PowerPoint Assignment 1

The World in 1492

By

Kevin Schwartz

The Grand Tour: Europe

• There were many colonies with varying degrees of prosperity and wealth.

• All across Europe, new leaders were emerging and attempting to explore and conquer uncharted regions of the Earth.

The Grand Tour: Turkey to Africa • Turks and other Islamic

people controlled a vast area of land between Spain and North Africa.

• Christianity saw dwindling numbers to Islamic religion but caught a break when Columbus turned over the Americas to the Spanish.

• Spain, with the largest population of Jews in all of Europe, expelled any Jews unwilling to accept Baptism.

The Grand Tour: South Asia

• Muslims dominated most of India during this period.

• India’s port Malacca was perhaps the greatest in the world with goods from the West and East.

• Islam was spread to many different ports and islands through Malacca.

• The main competition between Portugal and Spain was the spread of their chosen religion.

The Grand Tour: China and Japan • Tome Pires became

Portugal’s first Ambassador to China.

• Zheng he was supposedly a great explorer but under further investigation, it was found that he wasted vast amounts of money, grain, and lives of the voyagers with hardly any benefit to the state.

• China’s Confucian bureaucrats made sure that naval exploration would not continue.

The Grand Tour: The Western Hemisphere

• The Aztecs remained bound to their land and had little interest in naval exploration.

• Their leader, Ahuitzotl, relied on economic pressure and terror to keep things running smoothly.

• The disunity of the Aztec tribes enabled them to resist the Spanish until 1700.

• The Putum were heavily engaged in trade.

• The Incas had a superb transport system in which information and goods could be moved at an extremely fast rate.

The Staff of Life • Each population

depended on a different resource based on the way in which its society developed.

• Western Eurasia depended on wheat.

• Eastern Eurasia depended on rice.

• Americas depended on com.

• Of these three commodities, com requires the least amount of time and effort.

• This kept jobs for women, where as they were displaced in wheat and rice jobs because of the advancement of heavy machinery requiring strenuous manual labor.

The Great Traditions

• There were 4 major forms of civilization that thrived in Eurasia.

• All had major cities, advanced technology, writing, metal implements, and elaborate bureaucratic structures.

• Outsiders continued to push on these stable populations but learned local customs and were just absorbed into the culture.

The European Challenge

• Due to the fact that the societies in Eurasia were in contact with each other, they could make technological advances much faster than a population that was isolated.

• Europe focused much of their resources and energy into building faster and more powerful ships for exploration and warfare.

• Europeans had exploration and expansion at the top of their list.

• They began to set up forts, trading posts, and churches in Africa.