MEDIEVAL HISTORY NOTES: GRADE 7

 

CHAPTER 6       A NEW AGE IN EUROPE

 

Section 1: The Renaissance and Reformation (page 154)

 

I.           Introduction

 

-Leonardo da Vinci was just one of the many gifted Europeans who lived between about 1300 and 1600. This was the time of the Renaissance, a period of rebirth of learning in Europe.

 

II.        The Renaissance (page 155)

 

-The Renaissance began in northern Italy. During the Middle Ages, Northern Italy, where Leonardo lived, was different from the rest of Western Europe. Most people in northern Europe lived under feudalism. They labored for their lords and depended on their lords for protection. Manors, rather than cities, were the centers of economic life.

 

-In northern Italy, however, people lived in city-states, or cities that were both cities and independent states. They had their own governments and were not as closely controlled by nobles of the Church. Instead, wealthy families or wealthy merchants held power.

 

-These merchants controlled European trade with Asia. Italian merchants bought precious goods such as silk and spices in Muslim trading centers around the Mediterranean Sea. They then transported these goods throughout Europe, reselling them at high prices.

 

-The city of Venice, built on islands in the Adriatic Sea, was a leader in this trade.

 

-Being at the center of this lively international trade exposed Italian city-states to other cultures and ideas. And because trade brought them wealth, many Italians had more time to think, to read, and to create and enjoy art.

-The wealthy became great patrons, or financial supporters, of scholarship and the arts. By the 1430s, the city of Florence, ruled by the prosperous Medici family, had become a center for the arts.

 

-In the 1300s, the scholars and artists of Italy began to look at life in a new way. First, they looked back—not to the Middle Ages, but to the literature, science, and art of ancient Greece and Rome.

 

-Ruins of fine architecture and realistic statues were all around them, especially in the city of Rome. These works inspired study and curiosity as well as a new focus on the achievements of individual people.

 

-Renaissance scholars and artists developed a new focus on the nature, ideals, and achievements of human beings, rather than the divine. This philosophy is called humanism. The ideal of this new era was someone with talent and achievements in many fields. Such a person came to be called a Renaissance man.

 

-A rebirth of culture occurred somewhat later in northern Europe. In the early 1400s, artists such as Jan van Eyck developed a distinctive Flemish style of painting. By the 1450s, newly prosperous cities in the north were the center of a Northern Renaissance.

 

-Scholars and artists, such as the German artist Albrecht Durer, traveled to Italy and helped spread the idea of the Italian Renaissance in the north. By the late 1500s, the Renaissance had reached England, where the plays of William Shakespeare drew large audiences.

 

III.     The Renaissance Artist (page 157)

 

-Artists of the Middle Ages had not painted people or nature realistically. Their goal had been to celebrate God, the saints, and the Church.

 

-In contrast, the artists of the Renaissance studied and copied the more realistic art of ancient Greece and Rome. While they continued to do religious paintings, they often used the architecture and clothing of their own time for these biblical scenes.

 

-In keeping with their interest in individual achievement, these artists also painted realistic portraits of important people of the day—including their patrons. One of the most famous Renaissance paintings, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vince, depicts a woman who was not famous. In fact, to this day, no one is sure who she was.   

 

-To better understand how to portray people, Italian painters and sculptors studied the bones and muscles of the body. Some artists even dissected corpses to learn about anatomy.

 

-Renaissance painters also used a new technique called perspective to make objects and landscapes look more realistic. By making distant objects smaller, artists could create a scene that appeared three-dimensional. They also used light and shadow to make objects look solid.

 

-Michelangelo was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. He could sculpt marble so that it looked like flowing cloth, rippling muscle, and twisting hair. However, his most famous work is not a sculpture but a series of paintings that cover the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City in Rome.

 

-Painting and sculpture were not Michelangelo’s only achievement. He was also a poet and an architect. Michelangelo designed the dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome as well as military fortifications for the city of Florence.      

 

IV.       The Protestant Reformation (page 158)

 

-In 1517, only five years after Michelangelo finished the Sistine Chapel, a German monk named Martin Luther began to criticize the Church. Following the custom of the time, he posted a list of his complaints on the door of his church in Wittenberg, Germany.

 

-This act is regarded as the beginning of the Reformation, an effort to reform or improve the Catholic Church. At first, instead of reforms, it led to the establishment of new forms of Christianity.

 

-Luther disagreed with many of the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church of the 1500s. He believed that people did not need popes or other Church officials to tell them what God wanted them to do.

 

-In Luther’s view, faith in God, coupled with common sense, and not obedience to the Church, was the key to a proper Christian life.

 

-Luther also felt that ordinary people could understand the Bible for themselves. He translated the Bible into German so that ordinary people could read it. He was in favor of creating town schools that would teach everyone to read.

 

-Luther especially despised the Church practice of selling indulgences, or pardons for sins. At that time, people were asked to pay money to the Church to be forgiven for their sins.

 

-Luther felt the Church did not have the power to exchange God’s forgiveness for money. What’s more, the Church often sold indulgences more to raise money than for any truly religious reason.

 

-In Germany, priests, nobles, and ordinary people rallied behind Luther’s ideas. Some priests agreed with Luther about corruption in the Church. Nobles were eager to limit the Church’s overwhelming power. They wanted to collect their own taxes and make their own laws, like the leaders of Italy’s city-states.

 

-Meanwhile, a revolution in technology had begun in Germany. In the 1400s, the German printer Johann Gutenberg invented the first European printing press using moveable type. He printed a Bible in 1455.

 

 

-The development of the European printing press helped spread Luther’s writings across Europe. Bibles printed in German became available. By the time Luther died in 1546, most of the people in what is now northern Germany were Lutheran, or followers of Luther’s teachings.

 

-Soon, people in much of northern Europe held views similar to Luther’s. They created their own Christian churches, free of Roman Catholic control. These came to be called Protestant churches because they grew out of protests against the power and abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. Their members, even today, are called Protestants.

 

-Many Roman Catholics agreed with some criticisms made by Protestants. Instead of turning away from the Church, however, they worked to reform it. As part of this Catholic Reformation, Pope Paul III set up the Council of Trent in 1545. For almost twenty years, it worked to correct the worst abuses of the Church. But it also maintained the basic teachings of the Catholic Church.

 

-The Catholic Reformation also strove to bring Protestants back to the Catholic Church and to make sure that Catholics held strictly to Church teachings.

 

-In an effort to wipe out heresy, or beliefs that did not conform to Church teachings, the Church strengthened the power of the Inquisition. The Inquisition was a system of church courts that used secret testimony and torture to root out heresy and force non-Catholics to convert to Catholicism.

 

-At the same time, the effort to reform the Church led to a rebirth of sincere faith among many Catholics. St. Vincent de Paul worked to help the poor people of Paris. Teresa of Avila set up a new order of nuns in Spain.

 

-Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus. Jesuits, as members of this society are called, were among the best- educated people of Europe at this time. They became well known as teachers and missionaries.

  

 

 

Section 2: The Age of Exploration (page 161)

 

I.           Introduction

 

-During the Middle Ages, Europeans had done little exploring beyond their own shores. Except for the Holy Land, they had very little knowledge of, or interest in, other lands.

 

-During the Renaissance, however, Europeans became curious about the world around them. This led to an interest in science and technology. It also led to exploration.

 

II.        Europeans Begin to Explore (page 162)

 

-Driven by curiosity, a desire for trade, and great advances in sailing technology, Europeans soon traveled far beyond their homelands—and all the way around the world.

 

-From about 1400 to 1600, Europeans sailed across the vast oceans to explore Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This period is called the Age of Exploration. Eventually, Europeans would control much of these lands and change the course of world history.

 

-Before this time, European ships were not capable of such long ocean crossings. By the 1400s, though, Portuguese shipbuilders had developed a new type of ship called the caravel. Strong, maneuverable, and able to sail against the wind, it was the best sailing vessel of its time.

 

-The Europeans also had two improved navigation tools, the mariner’s compass and the astrolabe. Further, they had learned how to make better, more accurate maps. Now they were able to set out on long voyages.

