The Renaissance in Italy study guide chapter summary

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The Renaissance in Italy study guide chapter summary

AP European History
Chapter 10 Outline: Renaissance and Discovery

Section One: The Renaissance in Italy

Section Overview

Jacob Burckhardt, a Swiss historian, described the Renaissance as the “prototype of the modern world” in his book Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860)

In Italy blossomed new secular and scientific views
People became to approach the world empirically and draw rational conclusions based on observation
Burckhardt saw the emergence of the modern world emerge from that of the pre-modern, or medieval, period
Some criticize Burckhardt for overlooking the continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Scholars agree that the Renaissance (1375-1527)was a transition from medieval to modern times

Different from the feudal fragmentation of medieval times, Renaissance Europe was characterized by growing national consciousness and political centralization, an urban economy based on organized commerce and capitalism, and growing lay control of secular thought and culture

The Italian City State

Growth of City-States

When commerce revived in the eleventh century, Italian merchants mastered the organizational skills needed for trade: book-keeping, scouting new markets, securing new markets, and banking
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, trade-rich cities became powerful city-states, dominating the political and economic life of the surrounding countryside
Incessant warfare between pope and emperor and the Guelf [propapal] and Ghibelline [proimperial] factions created an environment in which city-states could emerge and expand as the two major powers weakened each other
A unique urban rich emerged in Italy comprised of the local nobility and new rich
Five major city-states evolved: the duchy of Milan, the republics of Florence and Venice, the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Naples

Social Class and Conflict

Florence as an example of social division and anarchy

Four social groups of Florence

Grandi—the old rich, or nobles and wealthy merchants who traditionally had ruled the city
Popolo grosso (“fat people”)—the newly rich merchant class, capitalists and bankers, who began to the old rich for political powers
Middle-burgher ranks of guild masters, shop owners, and professionals, the smaller businesspeople, who tended to side with the new rich against the conservative policies of the old rich
Popolo minuto (“little people”)—the lower economic classes
Popolo Minuto (“little people”)—the lower economic classes

Paupers—in 1457, one-third the population of Florence, was officially listed as paupers, or having no wealth at all

Ciompi Revolt—a great uprising of the poor that occurred in Florence in 1378

Three reasons that made life unbearable for the lower classes

feuding between the old rich and the new rich
social anarchy created when the Black Death cut the city’s population almost in half
the collapse of the great banking houses of Bardi and Peruzzi

the revolt established a chaotic four-year reign of power by the lower Florentine classes; stability did not return to Florence until the rise of the Medici family in 1434

Despotism and Diplomacy

Florence and the Medici Family

Cosimo de’ Medici, the wealthiest Florentine and natural statesmen, controlled the Florence from behind the scenes by manipulating the constitution and manipulating elections
Signoria—a council of first six and later of eight members governed the city; these men were chosen from the most powerful guilds, mainly those representing the major clothing industries (cloth, wool, fur, and silk) and such other groups as bankers, judges, and doctors
Despotism in Florence

Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruled Florence in a totalitarian fashion during the last quarter century of the fifteenth century
Lorenzo’s brother had been assassinated by a rival family, the Pazzi, who had long plotted with the pope against the Medicis which made Lorenzo a cautious ruler

Despotism throughout Renaissance Italy

Oligarchies, or a small group of wealthy elites, hired strongmen, or despots, known as podesta to maintain law and order

Podesta held executive, military, and judicial authority, and had the task of maintaining the normal flow of business activity in the city state by whatever means necessary
Condottieri—military brokers who sent mercenary armies who were hired by the despots of the different city-states; since the despots could not rely on the loyalty of their divided populaces to serve as soldiers, they relied on mercenaries who they contracted through condottieri
Some despots, like the Visconti and Sforza families in Milan, came to rule their respective city-states free from interference from oligarchies
Political turbulence and warfare of the Renaissance period gave rise to the art of diplomacy and many despots established resident embassies and appointed ambassadors to other powerful city-states and nations

