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Read Trade and Commerce In the Early Islamic World on Epic

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Read Trade and Commerce In the Early Islamic World on Epic

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North America, the third-largest continent, extends from the tiny Aleutian Islands in the northwest to the Isthmus of Panama in the south. The continent includes the enormous island of Greenland in the northeast and the small island countries and territories that dot the Caribbean Sea and western North Atlantic Ocean. In the far north, the continent stretches halfway around the world, from Greenland to the Aleutians. But at Panama's narrowest part, the continent is just 50 kilometers (31 miles) across.

North America's physical geography, environment and resources, and human geography can be considered separately.

North America can be divided into five physical regions: the mountainous west, the Great Plains, the Canadian Shield, the varied eastern region, and the Caribbean. Mexico and Central America's western coast are connected to the mountainous west, while its lowlands and coastal plains extend into the eastern region.

Within these regions are all the major types of biomes in the world. A biome is a community of animals and plants spreading over an extensive area with a relatively uniform climate. Some diverse biomes represented in North America include desert, grassland, tundra, and coral reefs.

Western Region

Young mountains rise in the west. The most familiar of these mountains are probably the Rockies, North America's largest chain. The Rockies stretch from the province of British Columbia, Canada, to the U.S. state of New Mexico.

The Rocky Mountains are part of a system of parallel mountain ranges known as the Cordilleras. A cordillera is a long series of mountain ranges. Although cordilleras exist all over the world, in North America, "the Cordilleras" indicate the massive mountain ranges in the western part of the continent. The Cordilleras extend from Canada all the way to the Isthmus of Panama.

The Sierra Madre mountain system is part of the Cordilleras. The Sierra Madre stretch from the southwestern United States to Honduras. The Sierra Madre include many high volcanoes (up to 5,636 meters, or 18,500 feet) that stretch across Mexico south of the cities of Guadalajara and Mexico City.

Volcanic mountain ranges in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama are also considered part of the Cordilleras. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur frequently in this region. Volcanic activity can destroy towns and cities. It also contributes to the rich, fertile soils of the region.

Some of the Earth's youngest mountains are in the Cascade Range of the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and California. Some peaks began to form only about a million years ago-a blink of an eye in Earth's long history. The mountains include temperate rain forest-a biome unique to the area. The temperate rain forest receives an incredible amount of precipitation, between 254 to 508 centimeters (100 to 200 inches) annually. However, its cool winters and mild summers promote the growth of mosses, ferns, fungi, and lichens.

The temperate rain forest supports a wide variety of life. The Sitka spruce, western red cedar, and Douglas fir are trees native to North America's temperate rain forest. Some of these trees grow to more than 90 meters (300 feet) tall and 3 meters (10 feet) in diameter. Black bears, Roosevelt elk, and marmots are indigenous animal species.

The three major desert regions of North America-the Sonoran, Mojave, and Chihuahuan-are all in the American southwest and northern Mexico. These large deserts are located in the rain shadows of nearby mountains. The mountains block precipitation and accelerate the movement of hot, dry wind over these regions. The Sonoran is in the rain shadow of the Coast Ranges, the Mojave is in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada, and the Chihuahuan is in the shadow of the Sierra Madre.

Notable desert plant species includes the saguaro cactus, Joshua tree, and mesquite. Animal species include the roadrunner, Gila monster, and rattlesnake.

In addition to mountains, deserts, and forests, the northern part of the western region of North America also has the richest deposits of oil and natural gas on the continent. Most of these deposits are located offshore, in the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.

Great Plains

The Great Plains lie in the middle of the continent. Deep, rich soil blankets large areas of the plains in Canada and the United States. Grain grown in this region, called the "Breadbasket of North America," feeds a large part of the world. The Great Plains are also home to rich deposits of oil and natural gas.

Much of the fertile soil was formed from material deposited during the most recent glacial period. This ice age reached its peak about 18,000 years ago. As glaciers retreated, streams of melted ice dropped sediment on the land, building layers of productive soil.

The grassland or prairie regions of the Great Plains make up the largest biome in North America. Extreme weather prevents the growth of large plants but is perfectly suited to the native grasses that dominate the region.

Native grasses vary in size from 2 meters (7 feet) in tallgrass prairies to only 20 or 25 centimeters (8 or 10 inches) in shortgrass prairies. Native animal species include bison, prairie dogs, and grasshoppers.

Canadian Shield

The Canadian Shield is a raised but relatively flat plateau. It extends over eastern, central, and northwestern Canada. The Canadian Shield is characterized by a rocky landscape pocked by an astounding number of lakes.

The tundra, stretching along the northern borders of Alaska and Canada to the Hudson Bay area, is a biome common to the Canadian Shield. Tundra is where low temperatures and precipitation levels hinder tree growth. The tundra is characterized by permafrost-soil that is frozen for two or more years. This permafrost keeps moisture near the soil's surface, promoting vegetation growth even in the extreme, Arctic conditions of the tundra.

During the summer, this top layer of soil thaws less than 10 centimeters (only a few inches) down, forming numerous shallow lakes, ponds, and bogs. Lichens, mosses, algae, and succulents take advantage of these shallow waters. In turn, they provide food for the caribou and musk ox that are typical of this area.

Eastern Region

This varied region includes the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coastal plain.

North America's older mountain ranges, including the Appalachians, rise near the east coast of the United States and Canada. These areas have been mined for rich deposits of coal and other minerals for hundreds of years.

The Atlantic coastal plain extends from river, marsh, and wetland regions east of the mountains toward the sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast. Wetland areas are a biome of the eastern region and consist of areas of land whose soil is saturated with permanent or seasonal moisture. The Florida Everglades is the largest wetland system in the United States, covering more than 11,137 square kilometers (4,300 square miles) of southern Florida.

The Everglades is a biologically diverse region and contains several bordering ecosystems. Sawgrass marshes are the most iconic plant community of the Everglades and thrive on the slow-moving water of the wetlands. Alligators nest in the sawgrass, while wading birds such as egrets, herons, spoonbills, and ibises make their breeding grounds in other wetland tree species, such as cypress and mangrove.

Caribbean Region

The Caribbean Region includes more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. The region's islands and smaller islets are varied in their topography; some have relatively flat and sandy terrain while others are rugged, mountainous, and volcanic.

The coral reefs and cays of the Caribbean Sea are among the most spectacular biomes in North America. A reef is a ridge of jagged rock, coral, or sand just above or below the surface of the sea. Some coral reefs surround islands, such as the Bahamas, Antigua, and Barbados. Others are found off the Florida Keys, a chain of cays-small islands situated on a coral reef platform-near the southern coast of the U.S. state of Florida.

Coral reefs are made of millions of tiny animals-corals-that form a hard shell around their bodies. This hard surface provides a rich community for algae and plants such as seagrass. Brightly colored tropical fish, as well as sharks, sea turtles, sea stars, and sea horses, are animals native to the Caribbean's coral reefs.

Natural Wonders

North America's varied landscape features many natural wonders. It has deep canyons, such as Copper Canyon in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Denali, the continent's highest peak, stands at 6,194 meters (20,320 feet) within Denali National Park and Preserve in the U.S. state of Alaska. Yellowstone National Park, in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, has some of the world's most active geysers. Canada's Bay of Fundy has the greatest tidal range in the world. The Great Lakes form the planet's largest area of freshwater. The Mississippi River, at 3,730 kilometers (2,320 miles) long, is one of the longest river systems in the world and drains all or parts of 31 U.S. states.

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North America: Physical Geography | National Geographic Society

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North America, the third-largest continent, extends from the tiny Aleutian Islands in the northwest to the Isthmus of Panama in the south. The continent includes the enormous island of Greenland in the northeast and the small island countries and territories that dot the Caribbean Sea and western North Atlantic Ocean.

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South America, the fourth-largest continent, extends from the Gulf of Darién in the northwest to the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in the south.

South America's physical geography, environment and resources, and human geography can be considered separately.

South America can be divided into three physical regions: mountains and highlands, river basins, and coastal plains. Mountains and coastal plains generally run in a north-south direction, while highlands and river basins generally run in an east-west direction.

South America's extreme geographic variation contributes to the continent's large number of biomes. A biome is a community of animals and plants that spreads over an area with a relatively uniform climate.

Within a few hundred kilometers, South America's coastal plains' dry desert biome rises to the rugged alpine biome of the Andes mountains. One of the continent's river basins (the Amazon) is defined by dense, tropical rain forest, while the other (Paraná) is made up of vast grasslands.

With an unparalleled number of plant and animal species, South America's rich biodiversity is unique among the world's continents.

Mountains & Highlands

South America's primary mountain system, the Andes, is also the world's longest. The range covers about 8,850 kilometers (5,500 miles). Situated on the far western edge of the continent, the Andes stretch from the southern tip to the northernmost coast of South America. There are hundreds of peaks more than 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) tall, many of which are volcanic.

The highest peak in the Andes, Aconcagua, stands at 6,962 meters (22,841 feet) and straddles the Argentina-Chile border. Aconcagua is the tallest mountain outside Asia.

High plateaus are also a feature of the Andes. The altiplano of Peru and Bolivia, for example, has an elevation of about 3,700 meters (12,300 feet). The Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile consists of lower-elevation plateaus and rugged glaciers.

Most plants in the alpine biome are small, and their leaves are stiff and strong to protect them from frost and drought. The largest herb in the world, Puya raimondii, is known as the Queen of the Andes. A Puya raimondii can live for 100 years and can grow to more than 9 meters (30 feet) tall. The leaves of this endangered species all grow from one woody stem, allowing moisture to run down the leaves to the base of the plant.

Outside the Andes, South America has two principal highland areas: the Brazilian Highlands and the Guiana Highlands. Located south of the Amazon River in Brazil, the Brazilian Highlands are made up of low mountains and plateaus that rise to an average elevation of 1,006 meters (3,300 feet). The Guiana Highlands are located between the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. The heavily forested plateau of the Guiana Highlands covers southern Venezuela, French Guiana, Guyana, northern Brazil, and a portion of southeastern Colombia.

River Basins

South America has three important river basins: the Amazon, Orinoco, and Paraguay/Paraná.

