Description
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
Textbook: Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4
Lesson
Minimum of 1 scholarly source (in addition to the textbook)
Optional Resources to Explore
Feel free to review the library guide for scholarly sources and videos at the following link:
History Library GuideLinks to an external site.
INSTRUCTIONS
The purposes of each case study assignment include the following:
To hone your abilities to research using scholarly sources
To advance critical thinking and writing skills
To compile a response to the prompts provided
To explore a historical topic and make connections to change over time
Instructions
Pick one (1) of the following topics. Then, address the corresponding questions/prompts for your selected topic:
Option 1: Exploration and Effects on Native Americans
Explain what motivated the European world powers to explore the Americas.
Describe the economic effects of exploration based on the Colombian exchange.
Analyze the effects of exploration on Native Americans.
Based on research, analyze if Europeans might be held accountable for transmitting Old World diseases to people in the Western Hemisphere.
Option 2: Slavery vs. Indentured Servitude
Explain how and why slavery developed in the American colonies.
Describe in what ways the practice of slavery was different between each colonial region in British North America.
Analyze the differences between slaves and indentured servants.
Option 3: Women in Colonial America
Pick two colonies (New England, Middle, or Southern colonies) and explain how women’s roles differ in the two colonies of your choice.
Describe what legal rights women held during the colonial period.
Analyze how Native women’s lives were different from colonial women’s lives.
Make sure to use your course text and incorporate an additional scholarly source from the Chamberlain Library in your response.
REQUIREMENTS
Length: 1-2 pages (not including title page or references page)
Use standard essay writing process by including an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
1-inch margins
Double spaced
12-point Times New Roman font
Title page
References page (minimum of 1 scholarly source)
No abstract is required
In-text citations that correspond with your end references
Unformatted Attachment Preview
The Americas, Europe, and Africa
Before 1492
1
FIGURE 1.1 This 1507 map by cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthais Ringmann is credited as the first
to incorporate the word “America.” Little was known about the continent at the time, as the land masses on the far
left of the map reveal. But the New World offered opportunity that the Old World would exploit.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
1.1 The Americas
1.2 Europe on the Brink of Change
1.3 West Africa and the Role of Slavery
INTRODUCTION Globalization, the ever-increasing interconnectedness of the world, is not a new
phenomenon, but it accelerated when western Europeans discovered the riches of the East. During the
Crusades (1095–1291), Europeans developed an appetite for spices, silk, porcelain, sugar, and other luxury
items from the East, for which they traded fur, timber, and Slavic people they captured and sold (hence the
word slave). But when the Silk Road, the long overland trading route from China to the Mediterranean, became
costlier and more dangerous to travel, Europeans searched for a more efficient and inexpensive trade route
over water, initiating the development of what we now call the Atlantic World.
In pursuit of commerce in Asia, fifteenth-century traders unexpectedly encountered a “New World” populated
by millions and home to sophisticated and numerous peoples. Mistakenly believing they had reached the East
Indies, these early explorers called its inhabitants “Indians.” West Africa, a diverse and culturally rich area,
soon entered the stage as other nations exploited its slave trade and brought its peoples to the New World in
8
1 • The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492
chains. Although Europeans would come to dominate the New World, they could not have done so without
Africans and Native peoples (Figure 1.1).
1.1 The Americas
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Locate on a map the major American civilizations before the arrival of the Spanish
• Discuss the cultural achievements of these civilizations
• Discuss the differences and similarities between lifestyles, religious practices, and customs among Native
peoples
FIGURE 1.2 (credit: modification of work by Architect of the Capitol)
Most Native American origin stories assert that Native nations have always called the Americas home;
however, some scholars believe that between nine and fifteen thousand years ago, a land bridge existed
between Asia and North America that we now call Beringia. The first inhabitants of what would be named the
Americas migrated across this bridge in search of food. When the glaciers melted, water engulfed Beringia,
and the Bering Strait was formed. Later settlers came by boat across the narrow strait. (The fact that Asians
and Native Americans share genetic markers on a Y chromosome lends credibility to this migration theory.)
Continually moving southward, the settlers eventually populated both North and South America, creating
unique cultures that ranged from the highly complex and urban Aztec civilization in what is now Mexico City to
the woodland tribes of eastern North America. Recent research along the west coast of South America suggests
that migrant populations may have traveled down this coast by water as well as by land.
