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Spain Builds an American Empire
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Spain Builds an American Empire

Slide 1:

  1. Competition for the wealth in Asia among European nations was fierce
  2. This prompted a Genoese sea captain named Christopher Columbus to make a voyage from Spain in 1492
  3. Instead of finding an alternative route to Asia, he instead found the Caribbean

Slide 2:

  1.  The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria sailed out of port on August 3rd 1492
  2. On October 12th of the same year, Pinta caught sight of the coastline
  3. Columbus and his crew went ashore.
  4. Thinking he finally reached the East Indies Columbus called the inhabitants who greeted him, los indios, which means Indian.

Slide 3:

  1. Scholars believed he landed in the Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea
  2. Indians called themselves Taino
  3. Columbus claimed the island for spain, calling it San Salvador “Holy Savior”

Slide 4:

  1. Columbus was looking for gold and did not find any on the island, so he looked on the others.
  2. Columbus returned to Spain and they financed three more voyages.
  3. Return trip to the Americas was in 1493.
  4. This time he had a fleet of 17 ships and 1,000 soldiers, crew men and colonists
  5. Spanish intended to turn the caribbean islands into colonies: Lands controlled by another nation

Slide 5:

  1. Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral reached Brazil and claimed the lands for his country
  2. A year later Amerigo Vespucci, an italian in the service of portugal, traveled the coast of South America.
  3. He claimed that the land was not part of Asia, but a new world.
  4. 1507 a German map maker named the new continent America in honor of Amerigo Vespucci

Slide 6:

  1. Vasco Nunez de Balboa became the first European to go through the modern day Panama to be the first European to gaze on the Pacific Ocean
  2. Ferdinand Magellan, a few years later, convinced a king to let him explore the ocean.
  3. With 250 men and five ships he sailed around the southern tip South America and into the oceans of the Pacific.
  4. fleet sailed for several months without seeing land.

Slide 7:

  1. Finally he saw land and explored the island of Guam
  2. After they went to the Philippines
  3. Magellan got involved in a local war and was killed.
  4. His men sailed home. Only 18 men and one ship arrived home.
  5. They were the first people to circumnavigate (sail around) the world.

Slide 8:

  1. As Magellan was on his voyage, a Spaniard named Hernando Cortes landed on the shores of Mexico
  2. He colonized several Caribbean island before turning their attention to the American inland
  3. Cortes and the Spanish explorers who followed him were known as conquistadors (conquerors)
  4. Lured by gold and silver, conquistadors carved out colonies in regions that would become Mexico, South America and the United States
  5. Spanish were the first settlers in the Americas

Slide 9:

  1. Cortes learned about the wealthy Aztec empire in the nation’s interior.
  2. Marched through mountain passes with 600 men to reach the city of (teh-nawch-tee-TLAHN) Tenochtitlan.
  3. And their emperor Moctezuma II, who was convinced Cortes was a god wearing armor
  4. He agreed to give the Spanish a part of their gold supply

Slide 10:

  1. Late spring of 1520, Cortes’ men killed some Aztec warriors and chiefs when they were celebrating a religious festival
  2. Aztecs rebelled soon after and drove out cortes
  3. Spanish did strike back and despite being outnumbered, cortes conquered the Aztecs in 1521
  4. Few key factors

Slide 11:

  1.  Guns: They had superior weapons
  2. Arrows could not match the firearm

Slide 12:

  1. Cortes enlisted several native groups.
  2. He learned through a native woman translator named Malinche that some natives resented the aztecs
  3. because of their harsh practices, including human sacrifice

Slide 13:

  1. Biggest factor was disease.
  2. Measles, mumps, smallpox and typhus were some diseases the native americans had never been exposed too
  3. They did not have natural defenses and died by the hundreds of thousands.
  4. By the time Cortes attacked their army had been greatly reduced
  5. Diseases would eventually kill millions in the Americas

Slide 14:

