Contextualizing US History 1491-1607

The beginning of each chapter is designed to help learners contextualize the time period being studied and then to apply that contextual knowledge to the specific content embedded in the subsequent lessons.

To begin this chapter, readers need to remember that the earlier the time period, the less certainty and specificity we can rely upon, particularly given that many of the societies that existed before European exploration of the Americas no longer survive or have changed and evolved significantly over the past 600+ years. Many indigenous civilizations did not leave easily accessible written records. With documents from European explorers, soldiers, and clergy, you may be asked to assess the historical context, audience, author’s purpose, and perspective, prospectively biases, particularly when responding to stimulus-based multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and document-based questions (DBQs).

To properly contextualize this chapter, we need to consider the vastly disparate worlds of Europe and the western hemisphere in the late 15th century. European countries that had recently waged lengthy civil and international wars, including Spain’s nearly 800-year-long reconquista from north African Muslim armies as well as the century-plus-long Hundred Year’s War between France and Great Britain and the subsequent English War of the Roses, and were now seeking to expand their military, economic, and cultural dominion to east Asia, particularly China and India.

Rivalries between Spain and Portugal ultimately defined much of the early European colonization of the western hemisphere, particularly after Spain was ceded most of the western hemisphere, other than what is today eastern Brazil, in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). France and Great Britain would begin colonizing Caribbean islands and then move into parts of North America, including areas bordering the Mississippi River for the French and the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia for the British. During this time period, European countries used important technological advances, including in shipbuilding and navigation as well as in cannons and muskets, to forge footholds in coastal communities and begin colonizing vast sections of the world.

In the western hemisphere, newly ascendant empires, including the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in western South America, intermingled with and at times displaced other indigenous civilizations. Historians, including William Denevan, generally estimate that between 50 - 75 million people lived in the western hemisphere at the time of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean in October 1492. European explorers soon followed Columbus and over the next 115 years, the western hemisphere would be fundamentally transformed - culturally, demographically, economically, and politically.

*** Image 001 / Map 1492 ***

As further European exploration turned into colonialism, the primary European empires of France, Great Britain, and Spain, later joined by Netherlands and Sweden, sought to expand their dominions in the western hemisphere. While the motivations of specific explorers varied, the 3 most frequently cited are often referred to as the > 3Gs - God, gold, and glory.> It is important to remember that these motivations frequently overlapped and reinforced each other; conversion of indigenous peoples to Catholicism, and eventually other forms of Christianity, occurred simultaneously with seizure of their lands and resources.

Throughout the time period 1491-1607, European conquest and colonization expanded throughout much of the western hemisphere. While European monarchies, and individual military commanders and landowners became increasingly wealthy as a result of conquest and colonization, many indigenous societies suffered catastrophic population losses and European colonizers began importing thousands of enslaved Africans to their American colonies. Widely accepted estimates of net indigenous population losses in the western hemisphere from 1492 through 1607 exceed 90%, although population declines vary depending on the degree of European colonial conquest.

In the next lesson, you will have a brief introduction to the larger groups of indigenous societies in what is now the United States during European colonization.