Researchers believe that about ten thousand years ago, humans also began the domestication of plants and
animals, adding agriculture as a means of sustenance to hunting and gathering techniques. With this
agricultural revolution, and the more abundant and reliable food supplies it brought, populations grew and
people were able to develop a more settled way of life, building permanent settlements. Nowhere in the
Americas was this more obvious than in Mesoamerica (Figure 1.3).
Access for free at openstax.org.
1.1 • The Americas
FIGURE 1.3 This map shows the extent of the major civilizations of the Western Hemisphere. In South America,
early civilizations developed along the coast because the high Andes and the inhospitable Amazon Basin made the
interior of the continent less favorable for settlement.
THE FIRST AMERICANS: THE OLMEC
Mesoamerica is the geographic area stretching from north of Panama up to the desert of central Mexico.
Although marked by great topographic, linguistic, and cultural diversity, this region cradled a number of
civilizations with similar characteristics. Mesoamericans were polytheistic; their gods possessed both male
and female traits and demanded blood sacrifices of enemies taken in battle or ritual bloodletting. Corn, or
maize, domesticated by 5000 BCE, formed the basis of their diet. They developed a mathematical system, built
huge edifices, and devised a calendar that accurately predicted eclipses and solstices and that priestastronomers used to direct the planting and harvesting of crops. Most important for our knowledge of these
peoples, they created the only known written language in the Western Hemisphere; researchers have made
much progress in interpreting the inscriptions on their temples and pyramids. Though the area had no
overarching political structure, trade over long distances helped diffuse culture. Weapons made of obsidian,
jewelry crafted from jade, feathers woven into clothing and ornaments, and cacao beans that were whipped
into a chocolate drink formed the basis of commerce. The mother of Mesoamerican cultures was the Olmec
civilization.
Flourishing along the hot Gulf Coast of Mexico from about 1200 to about 400 BCE, the Olmec produced a
number of major works of art, architecture, pottery, and sculpture. Most recognizable are their giant head
sculptures (Figure 1.4) and the pyramid in La Venta. The Olmec built aqueducts to transport water into their
cities and irrigate their fields. They grew maize, squash, beans, and tomatoes. They also bred small
domesticated dogs which, along with fish, provided their protein. Although no one knows what happened to
the Olmec after about 400 BCE, in part because the jungle reclaimed many of their cities, their culture was the
base upon which the Maya and the Aztec built. It was the Olmec who worshipped a rain god, a maize god, and
the feathered serpent so important in the future pantheons of the Aztecs (who called him Quetzalcoatl) and the
Maya (to whom he was Kukulkan). The Olmec also developed a system of trade throughout Mesoamerica,
giving rise to an elite class.
9
10
1 • The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492
FIGURE 1.4 The Olmec carved heads from giant boulders that ranged from four to eleven feet in height and could
weigh up to fifty tons. All these figures have flat noses, slightly crossed eyes, and large lips. These physical features
can be seen today in some of the peoples indigenous to the area.
THE MAYA
After the decline of the Olmec, a city rose in the fertile central highlands of Mesoamerica. One of the largest
population centers in pre-Columbian America and home to more than 100,000 people at its height in about
500 CE, Teotihuacan was located about thirty miles northeast of modern Mexico City. The ethnicity of this
settlement’s inhabitants is debated; some scholars believe it was a multiethnic city. Large-scale agriculture
and the resultant abundance of food allowed time for people to develop special trades and skills other than
farming. Builders constructed over twenty-two hundred apartment compounds for multiple families, as well
as more than a hundred temples. Among these were the Pyramid of the Sun (which is two hundred feet high)
and the Pyramid of the Moon (one hundred and fifty feet high). Near the Temple of the Feathered Serpent,
graves have been uncovered that suggest humans were sacrificed for religious purposes. The city was also the
center for trade, which extended to settlements on Mesoamerica’s Gulf Coast.
The Maya were one Mesoamerican culture that had strong ties to Teotihuacan. The Maya’s architectural and
mathematical contributions were significant. Flourishing from roughly 2000 BCE to 900 CE in what is now
Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala, the Maya perfected the calendar and written language the Olmec
had begun. They devised a written mathematical system to record crop yields and the size of the population,
and to assist in trade. Surrounded by farms relying on primitive agriculture, they built the city-states of Copan,
Tikal, and Chichen Itza along their major trade routes, as well as temples, statues of gods, pyramids, and
astronomical observatories (Figure 1.5). However, because of poor soil and a drought that lasted nearly two
centuries, their civilization declined by about 900 CE and they abandoned their large population centers.
