Give Me Liberty Ch01

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Title
Norton Media Library
Give Me Liberty! An American History
Eric Foner
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Chapter 1
Norton Media Library
Chapter 1
A New World
Eric Foner
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BEFORE COLUMBUS
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BEFORE COLUMBUS
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BEFORE COLUMBUS

• Evidence of human settlement dating to 35,000 BC
• People as Kitty Chow?
• Impact of hunting technology
• Spread of nomadic groups
• Differentiation by region
• Lack of surface mineral deposits (iron)

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BEFORE COLUMBUS
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BEFORE COLUMBUS
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But what about Europe at the time?

• Crusades --knowledge and a bit of flavor
• Reconquista in the Iberian Penninsula
• Black Death and the Mongols
• Emergence of (pre-)modern governments
• Nations -Decline of feudalism
• Strong monarchs -Mercantilism
• Renaissance

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APPEAL OF ASIA

• Spices pepper, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves
  helped cover the taste of spoiled meat
• Tropical foods rice, figs, oranges
• Other goods perfumes, silk cotton, rugs,
  textiles, dyestuffs, fine steel products,
  precious stones, various drugs

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II. The Expansion of Europe

• Portugal and West Africa
• Caravelle, compass, and quadrant made travel
  along African coast possible for the Portuguese
  in the early fifteenth century
• The search for African gold drove the early
  explorers
• Portugal began colonizing Atlantic islands and
  established sugar plantations worked by slaves
• Slavery and Africa
• Slavery was already one form of labor in Africa
  before the Europeans came
• Europeans traded textiles and guns for African
  slaves, which greatly disrupted African society
• By the time Vasco da Gama sailed to India in
  1498, Portugal had established a vast trading
  empire

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PRINCE HENRY the NAVIGATOR

• The third son of John I of Portugal, Henry became
  interested in navigation and exploration
• Ships were clumsy, instruments for reckoning
  latitude were inaccurate at best, and there were
  no instruments for figuring longitude
• Henry attempted to improve and codify
  navigational knowledge

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PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES(African American
Experience)

• Henrys captains sailed westward to the Madeiras,
  the Canaries and south along the coast of Africa
• In 1445, Dinis Dias reached Cape Verde
• In the 1480s King John II undertook systematic
  new explorations focusing on reaching India

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II. The Expansion of Europe (cont)

• The Voyages of Columbus
• Christopher Columbus, an Italian, received
  financial support from King Ferdinand and Queen
  Isabella of Spain
• Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1492 and
  colonization began the next year
• Amerigo Vespucci sailed along the coast of South
  America between 1498 and 1502, and the New World
  came to be called America based on Vespuccis
  name

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IV. The Spanish Empire

• Spain in America
• This aint China?! --New World!
• But is is a Christian world? No??? Good!
• Reconquista mindset
• Rivalry with Portugal ---gt Treaty of Tordesillas
• Cortes and the Aztec (Nahuatl)
• Montezumas bad timing
• Implications of human sacrifice
• Pizarro and the Incas
• No iron, but lots of GOLD AND SILVER

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IV. The Spanish Empire

• Spain in America
• Spain established a more stable government
  modeled after Spanish home rule
• Power ?owed from the King to Council of the
  Indies to Viceroys to local of?cials
• Gold and silver mines were the primary economies
  in Spanish America
• Mines were worked by Indians
• REQUIERMENTO
• Encomidas, repartimientos and haciendas
• Many Spaniards came to the New World for easier
  social mobility
• Spanish America evolved into a hybrid culture
• Peninsulares, criollos, mezstisos, negros

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IV. The Spanish Empire (cont)

• Justifications for Conquest
• To justify their claims to land that belonged to
  someone else, the Spanish relied on
• cultural superiority
• violence
• missionaries
• the Pope
• National glory and religious mission went hand in
  hand, with the primary aim of the Spaniards to
  transform Indians into obedient, Catholic
  subjects of the Crown

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IV. The Spanish Empire (cont)

• Spain and the Indians
• Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote about the injustices
  of Spanish rule toward the Indians
• He believed that the entire human race is one,
  but supported African slavery
• His writings encouraged the 1542 New Laws, which
  forbade the enslavement of Indians
• Black Legend was an image put forth, in part, by
  Las Casas that Spain was an uniquely brutal and
  exploitive colonizer

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IV. The Spanish Empire (cont)

• Spain in North America
• Spanish explorers migrated north in search of
  gold
• Ponce de Leon
• Florida was the ?rst region within the present
  United States to be colonized by the Spanish
• Narvaez
• Cabeza de Vaca
• Coronado and De Soto
• Juan de Oñate led settlers into present-day New
  Mexico
• Oñates methods toward the native Acoma were
  brutal

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THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