  1. Francisco Pizarro, led a small force of 200 men into South America and conquered the Incan Empire
  2. Met the incan ruler, (ah-tuh-WAHL-puh) Atahualpa near the city of Cajamarca.
  3. Atahualpa commanded a force of about 30,000, but brought mostly unarmed men for the meeting.
  4. Spaniards waited in ambush, defeated the incas and captured Atahualpa

Slide 15:

  1. Atahualpa offered a room full of gold and two of silver
  2. After receiving the ransom they strangled the king.
  3. Remaining incan forces retreated from Cajamarca
  4. Pizarro then marched on the capital Cuzo.
  5. Captured it without a struggle in 1533

Slide 16:

  1. Cortes and Pizarro conquered civilizations of the Americas and fellow conquistadors defeated other peoples
  2. Spanish explorers also conquered Maya in Yucatan and Guatemala.
  3. By the 16th century, spain had created an American empire that included New Spain and other lands in Central and South America and the Caribbean

Slide 17:

  1. Spanish handled their empire using techniques from the reconquista
  2. they lived among the people they conquered and imposed their spanish culture on them
  3. spanish settlers to the americas were known as peninsulares and were mostly men
  4. this resulted in relationships between spanish settlers and native women
  5. this created a large mestizo (mixed spanish and native american) population

Slide 18:

  1. Spanish lived among the people, but also oppressed them
  2. Forced Native Americans to work within a system known as encomienda
  3. Natives farmed, ranched, or mined for Spanish landlords
  4. These landlords received the rights to natives labor from Spanish authorities
  5. Holders of encomiendas promised Spanish rulers they would act fairly and respect workers
  6. Many abused natives and worked laborers to death.

Slide 19:

  1. Brazil remained outside of Spanish control
  2. In 1500 Cabral claimed the land for Portugal and in the 1530s colonists began settling Brazil’s coast region
  3. Found little gold or silver, so they began growing sugar
  4. Demand for sugar in Europe was great and the colony enriched Portugal
  5. They would settle more land for the production of silver

Slide 20:

  1. Spanish’s American colonies made it the most rich and powerful nation in the world
  2. In the 26th century ships filled with treasures from the Americas sailed into Spanish harbors
  3. Helped usher in a golden age of art and culture in Spain
  4. Spain also increased their military might by building a powerful navy
  5. Also built up their army and settled in parts of the American empire now known as the U.S.

Slide 21:

  1. Spain set off on a new series of expeditions into the southwestern U.S.
  2. Not their first time there though.
  3. In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed on the Florida coast and claimed it for Spain
  4. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado led an expedition throughout much of present day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas searching for wealth

Slide 22:

  1. They found only a little gold in the deserts, so the Spanish monarchy assigned mostly priests to explore and colonize the U.S.
  2. Catholic priests accompanied conquistadors from the beginning of American colonization looking for converts
  3. Pedro de Peralta, governor of Spain’s northern holdings called New Mexico, led settlers to a tributary on the upper Rio Grande
  4. Built a capital called Santa Fe or “Holy Faith”
  5. Christian missionaries arose among the pueblo, native inhabitants of the region

Slide 23:

  1. Spanish priests also pushed for better treatment of Native Americans
  2. Criticized the encomienda system
  3. The system was abolished in 1542
  4. To meet the demand for labor, Las Casas suggested Africans.
  5. Priests denounced this too, but others prompted it

Slide 24:

  1. Natives did not go peacefully and resisted domination
  2. Columbus encountered resistance on the island of present day St. Croix
  3. Before they surrendered they fired poisoned arrows
  4. At the end of the 17th century natives in New Mexico fought Spanish rule

Slide 25: 

  1. Spanish priests and soldiers burned sacred objects and prohibited native rituals
  2. Spanish forced them to work and abused them physically
  3. In 1680, Pope, a Pueblo ruler, led a rebellion against the Spanish
  4. Involved 8,000 warriors from villages all over New Mexico

Slide 26:

  1. Drove the spanish back into new Spain
  2. Took Spain 12 years to regain control of the area
  3. Southwest region of the future U.S. belonged to its original inhabitants
  4. Spaniards had other fish to fry though as other nations were colonizing the Americas.