Access for free at openstax.org.
1.1 • The Americas
FIGURE 1.5 El Castillo, located at Chichen Itza in the eastern Yucatán peninsula, served as a temple for the god
Kukulkan. Each side contains ninety-one steps to the top. When counting the top platform, the total number of stairs
is three hundred and sixty-five, the number of days in a year. (credit: Ken Thomas)
The Spanish found little organized resistance among the weakened Maya upon their arrival in the 1520s.
However, they did find Mayan history, in the form of glyphs, or pictures representing words, recorded in
folding books called codices (the singular is codex). In 1562, Bishop Diego de Landa, who feared the converted
Native people had reverted to their traditional religious practices, collected and burned every codex he could
find. Today only a few survive.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Visit the University of Arizona Library Special Collections (http://openstax.org/l/mayancodex) to view
facsimiles and descriptions of two of the four surviving Mayan codices.
THE AZTEC
When the Spaniard Hernán Cortés arrived on the coast of Mexico in the sixteenth century, at the site of
present-day Veracruz, he soon heard of a great city ruled by an emperor named Moctezuma. This city was
tremendously wealthy—filled with gold—and took in tribute from surrounding tribes. The riches and
complexity Cortés found when he arrived at that city, known as Tenochtitlán, were far beyond anything he or
his men had ever seen.
According to legend, a warlike people called the Aztec (also known as the Mexica) had left a city called Aztlán
and traveled south to the site of present-day Mexico City. In 1325, they began construction of Tenochtitlán on
an island in Lake Texcoco. By 1519, when Cortés arrived, this settlement contained upwards of 200,000
inhabitants and was certainly the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at that time and probably larger than
any European city (Figure 1.6). One of Cortés’s soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, recorded his impressions
upon first seeing it: “When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry
land we were amazed and said it was like the enchantments . . . on account of the great towers and cues and
buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the
things that we saw were not a dream? . . . I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had
never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.”
11
12
1 • The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492
FIGURE 1.6 This rendering of the Aztec island city of Tenochtitlán depicts the causeways that connected the central
city to the surrounding land. Envoys from surrounding tribes brought tribute to the Emperor.
Unlike the dirty, fetid cities of Europe at the time, Tenochtitlán was well planned, clean, and orderly. The city
had neighborhoods for specific occupations, a trash collection system, markets, two aqueducts bringing in
fresh water, and public buildings and temples. Unlike the Spanish, Aztecs bathed daily, and wealthy homes
might even contain a steam bath. A labor force of enslaved people from subjugated neighboring tribes had
built the fabulous city and the three causeways that connected it to the mainland. To farm, the Aztec
constructed barges made of reeds and filled them with fertile soil. Lake water constantly irrigated these
chinampas, or “floating gardens,” which are still in use and can be seen today in Xochimilco, a district of
Mexico City.
Each god in the Aztec pantheon represented and ruled an aspect of the natural world, such as the heavens,
farming, rain, fertility, sacrifice, and combat. A ruling class of warrior nobles and priests performed ritual
human sacrifice daily to sustain the sun on its long journey across the sky, to appease or feed the gods, and to
stimulate agricultural production. The sacrificial ceremony included cutting open the chest of a criminal or
captured warrior with an obsidian knife and removing the still-beating heart (Figure 1.7).
FIGURE 1.7 In this illustration, an Aztec priest cuts out the beating heart of a sacrificial victim before throwing the
body down from the temple. Aztec belief centered on supplying the gods with human blood—the ultimate
sacrifice—to keep them strong and well.
Access for free at openstax.org.
1.1 • The Americas
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Explore Aztec-History.com (http://openstax.org/l/azteccreation) to learn more about the Aztec creation story.
MY STORY
The Aztec Predict the Coming of the Spanish
The following is an excerpt from the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex of the writings of Fray Bernardino de
Sahagun, a priest and early chronicler of Aztec history. When an old man from Xochimilco first saw the Spanish in
Veracruz, he recounted an earlier dream to Moctezuma, the ruler of the Aztecs.
