1. European nations were driven by commercial and religious motives to explore territories and establish colonies. (8 pts)

• part 1

Merchants were not making money off of overland trade, because it was dangerous and the producats from the east they wanted to buy had gone through so many hands and middlemen that the prices were ridicilously marked up, and no one was buying them. So the Europeans said, "You know what? Let's go get those spices and silks ourselves!" This led to a lot of exploration of oversea trade routes, and to a lot of discovery of other places with precious metals and such. For instance, the Spanish found themselves some silver in Bolivia in the Potosi mines, and in the next little segment I'll explain all about how the state tried to use this to it's commercial advantage. 

 

• part 2

 

The rise of Mercantilism made a lot of changes happen in the commercial area; states tried to keep wages low, banned certain things from being imported so as to keep the population's money flowing into other more favorable things, and banking took a drastic change. Bankers now handled nearly all of the money. Mercantilism drove states overseas to find profitable things to bring back and sell to maintain the state's wealth. For example, Spain. In Spain, they put a LOT of effort into mining gold and silver (by that I mean getting slaves to put a lot of effort into mining) and tried to focus on getting their bank vaults full of gold. For instance,in 1586, one Spanish bureaucrat asked King Philip II to forbid the import of a ton of expensive stuff to keep everyone's eyes on the silver and gold.

 

• part 3

As all of us in AP European history should know, the Catholics were kind of obsessed with making everyone else Catholic. When they found out there were people in other places that weren't Catholic, they figured, "You know what's a good thing we could do? Force those poeple into our religion. It'd be the best thing for them." So off they went, into the wild yonder, They went as missionaries, building missions where they went to try and "help" the natives of that area. They way they did this was by trying to make Catholicism more relatable to them, and forcing them to be Catholic regardless of what they wanted or how valid they themselves considered their religions to be. For example, in Tenochitlan,a leader responded to a Fransiscan missionary, Bernardino de Sagahun by saying 

"You have told us that we do not know the One who gives us life and being... You also say that those we worship are not gods...We are not satisfied nor convinced with what you have told us, nor do we understand what had been said of our gods...all of us together feel that it is enough t have lost,enough that the power and royal jurisdiction have been taken from us. As for our gods, we will die before giving up serving and worshipping them.

And die, they did! (Because of disease and such.) 

 

• Section 2 part 1

  • 1. Compass: The compass was an instrument used to find north. This helped aid the Europeans explore the world by giving them a solid direction to steer in on the open sea.

  • 2. Portalani:  Portolani were navigational maps based on compass directions and estimated distances observed by the pilots at sea. They first happened in the 13th century in Italy, and later in Spain and Portugal, They didn't really get accurate until around the 16th century. The first ones actually kind of sucked. A lot.  Spain and Portugal were in such a race with eachother to explore more and better, they considered the maps national secrets. Since at that point, the Dutch and English were pretty much newbs at the whole exploration thing, they valued the maps alot to help them sail. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portolan_chart)

  • 3. Quadrant / Astrolabe: The quadrant aligned with the North Star at night to help sailors determine their latitude. This was only helpfl in the Northern Hemisphere where that star was visble, though; in the Southern Hemisphere, it was more or less useless. However, the Astrolabe dd the same thing, except aligning with the sun during the day. 

  • 4. Guns and gunpowder: Guns were pretty obviously a vital weapon in European conquest, as they were much more advanced than the weapons of the natives of the New World. They aided in being able to take over tribes and other civilizations. 

Section 3

• 1. Describe the Portuguese commercial network along the African coast, South and East Asia, and in South America

The Portugese commercial network along the African coast was pretty, solid. They had possesions along every side; east, south, west, and even a little up north. In South and East Asia, the coverage was decent. They even had a posession on the far east side of China and on Moluccas. In South AMerica, they conquered Brazil pretty hard, even though they didn't conquer very much of it or of the rest of the continent. Look, a map:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part 2

,Spain was really rich; they had a lot of silver, a lot of gold, a lot of colonies, and a lot of glory. They even threw some God in there. They had nearly all of the new world to themselves, as the map above displays. 

Section 4

1. Analyze how the exchange of goods shifted the center of economic power in Europe from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic states and brought the latter into an expanding world economy.

part 1

Before, anything any rich person wanted was from Italy. They had all the merchants, they were connected to all the trade routes from the east. they had Marco Polo, for God's sake! How cool were they? All the girls wanted to be them, all the boys wanted to date them-- until the Atlantic states showed up with their fancy caravels and their silver and "safer, faster, cheaper" overseas trade route. After that, there was no going back. the Atlantic stated dominated the global economy, setting up colonies everywhere, trading slaves, spices, silks, everything!  Then the Italians were left behind, with nothing but overprices spices and silks.

 

2. Analyze how the exchange of plants, animals, and diseases - the Columbian Exchange - created economic opportunities for Europeans and facilitated European subjugation an destruction of indigenous peoples, particularly in the Americas. Make sure to detail the plants, animals, and diseases that were introduced on each end of the exchange.

The Columbian exchange facilitated European dominace in the Americas by spreading diseases to the native peoples. The diseases weakened and destroyed a lot of the population of the natives, making it easy for the Europeans to take their food, their land, and use the survivors as workers. They brought over familiar crops such as wheat and had the natives cultivate them, and took over new crops to Europe to sell, like the potato and maize. They created the "plains Indian hunting buffalo on a horse" stereotype by bringingnthe horses to the Americas, and the "irish people that only eat potatoes" stereotype by taking the potato to Ireland. Look, a convenient image that depicts the stuff exchanged in the Columbian exchange:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

part 3

The Atlantic slave trade was what brought so many African slaves to the Americas. They were considered stronger than the Native Americans because they didn't die from diseases so easily, since most of them had already been exposed to them. Once the whole plantation thing started, they ordered African slaves by the thousands to work in them, and oh look, another convenient visual: