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The Americas at the beginning of the First Global Age

Reading: Bakewell, ch. 2.

  1. How do you account for the tremendous diversity of social and cultural environments that existed in the Americas by 1500?
  2. Why did the thirteenth-century penetration of the social and cultural environments of the Valley of Mexico by the Nahuatl-speaking Chichimec people know as the Mexicas produce social and cultural environments much more militaristic and violent than their predecessors?
  3. Why did the Mexicas/Aztecs suddenly push to dominate the Valley of Mexico in the fifteenth century?
  4. What was the basis of Tenochtitlán's growth by 1500 to a city substantially larger in population than any European city?
  5. In what ways was Aztec military leadership like that of the Mughals and Ottomans? In what ways was it different?
  6. Why did the Aztecs impose devotion to Huitzilopochtli on conquered regions?
  7. Why did the Incas suddenly push to extend their domain into what became the largest indigenous empire in the Americas?
  8. What factors allowed the Incas to maintain such a large territorial empire around 1500?
  9. Why were the Incas content to make use of existing political institutions and elite groups in the administration of regions under their control?
  10. How were the Incas able to thrust their mummy cults into the traditional devotional practices of the ayllus throughout the empire? What were the consequences of Inca religious imperialism?
  11. How did the Inca clans get the labor force to work their lands and to expand cultivation through terracing and irrigation?
  12. What impact did Inca imperialism have on the social environment of the Andes region under their control?
  13. Can you think of any possible reasons why the growth of territorially- extensive polities under the leadership of Itzcoatl (r. 1428-1440) and Pachacutec (r. 1438-1471) took place in the Americas at roughly the same time, and at about the same time as some of the major polities of Afroeurasia?
  14. What political and military factors contributed to the collapse of the Aztec and Inca empires in the face of Castilian intervention?
  15. Why did the introduction of new disease microorganisms in the Americas after 1492 have such devastating demographic and social effects on American Indian populations?

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J. B. Owens
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Revised:  28 July 1999


URL:  http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/reading.08.html