Humanism

Scholars debate over the meaning of the term humanism

humanism is the birth of modernity, driven by an anti-Christian philosophy that stressed the dignity of humankind, individual, and secularism
humanists as the champions of Catholic Christianity, opposing the pagan teachings of Aristotle
humanism is a form of historic scholarship adopted to promote a sense of civic responsibility and political liberty
Paul Kristellar, a famous historian, believes that humanism was not philosophy or value system, but an educational program built on rhetoric and scholarship

Most scholars agree that humanism was the scholarly study of Latin and Greek classics and of the ancient Church Fathers, both for its own sake and in the hope of reviving ancient norms and values

Humanists advocated the studia humanitatis, a liberal arts program of study embracing , rhetoric, poetry, history, politics, and moral philosophy
First humanists were orators and poets, wrote literature in classical languages and vernacular, taught rhetoric and grammar at universities, and worked at princely courts as secretaries, speechwriters, and diplomats
Humanists ideas were spread throughout Italy when the Byzantine, Greek scholar Chrysoloras took a position as the head of classical learning at a university in Florence

Early humanists

Francesco Petrarch—the father of humanism

Wrote personal letters to Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and Horace
Wrote a Latin Epic poem, Africa, a tribute to a Roman general, and biographies of famous Roman men
Sonnets to Laura remains his most famous work
Classical and Christian values coexist in his works

Dante Alighieri

Wrote Vita Nuova and Divine Comedy which were far less secular than Petrarch’s works

Giovanni Boccaccio

Wrote Decameron, a collection of one hundred tales told by three men and seven women in a country retreat away from plague-ravaged Florence; it is a social commentary about sexual and economic misconduct as well as a sympathetic look at human nature

Educational Reforms and Goals

Pietro Paolo Vergerio wrote On the Morals That Befit a Free Man which is the most influential tract on education which encouraged the ideal of a useful education and explained that well-rounded people inspired far-reaching reforms in traditional education
Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of Courtier was written for the nobility at the court of Urbino, a small duchy in central Italy; it provided humanists guidelines for the standard of education and etiquette to which a member of court ought to aspire
Christine de Pisan wrote many poems, but most notably The Treasure of the City of Ladies, which was a chronicle of the accomplishments of the great women of history

The Florentine Academy and the Revival of Platonism

Unlike their medieval predecessors who embraced Aristotle, Renaissance scholars embraced the Greek scholar Plato

Platonism appealed to Renaissance scholars due to its flattering view of human nature

Platonism distinguished between an eternal sphere of being and the perishable world in which humans actually lived

Cosimo de Medici provided the patronage to create the Florentine Platonic Academy

The academy was not actually a school, but rather an informal gathering of Renaissance humanists devoted to the revival of Plato and Neoplatonists
Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola supervised the academy

Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man is perhaps the most famous Renaissance statement on the nature of humankind—the study of human nature, the predecessor to modern psychology, was first studied by Renaissance humanists

Oration depicts human beings as the only creatures capable of controlling their own destiny—capable of rising to the level of angels but also just as quickly wallowing with pigs

Critical Work of the Humanists: Lorenzo Valla

Sometimes unintentionally, humanists works—like those of Valla—were critical of longstanding traditions like the Catholic Church
Valla’s Elegances of the Latin Language revealed that a document titled Donation of Constantine, purported to be a grant of vast territories that the Roman emperor Constantine donated to the Pope during the fourth century, was fraudulent

Valla used textual analysis and historical logic to prove that the document had been written in the eighth, rather than the fourth, century
Less than a century later, Valla became a hero to Protestant reformers

Civic Humanism emerged out of the belief that education—unlike that provided by scholastics—should promote individual virtue and public service

Three famous civic humanists were Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, and Poggio Bracciolini who used their rhetorical skills to rally the Florentines against the aggression of Naples and Milan

Renaissance Art

New themes and techniques

In Renaissance Italy the values of interests of the laity were no longer subordinate to those of the clergy and the laity established models in education and culture for the clergy to emulate

This happened due to the loss of international power of the Church in the late Middle Ages when the rise of national sentiments and national bureaucracies—staffed by laymen rather than clerics—took a leadership role in the rapid expansion of lay education
Medieval Christian values were adjusted to a more this worldly spirit