 

-By the early 1400s, many Europeans had grown tired of paying high prices to Italian merchants for Asian goods. These merchants, in turn, had paid high prices to the Muslim traders of the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the trade routes between Europe and Asia.

 

-Europeans wanted to gain control of the rich trade with Asia themselves. To do this, they would have to find a new route to Asia—one that did not use the Mediterranean Sea and the land routes controlled by the Ottomans.

 

-Two European nations, Portugal and Spain, set out to find a sea route starting from their Atlantic coasts.  

 

III.     The Portuguese Head East (page 163)

 

-By the 1400s, the small nation of Portugal was already a strong and successful seafaring power. It had even conquered some territory on the coast of North Africa.

 

-The Portuguese wanted to continue exploring the African coast. And they thought that the best sea route to Asia might be one that went east, around the southern tip of Africa.

 

-The search for this eastern sea route was led by Prince Henry, the son of Portugal’s king. In 1419, he opened a school to encourage exploration. He invited mapmakers, shipbuilders, and expert sailors called navigators from all over the country.

 

-Henry oversaw more than fifty expeditions. Although he did not go exploring himself, his work won him the title of Henry the Navigator.

 

-As expeditions pushed farther south along the western coast of Africa, sailors set up trading posts there. They also gathered information on winds, currents, and coastlines.

 

 

 

-Henry the Navigator died in 1460, but his dream of an eastern sea route to Asia lived on. In 1488, the Portuguese sea captain Bartolomeu Dias sailed all the way around the southern tip of Africa, which we now call the Cape of Good Hope.

 

-Ten years later, Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, up Africa’s eastern coast, and then across the India Ocean to India. He returned with a cargo of spices and precious stones.

 

-Soon, the Portuguese seized important ports around the Indian Ocean. They had their trade route to Asia.  

 

IV.       Columbus Heads West (page 164)

 

-While the Portuguese were exploring to the east, an Italian sea captain named Christopher Columbus became convinced that he could reach Asia by sailing west, across the Atlantic. At that time, educated Europeans knew that the world was round. It made sense to Columbus that a ship sailing west would eventually reach Asia.

 

-Columbus convinced Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain to pay for an expedition that headed west across the Atlantic. They knew of the great riches to be gained if Spain had a sea route to Asia.

 

-What neither Columbus nor the Spanish monarchs—nor anyone else—knew was that two huge continents lay between Europe and Asia. So in August 1492, Columbus set sail for Asia—westward across the Atlantic Ocean.

 

-Columbus’s expedition included three ships—the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria—and about ninety sailors. After two months, on October 12, 1492, they landed on a little island in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of North America.

 

-Because he thought he had reached the Indies in Asia, Columbus called the people he found there Indians. He claimed the land for Spain.

-News of Columbus’s discovery electrified Europe. Spain and Portugal became rivals. They tried to stop each other from claiming lands in the Americas. In 1494, they signed a treaty that set a Line of Demarcation through the Americas at about 50 degrees W longitude.

 

-Spain had the right to settle west of the line. Portugal could do the same east of the line.

 

-England sent sailor John Cabot across the Atlantic five years after Columbus’s first voyage. He reached what is now Canada. A few years later, his son Sebastian followed.

 

-His goal was to find a Northwest Passage, a way to sail through North America and then on to Asia. Many other European explorers searched unsuccessfully for a way to continue the western sea route to Asia.

 

-In 1513, a Spanish adventurer named Vasco Nunez de Balboa led a land expedition across a narrow but hazardous strip of land in Central America. From a mountaintop, he saw a huge ocean to the south, which he claimed for Spain.

 

-The Spanish called it the South Sea. Balboa had become the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the shores of America. The Pacific was the sea that would eventually take Europeans all the way to Asia. 

 

V.          All the Way Around the World (page 166)

 

-Even after Columbus reached the Americas, Europeans did not understand how large Earth was. They believed that Japan, which they called Cipango, was separated from the Americas by a narrow channel of water.