• Things Europeans gained from the New World
• Corn (maize)
• Tobacco
• Squash
• Beans
• Tomatoes
• Hot peppers
• Chocolate (cocoa)
• Potato (the one with the greatest long-term
  global impact)
• GOLD AND SILVER

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THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

• Things New World natives gained from the Old
  World
• Herd animals (cattle, sheep)
• Horses
• Food crops sugar, rice, fruits
• Iron and gunpowder technology
• Christianity
• DISEASE

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DISEASE POPULATION LOSS

• Issue of terms genocide and holocaust
• While clearly there was a drastic reduction in
  the Indian population after the arrival of
  Europeans, it lacked the purposeful intention
  implied by the above words
• In fact, Europeans often needed the Indians help
  for example
• Spanish needed natives to work in mines and
  fields and to build roads and buildings
• French needed them for trade
• English depended on them for additional food and
  knowledge

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DISEASE POPULATION LOSS

• Certainly the Europeans practiced barbarity in
  dealing with the natives
• De Las Casas and condemnation of Spanish
• Percy and example of English misbehavior
• But biggest killer was the many diseases
  (smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, diphtheria,
  influenza, malaria, yellow fever, and typhoid)
  Europeans brought with them
• Indians had no immunity, resulting in several
  million deaths
• Take a wild guess what did we get in exchange?

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V. The First North Americans

• Native American Societies
• Indians in North America did not resemble the
  empires of the Aztec or Inca civilizations
• Indians were very diverse and lived a variety of
  ways, some settling villages and some wandering
  as hunters
• By the fifteenth century some Indian tribes
  united into leagues or confederations in an
  effort to bring peace to local regions

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V. The First North Americans (cont)

• Religion, Land, and Gender
• Despite some similarities between Indian and
  European religious beliefs, Europeans still
  sought to Christianize the Indians
• Spanish and reconquista mindset
• The idea of private property was foreign to
  Indians
• Wealth and material goods were not sought after
  by Indians as compared to Europeans
• Many Indian societies were matrilineal
• Europeans and the Indians
• Europeans felt that Indians lacked genuine
  religion
• Europeans claimed that Indians did not use the
  land and thus had no claim to it
• Europeans viewed Indian men as weak and Indian
  women as mistreated

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V. The First North Americans (cont)

• Indians and Freedom
• Europeans concluded that the notion of freedom
  was alien to Indian societies
• Indians were barbaric to the Europeans because
  they were too free
• European understanding of freedom was based upon
  ideas of personal independence and the ownership
  of private property, foreign ideas to Indians

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SPAINS EUROPEAN RIVALS

• 1497 1498 John Cabot explored Newfoundland and
  the northeastern coast of the continent for
  England
• 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano explored from
  Carolina to Nova Scotia for France
• 1534 Jacques Cartier, also exploring for France,
  sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as present day
  Montreal
• Fishermen from France, Spain, Portugal and
  England exploited the cod and other fish off the
  coast of Newfoundland

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WHY SPAIN FIRST?

• Spain had a large measure of internal tranquility
  by the 16th century while France and England were
  suffering from religious and political strife
• Spanish seized those areas of the Americas which
  were best suited for producing quick returns
• First half of 16th century, under Charles V,
  Spain dominated Europe as well as Americas,
  controlling the Low Countries, most of central
  Europe, and part of Italy

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DECLINE OF SPAIN

• Under Charles successor, Philip II, Spain seemed
  at its peak
• Added Portugal in 1580
• But there were a number of problems
• Corruption of Spanish court
• Overdependence on gold and silver of colonies
  undermined local economy
• Disruption of Catholic Church caused by
  Protestant Reformation

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PROTESTANT REFORMATION

• Catholic Church suffering from a variety of
  problems in the early 1500s
• Sale of indulgences
• Luxurious lifestyle of Pope and papal court
• Why were protests so successful this time?
• Charismatic Leaders
• Martin Luther, who started the movement in 1517
• John Calvin, who helped carry it forward

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PROTESTANT REFORMATIONPolitical Support

• German princes stopped payments to Rome and
  seized church property
• Swiss cities established political independence
  from Catholic kings
• Francis I of France, although remaining Catholic,
  exerted authority over clergy
• Efforts of Spain to suppress Protestantism in Low
  Countries fueled nationalist movements
• Henry VIII of England broke from Rome in 1534
  when, in search of a male heir, he tried to get
  his marriage annulled but the Pope refused
• Implications in Ireland for America

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PROTESTANT REFORMATIONEconomic Issues

• It was originally theorized that because of the
  Catholic Churchs idea of just price and the
  fact that dislike of capital accumulation stifled
  merchant acquisitiveness, the merchant class
  supported the Protestant Reformation
• However, many merchants, especially some of the
  most successful (such as Italians and the wool
  merchants of Flanders), remained Catholic
• In some places merchants backed new Protestant
  sects because made less financial demands than
  Catholic Church

