Afro-Eurasia had interacted on some level and exchanged goods, ideas, people, and diseases. As world travel became possible, these types of exchanges became more meaningful — and sometimes more dangerous. Different kinds of travelers American historian Alfred Crosby made an interesting observation in his 1972 book. Humans have been traveling around the world since about 1500. But Crosby pointed out that it wasn’t just humans who were traveling. So were plants and animals that humans use. Human diseases traveled, too, as did rats, cockroaches, fleas, and other creatures. For millions of years, species of plants, animals, and bacteria had stayed in one area of the world. Suddenly, many species began to appear all over the world. Crosby called this remarkable phenomenon the “Columbian Exchange,” named after Christopher Columbus, who first voyaged to the Americas in 1492. Consequences and hypotheticals The Columbian Exchange had huge significance for both human and planetary history. Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz argues that 100 million years from now, alien paleontologists would find evidence of the spread of species on Earth. The observers might see evidence from fossilized pollen from corn and rice. They also might notice the strange globalization of species such as rats and cockroaches. Humans were moving many other species around the world. Before, this role had been performed by geology and climate. Remember Pangaea? Between about 300 million and 200 million years ago, most of the planet’s continents were joined together in a single huge continent. Geologists call it Pangaea. On Pangaea, species could spread over large areas quite easily. So, when paleontologists today see similar fossils across large areas of what was once Pangaea, they are not that surprised. In fact, certain fossils found in similarly dated layers on different continents offer strong evidence for Pangaea, continental drift, and plate tectonics. What would human history have been like if Pangaea continued, with just one “world zone?” We don’t know, of course. But Crosby pointed out that since 1500, we have basically recreated such a world. Humans have unified the world biologically so that corn, rabbits, goats, tomatoes, and even some diseases can now be found everywhere. Some friendly passengers Which species hitchhiked with traveling humans, and what was their impact on human history? Many plants began to travel globally as a result of the Columbian Exchange. This includes most of the major domesticated crops. The Americas contributed many of the crops farmed today in the rest of the world, including potatoes, corn (maize), manioc (cassava or tapioca), squash, avocado, chili, tobacco, and cocoa. Can you imagine Italian food without tomatoes? Korean food without chili? How about Ireland without potatoes, or a world without chocolate? Coffee, rice, oranges, and sugar traveled in the opposite direction, arriving to the Americas. New crops increased the choices available to local farmers. This allowed them to adapt their crops to the soils, climates, and landscapes they farmed. Within 50 years of Columbus’s voyages, corn was being farmed in parts of China that were unsuitable for rice cultivation. Today, a third of all the crops grown in China originated in the Americas. The Columbian Exchange represented an agricultural revolution. It is no wonder that populations began to rise in many regions around this time. Plenty of livestock made the trip as well. Large domesticated animals such as cattle and horses appeared in the Americas. Cattle soon multiplied on the plains of South America and sheep on the grasslands of Mexico. These new animals transformed local landscapes as they ate their way across continents. The American Plains Indians developed a horse-riding culture. They had farmed before, but now learned to tame horses and hunt in new ways. Dangerous trespassers Bugs and diseases traveled, too — with sometimes catastrophic results. In Afro-Eurasia, exchanges of goods, people, and diseases went back many centuries. Populations there had developed a wide range of immunities. When humans from Afro-Eurasia arrived in the Americas and, later, in the Australasian and Pacific world zones, they brought their diseases with them, with devastating results. According to some estimates, populations in Mesoamerica and the Andes may have fallen by as much as 90 percent. For the Americas, this was a catastrophe much worse than the Black Death, which had devastated Afro-Eurasian societies in the 1300s. The destructive spread of Afro-Eurasian diseases helps explain the conquest of American societies by European invaders, the rapid decline of American empires, and the undermining of indigenous cultures. Indigenous Americans understood perfectly well the source of the misfortune. An inhabitant of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula who witnessed the impact of the first Spaniards to arrive, wrote: (Before the Europeans came) there was then no sickness. They had no aching bones. They had no high fever. They had no smallpox. They had no burning chest. They had no abdominal pain. They had then no consumption. They had no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here. Thomas Hariot was an English colonist on the Roanoke Island settlement of 1587. He wrote that local people began to die very soon after their first contacts with European settlers. Here is a simplified passage from his writing: A few days after we left each town, people there began to die very quickly. In some towns, 20 died. In others 40 or 60. In one town 120 died, which was very many considering their numbers. The disease was strange to them. They didn’t know what it was or how to cure it. The oldest men in the country had never seen it or heard of it before, for as long as anyone could remember. Local populations would suffer in similar ways when European settlers arrived in Australasia and the Pacific. The death of local populations made it much easier for European invaders to build their own societies. Crosby calls these societies “neo-Europes” (New Europes). With the Columbian Exchange, humans began to transform the world as a whole rather than just within particular regions or world zones. This is why the great sea voyages that linked the world zones together from the end of the fifteenth century were one of the great turning points in human history. The rapid pace of globalization today is a continuation of processes that began 500 years ago. Motivations for Colonization Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands established colonies in North America. Each country had different motivations for colonization and expectations about the potential benefits. Jamestown Colony Ferry The opportunity to make money was one of the primary motivators for the colonization of the New World. The Virginia Company of London established the Jamestown colony to make a profit for its investors. PAINTING BY RICHARD SCHLECHT Europe’s period of exploration and colonization was fueled largely by necessity. Europeans had