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The Atlantic World Discovering America opened a new epoch in history but it was European diseases, not guns, which had the greatest impact. Declining Amerindian populations cut short the potential labor force, thus spawning demand for African slaves in America as plantations developed and gold and silver were mined. This Atlantic trade gave Europeans an edge: complete control of a lucrative trade unavailable to anyone else. Spain and Portugal opened the network to Asia and America, but soon found other European powers scrambling for a share, with great consequence.
Columbus was a product of his times. His desire to spread Christianity and earn money typified the goals of most Europeans and led to the creation of the Atlantic system. Soon others made the journey west and discovered the significance of Columbus’s efforts.
Claiming the new land, Columbus noted that the natives cut themselves on the sharp edges of his sword, symbolizing the dramatic technological disparities between the two peoples. Columbus wrote of their childlike innocence, while others were described as savage cannibals—the two primary stereotypes Europeans created about Amerindians. Amerindians viewed the Europeans with curiosity and fear. As time progressed, however, it was generally acknowledged that the Europeans had come as conquerors.
Reports of gold brought many more Spaniards to the Americas. Amerindians were soon pressed into virtual slavery in the search for gold. The Spanish crown institutionalized the practice by granting the privilege of exploiting the labor of certain Indian communities. Local overlords thus grew rich while the natives suffered horribly, dying of disease, dislocation, and malnutrition in shocking numbers. Angry at the treatment imposed on the natives, Dominican friars sharply condemned the practice, thus dividing Europeans over the fate of the Amerindians. Nevertheless, exploitation continued.
The Aztec Empire and the Spanish Conquest Some Europeans moved on and discovered complex societies in Central America. The Aztec rulers governed about 25 million people, many of whom lived in large cities administered by an elaborate array of priests, military leaders, and government officials. These in turn were supported by a host of village elders united by marital arrangements with the families of other villages. Elite families in the capital did the same, creating a class of natural leaders. A body of representative elders elected a "chief speaker" who, eventually, developed into an emperor figure with great powers that he shared with other powerful nobles. The Aztec system was theocratic: the emperor enjoyed close ties to divinity. Priests helped maintain order and selected sacrifices necessary to keep the sun burning and rains falling. By the end of the fifteenth century, military successes allowed the Aztecs to dominate Mesoamerica but earned deep resentment from non-Aztec Amerindians. Rebellions destabilized the empire, as did rivalries with outsiders like the Tlaxcalans and Tarascans. By the time of Moctezuma II, the strain of military expenditures and division among political leaders began producing cracks in Aztec unity and control. Sightings of arriving Europeans only added confusion to Aztec difficulties. Cortés acquired translators and marched on Mesoamerica. Entering the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, he and his men marveled at its splendor before allying with Aztec rivals, the Tlaxcalans, and capturing Moctezuma. Two years later, conflict between Spanish and Aztecs led to a massive uprising in which Moctezuma was killed and hundreds of Spaniards were sacrificed to the Aztec sun god. Regrouping with Tlaxcalan allies, Cortés returned with cannon to destroy Aztec resistance once and for all. Upon their return, the Spaniards discovered the Aztec defenders dying from smallpox. The war against the Aztecs taught the Europeans that Amerindian rivals had to be crushed quickly, before they realized the intruders weren’t gods. It also illuminates the tremendous impact disease had in the outcome of the conflict.
In Incan lands, factional infighting and disease weakened the Incan regime even before European rivals arrived. Capturing the emperor, Pizarro’s forces destroyed the Incas and opened the way for Spanish encomiendas to take over. Factionalism among the Spaniards, however, meant that war only continued before the Spanish crown intervened. The collapse of the Aztecs and Incas meant Europeans had access to new wealth, new markets, and new frontiers.
Europeans gained more than gold from the New World. Tomatoes, beans, cacao, peanuts and others items made their way to Europe as well, greatly transforming European diets. Amerindians got wheat, grapes, sugar, cattle, horses, and a transformation of the local flora and fauna as European plants and animals overwhelmed native species. Europeans and Africans also brought diseases that ravaged local populations. Smallpox epidemics were soon followed by measles and others, leading to the destruction of about 90 percent of the Amerindian population and leaving the New World wide open to European dominance.
The Spaniards supplanted the Aztec and Incan hierarchies while leaving most of the administrative structure intact. This allowed them to rule without having to fully reconstruct a bureaucratic system. Villagers offered goods and services to the Spanish as they had done to their Aztec leaders. Encomenderos forced Indian laborers to work in mines, on plantations, or on public works for their own profit. Another change involved the rise of the mestizos , peoples of mixed Amerindian and Spanish blood, who came to dominate after severe shortages of European women led many European men to take native women. Most Spaniards lived in cities, either ports or great capitals built on the ruined cities of conquered peoples.
Having discovered large quantities of specie in the lands of the Aztecs and Incas, the Spanish quickly began sending as much as possible back to Spain. Within the first two decades after conquering the Aztecs, the Spanish shipped more gold than all of Europe then possessed. After seizing Amerindian stores, the Spanish turned to mining silver from great deposits in Mexico and the Andes. These mines produced huge quantities of precious metal while also consuming countless lives of the Amerindians compelled to work in them. Filling European coffers, silver changed the balance of power in Europe and the balance of European trade in Asia—particularly with China and India.
The pope compelled Spain to share the New World with Portugal. While Brazil did not produce great mines, its vast tracts of extremely fertile land proved lucrative enough. Royal grants gave ambitious individuals great estates, which they administered from the safety of enclaves. Reluctant and dying Amerindians could not produce sufficient labor pools to work the land, so Portuguese turned to importing African slaves. On their islands off the coast of Africa, Portuguese had already developed a model for sugar production. Soon the model appeared in Brazil and the Caribbean, making sugar an extremely lucrative New World product. Most slaves were men working under harsh conditions on the small plantations. So many slaves perished that the demand for new shipments of slaves kept the Atlantic slave trade vibrant and active.
Beginnings of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Transatlantic slaving arose to supply sugar plantations with labor. Insatiable demands for sugar meant an insatiable demand for slaves. By 1820, five times more Africans had journeyed to the New World than Europeans. The Portuguese initiated the trade but were soon joined by all other European powers. While the Islamic world actually took more African slaves that did the Europeans, they did so over a much longer period of time. Africans themselves had also long engaged in slave-trading. Nevertheless, European slaving reached stunning proportions. Few areas remained unaffected by European or Asian slave networks. To Africans engaged in the capture and sale of slaves to the Portuguese, the high price tag on individuals meant that it was more profitable to sell them than to keep them as agricultural workers, thus contributing to Africa’s underdevelopment. By the end of the sixteenth century, an Atlantic system had emerged based on African labor, American minerals and land, and European technology and military power. Of the three contributors, Europe benefited far more than the other two. >> Continue to the next part of the Summary: The Transformation of Europe
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