Renaissance art embraced the natural world and human emotions and gave their work a rational, even mathematical, order—perfect symmetry and proportionately reflecting a belief in the harmony of the of universe
Availability of oil paints improved the quality of paintings
Chiaroscuro, the use of shading to enhance naturalness, and linear perspectivism, the adjustment of the size of figures to give the viewer a three-dimensional sense of the painting, equipped artists with the ability to create realistic paintings
Early Renaissance Artists

Giotto—considered by many as the first Renaissance artist

inspired by his love for Saint Francis, whose love for nature he shared, Giotto painted a more natural world
though still devoutly religious in practice and theme, Giotto’s works were no longer abstract and unnatural like the paintings that preceded him

the painter Masaccio and sculptor Donatello also portrayed the world around them naturally

Leonardo da Vinci

a true Renaissance man who was one of the greatest painters of all time, advised Italian princes and the French king Francis I on military engineering, advocated scientific experimentation, dissected corpses to learn anatomy, etc
most famous painting The Mona Lisa shows his skill at conveying inner moods through complex facial expressions

Raphael

Famous for his portrayals of the Madonna and his frescoes in the Vatican
His School of Athens is a perfect example of Renaissance technique as it depicts Plato and Aristotle surrounded by other great philosophers and scientists

Michelangelo

His statue David is a perfect example of Renaissance harmony, symmetry, and proportion, all serving the glorification of the human form
Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were commissioned by Pope Julius II and remains the crowning achievement of Renaissance painting
His later works are more complex and suggest deep personal changes and mark the passing from the High Renaissance style of painting—which valued symmetry and simplicity—to a new style known as mannerism—which accepted the strange and abnormal, giving freer reign to the individual perceptions and mood of the artist

Tintoretto and El Greco are mannerism’s best examples

Slavery in the Renaissance

Slavery developed in Italy in the twelfth century when the Spanish sold Muslims they captured in raids and war to wealthy Italians and other buyers

This form of slavery was perceived as a merciful act by contemporaries as the alternative would mean death for these captives

Slaves were used as domestic slaves and to work on plantations in the savannahs of the Sudan and the Venetian estates on the islands of Cyprus and Crete where sugarcane was grown
When the Black Plague caused a major labor shortage in Italy, the number of slaved soared and were captured randomly and consisted of people of many races including Tatars, Circassians, Greeks, Russians, Georgians, and Iranians as well as Africans and Asians

Slaves became so commonplace in Tuscany that nearly every well-to-do household possessed them

Section Two--Italy’s Political Decline: The French Invasions (1494-1527)

Section Overview

As a peninsula of autonomous city-states, Italy had relied on internal cooperation in the second half of the fifteenth century to provide a united front against outside invaders

Treaty of Lodi (1454)brought Milan and Naples, long traditional enemies, into an alliance with Florence and these three city-states stood together in opposition to an alliance between Venice and the Papal States

if a foreign enemy threatened, the five could present a united front

When Ludovico il Moro rose to power in Milan, hostilities between Milan and Naples resumed

Naples, Florence, and the Pope Alexander VI allied and threatened Milan
Ludovico asked the King of France for help

French kings had ruled Naples from 1266-1442 before forced out by Duke Alfonso of Sicily

Ludovico invited the French to enter Italy and claim Naples but the French soon threatened Milan

Chalres VIII’s March Through Italy

The French army marched over the Alps and into Florence

Piero de’ Medici, leader of Florence who was allied with Naples against Milan, tried to placate Chalres VIII by handing over Pisa and other Florentine possessions

This offering led the citizenry of Florence, who were inspired by a Dominican preacher named Girolamo Savonarola, to exile Piero de’ Medici from Florence
Savonarola convinced the people of Florence that the French were the rightful rulers of Florence
Charles VIII leaves Florence under the control of Savonarola

The League of Venice

Ferdinand of Aragon —hoping to gain land in Italy from a base he established in Sicily—found himself vulnerable so he established the League of Venice with the Papal States, and Emperor Maximilian I

This set the stage for a bitter rivalry between France and Spain

Ludovico, realizing the fatal mistake he made by inviting France to Italy, joined the League of Venice

Charles VIII and his French army are forced to retreat from Italy due to the strength of the League of Venice

