Review

• The natives of the American continent were a diverse people that had diverse societies based on the kinds of environments in which they lived
• Native American cultures


  • Pueblo people
  • Hunter-gatherer nomadic groups
  • Coastal fishing villages
  • Groups that congregated in cities and built empires
• Pueblo people


  • Farmers
  • Built small urban centers made of hardened clay bricks
  • Built magnificent cliff dwellings
• Great Basin and Great Plains region groups

  • Nomadic hunter-gatherers
  • Organized into small egalitarian kinship bands
• Pacific Northwest and California groups

  • Built permanent settlements
  • Participated in regional trade networks
• Iroquois


  • Farmers
  • Lived communally in long houses
• Mississippi River Valley groups

  • Farmers
  • Participated in trade up and down waterways
  • Cahokia civilization had centralized government led by powerful chieftains
• The natives of America developed distinct and increasingly complex societies shaped by their environment
• The natives utilized vast trading networks that stretched from South America to North America
• From the 1300s to 1400s, European kingdoms went through political unification and developed stronger centralized states governed by monarchs
• The growing wealthy upper class in Europe developed a taste for luxury goods from Asia
• Muslims controlled many of the land-based trading routes from Europe to Asia, so Europeans sought sea-based trade routes
• Portugal established a trading post empire around Africa and gained a foothold in the Indian Ocean trade network
• Maritime technologies used by the Portuguese

  • Updated astronomical charts
  • Astrolabe
  • Smaller, faster, and more nimble ship designs
  • Latin sail
  • Stern post rudder
• Spain jumped into the maritime game after seeing Portugal's success
• Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492, leading to the spread of tales of the hidden wealth of the New World
• Columbian Exchange


  The transfer of people, animals, plants, and diseases between the Eastern and Western hemispheres
• Items transferred in the Columbian Exchange

  • From the Americas to Europe: Potatoes, tomatoes, maize
  • From Europe to the Americas: Wheat, rice, soybeans
  • Animals: Turkeys, cattle, pigs, horses
  • Gold and silver
  • People (enslaved Africans)
• The influx of wealth from the Americas induced a shift from feudalism to capitalism in Europe
• Joint stock company


  Limited liability organization where investors pooled money to fund a venture, sharing profits and losses
• Spanish colonization in the Americas

  • Focused on agriculture and extraction of precious metals
  • Introduced the encomienda system of forced native labor
  • Imported African slave labor
• Casta system


  Spanish colonial social hierarchy based on racial ancestry
• Europeans developed elaborate belief systems to justify the exploitation of native Americans and Africans
• Juan Guiness de Sepulveda: 'Native Americans were less than human and benefited from harsh labor conditions'
• Bartolome de las Casas: 'Defended the humanity of native Americans worthy of protection'
• Europeans justified the enslavement of Africans based on the biblical story of Noah's curse on Ham's descendants