The Amazon River basin has an area of almost 7 million square kilometers (2.7 million square miles), making it the largest watershed in the world. The basin, which covers most of northern South America, is fed by tributaries from the glaciers of the Andes. Every second, the Amazon River empties 209,000 cubic meters (7,381,000 cubic feet) of freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Amazon River is the life force of the equally vast Amazon rain forest, which makes up about half of the rain forest of the entire planet. This tropical biome has as many as 100 different tree species on a single acre, including the rubber tree, silk cotton tree, and Brazil nut tree. Other important plant species include palms, ferns, and ropelike vines known as lianas that network throughout the rain forest's dense canopy.

The diversity of animal life in the Amazon rain forest is unsurpassed in the rest of the world. The rain forest is perfectly suited for arboreal, or tree-living, animals. More than 2 million species of insects are native to the region, including hundreds of spiders and butterflies. Primates are abundant-howler monkeys, spider monkeys, and capuchin monkeys-along with sloths, snakes, and iguanas. Thousands of native birds include brightly colored macaws, parrots, toucans, and parakeets.

The Orinoco River flows north of the Amazon. The Orinoco flows in a giant arc for more than 2,736 kilometers (1,700 miles), originating in the Guiana Highlands of northern Brazil and discharging in the Atlantic Ocean in Venezuela. The Orinoco River basin covers an area of about 948,000 square kilometers (366,000 square miles) and encompasses approximately 80 percent of Venezuela and 25 percent of Colombia.

A vast savanna or grassland region, known as the Llanos, is the primary biome of the Orinoco River basin. The Llanos is primarily made up of grasses. Swamp grasses, sedges, and bunchgrass are found in wet, low-lying areas. Carpet grass is found in the higher and drier elevations.

Like most grassland biomes, the Llanos is the perfect habitat for many bird species, including the scarlet ibis, bellbird, and umbrellabird. Important river species include the piranha, electric eel, and the Orinoco crocodile, which can reach a length of more than 6 meters (20 feet).

The Paraguay/Paraná River basin covers almost 2.8 million square kilometers (1,081,000 square miles), which is much of southeastern Brazil and Bolivia, Paraguay, and northern Argentina. The Paraná River includes Iguazu Falls, a massive series of waterfalls that extend for 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles).

Along with the Uruguay River, the Paraná River empties into the Rio de la Plata estuary between Argentina and Uruguay. The Rio de la Plata is the most populated region of both countries. The capital cities of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay, practically face each other across the estuary.

The Paraguay/Paraná River basin supplies water to the plains biome, or Pampas, of South America. The Pampas have rich, fertile soil and predictable rainfall patterns. They are the most important grazing and cropland areas on the continent.

Coastal Plains

A coastal plain is an area of low, flat land next to a seacoast. South American coastal plains are found on the northeastern coast of Brazil, on the Atlantic Ocean, and the western, Pacific coast of Peru and Chile. The coastal plains of northeastern Brazil are extremely dry. The Brazilian Highlands act as a wedge that pushes moist sea winds away from the coastal plains.

The western coastal plains are also extremely dry. They are trapped between the cold Peru Current to the west and the Andes Mountains to the east. The Peru Current brings cold water to the Pacific coast of Peru and Chile. This cold surface water results in thermal inversion: cold air at sea level and stable, warmer air higher up. Thermal inversion produces a thick layer of clouds at low altitudes. These low-lying clouds blanket much of the Pacific coast of South America. They do not allow precipitation to form.

The Atacama Desert is part of the western coastal plain. The Atacama is considered the driest region in the world. The average rainfall is about 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) a year, and some parts of the Atacama have never had rain in recorded history.

Very few plants grow in this desert. Even bacteria, insects, and fungi are scarce. Larger animal species are also rare, and include the grey fox, a type of deer called the huemul, and the viscacha-the largest member of the chinchilla family. Ocean birds, such as penguins, cormorants, and pelicans, are found on the desert coast. While Atacama lacks flora and fauna, it is a rich source of copper and a chief source of revenue for the Chilean economy.

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South America: Physical Geography | National Geographic Society

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South America, the fourth-largest continent, extends from the Gulf of Darién in the northwest to the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in the south. South America's physical geography, environment and resources, and human geography can be considered separately. South America can be divided into three physical regions: mountains and highlands, river basins, and coastal plains.

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Research Guides: Library of Congress Geography & Maps: An Illustrated Guide: North and South American Maps

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Maps and atlases have been part of the Library’s collections since its founding in 1800. Since then, the collection has expanded to include globes, aerial photos, special collections, and datasets. This guide explores these diverse holdings.

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The era known as the Age of Exploration, sometimes called the Age of Discovery, officially began in the early 15th century and lasted through the 17th century. The period is characterized as a time when Europeans began exploring the world by sea in search of new trading routes, wealth, and knowledge. The impact of the Age of Exploration would permanently alter the world and transform geography into the modern science it is today.

Impact of the Age of Exploration

The Birth of the Age of Exploration

Many nations were looking for goods such as silver and gold, but one of the biggest reasons for exploration was the desire to find a new route for the spice and silk trades.

When the Ottoman Empire took control of Constantinople in 1453, it blocked European access to the area, severely limiting trade. In addition, it also blocked access to North Africa and the Red Sea, two very important trade routes to the Far East.

The first of the journeys associated with the Age of Discovery were conducted by the Portuguese. Although the Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, and others had been plying the Mediterranean for generations, most sailors kept well within sight of land or traveled known routes between ports. Prince Henry the Navigator changed that, encouraging explorers to sail beyond the mapped routes and discover new trade routes to West Africa.

Portuguese explorers discovered the Madeira Islands in 1419 and the Azores in 1427. Over the coming decades, they would push farther south along the African coast, reaching the coast of present-day Senegal by the 1440s and the Cape of Good Hope by 1490. Less than a decade later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama would follow this route all the way to India.

The Discovery of the New World

While the Portuguese were opening new sea routes along Africa, the Spanish also dreamed of finding new trade routes to the Far East. Christopher Columbus, an Italian working for the Spanish monarchy, made his first journey in 1492. Instead of reaching India, Columbus found the island of San Salvador in what is known today as the Bahamas. He also explored the island of Hispaniola, home of modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Columbus would lead three more voyages to the Caribbean, exploring parts of Cuba and the Central American coast. The Portuguese also reached the New World when explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral explored Brazil, setting off a conflict between Spain and Portugal over the newly claimed lands. As a result, the Treaty of Tordesillas officially divided the world in half in 1494.

Columbus' journeys opened the door for the Spanish conquest of the Americas. During the next century, men such as Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro would decimate the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, and other indigenous peoples of the Americas. By the end of the Age of Exploration, Spain would rule from the Southwestern United States to the southernmost reaches of Chile and Argentina.

Opening the Americas

Great Britain and France also began seeking new trade routes and lands across the ocean. In 1497, John Cabot, an Italian explorer working for the English, reached what is believed to be the coast of Newfoundland. A number of French and English explorers followed, including Giovanni da Verrazano, who discovered the entrance to the Hudson River in 1524, and Henry Hudson, who mapped the island of Manhattan first in 1609.

Over the next decades, the French, Dutch, and British would all vie for dominance. England established the first permanent colony in North America at Jamestown, Va., in 1607. Samuel du Champlain founded Quebec City in 1608, and Holland established a trading outpost in present-day New York City in 1624.

Other important voyages of exploration during this era included Ferdinand Magellan's attempted circumnavigation of the globe, the search for a trade route to Asia through the Northwest Passage, and Captain James Cook's voyages that allowed him to map various areas and travel as far as Alaska.

The End of the Era

The Age of Exploration ended in the early 17th century after technological advancements and increased knowledge of the world allowed Europeans to travel easily across the globe by sea. The creation of permanent settlements and colonies created a network of communication and trade, therefore ending the need to search for new routes.

It is important to note that exploration did not cease entirely at this time. Eastern Australia was not officially claimed for Britain by Capt. James Cook until 1770, while much of the Arctic and Antarctic were not explored until the 20th century. Much of Africa also was unexplored by Westerners until the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Contributions to Science

The Age of Exploration had a significant impact on geography. By traveling to different regions around the globe, explorers were able to learn more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and bring that knowledge back to Europe.

Methods of navigation and mapping improved as a result of the travels of people such as Prince Henry the Navigator. Prior to his expeditions, navigators had used traditional portolan charts, which were based on coastlines and ports of call, keeping sailors close to shore.

The Spanish and Portuguese explorers who journeyed into the unknown created the world's first nautical maps, delineating not just the geography of the lands they found but also the seaward routes and ocean currents that led them there. As technology advanced and known territory expanded, maps and mapmaking became more and more sophisticated.

These explorations also introduced a whole new world of flora and fauna to Europeans. Corn, now a staple of much of the world's diet, was unknown to Westerners until the time of the Spanish conquest, as were sweet potatoes and peanuts. Likewise, Europeans had never seen turkeys, llamas, or squirrels before setting foot in the Americas.

The Age of Exploration served as a stepping stone for geographic knowledge. It allowed more people to see and study various areas around the world, which increased geographic study, giving us the basis for much of the knowledge we have today.

Long-Term Impact

The effects of colonization still persist as well, with many of the world's former colonies still considered the "developing" world and the colonizers the First World countries, holding a majority of the world's wealth and receiving a majority of its annual income.

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The era known as the Age of Exploration, sometimes called the Age of Discovery, officially began in the early 15th century and lasted through the 17th century. The period is characterized as a time when Europeans began exploring the world by sea in search of new trading routes, wealth, and knowledge.

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The Columbian Exchange - American History (#ushistory) in Social Studies Educational Video for Kids

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The Spice Trade & the Age of Exploration

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One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the…

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Newsela | Settlement: Native American Slavery in the Americas

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A scholar says history books should be revised to more realistically depict the scourge of slavery. Many Native Americans and even Europeans were slaves, in addition to Africans.

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Newsela | A brief history of European colonization in Texas

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Newsela | Colonial America Depended on the Enslavement of Indigenous People

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For years, the enslavement of Native Americans throughout colonial America, even in New England, was not included in textbooks.

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Newsela - Clash of Cultures: Cortes Conquers Moctezuma and the Aztecs

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A case of mistaken identity brought the end of the Aztec empire.

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Newsela | Early European explorers of Alta California

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Newsela | The Significance of Spanish Colonial Missions in our National Story

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Spanish Colonial Missions and our Common Heritage with Spain, Mexico and Latin America

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Newsela | First European contacts in North Carolina

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The first European contacts in North Carolina did not go well.

