Chapter 1: New World Beginnings

The Conquest of Mexico

The Spread of Spanish America

• Hernan Cortes sailed from Cuba, and conquered the Aztec Empire with the help of Indian allies and fatal diseases.
• The Aztecs for conquered because of the Spaniards want for wealth.
• Aztecs believed Cortes was the god Quetzalcoatl. (Religion)
• Intermarriage began with Indians, creating the mestizos.

• Spanish cities and towns flourished.
• They sought to secure the New World domain and protect sea lanes to the Caribbean (built St. Augustine).
• In the Battle of Acoma, the Spanish captured an area known as New Mexico.
• Natives launched the Pope Rebellion.
• The misdeeds of the Spanish in New World caused the Black Legend (over exaggerated concept of treatment of Indians).

When Worlds Collide

• The Colombian Exchange began global commerce between the New and Old World.
• 3/5 of crops cultivated around the world, originated in the Americas.
• Many New World foods fed the population growth of the Old World.
• The Old World brought diseases that devastated the Indians.

The Earliest Americans (Social)

• Agriculture accounted for the size and sophistication of the Native American civilization.
• Corn transformed nomadic bands into settled agricultural villages.
• Social life was less elaborately developed, and societies scarcely existed.
• No dense concentrations of population existed in North America.
• People lived in small, scattered, and impermanent settlements.
• Cultivation of the maize caused the three-sister farming: beans, corn, and squash.

Indirect Discoveries of the New World

• Europeans sought contact with a wide world, whether for conquest or trade, which led to the want for connections with Asia and Africa.
• They were eager to find access to less expensive routes to the riches of Asia.

Europeans Enter Africa (Economic)

• With the use of the caravel, Europeans came into contact with sub-Saharan Africa.
• African gold crossed the Sahara on camelback.
• Portuguese set up trading posts along the African shore for the purchase of gold and slaves.
• Slaves worked on Portuguese sugar plantations.

Each chapters influence in the development of the people in North America

The Spanish Conquistadors

The Shaping of North America

The events that's influenced the development of people in North America was the Bering Isthmus opening up and Columbus bumping into the New World. The Columbian Exchange led to a global commerce between the Americas and the Old World. Also the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

• Europeans began to realize that the American continents held rich prizes.
• Spain claimed the New World through the Treaty of Tordesillas. (Political)
• The conquistadors wanted gold, glory, and God.
• The New World helped Europe with banking and capitalism.
• The encomienda system was introduced which gave Indians to colonist in exchange to christianize them.

• 225 million years ago, a supercontinent had drifted apart.
• Nature sculpted the basic geological shape of North America, anchored by the Canadian Shield.
• 2 million years ago, the Great Ice Age began and glaciers carpeted most of the land. It left North Americas landscape transformed and much as we know it today.
• Climate and geological forces recreated the continent.

Columbus Comes upon a New World

People in the Americas

• Europeans wanted cheaper products from lands beyond the Mediterranean.
• Compass improved sea travel.
• Seeking a new route with the Indies, he bumped into the Americas.
• The world changed forever. Europeans provided the market, capital, and tech; Africa provided labor; and the New World provided raw materials.

• Early people reached America in crude boats, most probably by land.
• 35,000 years ago, the sea level dropped, and exposed a land bridge connecting Asia with North America.
• Nomadic Asian hunters crossed the Bering Isthmus.
• In 1492, 54 million people may have been living in the Americas.

Chapter 1: New World Beginnings

When European explorers came across the Americas, the future of the Old World, New World, Africa, and Asia was forever altered.