“Said Quzatli to the sovereign, “Oh mighty lord, if because I tell you the truth I am to die, nevertheless I am here
in your presence and you may do what you wish to me!” He narrated that mounted men would come to this land
in a great wooden house [ships] this structure was to lodge many men, serving them as a home; within they
would eat and sleep. On the surface of this house they would cook their food, walk and play as if they were on
firm land. They were to be White, bearded men, dressed in different colors and on their heads they would wear
round coverings.”
Ten years before the arrival of the Spanish, Moctezuma received several omens which at the time he could not
interpret. A fiery object appeared in the night sky, a spontaneous fire broke out in a religious temple and could
not be extinguished with water, a water spout appeared in Lake Texcoco, and a woman could be heard wailing, “O
my children we are about to go forever.” Moctezuma also had dreams and premonitions of impending disaster.
These foretellings were recorded after the Aztecs’ destruction. They do, however, give us insight into the
importance placed upon signs and omens in the pre-Columbian world.
THE INCA
In South America, the most highly developed and complex society was that of the Inca, whose name means
“lord” or “ruler” in the Andean language called Quechua. At its height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
the Inca Empire, located on the Pacific coast and straddling the Andes Mountains, extended some twenty-five
hundred miles. It stretched from modern-day Colombia in the north to Chile in the south and included cities
built at an altitude of 14,000 feet above sea level. Its road system, kept free of debris and repaired by workers
stationed at varying intervals, rivaled that of the Romans and efficiently connected the sprawling empire. The
Inca, like all other pre-Columbian societies, did not use axle-mounted wheels for transportation. They built
stepped roads to ascend and descend the steep slopes of the Andes; these would have been impractical for
wheeled vehicles but worked well for pedestrians. These roads enabled the rapid movement of the highly
trained Incan army. Also like the Romans, the Inca were effective administrators. Runners called chasquis
traversed the roads in a continuous relay system, ensuring quick communication over long distances. The Inca
had no system of writing, however. They communicated and kept records using a system of colored strings and
knots called the quipu (Figure 1.8).
13
14
1 • The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492
FIGURE 1.8 The Inca had no written language. Instead, they communicated and kept records by means of a system
of knots and colored strings called the quipu. Each of these knots and strings possessed a distinct meaning
intelligible to those educated in their significance.
The Inca people worshipped their lord who, as a member of an elite ruling class, had absolute authority over
every aspect of life. Much like feudal lords in Europe at the time, the ruling class lived off the labor of the
peasants, collecting vast wealth that accompanied them as they went, mummified, into the next life. The Inca
farmed corn, beans, squash, quinoa (a grain cultivated for its seeds), and the indigenous potato on terraced
land they hacked from the steep mountains. Peasants received only one-third of their crops for themselves.
The Inca ruler required a third, and a third was set aside in a kind of welfare system for those unable to work.
Huge storehouses were filled with food for times of need. Each peasant also worked for the Inca ruler a number
of days per month on public works projects, a requirement known as the mita. For example, peasants
constructed rope bridges made of grass to span the mountains above fast-flowing icy rivers. In return, the lord
provided laws, protection, and relief in times of famine.
The Inca worshipped the sun god Inti and called gold the “sweat” of the sun. Unlike the Maya and the Aztecs,
they rarely practiced human sacrifice and usually offered the gods food, clothing, and coca leaves. In times of
dire emergency, however, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes, volcanoes, or crop failure, they resorted to
sacrificing prisoners. The ultimate sacrifice was children, who were specially selected and well fed. The Inca
believed these children would immediately go to a much better afterlife.
In 1911, the American historian Hiram Bingham uncovered the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu (Figure 1.9).
Located about fifty miles northwest of Cusco, Peru, at an altitude of about 8,000 feet, the city had been built in
1450 and inexplicably abandoned roughly a hundred years later. Scholars believe the city was used for
religious ceremonial purposes and housed the priesthood. The architectural beauty of this city is unrivaled.
Using only the strength of human labor and no machines, the Inca constructed walls and buildings of polished
stones, some weighing over fifty tons, that were fitted together perfectly without the use of mortar. In 1983,
UNESCO designated the ruined city a World Heritage Site.
Access for free at openstax.org.
1.1 • The Americas
FIGURE 1.9 Located in today’s Peru at an altitude of nearly 8,000 feet, Machu Picchu was a ceremonial Incan city
built about 1450 CE.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Browse the British Museum’s World Cultures collection (http://openstax.org/l/inca) to see more examples and
descriptions of Incan (as well as Aztec, Mayan, and North American Native) art.