 

-The Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan was eager to cross that channel. But one problem still remained: how to get around the Americas.

 

-With backing from the Spanish king, Magellan set sail in 1519 with five ships. They sailed west to South America and then south along the South American coast.

 

-After spending a stormy winter on land, some of the sailors wanted to turn back, but Magellan forced them to continue. Finally, they located a narrow, twisting passage near the tip of South America. Today, it is called the Strait of Magellan, in the explorer’s honor.

 

-It took Magellan thirty-eight days to sail through the strait. Strong currents and fierce winds made the journey difficult. Only three of the five ships made it through.

 

-The three ships emerged from the treacherous strait into the sea that Balboa had sighted. Magellan thought this ocean was much less stormy than the strait, so he called it pacific, which means “peaceful.”

 

-Magellan and his men had no idea how vast the Pacific Ocean was. Short of food and fresh water, they sailed for three months without sighting any land, except for a few tiny islands.

 

-Some of the men starved to death, while others died of disease. At last, they reached the Philippines. There, tragedy struck: Magellan was killed when he became involved in a local dispute.

 

-The expedition continued, but only one ship finally made it back to Spain. Of the roughly 250 sailors who had set sail with Magellan, only eighteen returned.

 

-On September 8, 1522, the survivors reached Seville, where the Spanish hailed them as the first people to circumnavigate, or sail around, the world.   

 

 

 

 

 

Section 3: The Age of Powerful Monarchs (page 170)

 

I.           Absolute Rule in France (page 171)

 

-Louis XIV was king of France in the 1600s and early 1700s. In Europe at this time, people did not choose their leaders. They believed that God chose the king. The king’s authority came directly from God, and was therefore divine. This belief was called the divine right of kings.

 

-Therefore, it seemed logical that a leader chosen by God should have more power than anyone else. Louis XIV was an absolute monarch, or royal ruler with absolute, or complete, authority over the government and people in his or her kingdom.

 

-Absolute monarchs did not share power with nobles, with common people, or with anyone else. From the 1400s to the 1700s, much of Europe was governed by absolute monarchs.

 

-French kings had not always been absolute monarchs. Over a period of about 150 years, starting in the late 1400s, French kings had gradually taken power away from the nobles.

 

-Much of this transfer of power was accomplished not by a king but by a cardinal. Cardinal Richelieu served as chief minister to Louis XIV’s father King Louis XIII.

 

-To limit the power of the French nobles, Richelieu allowed wealthy merchants to buy titles of nobility. Then he stripped the nobles of some of their rights.

 

-He also started businesses for the French government. These businesses earned a great deal of money for the crown. Altogether, as these changes made the nobles weaker, the king became wealthier and more powerful.

 

-Both Richelieu and Louis XIII died in 1643, and Louis XIV became king. He was the absolute monarch of France for seventy-two years. -King Louis XIV was so powerful that he became known as the Sun King. Just as the sun was the center of the solar system, Louis XIV was the center of the French nation.

   

-He lived in incredible luxury at Versailles, his huge palace outside Paris. It took forty years to complete this magnificent estate. At times, as many as 30,000 laborers worked on its construction.

 

-Many nobles lived at the palace of Versailles with the king. Having the nobles at Versailles made it easier for Louis to keep them in check. At home on their estates, they might have become a threat to his power.

 

-To keep the nobles happy, Louis XIV gave huge parties with fabulous entertainment. For the most part, the king also excluded the nobles from paying taxes.

 

-All of this luxury and entertainment was very expensive. To raise the money, the king taxed the peasants. This meant that the poorest and least powerful people in France paid for the luxury of the Sun King’s court.

 

-King Louis XIV had more power and wealth than any other person in France. And he wanted France to have more power and wealth than any other nation in Europe.

 

-To accomplish this goal, he encouraged the growth of industry and supported efforts to build an empire in Asia and in the Americas. Louis also went to war to gain new territories. From 1667 to 1713, France was almost constantly at war with other European countries.

 

-These wars cost huge sums of money, yet they won France little in the way of land or power. By the time King Louis XIV died in 1715, France had huge debts. Even the silverware at Versailles had to be sold to help pay for France’s wars.