become accustomed to the goods from Asia, such as the silk, spices, and pottery that had for centuries traveled the Silk Road. By the middle of the 16th century, however, this trade was under threat. The rise in power of the Ottoman Turks and the decline of the Mongol Empire disrupted traditional trade routes. At the same time, there were a number of improvements in shipbuilding and navigation, making it possible to travel farther and for longer periods of time. European countries recognized the potential profits of securing better trade with Asia and sought new routes by sea. Commissioned by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus was among the first who sought a faster, more direct route to Asia by sailing west rather than east. In 1492, Columbus landed on an island in the Caribbean. Although Columbus mistakenly believed he had landed on an island in East Asia, later explorers added to the knowledge of the land, and—thanks in part to the voyages of fellow Italian Amerigo Vespucci—determined that Columbus had reached a “New World.” Each of the major European powers—Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England—sent explorers to the New World. Colonization, or the desire to establish permanent settlements, soon followed. Some of these European countries fought one another for control over trade and the riches of the New World. While they all shared a desire for wealth and power, their motivations for colonization differed somewhat, and thus the pattern and success of their colonies varied significantly. God, Gold, and Glory Spain was driven by three main motivations. Columbus, in his voyage, sought fame and fortune, as did his Spanish sponsors. To this end, Spain built a fort in 1565 at what is now St. Augustine, Florida; today, this is the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States. A few fledgling Spanish settlements were established nearby, but clashes with Native Americans who lived there, and the lack of gold or other riches made many of them short-lived. Spanish conquistadors had better success in South America, where they conquered the Aztec and Inca Empires and claimed the land for Spain. Spain soon grew rich from ample deposits of gold and silver in Mexico, Central America, and South America. In addition to the quest for gold, however, Spain sought to spread Christianity. To this end, missions were founded in present-day Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—indeed, anywhere the Spaniards had influence. The first mission was founded in New Mexico by friars who accompanied a 1598 expedition by Don Juan Oñante, who explored the southwest in search of gold. It would take another 70 years before the Spanish began to settle in California; Father Junipero Serra built Mission San Diego, the first mission in present-day California, in 1769. To protect these missions, the Spanish established presidios, where soldiers lived. The main goal of these missions was to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Missionaries worked in schools to convert Native Americans to Christianity and also how to farm and adopt other European ways. Some missions also served as posts where explorers set out on the quest for riches. Many claimed larger areas of land around them to farm and raise animals. Over time, these missions grew into villages and then cities. Some of today’s largest cities in the southwestern United States began hundreds of years ago as missions. Fur Fervor In 1534, navigator Jacques Cartier claimed northern North America for France; in 1608, fellow explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the first French settlement of Quebec on the cliffs over the St. Lawrence River. France focused its attention on establishing commercially viable trading posts in the New World to supply Europe with its seemingly never-ending demand for furs. To this end, France fostered good relationships with Native Americans, and built on mutual benefits of the trade of beaver furs for French goods. In comparison with England, the colonial population of New France was relatively small. The Netherlands also became interested in the New World because of its economic promise. For such a small country, the Netherlands was a naval powerhouse. The Dutch East India Company controlled trade with the so-called Spice Islands, which are now part of Indonesia, making the Netherlands one of the world’s foremost commercial centers. The Dutch government gave the company the power to establish colonies, which enabled the company to control trade. Its foray into North America began in 1609, when the Dutch East India Company employed English explorer Henry Hudson to search for a water route by which it could reach its markets in Indonesia more quickly. Hudson did not find the so-called Northwest Passage, but he explored the river bearing his name. The Dutch established settlements in what it called New Netherland. It purchased the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans in 1626 and renamed it New Amsterdam. The primary motivation for Dutch settlement of this area was financial—the country wanted to add to its treasury. To this end, Dutch traders formed powerful alliances with Native Americans based on the trade of beaver pelts and furs. Farmers and merchants followed. Success was short-lived, however. In 1664, Britain took over the colony of New Netherland and renamed it New York.  England Establishes Permanent Colonies Of all the European countries, England established the firmest foothold in North America. Like the other European countries, England was motivated in part by the lure of both riches and the Northwest Passage. In 1606, King James I granted a charter to colonize Virginia to the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock company of investors who believed there was a profit to be made. They settled the colony of Jamestown. Yet, Britain soon had populated permanent settlements in the new world for a different reason. The settlement of these colonies was motivated by religion. In 1620, a group of settlers left Plymouth, England, to join the settlers in Jamestown. Among them were the separatists, a group of people who believed the Church of England to be corrupt and thus sought to break from it. They believed the New World would offer them an opportunity to live and worship in accordance with their beliefs. They left England later than they had planned, and their ship was blown off course. They landed on the coast of present-day Massachusetts and named their settlement after the town from which they had set sail. These Pilgrims were followed by countless others who settled along the Atlantic Coast. Britain encouraged these settlements, benefiting from the vast array of raw materials the colonies found and cultivated. In New England, the colonies engaged in fishing, lumber, and shipbuilding. Farther south, colonies provided tobacco, rice, and indigo. For almost 200 years, until the colonies fought and won their independence, England benefited financially from the relationship with its North American colonies.