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America’s History: Printed Page 4

America: A Concise History: Printed Page 4

America’s History: Value Edition: Printed Page 4

Transformations of North America

1450–1700

Question

Thematic Understanding This timeline arranges some of the important events of this period into themes. Look at the entries for “Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture” from 1450 to 1700. How did the Protestant Reformation and the response of the Catholic Church influence the colonization of the Americas in these years? In the realm of “Work, Exchange, and Technology,” how did colonial economies evolve, and what roles did Native American and African labor play in them?

WORK, EXCHANGE, & TECHNOLOGY PEOPLING POLITICS & POWER IDEAS, BELIEFS, & CULTURE IDENTITY
1450

  • Diversified economies of Native America

  • Rise of the Ottoman Empire blocks Asian trading routes of the Italian city-states

  • Europeans fish off North American coast

  • Portuguese traders explore African coast

  • Christopher Columbus explores the Bahamas and West Indies (1492–1504)

  • Pedro Alvares Cabral makes landfall in Brazil (1500)

  • Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru (1519–1535)

  • Rise of monarchical nation-states in Europe

  • Aztecs and Incas consolidate their empires

  • Probable founding of the Iroquois Confederacy

  • Rise of the Songhai Empire in Africa

  • Protestant Reformation (1517) sparks century of religious warfare

  • Henry VIII creates Church of England (1534)

  • Founding of Jesuit order (1540)

  • Castile and Aragon joined to create Spain; the Inquisition helps create a sense of Spanishness

  • John Calvin establishes a Protestant commonwealth in Geneva, Switzerland
1550

  • Growth of the outwork system in English textile industry

  • Spanish encomienda system organizes native labor in Mexico

  • Inca mita system is co-opted by the Spanish in the Andes

  • Castilians and Africans arrive in Spanish America in large numbers

  • English colonies in Newfoundland, Maine, and Roanoke fail

  • Elizabeth’s “sea dogs” plague Spanish shipping

  • English monarchs adopt mercantilist policies

  • Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588)

  • Philip II defends the Roman Catholic Church against Protestantism

  • Elizabeth I adopts Protestant Book of Common Prayer (1559)

  • English conquest and persecution of native Irish

  • Growing Protestant movement in England
1600

  • First staple exports from the English mainland colonies: furs and tobacco

  • Subsistence farms in New England

  • Transition to sugar plantation system in the Caribbean islands

  • First set of Anglo-Indian wars

  • African servitude begins in Virginia (1619)

  • Caribbean islands move from servitude to slavery

  • James I claims divine right to rule England

  • Virginia’s House of Burgesses (1619)

  • English Puritan Revolution

  • Native Americans rise up against English invaders (1622, 1640s)

  • Persecuted English Puritans and Catholics migrate to America

  • Established churches set up in Puritan New England and Anglican Virginia

  • Dissenters settle in Rhode Island

  • Pilgrims and Puritans seek to create godly commonwealths

  • Powhatan and Virginia Company representatives attempt to extract tribute from each other
1700

  • Tobacco trade stagnates

  • Maturing yeoman economy and emerging Atlantic trade in New England

  • Growing gentry immigration to Virginia

  • White indentured servitude shapes Chesapeake society

  • Africans defined as property rather than people in the Chesapeake

  • Restoration of the English crown (1660)

  • English conquer New Netherland (1664)

  • Metacom’s War in New England (1675–1676)

  • Bacon’s Rebellion calls for removal of Indians and end of elite rule

  • Salem witchcraft crisis (1692)

  • Social mobility for Africans ends with collapse of tobacco trade and increased power of gentry