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Newsela | The History of European Immigrants in the United States

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America has long been the most attractive destination for the disaffected from all over the world

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Algonquin Native American attacks French superiority

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A Micmac leader counters French claims that Native Americans are worse off than French traders.

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Before Columbus: Native American cultures

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https://newsela.com/read/lib-history-native-american-cultures/id/23971/

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Newsela | Overview of Native American and colonial relations

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Newsela | North America: Human geography

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A variety of economic, environmental and political issues contributed to the diversity of North America's human population

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Newsela | North America: Physical geography

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North America covers a vast area and features a unique physical geography

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Newsela | Animal Atlas: Meet the animals of North America

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In North America, salmon, caribou, whales and black bears have many amazing adventures.

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Newsela | When did humans settle in North America? 20,000 years before once thought, study says

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Carbon-dating analysis suggests that "deliberately broken" mammoth bone pieces found at a site in New Mexico are 37,000 years old.

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A birds-eye view of North America in 1770

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The 12 different climates of North America

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Newsela | The Americas to 1620: North America on the eve of the European invasion

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Climate change and natural disasters changed the way of life for Native Americans

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Newsela | Lost Cities: Cahokia - why did North America's largest city vanish?

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Newsela | The physical geography of South America

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The physical geography of the fourth-largest continent is divided into three regions: mountains and highlands, river basins, and coastal plains.

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Newsela | South America: Human geography

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South America has a rich cultural diversity

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Newsela | People and society in the Americas

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An exploration of recent and historic issues facing Indigenous and non-white people throughout the Americas.

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October is upon us, bringing with it the excitement of Halloween, harvest markets, Oktoberfest and upcoming holiday feasts. But in your haste to indulge in all these tasty events, don’t forget about the holiday that sometimes gets overlooked in all the excitement—Columbus Day.

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Newsela | Columbian Exchange: Spreading Ideas, and Diseases, for Good and Ill

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Societies in Afro-Eurasia exchanged goods, ideas, people, and diseases for centuries. When world travel became possible, these exchanges became more important, and more dangerous.

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Newsela | Back and Forth Across the Atlantic in the Columbian Exchange

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Mercantilism, an economic theory that rejected free trade and promoted government regulation of the economy for the purpose of enhancing state power, defined the economic policy of European colonizing countries.

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.

The process by which commodities, people, and diseases crossed the Atlantic is known as the Columbian Exchange.

Commerce in the New World

As Europeans expanded their market reach into the colonial sphere, they devised a new economic policy to ensure the colonies' profitability. The philosophy of mercantilism shaped European perceptions of wealth from the 1500s to the late 1700s. Mercantilism held that only a limited amount of wealth, as measured in gold and silver bullion, existed in the world. In order to gain power, nations had to amass wealth by mining these precious raw materials from their colonial possessions. Mercantilists did not believe in free trade, arguing instead that the nation should control trade to create wealth and to enhance state power. In this view, colonies existed to strengthen the colonizing nation.

Colonial mercantilism, a set of protectionist policies designed to benefit the colonizing nation, relied on several factors:

Colonies rich in raw materials

Cheap labor

Colonial loyalty to the home government

Control of the shipping trade

Under this system, the colonies sent their raw materials-harvested by enslaved people or native workers-to Europe. European industry then produced and sent finished materials-like textiles, tools, manufactured goods, and clothing-back to the colonies. Colonists were forbidden from trading with other countries.

Commodification quickly affected production in the New World. American silver, tobacco, and other items-which were used by native peoples for ritual purposes-became European commodities with monetary value. Before the arrival of the Spanish, for example, the Inca people of the Andes consumed chicha, a corn beer, for ritual purposes only. When the Spanish discovered chicha, they bought and traded for it, detracting from its spiritual significance for market gain. This process disrupted native economies and spurred early commercial capitalism.

The Columbian Exchange: goods introduced by Europe, produced in New World

As Europeans traversed the Atlantic, they brought with them plants, animals, and diseases that changed lives and landscapes on both sides of the ocean. These two-way exchanges between the Americas and Europe/Africa are known collectively as the Columbian Exchange.

Of all the commodities in the Atlantic World, sugar proved to be the most important. Indeed, in the colonial era, sugar carried the same economic importance as oil does today. European rivals raced to create sugar plantations in the Americas and fought wars for control of production. Although refined sugar was available in the Old World, Europe's harsher climate made sugarcane difficult to grow. Columbus brought sugar to Hispaniola in 1493, and the new crop thrived. Over the next century of colonization, Caribbean islands and most other tropical areas became centers of sugar production, which in turn fueled the demand to enslave Africans for labor.

The Columbian Exchange: from the New World to the Old World

Though of secondary importance to sugar, tobacco also had great value for Europeans as a cash crop -a crop cultivated for sale instead of personal consumption. Native Americans had been growing tobacco for medicinal and ritual purposes for centuries before European contact, believing tobacco could improve concentration and enhance wisdom. To some, its use meant achieving an entranced, altered, or divine state.

Tobacco was unknown in Europe before 1492, and it carried a negative stigma at first. The early Spanish explorers considered native people's use of tobacco to be proof of their savagery. However, European colonists then took up the habit of smoking, and they brought it across the Atlantic. Europeans ascribed medicinal properties to tobacco, claiming that it could cure headaches and skin irritations. Even so, Europeans did not import tobacco in great quantities until the 1590s. At that time, it became the first truly global commodity; English, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese colonists all grew it for the world market.

Native peoples also introduced Europeans to chocolate, made from cacao seeds and used by the Aztec in Mesoamerica as currency. Mesoamerican Indians consumed unsweetened chocolate in a drink with chili peppers, vanilla, and a spice called achiote. This chocolate drink- xocolatl -was part of ritual ceremonies like marriage. Chocolate contains theobromine, a stimulant, which may be why native people believed it brought them closer to the sacred world.

The Columbian Exchange: from the Old World to the New World

The crossing of the Atlantic by plants like cacao and tobacco illustrates the ways in which the discovery of the New World changed the habits and behaviors of Europeans. Europeans changed the New World in turn, not least by bringing Old World animals to the Americas. On his second voyage, Christopher Columbus brought pigs, cows, chickens, and horses to the islands of the Caribbean. Many Native Americans used horses to transform their hunting and gathering into a highly mobile practice.

Travelers between the Americas, Africa, and Europe also included microbes: silent, invisible life forms that had profoundly devastating consequences. Native peoples had no immunity to Old World diseases to which they had never been exposed. European explorers unwittingly brought with them chickenpox, measles, mumps, and smallpox, decimating some populations and wholly destroying others. One disease did travel the other direction- syphilis, a lethal sexually transmitted disease, came with travelers from the New World to Europe for the first time.

What do you think?

What was the best commodity introduced to the New World by the Columbian Exchange? What was the worst?

How did the Columbian Exchange shift cultural norms of Native Americans? Of European colonizers?

Try to draw your own diagram of the Columbian Exchange on a world map.

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The Columbian Exchange (article) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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What is Columbian Exchange? How did it impact the New World?

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they brought their stuff with them, and later took some stuff from the Americas back to Europe as well. In that manner there was an exchange of goods and ideas, which came to be known as the Columbian Exchange.

The Columbian Exchange was a widespread transfer of animals, plants, culture, technologies, diseases, people, and ideas between the Old World (Europe, Africa, and Asia) and the New World (the Americas) in the decades following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492. This exchange devastated the population of the Americas and led to widespread slavery of Africans. And as a result of the Columbian Exchange, while fewer people have starved since 1492, the diversity of life on earth has diminished dramatically, and planting crops where they don't belong has hurt the environment.

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Columbian Exchange |Museum of the Coastal Bend | Victoria, TX

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What is Columbian Exchange? How did it impact the New World? When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they brought their stuff with them, and later took some stuff from the Americas back to Europe as well. In that manner there was an exchange of goods and ideas, which came to be known as the Columbian Exchange.

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The Effects of the Columbian Exchange | PBS LearningMedia

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Learn about the Columbian Exchange, the movement of plants, animals, and disease between the Americas and the rest of the world, in these video segments from Chronoscope: Exploring 1492: "Columbian Exchange." The positive and negative consequences of the Exchange became clear almost immediately.

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*Note—You do not need to complete the Enrichment Activity on the bottom.

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The Age of Exploration brought together people from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the , often for the first time. When people meet, they often exchange something. It can be a thing (a piece of silk) or an idea (the way to make silk). It can even be a disease.

Two main types of exchanges took place during the Age of Exploration. Biological exchanges include living things such as plants, animals, and diseases. Cultural exchanges include goods, technology, and ideas.

The spread of plants, animals, and diseases was one of the biggest effects of the Age of Exploration. Letï¿½s look at some examples of how biological exchanges affected people around the world.

The exchanges that began during this period affected the way people lived on every continent. Youï¿½ve already seen several examples of this impact in Chapter 33 of History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond. Here we take a deeper look.

Biological Exchanges: Plants, Animals, and Diseases

Explorers and conquistadors brought many new plants to the . They brought European crops such as barley and rye. They brought wheat, which was originally from the The Americas Middle East. They brought plants that had originally come from Asia, including sugar, bananas, yams, citrus fruit, coffee, rice, and sugarcane.

Increasing contact between people led to many exchanges of goods, technology, and ideas. Here are some examples of how cultural exchanges affected peopleï¿½s lives around the world.

The arrival of Europeans in the had many long-lasting effects. One devastating impact was the destruction of the Aztec and Inca Empires. Guns, a European technology, helped the conquistadors conquer these great empires. Over time, guns also changed Native American warfare and enabled Indians to fight more effectively against white settlers.

The desire for riches was a major reason that Europeans explored the . As you learned in Chapter 33, gold and silver from the changed European economies. Goods from Africa and Asia, such as gold and spices, also changed life in

The slave trade had an enormous impact on Africa, especially in

In

Use the information from the essay as well as from Chapter 33 of History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond to complete the following chart.

1. For each region in the chart, list an example of a biological exchange (plant, animal, or disease) that affected that region. Then draw an appropriate visual to illustrate your example. In the next column, briefly indicate the impact of the exchange on the region and its people.

2. Repeat Step 1 for cultural exchanges.

Biological and Cultural Exchanges and Their Impacts Asia, contact with Europeans led to the spread of the Christian religion. European missionaries made converts in India, China, Japan, the East Indies, and thePhilippines. In , Islam also spread as Muslims competed with the Portuguese for control of trade.

