Intro to Part 4 (pp.610-615) + Chapter 13 (pp. 617-649)

I learned that the eras we will be talking about is the ancient then classical and finally modern era. The main question that we should keep in mind this semester is if we are are still in the modern era. What it means to be modern is the technology we have available today and the rapidity of change. Chapter 13 is the political transformations of empires and encounters. We see European empires expanding to the Americas. The Spanish colonized the Caribbean, the Portuguese colonized Brazil, and the British, French, and Dutch all colonized North America. What gave the Europeans advantage in colonizing lands far away from home is that they had knowledge in air currents, innovation in mapping, navigation, and sailing technology. As many know about Hernan Cortes who was a Spanish conquistador who led the expedition to what is today Mexico and caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. Assisting Cortes in the fall of the Aztec Empire was Dona Marina, also known as La Malinche who was a interpreter, advisor, and loved Cortes. There would be a great dying epidemic because explorers and conquistadors from he New World brought diseases that would lead to around 60 to 80 million people dying. This was a social breakdown of Native Societies because their small villages were being depleted due to the quick loss of people from the diseases. Due to European colonization there was the beginning of the columbian exchange was was exchange of people, trade, disease, plants, and animals. The large scale transformations that the European Empires were generating around this time was the demographic collapse of Native societies. There was combinations of indigenous, European and African people meaning new societies were arising. With new plants and animals then there would be more crops and agriculture would improve. Silver mines became important in Mexico and Peru that were fueled by the trans Atlantic and trans Pacific commerce. This meant that there would be a need for workers and led to a mass scale of slavery. The cash crops that became very popular at this time was sugar and the cotton trade. From all this there was a rapid population because with more resources available then countries could maintain a large population. Who became most dominant around the world at this time were the Western Europeans. Although the Europeans benefited most by creating empires around the world they did not realize that there would be consequences on trying to maintain an empire across the ocean.