 

 

 

II.        A Powerful Queen of England (page 173)

 

-Nearly a century before King Louis XIV took the throne of France, England already had a powerful monarch ruling over a golden age.

 

-The monarch, however, was a woman—Queen Elizabeth I. She became the most powerful and successful ruler England had ever known.

 

-When Elizabeth I became queen in 1588, she found herself in a position of great power. Her grandfather, Henry VII, had ended fighting among local lords. He had made sure that England’s monarch would be more powerful than any of the nobles.

 

-Her father, Henry VIII, had broken away from the Roman Catholic Church and started a new Protestant church, the Church of England. The English monarch became head of the Church of England and no longer had to share power with the Church based in Rome.

 

-Like her father, Elizabeth was determined and intelligent. She spoke French and Italian, and she could read the classical languages of Greek and Latin.

 

-Unlike her father, who was married six times, Elizabeth never married. She knew that if she married, she would lose some of her authority to her husband.

 

-Elizabeth was wise enough to gain the support of the English people. After she became queen, she often traveled through the English countryside so her people could see her. The English people came to love and admire their queen.

 

-Elizabeth’s rule, from 1558-1603, is called the Elizabethan Age. During this time, England grew increasingly powerful and prosperous. Elizabeth strengthened England by using compromise to prevent religious war between Protestants and the Catholics who were still numerous in England.

 

-She made sure that England remained a Protestant nation and that the monarch remained head of the Church of England. However, she also allowed much of Catholic tradition to be practiced in the English church.

 

-At first, Elizabeth avoided war with other European powers. She used the possibility of her marriage with their kings as one way to prevent war. Meanwhile, Elizabeth supported English sea power and exploration in the Americas.

 

-The English sea captain Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world. He also delighted Elizabeth by leading attacks on Spanish ships carrying treasure from the Americas.

 

-By 1588, Spain had had enough. The Spanish king sent a huge armada, or fleet of ships, to invade England. With the help of a storm that destroyed much of the armada, the lighter English ships defeated the larger, awkward Spanish vessels. Now England had the most powerful navy in the world.

 

-Elizabethan England was not only powerful, it also enjoyed a golden age of science, art, and literature. Elizabeth loved the theater. She often attended and helped promote the plays of William Shakespeare. Today, Shakespeare is regarded as perhaps the greatest writer in the English language.  

 

 

III.     Strong Rulers Unite Spain (page 175)

 

-Spain, too, came under the control of strong monarchs. When Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile married in 1469, their separate kingdoms became one. Together, they ruled almost all of present-day Spain.

 

 

 

 

-Like other European monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella worked to limit the power of the nobles. They also used their power to strengthen the Roman Catholic Church throughout Spain. Under their rule, Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or leave the country.

 

-The Moors, North African Muslims who had controlled part of southern Spain since the 700s, were driven out of Spain in 1492.

 

-Ferdinand and Isabella also established the Spanish Inquisition, a court that tried and executed people who did not obey the Roman Catholic Church.

 

-The Spanish monarchs also supported voyages of exploration, including those of Christopher Columbus. These voyages eventually led to the creation of a huge Spanish empire in the Americas.

 

IV.       Absolute Power in Russia (page 175)

 

-Russia shared many of the religious and political developments of Europe, including the rule of Christian absolute monarchs. But Russia was also different.

 

-First of all, not all of Russia is in Europe. Much of it is in Asia. Today, Russia extends all the way from the Pacific coast of Asia to the coasts of the Baltic and the Black seas in Europe.

 

-In the 700s and 800s, Kiev, a city in present-day Ukraine, became an important center of trade. It developed ties to the Byzantine Empire, which sent Christian missionaries to Kiev.

 

-In 957, Princess Olga converted to Christianity. Her grandson, Vladimir, expanded the territory ruled by Kiev and also made Orthodox Christianity its official religion.

 

-During the early 1200s, the Mongols had conquered much of Asia. In the 1230s, Mongol armies known as the Golden Horde turned west. They took over much of Russia including Kiev.

