Age of Exploration 1

1. The immediate result of Columbus’s voyage in Europe was that a letter was published on April 1, 1493, describ-ing what Columbus believed he had found. By the end of April, it had been translated to Latin, German, and Tuscan. Amerigo Vespucci was the first person to think of it as a new continent rather than Asia. Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Malay Archipelago, which he called the “Western Isles” (modern-day Philippines). He was killed there, but his crew made their way back to Spain and confirmed that the Earth was round and the vastness of the Pacific. With only six hundred men, seventeen horses, and ten cannon, Hernando Cortés con-quered the rich Aztec Empire within three years and secured the silver-rich north within twenty years. Francis-co Pizarro conquered Peru between 1531 and 1536 with fewer resources and established silver mines that be-came the richest in the New World. Spain’s rise to world power was centered on their mines in the New World. The mines at Zacatecas and Guanajuato in Mexico and Potosí in Peru poured tons of silver. Spain also expe-rienced a steady population increase, creating a rise in the demand for food and goods. Because Spain had ex-pelled the valuable Jews and Muslims, the Spanish economy suffered and could not meet the demands. Prices rose and so did the costs of manufacturing cloth and other goods. Spanish products could not compete in the international market with cheaper products. The Spanish Crown divided the New World into four viceroyalties: New Spain (Mexico, Central American, and present-day California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, with the capital at Mexico City), Peru (modern Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador, with the capital at Lima), New Granada (present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and later Ecuador, with Bogotá the capital), and La Plata (modern Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, with Buenos Aires the capital. Within each territory, the viceroy had broad military and civil authority as the representative to Madrid. They ruled over the audencia, twelve to fifteen judges that served as an advisory council and judicial body. Intendants were established later, and they had military, administrative, and financial authority within their intendancy and were responsible to the Crown. The union of the Crowns of Portugal and Spain in 1580 introduced Spanish administrative forms called corregidores to Brazil.

2. Between 1560 and 1600, most of Europe experienced large price increases where prices doubled or sometime quadrupled, with wages not keeping up with the prices. Spain suffered most severely. People who lived on fixed incomes, like nobles, were badly hurt, whereas people who owed money prospered. Food prices rose sharply, and the poor suffered the most.

3. Intendants were royal officials implemented in the late eighteenth century who possessed broad military, ad-ministrative, and financial authority within their intendancy and were responsible to the Crown. The audencia was a board of twelve to fifteen judges that served as the viceroy’s advisory council and the highest judicial body. The quinto was a one-fifth tax of all precious metals mined in South America to the Crown. Corregidores were local officials who held judicial and military powers.

4. Marriage manuals stated that husbands were obliged to provide for the material welfare of their wives and children and that he was to protect his family while remaining steady and self-controlled. He was supposed to rule firmly but not harshly. Wives should be mature, good household managers, and subservient and faithful. Husbands were also supposed to be faithful. Marriage should be based on mutual respect and trust. A woman’s first priority was the household and that she should try to assist in her own or her husband’s business and do charity. Catholics viewed marriage as a sacramental union that could not be dissolved, whereas Protestants viewed it as a contract that promised the other support, companionship and the sharing of mutual goods, but also could be ended. Prostitution was important because it prevented worse sins. It was a source of income for women and young men. Single women worked as butchers, shopkeepers, nurses, goldsmiths, midwives, and workers in weaving and printing industries. The closing of converts caused marriage to be the only occupation for upper-class Protestant women. Communities of religious women were established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

5. The image of the witch was that she was married or widowed, between fifty and seventy years old, crippled or bent with age, and had pockmarked skin. Between 1560 and 1660, witch-hunting became very common. The charges of witchcraft were a means of accounting for inexplicable misfortunes such as military defeats and dis-eases. People who were nonconformists were attacked as being witches. There were charges against women who were believed to worship the Devil, had sexual acts with him, or ate infants. Women were tried because their neighbors feared their evil powers or that they had unbridled sexuality. The belief that women were more susceptible to the Devil’s allurements and could have multiple and demanding orgasms caused them to be ac-cused of many kinds of mischief and witchcraft.

6. Slavery is an ancient practice that began to become prominent in the later Middle Ages. The Black Death, fa-mines, and other epidemics created a severe shortage of agricultural and domestic workers that caused Euro-pean to buy slaves from the Balkans, Thrace, southern Russia, and central Anatolia. The 1453 Ottoman capture of Constantinople stopped the flow of slaves from the Black Sea and the Balkans, causing Europeans to turn to sub-Saharan Africa. Sugar plantations required thousands of people to do the manual labor. In the New World, shortage of labor was a major problem that was fixed by enslaving the native Indians. The natives were not used to any form of forced labor and died. In 1515, Spanish missionary Bartolomé de las Casas urged Charles V to end Indian slavery and instead use blacks because they could better survive the South American conditions and the church did not forbid black slavery. Settlers’ beliefs and attitude toward blacks came from Christian theological speculation and Arab ideas. Europeans were curious about Africans’ lives and customs, and slavers’ accounts were very popular. Africans were considered savage because of their eating habit, morals, clothing, and social custom as barbarians because of their language and methods of war; and as heathens because they were not Christians. They were believed to have a potent sexuality and were sexually aggressive. Medieval Arabic literature showed blacks’ physical repulsiveness, mental inferiority, and primitivism. They were the only culture that had not produced any sciences or stable states.

7. Skepticism is a school of thought founded on doubt that total certainty or definitive knowledge is ever attaina-ble. Montaigne embodied this belief by having a sense of calm, inner peace, and patience. He was tolerant and broad-minded and could look at both sides of a problem. Montaigne was a member of the nobility who identi-fied himself with the new nobility of the robe. He condemned religious ideology, cruelty, and overseas coloni-zation. His Essays were a series of essays that criticized the world around him in an Enlightened thought. They rejected any dogmatism and were secular and skeptic.

8. Some of the writers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods were Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christo-pher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s brilliance came from the originality of his characterizations, the diversity of his plots, his understanding of human psychology, and his unexcelled gift for language. The theme of Macbeth is exorbitant ambition and Hamlet’s is revenge. The Authorized, or King James’s, Bible was a translation of the Bible that took and a committee of scholars seven years to translate.

9. Baroque art and music is backlash to the overblown, unbalanced Renaissance art. Baroque came from the in-fluence of Rome and the revitalized Catholic church. The papacy and the Jesuits encouraged the growth of an emotional, exuberant art that wanted to go beyond the Renaissance focus on pleasing a small, wealthy, cultur-al elite. They wanted it to touch the soul and kindle the faith of ordinary churchgoers while proclaiming the power and confidence of the reformed Catholic church. Peter Paul Rubens glorified monarchs such as Queen Mother Marie de’ Medici of France and painted Christian subjects, Roman goddesses, water nymphs, saints, and angels. Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the greatest composers in the Western world through his con-certos, cantatas, and organ music.