At various times, both China and resisted the influence of foreign traders and missionaries. As a result, Europeans had a limited impact on these countries during this period. As you have learned, some Japanese and Chinese adopted Christianity. Warfare in changed as the Japanese learned about guns from Europeans. Europeans also imported new goods into , including tobacco. The Chinese learned about new scientific instruments from European missionaries. Some European books were published in Chinese, especially scientific books.

In many ways, the Age of Exploration was the beginning of today's global society. Can you think of examples of biological and cultural exchanges that are happening today?

West Africa. Slavery forever changed the lives of millions of enslaved Africans who were taken to the . It also affected the lives of other Africans. Tribal wars erupted as chiefs sought captives to sell as slaves. Europeans interfered in African political affairs as they supported one chief over another in the hope of getting slaves.

European religion and languages had a relatively small impact on most of Africa during this period. Some Africans became Christians. Some also learned Portuguese. Europeans would have a much larger effect on African life when they established huge colonies in Africa in the 1800s and 1900s.

Europe.

Over time, Europeans established colonies in the . Many natural resources and luxury items flowed from the colonies to Europe. From North America, Europeans got tobacco, fish, furs, and whale oil. Raw materials such as cotton fed the growth of manufacturing industries and trade. Europeans also acquired new knowledge. For example, they learned farming techniques from Native Americans that helped them survive in the .

Two other important imports from Europe were language and religion. In southern North America, Central America, and South America, many native people learned Spanish and Portuguese. They often combined these languages with their own to create new dialects. Many also became Roman Catholic because of the influence of Spanish and Portuguese missionaries. New forms of religion arose as native people blended Christianity with their own beliefs.

Cultural Exchanges: Goods, Technology, and Ideas
Diseases and animals from the had relatively little impact on other continents. However, new plants and crops from the changed peopleï¿½s lives all over the world.

Europeans brought many native plants from the Americas back to Europe. People in Europe were introduced to maize (a type of corn), potatoes and sweet potatoes, beans and squashes, tomatoes, avocados, papaya, pineapples, peanuts, chili peppers, and cacao (the raw form of cocoa).

New crops from changed how Europeans lived and farmed. The potato, for example, had an enormous impact. It was nutritious and easy to grow. It helped people create a stable food supply. As a result, the population surged. Eventually, the growth in population contributed to major social changes, such as the Industrial Revolution.

Plants and crops from the Americas also spread to Africa and Asia. They transformed peopleï¿½s diets and lives on those continents, too. Maize became a staple food in North Africa, Egypt, southern Africa, China, and . Peanuts and cassava (an eatable root) provided new foods to West Africa. The chili pepper became a popular ingredient in Asian cooking.

The potato influenced Asia as well as Europe. Because potatoes grow well in the mountains, the Chinese were encouraged to settle in mountainous areas. The sweet potato became the third most important crop in , after rice and wheat.

New plants created new economies in the . They also contributed to the creation of huge slave societies. By the 1600s, the Portuguese were growing sugar, bananas, and citrus fruit on large plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean. They began importing African slaves to work on these plantations. This was the beginning of a slave trade that uprooted millions of Africans over the next few centuries. Later, African slaves were brought to the American South to grow cotton, tobacco, rice, and other crops.

In addition to plants, Europeans brought domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses. Eventually, people began to breed horses, cattle, and sheep in North America, Mexico, and South America. With the introduction of cattle, many people took up ranching as a way of life. Cattle took over native grasslands as well as areas that Native Americans had used for growing food.

In North America, the horse dramatically changed how many Native Americans lived. They soon learned to use horses for hunting and warfare. Several groups gave up farming and became nomads who hunted buffalo.

Along with new plants and animals, Europeans also brought deadly diseases. This biological exchange had the greatest impact of all on Native Americans. Native people had no resistance to such diseases as measles, smallpox, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus. Millions fell sick and died. Diseases brought by Europeans wiped out as much as 90 percent of the native population of the .

With so many people dying, there was a huge shortage of available workers in the . This was one reason Europeans turned to African slaves to work their plantations. In this way, the new diseases had an indirect impact on Africa as well.

Over the next few centuries, the arrival of African slaves changed the makeup of the population in the . The population also changed because of marriages between Europeans and native people. The children of these marriages were or a mixture of races. Europeans, Africans, and mestizos eventually replaced much of the native population.

Europe, Africa, and Asia The Americas Europe Africa Asia Enrichment Activity

History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, Enrichment Essay

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Biological and Cultural Exchanges During the Age of Exploration

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The Age of Exploration brought together people from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the , often for the first time. When people meet, they often exchange something. It can be a thing (a piece of silk) or an idea (the way to make silk). It can even be a disease.

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Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas

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Theodor de Bry, "Negotiating Peace With the Indians," 1634 / Virginia Historical Society
By Erin Bonuso Kramer
PhD Candidate in Early American History
University of Wisconsin

Introduction

The Columbian Exchange transformed both sides of the Atlantic, but with dramatically disparate outcomes. New diseases wiped out entire civilizations in the Americas, while newly imported nutrient-rich foodstuffs enabled a European population boom. Spain benefited most immediately as the wealth of the Aztec and Incan Empires strengthened the Spanish monarchy. Spain used its new riches to gain an advantage over other European nations, but this advantage was soon contested.

Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and England all raced to the New World, eager to match the gains of the Spanish. Native peoples greeted the new visitors with responses ranging from welcoming cooperation to aggressive violence, but the ravages of disease and the possibility of new trading relationships enabled Europeans to create settlements all along the western rim of the Atlantic world. New empires would emerge from these tenuous beginnings, and by the end of the seventeenth century, Spain would lose its privileged position to its rivals. An age of colonization had begun and, with it, a great collision of cultures commenced.

Spanish America

Spain extended its reach in the Americas after reaping the benefits of its colonies in Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America. Expeditions slowly began combing the continent and bringing Europeans into the modern-day United States in the hopes of establishing religious and economic dominance in a new territory.

Juan Ponce de Leon arrived in the area named "La Florida" in 1513. He found between 150,000 and 300,000 Native Americans. But then two-and-a-half centuries of contact with European and African peoples-whether through war, slave raids, or, most dramatically, foreign disease-decimated Florida's indigenous population. European explorers, meanwhile, had hoped to find great wealth in Florida, but reality never aligned with their imaginations.
1513 Atlantic map from cartographer Martin Waldseemuller. / Wikimedia Commons
In the first half of the sixteenth century, Spanish colonizers fought frequently with Florida's native peoples as well as with other Europeans. In the 1560s Spain expelled French Protestants, called Huguenots, from the area near modern-day Jacksonville in northeast Florida. In 1586 English privateer Sir Francis Drake burned the wooden settlement of St. Augustine. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, Spain's reach in Florida extended from the mouth of the St. Johns River south to the environs of St. Augustine-an area of roughly 1,000 square miles. The Spaniards attempted to duplicate methods for establishing control used previously in Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Andes. The Crown granted missionaries the right to live among Timucua and Guale villagers in the late 1500s and early 1600s and encouraged settlement through the encomienda system (grants of Indian labor).

In the 1630s, the mission system extended into the Apalachee district in the Florida panhandle. The Apalachee, one of the most powerful tribes in Florida at the time of contact, claimed the territory from the modern Florida-Georgia border to the Gulf of Mexico. Apalachee farmers grew an abundance of corn and other crops. Indian traders carried surplus products east along the Camino Real, the royal road that connected the western anchor of the mission system with St. Augustine. Spanish settlers drove cattle eastward across the St. Johns River and established ranches as far west as Apalachee. Still, Spain held Florida tenuously.

Further west, Juan de Oñate led 400 settlers, soldiers, and missionaries from Mexico into New Mexico in 1598. The Spanish Southwest had brutal beginnings. When Oñate sacked the Pueblo city of Acoma, the "sky city," the Spaniards slaughtered nearly half of its roughly 1,500 inhabitants, including women and children. Oñate ordered one foot cut off of every surviving male over 15 and he enslaved the remaining women and children. ¹

Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest, was established in 1610. Few Spaniards relocated to the southwest due to the distance from Mexico City and the dry and hostile environment. Thus, the Spanish never achieved a commanding presence in the region. By 1680, only about 3,000 colonists called Spanish New Mexico home. There, they traded with and exploited the local Puebloan peoples. The region's Puebloan population had plummeted from as many as 60,000 in 1600 to about 17,000 in 1680.

Spain shifted strategies after the military expeditions wove their way through the southern and western half of North America. Missions became the engine of colonization in North America. Missionaries, most of whom were members of the Franciscan religious order, provided Spain with an advance guard in North America. Catholicism had always justified Spanish conquest, and colonization always carried religious imperatives. By the early seventeenth century, Spanish friars established dozens of missions along the Rio Grande, in New Mexico, and in California.

Spain's Rivals Emerge
The earliest plan of New Amsterdam (now Manhattan). 1660. / Wikimedia Commons
While Spain plundered the New World, unrest plagued Europe. The Reformation threw England and France, the two European powers capable of contesting Spain, into turmoil. Long and expensive conflicts drained time, resources, and lives. Millions died from religious violence in France alone. As the violence diminished in Europe, however, religious and political rivalries continued in the New World.

The Spanish exploitation of New Spain's riches inspired European monarchs to invest in exploration and conquest. Reports of Spanish atrocities spread throughout Europe and provided a humanitarian justification for European colonization. An English reprint of the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas bore the sensational title: "Popery Truly Display'd in its Bloody Colours: Or, a Faithful Narrative of the Horrid and Unexampled Massacres, Butcheries, and all manners of Cruelties that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish Spanish." An English writer explained that the Indians "were simple and plain men, and lived without great labour," but in their lust for gold the Spaniards "forced the people (that were not used to labour) to stand all the daie in the hot sun gathering gold in the sand of the rivers. By this means a great number of them (not used to such pains) died, and a great number of them (seeing themselves brought from so quiet a life to such misery and slavery) of desperation killed themselves. And many would not marry, because they would not have their children slaves to the Spaniards." ² The Spanish accused their critics of fostering a "Black Legend." The Black Legend drew on religious differences and political rivalries. Spain had successful conquests in France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands and left many in those nations yearning to break free from Spanish influence. English writers argued that Spanish barbarities were foiling a tremendous opportunity for the expansion of Christianity across the globe and that a benevolent conquest of the New World by non-Spanish monarchies offered the surest salvation of the New World's pagan masses. With these religious justifications, and with obvious economic motives, Spain's rivals arrived in the New World.