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PROTESTANT REFORMATIONEconomic Issues

• As commercial classes rose to positions of
  influence, England, France and United Provinces
  of the Netherlands, experienced a flowering of
  trade and industry
• DUTCH built the largest merchant fleet in the
  world, captured most of the Far Eastern trade
  from the Portuguese, infiltrated Spains
  Caribbean stronghold
• ENGLISH merchant companies began to play vital
  role as colonizers forming joint stock companies
  that were predecessors to modern corporation

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ENGLISH BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA
Martin Frobisher

• Muscovy Company spent large sums looking for a
  passage to China around Scandanavia
• In the 1570s, backed by Queen Elizabeth I of
  England, Martin Frobisher made three voyages
  across the Atlantic looking for a northwest
  passage to Asia or new sources of gold
• The queen also supported privateers such as Sir
  Francis Drake, who preyed on Spanish shipping

Sir Francis Drake
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BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH SETTLEMENT

• Elizabeth also backed settlement efforts such as
  the unsuccessful efforts of Sir Humphrey Gilbert
  in 1578, 1570, and 1583
• The first settlement, on Roanoke Island off the
  coast of North Carolina in 1585, was sponsored by
  Sir Walter Raleigh
• Ships due to arrive in 1588 to re-supply did not
  come due to the attack of the Spanish Armada and
  when ships did arrive in 1590, not a trace of the
  colonists could be found
• The mystery of Croatan

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MOTIVES FOR ENGLISH SETTLEMENT

• Settlement efforts were costly and in 1584
  Richard Hakluyt urged crown support
• Stressed
• Military advantages
• The spread of Protestantism
• The possible enrichment of the parent country
  through expanding markets, increasing tax
  revenues, and the provision of employment and raw
  materials
• Easing of overpopulation
• Enclosure movement --gtlots of homeless peasants
• Elizabeth, however, did not pursue Hakluyts
  suggestions and the settlement that started in
  earnest after her death in 1603 was backed mainly
  by merchant capitalists not the crown

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DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA

• Philip of Spain (brother-in-law to Elizabeth)
  wishes to conquer England in the name of the
  Catholic Church
• Huge invasion fleet assembles across the Channel
• Drakes fleet crosses the T on the Spanish
  Armada
• Spanish dominance of the Atlantic seriously hurt
  by destruction of fleet
• Increased explorations of North America by the
  English are a direct consequence

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VI. England and the New World (cont)

• England and New World Colonization
• The English crown issued charters for individuals
  to colonize America at their own expense, but
  they failed
• National glory, profit, and a missionary zeal
  motivated the English crown to settle America
• A Discourse Concerning Western Planting (Hakluyt)
  argued that settlement would strike a blow at
  Englands enemy Spain
• It was also argued that trade, not mineral
  wealth, would be the basis of Englands empire

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VI. England and the New World (cont)

• The Social Crisis
• A worsening economy (The Great Inflation) and the
  enclosure movement led to an increase of the poor
  and a social crisis
• Unruly poor were encouraged to leave England for
  the New World
• Masterless Men
• The English increasingly viewed America as a land
  where a man could control his own labor and thus
  gain independence, particularly through ownership
  of land

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VII. The Freeborn Englishman

• Christian Freedom
• To embrace Christ was believed to provide a
  freedom from sin
• Theology Erasmus, Calvin
• Ties to politics Henry VIII
• Christian liberty had no connection to later
  ideas of religious tolerance

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VII. The Freeborn Englishman (cont)

• Freedom and Authority
• Obedience to law was another definition of
  freedomlaw was libertys salvation
• Under English law, a woman held very few rights
  and was submissive to her husband
• Freedom was a function of social class and as
  such a well-ordered society depended on obedience
  
• Liberty was often understood as formal privileges
  enjoyed by only a few

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VII. The Freeborn Englishman (cont)

• The Rights of Englishmen
• The Magna Carta was signed by King John in 1215
• It identified a series of liberties, which barons
  found to be the most beneficial
• The Magna Carta embodied the idea of English
  freedom
• habeas corpus
• the right to face ones accuser
• trial by jury
• English Civil War of the 1640s illuminated
  debates about liberty and what it meant to be a
  freeborn Englishman

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VII. The Freeborn Englishman (cont)

• Englands Debate over Freedom
• The Levellers called for an even greater
  expansion of liberty, moving away from a
  definition based on social class
• Diggers were another political group attempting
  to give freedom an economic underpinning
• After the English Civil War, there emerged a more
  general definition of freedom grounded in the
  common rights of all individuals within the
  English realm
• a belief in freedom as the common heritage of all
  Englishmen
• a belief that England was the worlds guardian of
  liberty