Pope Alexander VI and the Borgia Family

France returned to Italy under Charles’s successor, Louis XII, when Pope Alexander VI assisted them
Alexander VI is known as the most corrupt Pope in history who aligned his Church policies with his personal ambition to gain power and land

Alexander VI openly promoted the political careers of his two sons Cesare and Lucrezia

The Papal States had lost territory in the Romagna during the years the papacy operated from Avignon and Alexander VI aligned with the French king Louis XII to regain this territory
In 1499 Louis XII and his French army invaded Milan and conquered Naples which was split and half given to Ferdinand of Aragon
Alexander and his son Cesare Borgia were supported in their conquest of the cities of the Romagna by the French

Cesare Borgia was given the title Duke of Romagna and this territory became the possession of the Borgia family

Pope Julius II—“Warrior Pope”

Julius’s Wars

Succeeded Alexander VI to the papacy and fought incessantly to place the lands under the control of the Brogia family in the Romagna under papal jurisdiction
In 1511, Julius formed the Holy League with Ferdinand of Aragon, eventually joined by the alliance of Venice, Emperor Maximilian I, and the Swiss; the Holy League was successful in driving France from Italy

The French fought back in 1515 under the leadership of King Francis I and the French won a few quick victories

Concordat of Bologna—seeking to end the French from meddling in Italian affairs, Julius agreed to give the French king control over the clergy in France in exchange for French recognition of the papal authority over church council and the right to collect annates in France

The secular nature of the papacy during the reign of Julius II prompted the humanist Erasmus to write the satire Julius Excluded from Heaven

Niccolo Machiavelli

He lived through the tumultuous years when French, German, and Spanish armies wreaked havoc on Italy leading him to conclude that Italian unity was needed

He believed internal fighting had led to foreign interference

He was a humanist who studied classical Rome and was impressed by the ability of the Romans to fend off enemies and their commitment to the idea of virtu—the ability to act decisively and heroically for the good of the country
In his book The Prince, Machiavelli encourages rulers to use fraud and deceit to maintain power; he dedicated the book to Lorenzo de’ Medici and he hoped that powerful leader of whom he writes in The Prince would emerge from the Medici family

Leo X, a member of the Medici family, had recently been named pope and this provided hope for Machiavelli’s grand vision
Nonetheless, the second Medici pope, Clement VII, fell victim to Emperor Charles V when he sacked Rome in 1527

Section Three—Revival of Monarch in Northern Europe

Section Overview

Truly sovereign monarchs begin to consolidate and centralize their power unlike the feudal monarchs of the High Middle Ages who forfeited power to semi-autonomous vassals, towns, and clergy
After the Hundred Years’ War and the Great Schism in the church, the nobility and the clergy were in decline and less able to block the power of growing national monarchies
During this period both townspeople and monarchs worked to create closer ties with each other. As towns became more prosperous, kings wanted to benefit from these commercial centers in the form of tribute and taxes. Likewise, the towns wanted the protection that could be afforded by the king.
Loyal, business-wise townspeople, not the nobility and the clergy, increasingly staffed royal offices and became the king’s lawyers, military tacticians, and foreign diplomats. This new alliance between king and townspeople broke the bonds of feudal society and made possible the rise of sovereign states
In sovereign states, the powers of taxation, war making, and law enforcement no longer belong to semiautonomous vassals, but are concentrated in the hands of the monarch and exercised by his or her chosen agents
Monarchies began to create standing national armies in the fifteenth century. The noble cavalry disappeared and was replaced by the infantry and artillery

France

Charles VII (1422-1461)

created a permanent professional army in France
he used the expertise of an independent merchant-banker named Jacques Coeur to build a strong economy, diplomatic corps, and national administration for France

Louis XI (1461-1483)

During his reign, the English Empire in France ended when the English were slowly—but steadily—forced out of France during the course of the Hundred Years’ War
Burgundy, a duchy in France, had maintained its independence throughout the medieval period. With the death of its leader, Charles the Bold, in 1477, Burgundy was divided by French king Louis XI and Habsburg emperor Maximilian I
Louis XI ended his reign as king with nearly double the land holdings he inherited when he came to the throne
he established a national postal system, expanded trade and industry, and developed a lucrative silk industry

