AI Notes

Columbian Exchange reshaped both hemispheres:
- Europe: maize, potatoes → population boom.
- Americas: smallpox/measles → catastrophic depopulation (up to 90%).
Spain initially benefited most (Aztec + Inca wealth).
Rival European powers (Portugal, France, Netherlands, England) soon competed.
Colonization marked by cultural collisions: trade, disease, conflict, cooperation.

Florida (1513, Ponce de León): 150k–300k Natives → devastated by disease, war, slave raids.
St. Augustine (1565) = first permanent European settlement in present-day U.S. → vulnerable (1586 Drake attack).
Encomienda system: settlers granted Native labor in exchange for Christianization.
Franciscan missions: religious justification for conquest; extended to Timucua, Guale, Apalachee.
Juan de Oñate (1598): brutal conquest of Pueblo Acoma (“Acoma Massacre” – 1 foot cut off men >15, women/children enslaved).
Santa Fe (1610): permanent Spanish capital in New Mexico; small Spanish presence (~3,000 by 1680).
Pueblo population collapse: 60,000 (1600) → 17,000 (1680).
Shift in strategy: military conquest → missionary colonization (Rio Grande, later California).
Significance: Spain’s dominance in North America = tenuous, dependent on missions, small settlements, and Indigenous alliances.

Reformation turmoil in Europe delayed France & England’s colonization.
Black Legend: propaganda highlighting Spanish atrocities (Las Casas’s writings exaggerated in Protestant Europe). Justified rival colonization as more “humane.”

The French

Goal = Northwest Passage to Asia.
Quebec (1608, Champlain) → foothold of New France.
Economy = fur trade; depended on Indigenous trappers.
Few settlers (Catholics only after 1685); focus on trade networks.
Jesuit missionaries lived among Natives → gradual conversion vs. Spanish missions.
Alliances: esp. Huron (many converted; devastated by disease).
“Middle Ground” (Great Lakes): cross-cultural exchange, negotiation, accommodation.
Significance: French prioritized alliances over conquest; model distinct from Spanish & English.

The Dutch

Independent (1581) from Spain; commercial powerhouse, tolerant society.
Henry Hudson (1609) claims New York → New Netherland.
Dutch West India Company (1621) controls trade, colonies.
Patroon system: large estates to attract settlers; failed due to labor shortages.
Economy = fur trade + African slavery.
- 1626: first enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam (built Wall Street).
- By 1660: largest enslaved population in North America (~500).
Relations: purchased Manhattan (1626) → different land-use understandings → tension.
Alliances with Iroquois sustained trade.
Significance: Dutch = trade-centered, tolerant, capitalist, but slavery + land conflict undermined ideals.

The Portuguese

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) → Portugal claims Brazil.
Colonization by 1530s; economy = sugar plantations + African slavery.
Brazil = largest importer of enslaved Africans in Atlantic World history.
Jesuits spread Catholicism; African/Native traditions blended with Catholicism.
Quilombos: settlements of escaped slaves + Natives resisted Portuguese raids.
Significance: Brazil foreshadowed plantation/slavery model later adopted in Caribbean + American South.

Elizabeth I (1558–1603): Protestant England rivals Catholic Spain.
Mercantilism: colonies provide markets, resources → economic nationalism.
Social crisis: population boom, poverty, Enclosure Movement → displaced peasants. Colonization offered solution.
Religious justification: spreading Protestantism vs. “corrupt” Catholicism.
Richard Hakluyt (1584): colonization = Christian duty, economic benefit, social safety valve.
Early colonization = piracy (Drake, Hawkins).
1588 – Spanish Armada destroyed: turning point → secured English dominance at sea.
Early failures: Gilbert (Newfoundland), Raleigh/White (Roanoke, “Lost Colony”).
Virginia Company (1606): joint-stock company; financed colonization (profit motive).

Founded 1607: poor location (disease, brackish water, bad soil).
Colonists unprepared (seeking gold, not survival).
Starving Time (1609–1610): cannibalism; only 60/500 survived.
Relations with Powhatan Confederacy: initially trade, later conflict.
John Smith enforced discipline; Pocahontas → symbol of diplomacy.
Tobacco (1616, John Rolfe): profitable cash crop; saved colony.
Labor: indentured servants + headright system (1618) encouraged migration.
1619: House of Burgesses (first representative assembly) + arrival of first Africans (status ambiguous; some became landowners, e.g. Anthony Johnson).
Native conflict: 1622 Powhatan Uprising (Opechancanough kills 350 colonists); English retaliated with mass killings, adopted “expulsion” policy.
Significance: Jamestown shifted from failed trading post → profitable plantation economy built on land/labor hunger, setting stage for slavery.

Founded with religious motives (not just profit).
Pilgrims (1620) – Plymouth Colony.
Puritans (1630, Massachusetts Bay) – John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill.”
Puritan beliefs: Calvinism, predestination, Elect, Bible central.
Settled in family groups → stability, rapid population growth.
Economy: small farms, shipbuilding, fishing, trade; no plantations.
Government: town meetings, covenants, property-holding males vote.
Little tolerance: dissenters banished (Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, Quakers).
Great Migration (1630–1640): ~20,000 Puritans.
Natives devastated by smallpox → some tribes allied with Puritans.
Culture: Jeremiads lamented younger generations’ moral decline.
By late 1600s → religious pluralism rising (Anglicans, Quakers).
Significance: Puritans left lasting mark (communal ideals, literacy, work ethic) despite failure to build utopia.

Compared to Caribbean sugar colonies, Virginia & Massachusetts were minor at first.
Yet they laid enduring English footholds on the continent.
Atlantic economy (tobacco, sugar, slavery) tied Europe, Africa, Americas.
Enslavement of Africans + racial ideology hardened in 1600s.
Colonization forged new identities and reshaped cultures across four continents.

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