Ways of the World: Chapter 13 Summary

In Chapter 13 we learned the Spanish, Portuguese, British, French, and Dutch were trying to expand to new lands.

•  Spanish →  Carribean → Aztec and Inca empires.
•   Portuguese  → Brazil
• British, French, and Dutch → North America

**BY MID 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN MOST OF THE AMERICAS

The European Advantage

• Their geography was important. European Atlantic states were well positioned for involvement in the Americas 
• need/want to become involved in Indian Ocean Trade
• religion
• weapons: guns, swords, horses
• diseases: Europeans immune to diseases but natives were dying out

The Great Dying

• 90% of natives died out
• Europeans brought diseases (Europeans immune, natives not)

Columbian Exchange

• the great dying → death of natives → labor shortage
• indentured servants and African slaves
• brought plants + animals to America'ss

Europeans at the time

• **mercantilism: governments should encourage exports to serve countries 

Aztecs and Incas

• natives put into forced labor 
• Spaniards divides: ex-mestizos - mixed race 
• large death rates

Sugar

• transformed Brazil and the Carribean
• Portuguese in Brazil dominated sugar market
• British, French, Dutch in Carribean broke portuguese monopoly
• production was intense
• large use of slave labor →  natives wiped out →  imported african slaves

North America 

• 90% of N. American population was European
• natives killed off by diseases
• became dominant