European exploration in the Americas | 1.3

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##Plague and repopulation

The fall of the Roman Empire (476 CE) and the beginning of the European Renaissance in the late fourteenth century roughly bookend the period of the Middle Ages. Without a dominant centralized power or overarching cultural hub, Europe experienced political and military discord. Social and economic devastation arrived in the 1340s when Genoese merchants returning from the Black Sea unwittingly brought with them a rat-borne and highly contagious disease: the bubonic plague. In a few short years, it had killed about one-third of Europe’s population. The effects of the devastating disease are known as the Black Death.

A high birth rate, however, coupled with bountiful harvests, meant that the population grew during the next century. By 1450, a newly rejuvenated European society, smaller and more prosperous than before, was on the brink of renaissance.

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##Feudalism

During the Middle Ages, most Europeans lived in small villages that consisted of a manorial house or castle for the lord, a church, and simple homes for the peasants or serfs, who altogether made up about 60 percent of western Europe’s population.

Europe’s feudal society was a mutually supportive system, at least in theory. The lords owned the land; the knights gave military service to a lord and carried out his justice; the serfs worked the land in return for the protection from invaders within the walls of the lord’s castle or city. Feudal society was first based on communal farming, but as lords became more powerful, they privatized their ownership and rented land to their subjects. Thus, although they were technically free, serfs were effectively bound to the land they worked, which supported them and their families, as well as the lord and all who depended on him. In practice, serfdom looked more like slavery than employment.

A serf’s life was difficult. Women often died in childbirth, and perhaps one-third of children died before the age of five. Without sanitation or medicine, many people perished from diseases we consider inconsequential today; few lived to be older than forty-five. Most individuals owned no more than two sets of clothing, consisting of a woolen jacket or tunic and linen undergarments, and bathed only when the waters melted in spring. In an agrarian society, the seasons dictated the rhythm of life. Bad weather, crop disease, or insect infestation could cause an entire village to starve or force the survivors to relocate.

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##The role of religion in early Europe

After the fall of Rome, the Christian Church—united in dogma but unofficially divided into western and eastern branches—was the only organized institution in medieval Europe. Before the Protestant Reformation, Christianity had one dominant sect: Catholicism. Just as agrarian life depended on the seasons, village and family life revolved around the Church. The sacraments, or special ceremonies of the Church, marked every stage of life, from birth to marriage to burial. As Christianity spread throughout Europe, it replaced pagan and animistic views, explaining supernatural events and forces of nature in its own terms. God in heaven, creator of the universe and beyond the realm of nature and the known, controlled all events, warring against the force of darkness, known as the Devil or Satan, here on earth.

All events had a spiritual connotation. Sickness, for example, might be a sign that a person had sinned. Penitents confessed to the priest, who absolved them and assigned them penance to atone for their acts and save themselves from eternal damnation. Thus the parish priest held enormous power over the lives of his parishioners.

Ultimately, the pope decided all matters of theology, interpreting the will of God to the people, but he also had authority over temporal matters. Because the Church had the ability to excommunicate people, or ban them from the church, even monarchs feared to challenge its power. It was also the seat of all knowledge. Latin, the language of the Church, served as a unifying factor for a continent of isolated regions, each with its own dialect. The mostly illiterate serfs were thus dependent on those literate priests to read and interpret the Bible, the word of God, for them. The feudal system, therefore, relied on the sanctity and fervor of religion to keep serfs tied to their lord.

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##What do you think?

How was serfdom similar to African slavery? How was it different?

How did the Christian Church affect political, economic, and social life of the Middle Ages?

Explain how the Christian church dictated future European colonization projects.

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##The Crusades: increased religious intolerance and forceful religious conversion

The year 622 brought a new challenge to Christianity. Near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a prophet named Muhammad claimed he received a revelation that became a cornerstone of the Islamic faith. The Koran, which contained the revelations received by Muhammad, identified Jesus Christ not as God but as a prophet. Islam spread throughout the Middle East and into Europe until 732.

Soon thereafter, European Christians began the Crusades, a campaign of violence against Muslims to dominate the Holy Lands—an area that extended from modern-day Turkey in the north along the Mediterranean coast to the Sinai Peninsula—under Islamic control, partially in response to sustained Muslim control in Europe. The city of Jerusalem is a holy site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims; evidence exists that the three religions lived there in harmony for centuries. But in 1095, European Christians decided not only to reclaim the holy city from Muslim rulers but also to conquer the entire surrounding area.

The Crusades provided the religious ideology for the Reconquista, which in turn inspired Atlantic colonization. The Reconquista, or reconquest, refers to the 800 years of violence and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula after the failed Crusades. The Crusades and the Reconquista cemented religious intolerance, and the Christians looked to colonization partly as a means of continuing religious conquests. Particularly in the strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal, religious zeal motivated the rulers to convert Native Americans and sanctify Christian global dominance.

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##The lure of gold: finding new routes to trade Eastern goods

Despite the consequent religious polarization, the Crusades dramatically increased maritime trade between the East and West. As Crusaders experienced the feel of silk, the taste of spices, and the utility of porcelain, desire for these products created new markets for merchants.

Merchants’ ships brought Europeans valuable goods, traveling between the port cities of western Europe and the East from the 10th century on along routes collectively labeled the Silk Road. However, transporting goods along the Silk Road was costly, slow, and unprofitable. Muslim middlemen collected taxes as the goods changed hands. Robbers waited to ambush treasure-laden caravans.

As well as seeking a water passage to the wealthy cities of the East, sailors wanted to find a route to the exotic and wealthy Spice Islands in modern-day Indonesia, whose location was kept secret by Muslim rulers. The lure of profit pushed explorers to seek new trade routes to the Spice Islands and to eliminate Muslim middlemen.

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##A thirst for glory: European competition for global dominance

Competition between the Portuguese and the Spanish motivated both nations to colonize quickly and aggressively. Prince Henry the Navigator spearheaded Portugal’s exploration of Africa and the Atlantic in the 1400s. Portuguese sailors successfully navigated an eastward route to West Africa, where they established a trading foothold. Portugal then spread its empire down the western coast of Africa to the Congo, along the western coast of India, and eventually to Brazil and the Atlantic islands. Although the Portuguese did not rule over an immense landmass, their strategic holdings of islands and coastal ports gave them almost unrivaled control of nautical trade routes.

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The travels of Portuguese traders to western Africa also acquainted the Portuguese with the African slave trade, already widely in practice in West Africa and funded by sugar production on the newly colonized Atlantic islands. Upon discovering the immense global market for sugar, the Portuguese began to trade enslaved people across the Atlantic to toil on the sugar plantations. The Portuguese fort Elmina Castle, located in modern-day Ghana, became more of a holding pen for enslaved Africans from the interior of the continent than a trading post, as the markets for slave labor in both Europe and then the New World boomed.

Portuguese colonization in the 1400s inaugurated an era of aggressive European expansion across the Atlantic. The Spanish, threatened by the Portuguese monopoly on enslaved Africans and expansion in the Atlantic, started their own colonization project with Christopher Columbus in 1492. The competition between the two nations continued and drew more and more Europeans to the New World.

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##What do you think?

How did the Crusades influence European colonization projects?

Explain the relationship between religion, commerce, and conquest at the beginning of European exploration and colonization.

Imagine you are a European explorer in the 1400s. Do you think you would be most motivated by religious conversion, global market opportunities, or competition with other European nations? Why?

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