Louis XI’s successors, however, made poor foreign policy decisions. For example, France suffered from losing conquests in Italy in the 1490s and lost a series of wars with the Habsburgs in the first half of the sixteenth century

Spain

Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon work to Unify Spain

The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 created a new power in Europe that alarmed both France and Portugal
Although the marriage dynastically united the two kingdoms, constitutionally the remained separate as each retained separate laws, armies, coinage, taxation and cultural traditions
Between 1482 and 1504, Isabella and Ferdinand had conquered the Moors in Granada, made Naples a Spanish possession, and conquered the kingdom of Navarre in the north
They won the allegiance of the Hermandad, a powerful league of cities and towns that served them rather the noble landowners
Spain, once a rare melting pot of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, became a Christian nation as Ferdinand and Isabella made Spain the shining example of a state-controlled religion
In 1492, non-converting Jews were exiled from Spain and their property confiscated; in 1502, non-converted Moors were exiled

Isabella and Ferdinand negotiate marriages for the offspring

Their eldest daughter, Joanna, married Archduke Philip, the son of Emperor Maximilian I

The son of Joanna and Philip, Charles I was the first to rule over a united Spain; with his inheritance and election as emperor in 1519, his empire almost equaled the size of that of Charlemagne

Their second daughter, Catherine of Aragon, first married Prince Arthur, the son of English king Henry VII; after Arthur’s premature death, she married his brother Henry VIII; the failure of their marriage led to the creation of the Anglican Church and English Reformation

Isabella and Ferdinand make Spain the supreme power in Europe in the sixteenth century

They promoted overseas exploration from which they benefitted when Columbus landed in the Caribbean Islands while searching for a shorter route to the Far East.
They created the Spanish Empire in Mexico and Peru whose gold a silver mines helped make Spain the wealthiest nation in Europe

England

Turmoil in the latter half of the fifteenth century

Civil war broke out between the House of York and the House of Lancaster

The roots of the conflict lay in the succession irregularities after the forced deposition of the erratic king Richard II
The duke of York and his supporters in the prosperous southern towns challenged the Lancastrian monarchy of Henry IV. In 1461, Edward IV, son of the duke of York, seized power and ruled for more than 20 years; his reign was only briefly interrupted by Henry IV’s short-lived restoration
Edward IV’s brother, Richard III, usurped power from Edward IV’s son, and after Richard’s death, the new Tudor dynasty portrayed him as a villain who killed Edward’s sons in the Tower of London
Richard’s reign saw the growth for support of the Lancastrian Henry Tudor, who came back to England from France and defeated Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485

Henry VII consolidates his power over England

Henry Tudor married the daughter of Edward IV, Elizabeth of York, in order to make the throne of England uncontestable
He created the Court of the Star Chamber which took the power of administering justice away from nobles and placed it firmly in the hands of royal courts; nobles were no longer capable of rigging verdicts to promote their interests
Henry manipulated English law to confiscate lands and fortunes from nobles with such success that he was able to manage the government without depending on Parliament for royal funds

Holy Roman Empire

Germany and Italy were the exceptions to the rule when France, England, and Spain steadily began to politically centralize
Rulers in the Holy Roman Empire continued to partition their kingdoms, however small, among their sons; by the late fifteenth century, Germany was divided into over three hundred independent political entities
Golden Bull, an agreement reached in 1356, established a seventeen member electoral college consisting of the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne; the duke of Saxony; the margrave of Brandenburg; the count of Palatine; and the king of Bohemia. They functioned as an administrative body and elected the emperor
Reichstag was created in the fifteenth century to bring to a halt the constant feuding. It was a national assembly of the seven electors, the nonelectoral princes, and representatives from the sixty-five imperial free cities

Section Four—The Northern Renaissance

Section Overview

Scholars of the northern Renaissance created conditions that would help spring forth the Protestant Reformation as they read original Latin texts of the Church fathers and realized many discrepancies to the dominant Catholic orthodoxy
Northern humanists came from more diverse social backgrounds and were more devoted to religious reform than their Italian counterparts
The development of print, or moveable type, gave northern humanists, the Church and state new influence to popularize their viewpoints freely and to a wider audience