NATIVE AMERICANS
With few exceptions, the North American Native cultures were much more widely dispersed than the Mayan,
Aztec, and Incan societies, and did not have their population size or organized social structures. Although the
cultivation of corn had made its way north, many Native people still practiced hunting and gathering. Horses,
first introduced by the Spanish, allowed the Plains Natives to more easily follow and hunt the huge herds of
bison. A few societies had evolved into relatively complex forms, but they were already in decline at the time of
Christopher Columbus’s arrival.
In the southwestern part of today’s United States dwelled several groups we collectively call the Pueblo. The
Spanish first gave them this name, which means “town” or “village,” because they lived in towns or villages of
permanent stone-and-mud buildings with thatched roofs. Like present-day apartment houses, these buildings
had multiple stories, each with multiple rooms. The three main groups of the Pueblo people were the Mogollon,
Hohokam, and Anasazi.
The Mogollon thrived in the Mimbres Valley (New Mexico) from about 150 BCE to 1450 CE. They developed a
distinctive artistic style for painting bowls with finely drawn geometric figures and wildlife, especially birds, in
black on a white background. Beginning about 600 CE, the Hohokam built an extensive irrigation system of
canals to irrigate the desert and grow fields of corn, beans, and squash. By 1300, their crop yields were
supporting the most highly populated settlements in the southwest. The Hohokam decorated pottery with a
red-on-buff design and made jewelry of turquoise. In the high desert of New Mexico, the Anasazi, whose name
means “ancient enemy” or “ancient ones,” carved homes from steep cliffs accessed by ladders or ropes that
could be pulled in at night or in case of enemy attack (Figure 1.10).
15
16
1 • The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492
FIGURE 1.10 To access their homes, the cliff-dwelling Anasazi used ropes or ladders that could be pulled in at night
for safety. These pueblos may be viewed today in Canyon de Chelly National Monument (above) in Arizona and Mesa
Verde National Park in Colorado.
Roads extending some 180 miles connected the Pueblos’ smaller urban centers to each other and to Chaco
Canyon, which by 1050 CE had become the administrative, religious, and cultural center of their civilization. A
century later, however, probably because of drought, the Pueblo peoples abandoned their cities. Their presentday descendants include the Hopi and Zuni tribes.
The Indigenous groups who lived in the present-day Ohio River Valley and achieved their cultural apex from
the first century CE to 400 CE are collectively known as the Hopewell culture. Their settlements, unlike those of
the southwest, were small hamlets. They lived in wattle-and-daub houses (made from woven lattice branches
“daubed” with wet mud, clay, or sand and straw) and practiced agriculture, which they supplemented by
hunting and fishing. Utilizing waterways, they developed trade routes stretching from Canada to Louisiana,
where they exchanged goods with other tribes and negotiated in many different languages. From the coast they
received shells; from Canada, copper; and from the Rocky Mountains, obsidian. With these materials they
created necklaces, woven mats, and exquisite carvings. What remains of their culture today are huge burial
mounds and earthworks. Many of the mounds that were opened by archaeologists contained artworks and
other goods that indicate their society was socially stratified.
Perhaps the largest indigenous cultural and population center in North America was located along the
Mississippi River near present-day St. Louis. At its height in about 1100 CE, this five-square-mile city, now
called Cahokia, was home to more than ten thousand residents; tens of thousands more lived on farms
surrounding the urban center. The city also contained one hundred and twenty earthen mounds or pyramids,
each dominating a particular neighborhood and on each of which lived a leader who exercised authority over
the surrounding area. The largest mound covered fifteen acres. Cahokia was the hub of political and trading
activities along the Mississippi River. After 1300 CE, however, this civilization declined—possibly because the
area became unable to support the large population.
NATIVE PEOPLES OF THE EASTERN WOODLAND
Encouraged by the wealth found by the Spanish in the settled civilizations to the south, fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century English, Dutch, and French explorers expected to discover the same in North America. What
they found instead were small, disparate communities, many already ravaged by European diseases brought
by the Spanish and transmitted among the Native peoples. Rather than gold and silver, there was an
abundance of land, and the timber and fur that land could produce.