The French crown subsidized exploration in the early sixteenth century. Early French explorers sought a fabled Northwest Passage, a mythical waterway passing through the North American continent to Asia. Despite the wealth of the New World, Asia's riches still beckoned to Europeans. Canada's Saint Lawrence River at first glance appeared to be such a passage, stretching deep into the continent and into the Great Lakes. French colonial possessions centered on these bodies of water (and, later, down the Mississippi River to the port of New Orleans).

French colonization developed through investment from private trading companies. Traders established Port-Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia) in 1603 and launched trading expeditions that stretched down the Atlantic coast as far as Cape Cod. The needs of the fur trade set the future pattern of French colonization. Founded in 1608 under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain, Quebec provided the foothold for what would become New France. French fur traders placed a higher value on cooperating with the Indians than on establishing a successful French colonial footprint. Asserting dominance in the region could have been to their own detriment, as it might have compromised their access to skilled Indian trappers, and therefore wealth. Few Frenchmen traveled to the New World to settle permanently. In fact, few traveled at all. Many persecuted French Protestants (Huguenots) sought to emigrate after France criminalized Protestantism in 1685, but all non-Catholics were forbidden in New France.
Jean-Pierre Lassus, "Veüe et Perspective de la Nouvelle Orleans," 1726, Centre des archives d'outre-mer, France. This depiction of New Orleans in 1726 when it was an 8-year-old French frontier settlement. / Wikimedia Commons
The French preference for trade over permanent settlement fostered more cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships with Native Americans than was typical among the Spanish and English. Perhaps eager to debunk the anti-Catholic elements of the Black Legend, the French worked to cultivate cooperation with Indians. Jesuit missionaries, for instance, adopted different conversion strategies than the Spanish Franciscans. Spanish missionaries brought Indians into enclosed missions, whereas Jesuits more often lived with or alongside Indian groups. Many French fur traders married Indian women. The offspring of Indian women and French men were so common in New France that the French developed a word for these children, Métis(sage). The Huron people developed a particularly close relationship with the French and many converted to Christianity and engaged in the fur trade. But close relationships with the French would come at a high cost. The Huron, for instance, were decimated by the ravages of European disease, and entanglements in French and Dutch conflicts proved disastrous. Despite this, some native peoples maintained distant alliances with the French.

Pressure from the powerful Iroquois in the east pushed many Algonquian-speaking peoples toward French territory in the mid-seventeenth century and together they crafted what historians have called a "middle ground," a kind of cross-cultural space that allowed for native and European interaction, negotiation, and accommodation. French traders adopted-sometimes clumsily-the gift-giving and mediation strategies expected of native leaders and natives engaged the impersonal European market and submitted-often haphazardly-to European laws. The Great Lakes "middle ground" experienced tumultuous success throughout the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries until English colonial officials and American settlers swarmed the region. The pressures of European expansion strained even the closest bonds. ³

The Netherlands, a small maritime nation with great wealth, achieved considerable colonial success. In 1581, the Netherlands had officially broken away from the Hapsburgs and won a reputation as the freest of the new European nations. Dutch women maintained separate legal identities from their husbands and could therefore hold property and inherit full estates.

Ravaged by the turmoil of the Reformation, the Dutch embraced greater religious tolerance and freedom of the press than other European nations. Radical Protestants, Catholics, and Jews flocked to the Netherlands. The English Pilgrims, for instance, fled first to the Netherlands before sailing to the New World years later. The Netherlands built its colonial empire through the work of experienced merchants and skilled sailors. The Dutch were the most advanced capitalists in the modern world and marshaled extensive financial resources by creating innovative financial organizations such as the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and the East India Company. Although the Dutch offered liberties, they offered very little democracy-power remained in the hands of only a few. And even Dutch liberties had their limits. The Dutch advanced the slave trade and brought African slaves with them to the New World. Slavery was an essential part of Dutch capitalist triumphs.

Sharing the European hunger for access to Asia, in 1609 the Dutch commissioned the Englishman Henry Hudson to discover the fabled Northwest Passage through North America. He failed, of course, but nevertheless found the Hudson River and claimed modern-day New York for the Dutch. There they established New Netherland, an essential part of the Netherlands' New World empire. The Netherlands chartered the Dutch West India Company in 1621 and established colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. The island of Manhattan provided a launching pad from which to support its Caribbean colonies and attack Spanish trade.

Spiteful of the Spanish and mindful of the "Black Legend," the Dutch were determined not to repeat Spanish atrocities. They fashioned guidelines for New Netherlands that conformed to the ideas of Hugo Grotius, a legal philosopher who believed native peoples possessed the same natural rights as Europeans. Colony leaders insisted that land be purchased; in 1626 Peter Minuit therefore "bought" Manhattan from Munsee Indians. Despite the honorable intentions, it is very likely that the Dutch paid the wrong Indians for the land (either intentionally or unintentionally) or that the Munsee and the Dutch understood the transaction in very different terms. Transactions like these illustrated both the Dutch attempt to find a more peaceful process of colonization and the inconsistency between European and Native American understandings of property.

Like the French, the Dutch sought to profit, not to conquer. Trade with Native peoples became New Netherland's central economic activity. Dutch traders carried wampum along pre-existing Native trade routes and exchanged it for beaver pelts. Wampum consisted of shell beads fashioned by Algonquian Indians on the southern New England coast, and were valued as a ceremonial and diplomatic commodity among the Iroquois. Wampum became a currency that could buy anything from a loaf of bread to a plot of land.

In addition to developing these trading networks, the Dutch also established farms, settlements, and lumber camps. The West India Company directors implemented the patroon system to encourage colonization. The patroon system granted large estates to wealthy landlords, who subsequently paid passage for the tenants to work their land. Expanding Dutch settlements correlated with deteriorating relations with local Indians. In the interior of the continent the Dutch retained valuable alliances with the Iroquois to maintain Beverwijck, modern-day Albany, as a hub for the fur trade. In the places where the Dutch built permanent settlements, the ideals of peaceful colonization succumbed to the settlers' increasing demand for land. Armed conflicts erupted as colonial settlements encroached on Native villages and hunting lands. Profit and peace, it seemed, could not coexist.

Labor shortages, meanwhile, crippled Dutch colonization. The patroon system failed to bring enough tenants and the colony could not attract a sufficient number of indentured servants to satisfy the colony's backers. In response, the colony imported 11 company-owned slaves in 1626, the same year that Minuit purchased Manhattan. Slaves were tasked with building New Amsterdam (modern-day New York City), including a defensive wall along the northern edge of the colony (the site of modern-day Wall Street). They created its roads and maintained its all-important port. Fears of racial mixing led the Dutch to import enslaved women, enabling the formation of African Dutch families. The colony's first African marriage occurred in 1641, and by 1650 there were at least 500 African slaves in the colony. By 1660 New Amsterdam had the largest urban slave population on the continent. ⁴

As was typical of the practice of African slavery in much of the early seventeenth century, Dutch slavery in New Amsterdam was less comprehensively exploitative than later systems of American slavery. Some enslaved Africans, for instance, successfully sued for back wages. When several company-owned slaves fought for the colony against the Munsee Indians, they petitioned for their freedom and won a kind of "half freedom" that allowed them to work their own land in return for paying a large tithe, or tax, to their masters. The children of this "half-free" laborers were held in bondage by the West India Company, however. The Dutch, who so proudly touted their liberties, grappled with the reality of African slavery, and some New Netherlanders protested the enslavement of Christianized Africans. The economic goals of the colony slowly crowded out these cultural and religious objections, and the much boasted liberties of the Dutch came to exist alongside increasingly brutal systems of slavery.

The Portugese

The Portuguese had been leaders in Atlantic navigation well ahead of Columbus's voyage. But the incredible wealth flowing from New Spain piqued the rivalry between the two Iberian countries, and accelerated Portuguese colonization efforts. This rivalry created a crisis within the Catholic world as Spain and Portugal squared off in a battle for colonial supremacy. The Pope intervened and divided the New World with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. Land east of the Tordesillas Meridian, an imaginary line dividing South America, would be given to Portugal, whereas land west of the line was reserved for Spanish conquest. In return for the license to conquer, both Portugal and Spain were instructed to treat the natives with Christian compassion and to bring them under the protection of the Church.

Lucrative colonies in Africa and India initially preoccupied Portugal, but by 1530 the Portuguese turned their attention to the land that would become Brazil, driving out French traders and establishing permanent settlements. Gold and silver mines dotted the interior of the colony, but two industries powered early colonial Brazil: sugar and the slave trade. In fact, over the entire history of the Atlantic slave trade, more Africans were enslaved in Brazil than any other colony in the Atlantic World. Gold mines emerged in greater number throughout the eighteenth century, but still never rivaled the profitability of sugar or slave-trading.

Jesuit missionaries succeeded in bringing Christianity to Brazil, but strong elements of African and native spirituality mixed with orthodox Catholicism to create a unique religious culture. This culture resulted from the demographics of Brazilian slavery. High mortality rates on sugar plantations required a steady influx of new slaves, thus perpetuating the cultural connection between Brazil and Africa. The reliance on new imports of slaves increased the likelihood of resistance, however, and escaped slaves managed to create several free settlements, called quilombos. These settlements drew from both African and Native slaves, and despite frequent attacks, several endured throughout the long history of Brazilian slavery.

Despite the arrival of these new Europeans, Spain continued to dominate the New World. The wealth flowing from the exploitation of the Aztec and Incan Empires greatly eclipsed the profits of other European nations. But this dominance would not last long. By the end of the sixteenth century, the powerful Spanish Armada would be destroyed, and the English would begin to rule the waves.

English Colonization
Nicholas Hilliard, The Battle of Gravelines, 1588 / National Geographic España
Spain had a one-hundred year head start on New World colonization and a jealous England eyed the enormous wealth that Spain gleaned. The Protestant Reformation had shaken England but Elizabeth I assumed the English crown in 1558 and oversaw the expansion of trade and exploration-and the literary achievements of Shakespeare and Marlowe-during England's so-called "golden age." English mercantilism, a state-assisted manufacturing and trading system, created and maintained markets, ensured a steady supply of consumers and laborers, stimulated economic expansion, and increased English wealth.