-The Mongols ruled Russia for 240 years. Although they required heavy tribute, the Muslim Mongols allowed Russians to practice Christianity and brought peace to their large empire. However, Mongol rule cut Russia off from Western Europe and many of the advances being made there.

 

-During this period, the princes of Moscow gained power. Moscow was a center of trade, and its princes were the tax collectors for the Mongol rulers. The areas they controlled were called Muscovy. Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church made Moscow its headquarters.  

 

-In the 1300s, the leaders of Moscow led other Russian groups in a rebellion against Mongol rule. By 1505, Prince Ivan of Moscow had brought much of Russia under his own control. He then turned to strengthening his power by limiting the power of Russian nobles.

 

-Ivan the Great, as he came to be called, declared himself absolute ruler of Russia, “in authority like the highest God.” His grandson, Ivan the Terrible, strengthened the monarch’s power even more. He was crowned tsar, the Russian word for “Caesar” or “emperor.”

 

-Peter the Great became tsar of Russia in 1682 and ruled for more than forty years. Peter modernized the Russian army and navy and improved Russian farming and industry by adopting European technology.

 

-But he also strengthened serfdom, which had already died out in the rest of Europe. Peter expanded Russia’s territory, but he could not achieve one of his major goals: a port that would not freeze over in the winter, so that Russia could trade by sea all year.

 

-Like other absolute monarchs, Peter the Great limited the power of nobles in order to strengthen his own position. Peter also wanted Russia to be more like Western Europe. He built St. Petersburg, a magnificent city near the Baltic coast, which he called a “window on the West.”  The city became a symbol of Peter’s power and his desire to make Russia a modern nation.

 

 

Section 4: Conquests in the Americas and Africa (page 180)

 

I.           Introduction (page 180)

 

-About a hundred years before Louis XIV had sat down to a splendid dinner, Moctezuma was the supreme ruler of the Aztec empire in the Valley of Mexico. Moctezuma was powerful, but the Aztecs believed in gods that were even more powerful.

 

-An Aztec legend said that long ago the white-skinned god Quetzalcoatl had sailed away to the east. The Aztecs believed that someday Quetzalcoatl would return to rule them.

 

-In 1519 that seemed to happen. Moctezuma heard about a group of pale-skinned men who had landed on the east coast. He wondered if these men could be Quetzalcoatl and his followers. 

 

 

II.        Spain’s Empire in the Americas (page 181)

 

-The leader of the pale-faced men was not an Aztec god but a Spanish conquistador. A conquistador was a Spanish soldier who conquered Native American peoples in the 1500s.

 

-Ever since Columbus had brought back reports of new lands, European had dreamed about the riches that might be found there. The Spanish sent expeditions to look for gold and other treasures.

 

-One of these expeditions was led by Hernan Cortes. Soon after landing in present-day Mexico, Cortes heard about the wealth of the Aztecs. He also heard that many of the local people hated the Aztecs because the Aztecs had conquered them and taxed them heavily. Cortes persuaded some of these groups to help them fight the Aztecs.

 

-Cortes headed for the Aztec capital with 500 soldiers and 6 horses. Aztec spies saw them coming. They had never seen horses before.

 

-Moctezuma’s spies described the Spanish as “supernatural creatures riding on hornless deer, armed in iron, fearless as gods.”

 

-When Cortes and his men arrived in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, they were amazed. The city was larger than any European city at the time.

 

-The Aztec leader Moctezuma welcomed Cortes and his men. He and his advisors were afraid that Cortes might be the returning Quetzalcoatl, so they treated him and his men as honored guests.

 

-In order to gain control of the Aztecs, Cortes kidnapped Moctezuma. The Aztec people soon rebelled. Moctezuma was killed, but the Aztecs drove Cortes and his army out of Tenochtitlan.

 

-Outside the city, Cortes regrouped. The Spaniards and their Native American allies attacked Tenochtitlan. In 1521, the Aztecs finally surrendered. By then, about 240,000 Aztecs had died, and 30,000 of Cortes’s allies had been killed. Tenochtitlan and the Aztec empire lay in ruins.