The Printing Press

Johann Gutenberg invented printing with moveable type in the middle of the fifteenth century in Mainz, Germany which became the printing capital for all of western Europe
Books were rapidly produced on religious as well as practical topics like how-to books on childrearing, making brandies and liquors, curing animals, and farming

Erasmus

Northern humanists who made clear in his many works that devout Catholics wanted the Church to reform
He prepared short Latin dialogues for his students to teach them good manners of speech and how to live well, but also anticlerical dialogues, and satires on religious dogmatism; this collection of his dialogues were titled Colloquies
He also published a book of Adages which included over 5,000 contemporary and ancient proverbs
He encouraged what he called philosophia Christi, a simple, ethical piety in imitation of Christ and his apostles
He translated old Christian texts from Latin and Greek into vernacular languages as to be available to more people
In the 1520s a popular saying developed: “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.”

Humanism and Reform

Germany

Rudolf Agricola (1443-1485), the “father of German humanism” studied in Italy under the Italian humanists and introduced these ideas to Germany when he returned
Conrad Celtis, the first German poet laureate, and Ulrich von Hutten, a fiery knight, fused humanism with nationalism that spread ideas that were hostile toward people of non-German cultures
Reuchlin Affair

Johann Reuchlin was Europe’s foremost Christian authority on Hebrew and Jewish learning who wrote the first reliable Hebrew grammar by a Christian
Pfefferkorn, a Jewish man who converted to Christianity, supported by the Domincan order in Cologne, began a movement to suppress Jewish writings and Reuchlin came under attack
German humanists, in the name of freedom and good scholarship, rushed to defend Reuchlin
The conflict lasted for years and produced Letters of Obscure Men, a merciless satire of monks and scholastics to which von Hutten contributed

England

Visiting lecturers spread humanism to England

William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre lectured at Oxford
Erasmus lectured at Cambridge

John Colet, the dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, patronized humanist studies for the young and promoted religious reform
Thomas More (1478-1535)—the most famous English humanists (and close friend of Erasmus)

More’s book Utopia, a conservative criticism of contemporary society, rivals the plays of Shakespeare as the most widely read English work

Utopia depicted a society based on tolerance and reason where all property was held in common

More was top advisor to King Henry VIII

When he refused to accept the Act of Supremacy and recognize Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, he was executed

France

French invasions of Italy led to the permeation of Italian humanism in France
Guillaume Bude—a Greek scholar—and Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples—a biblical scholar—were the leaders of French humanism

Lefevre’s work influenced Martin Luther

The future Protestant reformer John Calvin was educated by French humanists

Spain

Interestingly, humanism--the same weapon used to bring down the Catholic Church in northern Protestant countries like England, France, and Germany—was used to strengthen the Catholic Church in Spain
Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros, advisor to Queen Isabella and appointed “Grand Inquisitor” and Spanish scholar of humanism, enforced strict Catholic orthodoxy

Founded the University of Alcala near Madrid
His greatest achievement was the Complutensian Polygot Bible in which he placed the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin versions of the Bible in parallel columns

Section Five—Voyages of Discovery and the New Empires in the West and East

Section Overview

Discovery of the Americas expanded European horizons both intellectually and geographically
Mineral and human wealth set in motion the engines of capitalism and trade shifted from the Mediterranean and Baltic areas to the Atlantic seaboard

The Portuguese Chart the Course

Prince Henry the Navigator, the brother of the king of Portugal, captured the North African Muslim city of Ceuta

He was in search of gold, slaves, and also launched missionary efforts here to save the Muslims
Portuguese ships delivered over 150,000 slaves to Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century
Henry searched for a safe route around the tip of Africa to Asia’s spice market

Cloves and pepper were the most sought after spices

Prior to Henry’s expedition, a limited supply of spices had been made available by Venetian merchants who purchased them from Egyptian markets or trading posts in the Ottoman Empire

Bartholomew Dias was the first Portuguese explorer to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in 1487
Vasco da Gama sailed all the way to India and returned with a vessel filled with spices worth 60X the cost of the voyage
The Portuguese established colonies in Calcutta and Goa on the cost of India

