History
Homo Sapiens Migration - Let's Conquer the World!
European Conquest of North and South America
Motivation for European Conquest:
God
Gold
Glory
Europeans also searched for optimal trade routes to lucrative Asian markets and hoped to gain global recognition for their country.
Question: What would you be willing to do to get rich?
European Countries Involved in the Conquest
Portugal: nice boats, thanks for the idea
Prince Henry the Navigator spearheaded Portugal’s exploration of Africa and the Atlantic in the 1400s.
The Portuguese got acquainted with the African slave trade
Upon discovering the immense global market for sugar, the Portuguese began to trade enslaved people across the Atlantic to toil on the sugar plantations.
Spain: the first true powerhouse of the 1500s and 1600s
Funded Christopher Columbus to find a trading route to China
Landed in Bahamas, encountered the Tainos (1 to 3 million)
Enslaved Tainos people to mine gold
Christopher Columbus introduced horses, sugar plants, and disease to the New World, while facilitating the introduction of New World commodities like sugar, tobacco, chocolate, and potatoes to the Old World
Columbus’s discovery opened a floodgate of Spanish exploration inspired by tales of rivers of gold and timid native peoples. Spanish explorers with hopes of conquest in the New World were known as conquistadores.
Conquered what is now Mexico, Central America, and South America, including:
The Aztecs in Mexico
The Incas in Peru
Reflect: Imagine seeing horses, war dogs, and guns for the first time. What would you do? Would you fight?
France and Netherlands: let's be friends (1500s and 1600s)
French and Dutch colonization in the Americans focused on the profitable fur trade.
Depending on Native Americans to hunt animals for their pelts, French and Dutch colonizers cultivated friendly relationships with Native Americans through intermarriage and military alliances.
Unlike the Spanish and English, the French and Dutch created few permanent settlements
England: time to take control (1600s and 1700s) but late to the party
Companies formed to make quick profit in gold and silver
British establish colonies in the Caribbean islands to produce sugar (sugar is like oil today)
Took lands to produce tobacco and cotton in the mainland (what is now the southern states)
Some came for religious freedom
Southern colonies were made up of a majority of single, young, white men who worked as indentured servants
The Seven Years' War 1756 - 1763
Possibly the most important war in human history.
Competition between European powers: After tobacco prices started to remain stagnant, plantation owners in Virginia wanted to move west into the Ohio River Valley to produce more tobacco and hopefully drive prices of that cash crop up. However, both Britain and France claimed ownership of the lands in the Ohio River Valley. The conflict between the two lead to the start of the Seven Years’ War.
Cooperation with Natives: Both the French and the British cooperated with Native Americans to use their forces in the Seven Years’ War. The French allied with the Hurons, whereas the British allied with the Iroquois. These alliances caused tension after the war in which the British began siding with Native Americans who were against colonial interest to move westward.
Migration after the war: When the Seven Years’ War ended, the British won all of France’s land holdings in colonial America. Colonists wanted to expand westward into these new lands in order to gain more land, but fearing conflicts with Native Americans, Britain passed the Proclamation of 1763. The proclamation prohibited movement west of the Appalachian Mountains, upsetting many colonists who wanted the land to increase their wealth. Thousands of colonists defied the law, moving west to claim land for themselves.
American Revolution: thanks for the land, but we got this
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 drew a boundary line in the Appalachian mountains and forbidding colonists from settling the lands west of the line, which were designated Indian territory, upsetting the colonists.
The Seven Years' War was costly, so they wanted to tax the colonies.
The colonists protested, “no taxation without representation,” arguing that the British Parliament did not have the right to tax them because they lacked representation in the legislative body.
Battles were fought.
On July 4, 1776, the Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which for the first time asserted the colonies’ intention to be fully independent of the mother country.
