(1394-1460)

Vasco da

Gama:

Founder of the

Sea Route to

India

Problem 1: A Sea Route to India

The Portuguese solve it!

European Voyages of Exploration: Asia:Vasco da Gama

http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/vasco.html

DaGama’s meeting with King

Camolim of Calicut

DaGama

meets

Muslim

Merchants

in India

The

Portuguese

Sea Route

to India

Map of

Columbus’

First

Voyage,

1492-93

The Pinta and Santa Maria

Pope

Alexander VI’s

Treaty of

Tordesillas

(1494) gave

Spain the

Western

Hemisphere

and Portugal

the eastern

Hemisphere

Ferdinand Magellan’s Voyage around the

World, 1519-22

Encomienda

• Crown retained property rights

• Land grant for three generations

• Right to enslave Native Americans

• Typically mines and plantations

• Must convert the Native Americans to

Christianity

• Ultimately a failure—why?

Scenes from the Andean Guaman Poma’s book

The Conquerors

Smallpox

The Columbian Exchange: America

gives Europe

• Chocolate

• Tobacco

• Potatoes

• Corn

• Squash

• Chiles

• Guinea pigs

• Syphilis

• Gold

• Silver

• Precious stones

• Words like

“hammock”

• Turkeys

• Coca leaves

• Tomatoes

Columbian Exchange: Europe gives

Americas

• Horses

• Cattle

• Sheep

• Pigs

• Chickens

• The Wheel

• Gunpowder

• The pulley

• Dandelions

• Clover

• Honey bees

• Smallpox

• Measles

• Mumps

• Distilled alcohol

• Citrus fruits

• Christianity

• Languages

The Native Americans: Human or

Animal?

Hernando

Cortes (1485-

1548):

Conqueror of

Mexico

Moctezuma II:

Aztec Emperor

(1502-1520)

Cortes

entering

Tenochtitlan,

1521

Frieze of the Meeting of Cortes and

Moctezuma

Guatemozin

(Cuauhtemoc):

Moctezuma’s

Successor

Medieval World View

• God is center of all things

• One Church—Roman Catholic

• Life Static and Unchanging

• Almost no social mobility

• Life is local or regional

• No sense of nation-state

• Europe a backwater cut off from rest of

world

• Superstitious

Catalysts of Change

• Crusades 1095-1300

• Bubonic Plague 1350

• Renaissance 1300-1500

• Reformation 1500-1650

• Scientific Revolution 1500-1700

• Discovery of New World 1492-1650

Early Modern World

• Humanism—Human Centered Universe

• Social Mobility

• Fragmentation of the Church

• Science and Reason begin to replace

Superstition

• Nation state concept of citizenship

• Europe an international player