The Spanish Voyages of Columbus

Whereas Portuguese exploration focused east on India, the Spanish sought a faster route to the east, and access to the spice trade, by sailing west across the Atlantic
Columbus’ first voyage across the Atlantic took thirty-three days and when he landed in San Salvador in the eastern Bahamas, he thought he had landed on an outer island of Japan

Not until his third voyage to the Caribbean in 1498 did he realize Cuba was not Japan and South America was not China
Believing he landed in the East Indies, Columbus called the Taino Indians—who spoke a language known as Arawak—Indians, a name that stuck with Europeans

Amerigo Vespucci and Ferdinand Magellan explored the coastline of South America

Magellan rounded the tip of South America and continued onto the Pacific Ocean where he landed and was killed in the Philippines

Intended and unintended consequences

The Spanish launched a series of wars of conquests, along with missionary efforts, against the native people of the Americas
Gold and silver extracted from Spain’s colonies in America helped ignite a period of economic expansion in Europe and finance Spain’s wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
American Indian population were devastated by the epidemics of measles and smallpox that the Europeans carried with them while they returned to Europe with a deadly strand of syphilis
Spanish conquests in North and South America left an imprint of Roman Catholicism, economic dependency, and hierarchical social structure, all still visible today

The Spanish Empire in the New World

Spanish Conquests of the Aztecs in Mexico

The Aztecs ruled all of Central America from their capital of Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico city) when the Hernan Cortes arrived in 1519
Cortes arrived with five hundred men and a few horses, was initially believed to be the god Quetzalcoatl by Aztec emperor Moctezuma II, and established an alliance with Tlaxcala—an independent state and long enemy of the Aztecs
Cortes, along with his men and the Tlaxcala marched on the Aztec capital, killing most and driving the rest from the city; he declared this land New Spain

Spanish Conquests of the Incas in Peru

Incas controlled an enormous empire in the highlands of Peru
Francisco Pizarro landed on the western coast of South America with a group of 200 men, killed Atahualpa—the leader of the Incas—and captured Cuzco, their capital

This marks the transformation of South America into Latin America

The Church in Spanish America

Missionaries accompanied the earliest explorers and conquerors and attempted to convert Europeans to Christianity, and brought with them European style of education and civilization
A Dominican missionary, Bartolome de Las Casas was outspoken about the poor treatment of natives; he also believed that conquests was not necessary for conversion
The colonial Church prospered as the Spanish elite prospered by exploiting the resources and peoples of the New World
The Church became a great landowner in the new world as it was given large tracts of land by the crown

The Economy of Exploitation

Mining

Conquistadores set up gold and silver mines—Potosi in Peru
Forced natives to labor in the mines

Agriculture

Hacienda—unit of land owned by persons born in Spain (peninsulars) or persons of Spanish descent born in America (creoles)-- which were labored by natives who had little legal freedom and no legal right to move around (similar to the status of serfs in medieval Europe)
Hacienda economy produced food for the mining regions and leather goods used in mining machinery
In Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and other islands, black Africans worked as slaves on the sugar plantations

Labor Servitude

Encomienda—a formal grant of the rights to the labor of a specific number of Indians for a designated period of time
Encomienda was replaced by the repartimiento—a law that required male Indians to devote a designated number of days annually to Spanish economic enterprise
Debt peonage—free Indian laborers were required to purchase goods from the landowner of mine owner, to whom they became forever indebted; this practice lasted well into the twentieth century

Interesting Fact—The native population of Mexico was reduced from 25 million to 2 million

The Impact of Europe

Columbus’s discovery demonstrated folly of relying on any fixed body of presumed authoritative knowledge.
Enlightenment philosophers compared Columbus’s discovery of the New World to the invention of the printing press in terms of their statuses as world historic events
New wealth enabled governments and private entrepreneurs to sponsor research and expansion in printing, shipping, mining, textile, and weapons industry

Whenever possible, entrepreneurs established monopolies

New industries disrupted the traditional social divisions and this made the way for the Reformation by making people critical of all traditional institutions

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