However, wrenching social and economic changes unsettled the English population. The island's population increased from fewer than three million in 1500 to over five million by the middle of the seventeenth century. The skyrocketing cost of land coincided with plummeting farming income. Rents and prices rose but wages stagnated. Moreover, movements to enclose public land-sparked by the transition of English landholders from agriculture to livestock-raising-evicted tenants from the land and created hordes of landless, jobless peasants that haunted the cities and countryside. One-quarter to one-half of the population lived in extreme poverty.

New World colonization won support in England amid a time of rising English fortunes among the wealthy, a tense Spanish rivalry, and mounting internal social unrest. But English colonization supporters always touted more than economic gains and mere national self-interest. They claimed to be doing God's work.

Many cited spiritual concerns and argued that colonization would glorify God, England, and Protestantism by Christianizing the New World's pagan peoples. Advocates such as Richard Hakluyt the Younger and John Dee, for instance, drew upon The History of the Kings of Britain, written by the twelfth century monk Geoffrey of Monmouth, and its mythical account of King Arthur's conquest and Christianization of pagan lands to justify American conquest. Moreover, promoters promised that the conversion of New World Indians would satisfy God and glorify England's "Virgin Queen," Elizabeth I, who was verging on a near-divine image among the English. The English-and other European Protestant colonizers-imagined themselves superior to the Spanish, who still bore the Black Legend of inhuman cruelty. English colonization, supporters argued, would prove that superiority.

In his 1584 "Discourse on Western Planting," Richard Hakluyt amassed the supposed religious, moral, and exceptional economic benefits of colonization. He repeated the "Black Legend" of Spanish New World terrorism and attacked the sins of Catholic Spain. He promised that English colonization could strike a blow against Spanish heresy and bring Protestant religion to the New World. English interference, Hakluyt suggested, may provide the only salvation from Catholic rule in the New World. The New World, too, he said, offered obvious economic advantages. Trade and resource extraction would enrich the English treasury. England, for instance, could find plentiful materials to outfit a world-class navy. Moreover, he said, the New World could provide an escape for England's vast armies of landless "vagabonds." Expanded trade, he argued, would not only bring profit, but also provide work for England's jobless poor. A Christian enterprise, a blow against Spain, an economic stimulus, and a social safety valve all beckoned the English toward a commitment to colonization. ⁵

This noble rhetoric veiled the coarse economic motives that brought England to the New World. New economic structures and a new merchant class paved the way for colonization. England's merchants lacked estates but they had new plans to build wealth. By collaborating with new government-sponsored trading monopolies and employing financial innovations such as joint-stock companies, England's merchants sought to improve on the Dutch economic system. Spain was extracting enormous material wealth from the New World; why shouldn't England? Joint-stock companies, the ancestors of the modern corporations, became the initial instruments of colonization. With government monopolies, shared profits, and managed risks, these money-making ventures could attract and manage the vast capital needed for colonization. In 1606 James I approved the formation of the Virginia Company (named after Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen").

Rather than formal colonization, however, the most successful early English ventures in the New World were a form of state-sponsored piracy known as privateering. Queen Elizabeth sponsored sailors, or "Sea Dogges," such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake, to plunder Spanish ships and towns in the Americas. Privateers earned a substantial profit both for themselves and for the English crown. England practiced piracy on a scale, one historian wrote, "that transforms crime into politics." ⁶ Francis Drake harried Spanish ships throughout the Western Hemisphere and raided Spanish caravans as far away as the coast of Peru on the Pacific Ocean. In 1580 Elizabeth rewarded her skilled pirate with knighthood. But Elizabeth walked a fine line. With Protestant-Catholic tensions already running high, English privateering provoked Spain. Tensions worsened after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic. In 1588, King Philip II of Spain unleashed the fabled Armada. With 130 Ships, 8,000 sailors, and 18,000 soldiers, Spain launched the largest invasion in history to destroy the British navy and depose Elizabeth.

An island nation, England depended upon a robust navy for trade and territorial expansion. England had fewer ships than Spain but they were smaller and swifter. They successfully harassed the Armada, forcing it to retreat to the Netherlands for reinforcements. But then a fluke storm, celebrated in England as the "divine wind," annihilated the remainder of the fleet. The destruction of the Armada changed the course of world history. It not only saved England and secured English Protestantism, but it also opened the seas to English expansion and paved the way for England's colonial future. By 1600, England stood ready to embark upon its dominance over North America.

English colonization would look very different from Spanish or French colonization, as was indicated by early experiences with the Irish. England had long been trying to conquer Catholic Ireland. The English used a model of forcible segregation with the Irish that would mirror their future relationships with Native Americans. Rather than integrating with the Irish and trying to convert them to Protestantism, England more often simply seized land through violence and pushed out the former inhabitants, leaving them to move elsewhere or to die.

English colonization, however, began haltingly. Sir Humphrey Gilbert labored throughout the late-sixteenth century to establish a colony in New Foundland but failed. In 1587, with a predominantly male cohort of 150 English colonizers, John White reestablished an abandoned settlement on North Carolina's Roanoke Island. Supply shortages prompted White to return to England for additional support but the Spanish Armada and the mobilization of British naval efforts stranded him in Britain for several years. When he finally returned to Roanoke, he found the colony abandoned. What befell the failed colony? White found the word "Croatan," the name of a nearby island and Indian people, carved into a tree or a post in the abandoned colony. Historians presume the colonists, short of food, may have fled for the nearby island and its settled native population. Others offer violence as an explanation. Regardless, the English colonists were never heard from again. When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, no Englishmen had yet established a permanent North American colony.

After King James made peace with Spain in 1604, privateering no longer held out the promise of cheap wealth. Colonization assumed a new urgency. The Virginia Company, established in 1606, drew inspiration from Cortes and the Spanish conquests. It hoped to find gold and silver as well as other valuable trading commodities in the New World: glass, iron, furs, pitch, tar, and anything else the country could supply. The Company planned to identify a navigable river with a deep harbor, away from the eyes of the Spanish. There they would find an Indian trading network and extract a fortune from the New World.

Jamestown
"Incolarum Virginiae piscandi ratio (The Method of Fishing of the Inhabitants of Virginia)," c1590 / Encyclopedia Virginia
In April 1607 Englishmen aboard three ships-the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery -sailed forty miles up the James River (named for the English king) in present-day Virginia (Named for Elizabeth I, the "Virgin Queen") and settled upon just such a place. The uninhabited peninsula they selected was upriver and out of sight of Spanish patrols. It offered easy defense against ground assaults and was uninhabited but still located close enough to many Indian villages and their potentially lucrative trade networks. But the location was a disaster. Indians ignored the peninsula because of its terrible soil and its brackish tidal water that led to debilitating disease. Despite these setbacks, the English built Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the present-day United States.

The English had not entered a wilderness but had arrived amid a people they called the Powhatan Confederacy. Powhatan, or Wahunsenacawh, as he called himself, led nearly 10,000 Algonquian-speaking Indians in the Chesapeake. They burned vast acreage to clear brush and create sprawling artificial park-like grasslands so that they could easily hunt deer, elk, and bison. The Powhatan raised corn, beans, squash, and possibly sunflowers, rotating acreage throughout the Chesapeake. Without plows, manure, or draft animals, the Powhatan achieved a remarkable number of calories cheaply and efficiently.

Jamestown was a profit-seeking venture backed by investors. The colonists were mostly gentlemen and proved entirely unprepared for the challenges ahead. They hoped for easy riches but found none. As John Smith later complained, they "Would rather starve than work." ⁷ And so they did. Disease and starvation ravaged the colonists, thanks in part to the peninsula's unhealthy location and the fact that supplies from England arrived sporadically or spoiled. Fewer than half of the original colonists survived the first nine months.

John Smith, a yeoman's son and capable leader, took command of the crippled colony and promised, "He that will not work shall not eat." He navigated Indian diplomacy, claiming that he was captured and sentenced to death but Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, intervened to save his life. She would later marry another colonist, John Rolfe, and die in England.

Powhatan kept the English alive that first winter. The Powhatan had welcomed the English and their manufactured goods. The Powhatan placed a high value on metal axe-heads, kettles, tools, and guns and eagerly traded furs and other abundant goods for them. With 10,000 confederated natives and with food in abundance, the Indians had little to fear and much to gain from the isolated outpost of sick and dying Englishmen.
John White, "Village of the Secotan, 1585 / Wikimedia Commons
Despite reinforcements, the English continued to die. Four hundred settlers arrived in 1609 and the overwhelmed colony entered a desperate "starving time" in the winter of 1609-1610. Supplies were lost at sea. Relations with the Indians deteriorated and the colonists fought a kind of slow-burning guerrilla war with the Powhatan. Disaster loomed for the colony. The settlers ate everything they could, roaming the woods for nuts and berries. They boiled leather. They dug up graves to eat the corpses of their former neighbors. One man was executed for killing and eating his wife. Some years later, George Percy recalled the colonists' desperation during these years, when he served as the colony's president: "Having fed upon our horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs, cats, rats and mice ... as to eat boots shoes or any other leather ... And now famine beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face, that nothing was spared to maintain life and to doe those things which seam incredible, as to dig up dead corpses out of graves and to eat them." ⁸ Archaeological excavations in 2012 exhumed the bones of a fourteen-year-old girl that exhibited the telltale signs of cannibalism. All but 60 settlers would die by the summer of 1610.

Little improved over the next several years. By 1616, 80 percent of all English immigrants that arrived in Jamestown had perished. England's first American colony was a catastrophe. The colony was reorganized and in 1614 the marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe eased relations with the Powhatan, though the colony still limped along as a starving, commercially disastrous tragedy. The colonists were unable to find any profitable commodities and they still depended upon the Indians and sporadic shipments from England for food. But then tobacco saved Jamestown.

By the time King James I described tobacco as a "noxious weed, ... loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs," it had already taken Europe by storm. In 1616 John Rolfe crossed tobacco strains from Trinidad and Guiana and planted Virginia's first tobacco crop. In 1617 the colony sent its first cargo of tobacco back to England. The "noxious weed," a native of the New World, fetched a high price in Europe and the tobacco boom began in Virginia and then later spread to Maryland. Within fifteen years American colonists were exporting over 500,000 pounds of tobacco per year. Within forty, they were exporting fifteen million.

