The Colombian Exchange and Silk Road were very similar, but at the same time they are very different. They both were a global system of exchange. The Silk Road was around from 3000 B.C. to the 15th century, and the Colombian Exchange was around from 1492 to 1789. Also, the Colombian Exchange was a land and sea trade route, but the Silk Road was land and sea. During the Colombian Exchange, they would use boats to travel.
1) Compare and contrast the French and Spanish experiences in the New World. a. As the Spanish empire spread over the southern portion of the present-day United States, the mission was developed to colonial development and to convert the Indians. More importantly the Spanish were there to get gold and other riches. On the other hand French wanted to increase trade. They traded textiles, weapons, and metal goods.
The Silk Road began in the 2nd century BCE with the diplomatic missions of Zhang Qian sent by the Han Emperor. The Silk Road was largely fragmented, commodities carried by merchants of many countries on the Silk Road from present day China to present day Turkey. The interaction of these different cultures created a cultural diffusion that can be seen in the resulting names, tools, jewelry, luxuries and house wares that these different societies adopted. Silk was one of the most important items traded along the Silk Road. Once the Silk Road was open techniques of weaving the silken thread did not begin to spread because this material was similar to that used by cloth weavers.
The Columbian Exchange between the new world and the old world significantly change people’s lives. After 1492, Europeans brought in horses to America which changes the nomadic Native American groups’ living from riding on buffalos to horses. This interchange also change the diet of the rest of the world with foods such as corns (maize), potatoes which are major diet for European nowadays. Besides all the animals from old world to the new world, Spanish also brought in the diseases that Native Americans were not immune of, such as smallpox which led to a large amount of Native Americans’ deaths.
To what extent did Europeans transform earlier patterns of commerce, and in what ways did they assimilate into those older patterns? This can be seen in three different cultures such as the portuguese, Spanish, and the Dutch. Portuguese aimed to control/enter Asian commerce with force, therefore disrupted old patterns of control of commerce through economic competition. Portuguese assimilated into patterns of commerce: carried Asian goods to Asian ports. Spanish forcefully took Philippine Islands, transformed old patterns of small, unstructured, and competitive kingdoms within the islands, as all kingdoms fell under the Spanish rule.
Nowadays, different news stations have been focusing on one side of the story. For instance, the incident in Anaheim in which a teenage boy was arrested due to a confrontation with an off-duty police officer. In the Hispanic news, the teenage boy was viewed as the victim and in the English news, he was portrayed as the aggressor. Both parties, emphasized on the facts they had, and they were both ideological. Like the famous phrase, ‘there are two sides to a story,’ and it was Zinn’s purpose to write about the other side of the US history.
o Magnetic compasses were first invented during the Qin dynasty in China and was used for fortune telling, where fortune tellers would use lodestones, a naturally magnetized mineral. Early references to a magnetic direction-finding device for land travel was recorded in a Song dynasty book in 1040-1044 . One of the first recordings of the use of magnetic compasses for navigation was during the Song dynasty and describes a magnetized needle floating in water that would align itself with the magnetic poles of the earth, regardless of the ship or boat’s orientation and movement. Zheng He was one of the first people recorded to have used a magnetic compass as a navigational tool in his seven ocean expeditions, which were organized by Ming Emperor
Some of the tools used on Christopher Columbus adventures were the quadrant, sextant, and astrolabe. “These tools were most prominent navigation tools used by Columbus and sailors
During the 1500s Europe and Africa began to trade more as traveling by sea was getting easier because of the new navigation discoveries. They traded with the people along the Atlantic Coast of Africa. After trading and exploring, the Portuguese travelers established small settlements. Some locals learned the Portuguese language so that they could communicate with the foreigners. They were both friendly and had many valuable things to trade.
Although a compass may not sound like a big deal it was a huge stepping stone for Europeans with this they were able to make maps. b. Magellan was the first european explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. This path was eventually called the strait of Magellan. Later in his voyage he ended up in the Philippines where he later died due to
European explorers and conquistadors during the age of exploration were motivated by three things: God, gold and glory. The two most prominent of the three between 1492 and 1607 were gold and glory. Beginning in 1492 gold motivated many explorers, from Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World to the Virginia Company’s colonization of America. Gold is a symbol for wealth, and many explorers soon realized the New World’s potential for wealth. The Spanish’s interest in wealth inspired Columbus’s expedition in the first place, as he was sent to India to trade for spices.
What was the role of technology in European Explorations ? I think the role of technology in European explorations was so so important. If you think about it without technology they wouldn 't have made it that far. Some of the technology they had was like the ships without the ships Europe wouldn 't have conquered the world.
The English were more concerned with finding gold rather than building functioning societies; which were primarily built around biblical teachings, while the Spanish intended for European national power to extend to western civilization beginning with Catholicism and influence of the pope. English settlers were driven from England due to religious practices and perceived themselves as saving the Indians from the Spanish and their tyrannical ways. For the English, owning land would give men control over their own labor and the right to vote in most colonies, and this land possession would show wealth. This new obtained wealth would not only have demonstrated power, but it could also be used to influence a society a certain way to convince others to follow suit. The English believed that their motives for colonization were pure, and that the growth of empire and freedom would always go together, unlike the Spanish.
As the world of global exploration and colonization grew, many powerful European empires set out to see what the New World had in store for them. Each empire had their own individual agendas and incentives for colonization. This led to the many differences between methods of colonization and exploration in every colony and region. The Atlantic World portrayed these contrasts between the Spanish, French, Dutch and British empires. However, the British settlements along the Eastern seaboard differed the most from those of other empires because there were no established policies or methods in British colonization, which led to differences in the economics and culture of each colony depending on who settled it.
Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes were both famous Spanish adventurers during the Age of Exploration. When the explorers came upon land, they encountered two different cultures. In 1492, Columbus encountered the Taino people, and in 1520, Cortes encountered the Aztecs. The two cultures that the men encountered were different in more ways than they were similar in regards to how the natives treated the men, what weapons they had and their war-like behavior, their technologically advancements, their housing and architectural structures, and even their religion.
