This page presents information related to the fifth class session of J. B. Owens's fall 2002 upper-division undergraduate and graduate course, History 360/560, The Spanish Empire. This course is part of the core curriculum in comparative and world history of the Department of History, Idaho State University. The sole purpose of this page is to provide an orientation to the reading assignments and class session for those students enrolled in History 360/560. See the source page for the complete Dublin Core standard metadata.

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Integrating the Americas in the First Global Age

An examination of the American and Afroeurasian contexts of the integration of the Americas into the development of the first global age. A discussion of the support from different groups for the maritime expansion policies of the Castilian and Portuguese monarchies.

Reading: Burkholder and Johnson, ch. 1; Payne, vol. I, ch. 9 (to p. 178); sections I, II, and III of The LaPietra Report of the Organization of American Historians.

  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?
  16. What were the motives, nature, and short-term significance of the major Iberian military and commercial expeditions to Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries?
  17. What factors made attractive to Europeans the consumption of commodities of Asian and Sub-Saharan African origin?
  18. What sources of information did Iberian intellectuals and political leaders have about the nature of the world outside of the Mediterranean, Western Europe, and its adjacent seas?
  19. Why have the European sources on the Portuguese role in Asia been more systematically used than the African and Asian sources?
  20. Why were Castilian and Portuguese peoples the ones to make the first effective European penetration of the Americas?
  21. Why was the initial intention of the Castilians and Portuguese, including Columbus and his followers, to implant overseas trading-posts?
  22. What factors contributed to the importance given in Castilian and Portuguese overseas ventures to the spread of Christianity?
  23. Why were the Castilians and Portuguese at first unable to derive much economic benefit from their Caribbean and South American territories?
  24. Why was so much control over Church administration in the non-European territories of Castile and Portugal given to members of monastic orders (Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and, later, Jesuits)?
  25. What motivated young men to join mendicant orders and undertake difficult missionary enterprises far from Europe?
  26. What impact did the Castilian conquests in the Americas have on the roles and conception of women in the social and cultural environments of the various American regions?
  27. If trade were indeed stigmatized by the governing elite of Castile and Portugal, as is often alleged in textbooks, why did so many wealthy Iberians, including aristocrats, quickly take advantage of the available investment opportunities?
  28. Why did some Castilians who went to the Americas protest the exploitation of the conquered indigenous peoples?
  29. Why did Castilian Extremadura become a major source of the few European immigrants to the Americas in the early sixteenth century?
  30. Why did the European pig adapt so well in the Americas?
  31. Why did such a high percentage of early European immigrants to the greater Caribbean region die within a year of their arrival?
  32. Why did the ruthless exploitation of indigenous labor by men like Pedrarias (Pedro Arias de Avila) become the norm among early Castilian settlers and officials in the Americas rather than the more benevolent policies of Vasco Núñez de Balboa?
  33. Why were Castilians always quick to set up, through proper legal documents, a municipality when they moved into a region like Hispaniola?

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J. B. Owens
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Revised: 3 September 2002




URL:  http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/readver5.05.html