Tobacco changed everything. It saved Virginia from ruin, incentivized further colonization, and laid the groundwork for what would become the United States. With a new market open, Virginia drew not only merchants and traders, but also settlers. Colonists came in droves. They were mostly young, mostly male, and mostly indentured servants, who signed contracts called indentures that bonded them to employers for a period of years in return for passage across the ocean. But even the rough terms of servitude were no match for the promise of land and potential profits that beckoned ambitious and dispossessed English farmers alike. But still there were not enough of them. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop and ambitious planters, with seemingly limitless land before them, lacked only laborers to exponentially escalate their wealth and status. The colony's great labor vacuum inspired the creation of the "headright policy" in 1618: any person who migrated to Virginia would automatically receive 50 acres of land and any immigrant whose passage they paid would entitle them to 50 acres more.

In 1619 the Virginia Company established the House of Burgesses, a limited representative body composed of white landowners that first met in Jamestown. That same year, a Dutch slave ship sold 20 Africans to the Virginia colonists. Southern slavery was born.

Soon the tobacco-growing colonists expanded beyond the bounds of Jamestown's deadly peninsula. When it became clear that the English were not merely intent on maintaining a small trading post, but sought a permanent ever-expanding colony, conflict with the Powhatan Confederacy became almost inevitable. Powhatan died in 1622 and was succeeded by his brother, Opechancanough, who promised to drive the land-hungry colonists back into the sea. He launched a surprise attack and in a single day (March 22, 1622) killed 347 colonists, or one-fourth of all the colonists in Virginia. The colonists retaliated and revisited the massacres upon Indian settlements many times over. The massacre freed the colonists to drive the Indians off their land. The governor of Virginia declared it colonial policy to achieve the "expulsion of the savages to gain the free range of the country." ⁹ War and disease destroyed the remnants of the Chesapeake Indians and tilted the balance of power decisively toward the English colonizers, whose foothold in the New World would cease to be as tenuous and challenged.

English colonists brought to the New World particular visions of racial, cultural, and religious supremacy. Despite starving in the shadow of the Powhatan Confederacy, English colonists nevertheless judged themselves physically, spiritually, and technologically superior to native peoples in North America. Christianity, metallurgy, intensive agriculture, trans-Atlantic navigation, and even wheat all magnified the English sense of superiority. This sense of superiority, when coupled with outbreaks of violence, left the English feeling entitled to indigenous lands and resources.

Spanish conquerors established the framework for the Atlantic slave trade over a century before the first chained Africans arrived at Jamestown. Even Bartolomé de las Casas, celebrated for his pleas to save Native Americans from colonial butchery, for a time recommended that indigenous labor be replaced by importing Africans. Early English settlers from the Caribbean and Atlantic coast of North America mostly imitated European ideas of African inferiority. "Race" followed the expansion of slavery across the Atlantic world. Skin-color and race suddenly seemed fixed. Englishmen equated Africans with categorical blackness and blackness with Sin, "the handmaid and symbol of baseness." ¹⁰ An English essayist in 1695 wrote that "A negro will always be a negro, carry him to Greenland, feed him chalk, feed and manage him never so many ways." ¹¹ More and more Europeans embraced the notions that Europeans and Africans were of distinct races. Others now preached that the Old Testament God cursed Ham, the son of Noah, and doomed blacks to perpetual enslavement.

And yet in the early years of American slavery, ideas about race were not yet fixed and the practice of slavery was not yet codified. The first generations of Africans in English North America faced miserable conditions but, in contrast to later American history, their initial servitude was not necessarily permanent, heritable, or even particularly disgraceful. Africans were definitively set apart as fundamentally different from their white counterparts, and faced longer terms of service and harsher punishments, but, like the indentured white servants whisked away from English slums, these first Africans in North America could also work for only a set number of years before becoming free landowners themselves. The Angolan Anthony Johnson, for instance, was sold into servitude but fulfilled his indenture and became a prosperous tobacco planter himself.

In 1622, at the dawn of the tobacco boom, Jamestown had still seemed a failure. But the rise of tobacco and the destruction of the Powhatan turned the tide. Colonists escaped the deadly peninsula and immigrants poured into the colony to grow tobacco and turn a profit for the Crown.

New England
Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony / The History Project (UC Davis)
The English colonies in New England established from 1620 onward were founded with loftier goals than those in Virginia. Although migrants to New England expected economic profit, religious motives directed the rhetoric and much of the reality of these colonies. Not every English person who moved to New England during the seventeenth century was a Puritan, but Puritans dominated the politics, religion, and culture of New England. Even after 1700, the region's Puritan inheritance shaped many aspects of its history.

The term Puritan began as an insult, and its recipients usually referred to each other as "the godly" if they used a specific term at all. Puritans believed that the Church of England did not distance itself far enough from Catholicism after Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 1530s. They largely agreed with European Calvinists-followers of theologian Jean Calvin-on matters of religious doctrine. Calvinists (and Puritans) believed that mankind was redeemed by God's Grace alone, and that the fate of an individual's immortal soul was predestined. The happy minority God had already chosen to save were known among English Puritans as the Elect. Calvinists also argued that the decoration or churches, reliance on ornate ceremony, and corrupt priesthood obscured God's message. They believed that reading the Bible was the best way to understand God.

Puritans were stereotyped by their enemies as dour killjoys, and the exaggeration has endured. It is certainly true that the Puritans' disdain for excess and opposition to many holidays popular in Europe (including Christmas, which, as Puritans never tired of reminding everyone, the Bible never told anyone to celebrate) lent themselves to caricature. But Puritans understood themselves as advocating a reasonable middle path in a corrupt world. It would never occur to a Puritan, for example, to abstain from alcohol or sex.

During the first century after the English Reformation (c.1530-1630) Puritans sought to "purify" the Church of England of all practices that smacked of Catholicism, advocating a simpler worship service, the abolition of ornate churches, and other reforms. They had some success in pushing the Church of England in a more Calvinist direction, but with the coronation of King Charles I (r. 1625-1649), the Puritans gained an implacable foe that cast English Puritans as excessive and dangerous. Facing growing persecution, the Puritans began the Great Migration, during which about 20,000 people traveled to New England between 1630 and 1640. The Puritans (unlike the small band of separatist "Pilgrims" who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620) remained committed to reforming the Church of England, but temporarily decamped to North America to accomplish this task. Leaders like John Winthrop insisted they were not separating from, or abandoning, England, but were rather forming a godly community in America, that would be a "City on a Hill" and an example for reformers back home. ¹² The Puritans did not seek to create a haven of religious toleration, a notion that they-along with nearly all European Christians-regarded as ridiculous at best, and dangerous at worst.

While the Puritans did not succeed in building a godly utopia in New England, a combination of Puritan traits with several external factors created colonies wildly different from any other region settled by English people. Unlike those heading to Virginia, colonists in New England (Plymouth [1620], Massachusetts Bay [1630], Connecticut [1636], and Rhode Island [1636]) generally arrived in family groups. The majority of New England immigrants were small landholders in England, a class contemporary English called the "middling sort." When they arrived in New England they tended to replicate their home environments, founding towns comprised of independent landholders. The New England climate and soil made large-scale plantation agriculture impractical, so the system of large landholders using masses of slaves or indentured servants to grow labor-intensive crops never took hold.

There is no evidence that the New England Puritans would have opposed such a system were it possible; other Puritans made their fortunes on the Caribbean sugar islands, and New England merchants profited as suppliers of provisions and slaves to those colonies. By accident of geography as much as by design, then, New England society was much less stratified than any of Britain's other seventeenth-century colonies.

Although New England colonies could boast wealthy landholding elites, the disparity of wealth in the region remained narrow compared to the Chesapeake, Carolina, or the Caribbean. Instead, seventeenth-century New England was characterized by a broadly-shared modest prosperity based on a mixed economy dependent on small farms, shops, fishing, lumber, shipbuilding, and trade with the Atlantic World.

A combination of environmental factors and the Puritan social ethos produced a region of remarkable health and stability during the seventeenth century. New England immigrants avoided most of the deadly outbreaks of tropical disease that turned Chesapeake colonies into graveyards. Disease, in fact, only aided English settlement and relations to Native Americans. In contrast to other English colonists who had to contend with powerful Native American neighbors, the Puritans confronted the stunned survivors of a biological catastrophe. A lethal pandemic of smallpox during the 1610s swept away as much as 90 percent of the region's Native American population. Many survivors welcomed the English as potential allies against rival tribes who had escaped the catastrophe. The relatively healthy environment coupled with political stability and the predominance of family groups among early immigrants allowed the New England population to grow to 91,000 people by 1700 from only 21,000 immigrants. In contrast, 120,000 English went to the Chesapeake, and only 85,000 white colonists remained in 1700. ¹³

The New England Puritans set out to build their utopia by creating communities of the godly. Groups of men, often from the same region of England, applied to the colony's General Court for land grants. They generally divided part of the land for immediate use while keeping much of the rest as "commons" or undivided land for future generations. The town's inhabitants collectively decided the size of each settler's home lot based on their current wealth and status. Besides oversight of property, the town restricted membership, and new arrivals needed to apply for admission. Those who gained admittance could participate in town governments that, while not democratic by modern standards, nevertheless had broad popular involvement. All male property holders could vote in town meetings and choose the selectmen, assessors, constables, and other officials from among themselves to conduct the daily affairs of government. Upon their founding, towns wrote covenants, reflecting the Puritan belief in God's covenant with His people. Towns sought to arbitrate disputes and contain strife, as did the church. Wayward or divergent individuals were persuaded and corrected before coercion.

Popular conceptions of Puritans as hardened authoritarians are exaggerated, but if persuasion and arbitration failed, people who did not conform to community norms were punished or removed. Massachusetts banished Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and other religious dissenters like the Quakers.

Although by many measures colonization in New England succeeded, its Puritan leaders failed in their own mission to create a utopian community that would inspire their fellows back in England. They tended to focus their disappointment on the younger generation. "But alas!" Increase Mather lamented, "That so many of the younger Generation have so early corrupted their [the founders'] doings!" ¹⁴ The Jeremiad, a sermon lamenting the fallen state of New England due to its straying from its early virtuous path, became a staple of late seventeenth-century Puritan literature.

