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Unit 1
4–6% of examBefore 1492, millions of people lived in the Americas in hundreds of societies, each shaped by its environment. This unit follows what happened when Europeans arrived: the Columbian Exchange, Spain's conquest and forced-labor systems, and the meeting of very different ways of life. The patterns set here, of trade, conflict, disease and slavery, shaped everything that came after.
Longer videos that cover the whole unit. Good for a first pass or a final review.
Before you study contact, get the big picture: the Americas were home to many different Native societies, while western Europe had growing kingdoms, better ships and a strong wish to reach Asian trade by sea. Seeing both sides of the Atlantic around 1491 helps you explain why contact happened when it did and why its effects were so huge.
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Native peoples built very different societies to fit their surroundings. In the Southwest, Pueblo peoples irrigated fields of maize (corn) and lived in towns, while in the dry Great Basin and on the western Great Plains many groups moved with the seasons to hunt and gather. In the Northeast, the Mississippi Valley and along the Atlantic coast, peoples such as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) farmed and hunted from permanent villages, and in the Pacific Northwest rich salmon runs let groups live in settled towns without farming.
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Europeans sailed west looking for new sources of wealth, an edge over rival kingdoms and people to convert to Christianity, often summed up as "God, gold and glory." Better ships and navigation tools made long ocean voyages possible, Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, and new ways of organizing trade, like joint-stock companies, later helped pay for colonies.
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The Columbian Exchange moved plants, animals and germs across the Atlantic. American crops like maize and potatoes helped Europe's population grow, while horses, cattle, wheat and diseases like smallpox came to the Americas, where epidemics killed a huge share of Native people. Spanish conquistadors such as Hernán Cortés, who toppled the Aztec Empire in 1521, and Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Inca in the 1530s, shipped home gold and silver, and that wealth helped Europe's economy move from feudalism toward capitalism.
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Under the encomienda system, Spanish colonists could force Native communities to work for them and pay tribute, in mines and on farms and plantations. As disease and abuse killed many Native workers, Spain relied more on enslaved Africans, bought from European traders who got captives from West African rulers and merchants. Spanish colonies also ranked people in a caste system (the casta system) by their mix of Spanish, Native and African ancestry.
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Europeans, Native Americans and Africans saw the world differently. Many Native peoples shared land as a community, and some traced family through their mothers, while Europeans saw land as private property and expected men to hold power; these gaps caused misunderstandings, though each side also borrowed useful things from the other, like crops, tools and horses. Native and African people resisted conquest, and Europeans argued over how to treat them: in the Valladolid debate (1550–1551), Bartolomé de las Casas condemned Spanish abuse of Native people, while Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda defended it.
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This skill topic asks you to explain causes and effects across Period 1: why Europeans crossed the Atlantic, and how the Columbian Exchange, Spanish conquest and forced labor changed life in the Americas, Europe and Africa. Practice separating short-term from long-term effects and arguing which causes mattered most.
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