 

-Cortes took control of the region, which he called New Spain. He built his new capital, Mexico City, on the site of Tenochtitlan.

 

-Cortes tried to make life in New Spain like that in his home country. He imported European plants and farm animals. He also introduced the encomienda system, in which the Spanish king gave Spanish settlers the right to the labor of the Native Americans who lived in a certain area. 

 

-The settlers were expected to convert the Native Americans to Christianity and to treat them well. In reality, the settlers treated them as slaves. Many Native Americans were worked to death, and many others died of European diseases.

 

-Like the Aztecs, the Incas had built an advanced civilization. Their vast empire covered most of the western coast of South America and was tied together by a well-constructed network of roads and bridges.

 

-For all its achievements and power, however, the Incan empire could not withstand the Spanish. In 1531, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro led his men into the northern Incan empire. He drove south, and within two years he and his 200 soldiers had conquered an empire of some 12 million people.

 

-How did he do it? First, a war was already raging within the Incan empire. Some of the people rebelling against Incan rule sided with Pizarro.  

 

-Further, as Cortes had done, Pizarro kidnapped the empire’s ruler. Leaderless, the empire was easy prey. Finally, European diseases such as smallpox killed or weakened millions of people in the region.

 

-The Spanish takeover of the Aztec and Incan empires eventually led to Spanish control of most of Central and South America. The riches of gold and silver that Spain brought back to Europe made Spain even more powerful.

 

-The large numbers of Spanish settlers changed the course of history in the Americas. And Spaniards cruel treatment of the Native Americans—along with the diseases they accidentally brought—devastated the people of the Americas.

 

 

III.     The Columbian Exchange (Links-page 183)

 

-The movement of peoples from Africa and Europe to the Americas opened up a global exchange of goods and ideas. Europeans introduced cattle, chickens, goats, and pigs to the Americas.

 

-From Africa and Asia, they brought such plants as bananas, coffee, and sugar cane. All became major foods in the Americas.

 

-The introduction of food crops such as corn, potatoes, and beans from the Americas made it easier to feed more people in Europe and Africa.

 

-Because Columbus’s famous voyages made this exchange possible, it is called the Columbian Exchange. 

 

 

IV.        The African Slave Trade (page 183)

 

-Europeans did not limit their conquests to the Americas. They were looking for riches in other lands as well.

 

-Prince Henry the Navigator helped start trade between Portugal and the west coast of Africa. Soon, British, French, and Dutch ships also sailed to Africa to trade for gold, ivory, and pepper. Then they began to trade for enslaved people as well.

 

-There was a market for slaves in the Americas. Spanish and Portuguese settlers in the Americas wanted workers for their plantations and mines.

 

-At first they enslaved Native Americans. When many of these slaves died, the Europeans began importing enslaved Africans. Some historians put the number of African slaves taken to the Americas at about 11 million.

 

-As many as 2 million may have died on the overcrowded and unsanitary slave ships. Men, women, and children were packed together in the dark hold of the ships. The air was so foul that there was often not enough oxygen to keep a candle burning.

 

-The slave trade created a disaster, both in the Americas and in Africa. In addition to being deprived of their liberty and taken from their homeland, enslaved Africans suffered terrible brutality.

 

-In the Americas, slavery was damaging to both slaves and slaveholders because the society that developed was based on injustice and inequality.     

 

-In Africa, groups who were victorious in war had often enslaved the people they conquered. Some of these enslaved people were sold to foreigners. But in the 1500s, the slave trade became big business.

 

-As the demand for slaves increased in the Americas, European slave traders lured African groups into wars against their neighbors. These wars guaranteed the traders a steady supply of slaves.

 

-Other people were kidnapped in slave raids and sold by African rulers and traders to the Europeans. These captives were exchanged for textiles, metalwork, weapons, and luxury goods.

 

-European settlers wanted Africans who were young, healthy, and strong to work on their plantations in the Americas. The loss of so many young people in their prime was a serious blow to many African societies.

 

-Wars also caused death and destruction. These harmful effects of the slave trade lasted for centuries.