Yet the Jeremiads could not stop the effects of prosperity. The population spread and grew more diverse. Many, if not most, New Englanders retained strong ties to their Calvinist roots into the eighteenth century, but the Puritans (who became Congregationalists) struggled against a rising tide of religious pluralism. On December 25, 1727, Judge Samuel Sewell noted in his diary that a new Anglican minister "keeps the day in his new Church at Braintrey: people flock thither." Previously forbidden holidays like Christmas were celebrated publicly in church and privately in homes. Puritan divine Cotton Mather discovered on the Christmas of 1711, "a number of young people of both sexes, belonging, many of them, to my flock, had...a Frolick, a reveling Feast, and a Ball, which discovers their Corruption."

Despite the lamentations of the Mathers and other Puritan leaders of their failure, they left an enduring mark on New England culture and society that endured long after the region's residents ceased to be called "Puritan."

Conclusion

The fledgling settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts paled in importance when compared to the sugar colonies of the Caribbean. Valued more as marginal investments and social safety valves where the poor could be released, these colonies nonetheless created a foothold for Britain on a vast North American continent. And although the seventeenth century would be fraught for Britain-religious, social, and political upheavals would behead one king and force another to flee his throne-settlers in Massachusetts and Virginia were nonetheless tied together by the emerging Atlantic economy. While commodities such as tobacco and sugar fueled new markets in Europe, the economy grew increasingly dependent upon slave labor. Enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic would further complicate the collision of cultures in the Americas. The creation and maintenance of a slave system would spark new understandings of human difference and new modes of social control. The economic exchanges of the new Atlantic economy would not only generate great wealth and exploitation, they would also lead to new cultural systems and new identities for the inhabitants of at least four continents.

Recommended Reading

David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002).

Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire Across the Sea: Communications And the State in the French Atlantic, 1713-1763 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006).

Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London and New York: Verso, 1997).

Colin G. Calloway, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors. Iberianizing the Atlantic , 1550-1700 ( Stanford University Press, 2006).

David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983).

Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500-1820 (New York: Routledge, 2002).

Ralph Davis, The Rise of Atlantic Economies (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973).

James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1996).

John H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

Eliga H. Gould, "Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery," American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (June 2007): 764-786.

Michael Kammen, Colonial New York: A History (New York: Scribner, 1975).

Peter C. Mancall, Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1975)

Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Susan Migden Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Ann Laura Stoler, "Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies," Journal of American History, 88: 3 (Dec. 2001), 829- 897

John Thorton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Notes

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Colliding Cultures in the European Exploration and Settlement of the Americas, 1500-1620

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Theodor de Bry, "Negotiating Peace With the Indians," 1634 / Virginia Historical Society By Erin Bonuso Kramer PhD Candidate in Early American History University of Wisconsin The Columbian Exchange transformed both sides of the Atlantic, but with dramatically disparate outcomes. New diseases wiped out entire civilizations in the Americas, while newly imported nutrient-rich foodstuffs enabled a European population boom.

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Between the 15th and 17th centuries, European sailors traversed the globe in search of riches, glory, and new trade routes. Historians refer to this period as the Age of Exploration, or the Age of Discovery. The voyages of Christopher Columbus and others may seem like ancient history, but they actually resulted in major cultural exchanges that shaped the world we live in today, in ways both big and small-and not always for the better, as you'll see on National Geographic's Origins (Mondays, 9/8 CST). Here are five lesser-known ways their overseas exploration molded modern civilization:

1. IT PAVED THE WAY FOR THE MODERN-DAY AMERICAN COWBOY.

Long before Western cowboys and their trusty steeds herded cattle, there weren't any horses or cows in the Americas. But in 1492, Columbus established a settlement on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. The following year, the explorer returned to the island, and brought longhorn cattle and horses with him.

Soon after, in 1519, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés and his soldiers arrived in what's today called Mexico, their sights set on conquering the wealthy Aztec empire. They, too, brought horses and the Spanish eventually established ranches and imported cattle to Mexico and the Caribbean. These animals eventually made their way to the present-day United States, paving the way for westward expansion and-yes-the emergence of the American cowboy.

2. IT REDEFINED WHAT IT MEANT TO BE WEALTHY.

The influx of gold and silver from the New World shook the foundations of the European economy to its core. Where land ownership-and the rents charged by landowners-once determined wealth, the arrival of large quantities of gold and silver, both of which had formerly been in short supply, caused prices to skyrocket. This dramatic shift is what historians refer to as "The Price Revolution": Landlords on fixed incomes suffered as the value of their incomes dropped and the debts owed to them also shrank. Trade soon replaced land-ownership as the most expedient way to achieve wealth.

3. IT TURNED THE WORLD ON TO TOBACCO.

For better or worse, the Age of Exploration introduced modern European civilization to the practice of smoking. When Columbus arrived in the Bahamas in 1492, residents of the island of San Salvador gave the explorer a gift of dry tobacco leaves. Columbus didn't understand their purpose, and threw them overboard. Later, he'd write that the locals "drank smoke." Soon after, Columbus and his expedition arrived in Cuba, where locals also practiced the curious custom. Two members tried it for themselves, and reportedly became hooked.

In subsequent years, other European explorers encountered tobacco, and in the 1550s, tobacco seeds arrived in Spain and Portugal. Europeans used the leaf for medicinal purposes-and eventually, recreational ones. Meanwhile, the Spanish fed Europe's cravings by cultivating the leaf; they controlled the tobacco trade until the 17th century, when John Rolfe of the Virginia Colony first shipped tobacco to England.

4. IT GAVE SOME COUNTRIES THEIR SIGNATURE FLAVORS ...

This may shock some people, but the potato isn't native to Ireland, the tomato hasn't always grown in Italy, and the chili is a relatively modern addition to Asian and Indian dishes. But thanks to European explorers, these crops made their way across the world, took root in foreign soil, and became an indelible part of the regional cuisine.

Sixteenth century Spanish conquistadors discovered the potato in Peru and took it back to Europe. It became a staple food on Spanish ships, and spread across the continent; eventually, Sir Walter Raleigh brought the potato to Ireland in 1589. In coming centuries, the potato would become an essential food source. During the 19th century, the nation's poorer classes ate up to 19 potatoes a day, according to one estimate.

Meanwhile, the tomato is native to the Andes of South America, Mexico, and Mesoamerica; it, too, was brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors. Europeans initially believed the tomato was poisonous (the acidic fruits soaked up the lead in pewter plates), but they eventually realized the error of their ways. The Spanish taught Italians how to cook with the tomato, and by the late 18th century, they were transforming it into sauces and pastes.

And Columbus is credited with introducing the chili pepper-which is native to the Caribbean and South America-to Europe. From there, traders brought the spicy fruits to West Africa, India, and East Asia. Today, it's hard to imagine how Thai or Indian food would taste without chili peppers.

5. ... AND GAVE THE REST OF THE WORLD A TASTE FOR CHOCOLATE.

Columbus may have been the first person to bring cacao beans-which chocolate is made from- to Europe, following his fourth voyage to the Americas in 1504. However, it's commonly believed that Cortés was the first European to sample the beans, which the Aztecs introduced to him in the form of a bitter drink. Cortés introduced cacao beans and brewing methods to Spain; Europeans mixed honey or sugar with the resulting beverage, making it a sweet-and popular-treat. The drink soon caught on in other countries, setting the stage for our global obsession with all things chocolate.

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5 Surprising Ways the Age of Exploration Shaped Modern Civilization

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Between the 15th and 17th centuries, European sailors traversed the globe in search of riches, glory, and new trade routes. Historians refer to this period as the Age of Exploration, or the Age of Discovery.

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The Spice Trade & the Age of Exploration

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One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the…

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The Columbian Exchange, Global Trade & Mercantilism - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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The new global trade routes, established after the Americas were opened up to exploration, drastically changed the global economy. Learn about the...

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Newsela | Transatlantic trade ushers in birth of consumerism and credit in America

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While Britain got rich through trade across the ocean, the introduction of credit placed more Americans in debt.

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Newsela | Early exploration of the land that became Tennessee

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Spanish, French and English explorations began in Tennessee in 1540.

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Newsela | Christopher Columbus Didn't Discover the New World; he Rediscovered it

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The Americas had been discovered and settled centuries before Christopher Columbus' arrival

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Newsela | The pros and cons of trade deficits and surpluses

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Newsela | America and the China Trade in the 1700s and 1800s

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In Canton, China, trade was conducted between merchants from China and the Eastern Seaboard of America, from 1784 through the mid-19th century.

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Was China More Productive Than Europe?, Part 1

When we think about the kind of trade taking place across the world in the 1600s and 1700s, and we recognize that Chinese finished goods are going to Europe in return for silver, this shouldn't be too great a surprise, since we know that if we go back several centuries to the Song dynasty that the first real urban commercial dynamism within Eurasia took place there.

A water-turned wheel for irrigation

There was an expansion of trade, the development of larger cities, the improvement of agricultural technologies to raise the yields of rice and other grains and crops on the land. And there was the development of transportation technologies to take advantage of river transport. Those developments start in China much earlier on a broader spatial scale than they do anywhere else in the world. And therefore in the year 1100, the most developed economy in the world was certainly in China.

And it's that lead, as it were, that China developed, beginning in roughly 1000, that remained in place for several centuries. Eurasian economies grew and contracted in this preindustrial area, but in essence, the Chinese economy remained a very productive economy for the following 500 years, so that when trade started to take place between China and Europe, fueled by the American silver that the Europeans were bringing to China, it was not surprising that the Chinese economy was, in certain ways at least, a more productive economy.

A water-powered pounding mill. China had captured the energy of water by the first or second century AD

We can only understand this contrast if we're aware of the Chinese economy beginning in the year 1000. If we tell our stories about global economic history beginning with European explorations in the late fifteenth century, we don't pick up the story until the time when Europeans themselves started to develop economically. We don't take into consideration that the Chinese had, in earlier centuries, already achieved levels of productivity that the Europeans only started to achieve in the 1500s.

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China and Europe, 1500-2000 and Beyond: What is "Modern"?

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Was China More Productive Than Europe?, Part 1 When we think about the kind of trade taking place across the world in the 1600s and 1700s, and we recognize that Chinese finished goods are going to Europe in return for silver, this shouldn't be too great a surprise, since we know that if we go back several centuries to the Song dynasty that the first real urban commercial dynamism within Eurasia took place there.