The Native peoples living east of the Mississippi did not construct the large and complex societies of those to
the west. Because they lived in small autonomous clans or tribal units, each group adapted to the specific
environment in which it lived (Figure 1.11). These groups were by no means unified, and warfare among tribes
was common as they sought to increase their hunting and fishing areas. Still, these tribes shared some
Access for free at openstax.org.
1.2 • Europe on the Brink of Change
common traits. A leader or group of tribal elders made decisions, and although the leader was a man, usually
the women selected and counseled him. Gender roles were not as fixed as they were in the patriarchal
societies of Europe, Mesoamerica, and South America.
FIGURE 1.11 This map indicates the locations of the three Pueblo cultures the major Eastern Woodland Native
tribes, and the tribes of the Southeast, as well as the location of the ancient city of Cahokia.
Women typically cultivated corn, beans, and squash and harvested nuts and berries, while men hunted, fished,
and provided protection. But both took responsibility for raising children, and most major Native societies in
the east were matriarchal. In tribes such as the Iroquois, Lenape, Muscogee, and Cherokee, women had both
power and influence. They counseled and passed on the traditions of the tribe. These complementary gender
roles changed dramatically with the coming of the Europeans, who introduced, sometimes forcibly, their own
customs and traditions to the natives.
Clashing beliefs about land ownership and use of the environment would be the greatest area of conflict with
Europeans. Although tribes often claimed the right to certain hunting grounds—usually identified by some
geographical landmark—Native peoples did not practice, or in general even have the concept of, private
ownership of land. The European Christian worldview, on the other hand, viewed land as the source of wealth.
According to the Christian Bible, God created humanity in his own image with the command to use and subdue
the rest of creation, which included not only land, but also all animal life. Land, and the game that populated it,
they believed, were there for the taking.
1.2 Europe on the Brink of Change
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Describe the European societies that engaged in conversion, conquest, and commerce
• Discuss the motives for and mechanisms of early European exploration
The fall of the Roman Empire (476 CE) and the beginning of the European Renaissance in the late fourteenth
century roughly bookend the period we call the Middle Ages. Without a dominant centralized power or
overarching cultural hub, Europe experienced political and military discord during this time. Its inhabitants
retreated into walled cities, fearing marauding pillagers including Vikings, Mongols, Arabs, and Magyars. In
return for protection, they submitted to powerful lords and their armies of knights. In their brief, hard lives,
few people traveled more than ten miles from the place they were born.
17
18
1 • The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492
The Christian Church remained intact, however, and emerged from the period as a unified and powerful
institution. Priests, tucked away in monasteries, kept knowledge alive by collecting and copying religious and
secular manuscripts, often adding beautiful drawings or artwork. Social and economic devastation arrived in
1340s, however, when Genoese merchants returning from the Black Sea unwittingly brought with them a ratborne and highly contagious disease, known as the bubonic plague. In a few short years, it had killed many
millions, about one-third of Europe’s population. A different strain, spread by airborne germs, also killed
many. Together these two are collectively called the Black Death (Figure 1.12). Entire villages disappeared. 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 was on the brink of tremendous change.
FIGURE 1.12 This image depicts the bodily swellings, or buboes, characteristic of the Black Death.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Visit EyeWitness to History (http://openstax.org/l/plague) to learn more about the Black Death.
LIFE IN FEUDAL EUROPE
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 made up about 60 percent of western
Europe’s population. Hundreds of these castles and walled cities remain all over Europe (Figure 1.13).
FIGURE 1.13 One of the most beautifully preserved medieval walled cities is Carcassonne, France. Notice the use
of a double wall.
Europe’s feudal society was a mutually supportive system. The lords owned the land; knights gave military
service to a lord and carried out his justice; serfs worked the land in return for the protection offered by the
Access for free at openstax.org.
1.2 • Europe on the Brink of Change
lord’s castle or the walls of his city, into which they fled in times of danger from invaders. Much land was
communally farmed at first, but as lords became more powerful they extended 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. The
Catholic Church, the only church in Europe at the time, also owned vast tracts of land and became very wealthy
by collecting not only tithes (taxes consisting of 10 percent of annual earnings) but also rents on its lands.
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. Entire families, usually including grandparents, lived in one- or
two-room hovels that were cold, dark, and dirty. A fire was kept lit and was always a danger to the thatched
roofs, while its constant smoke affected the inhabitants’ health and eyesight. 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 dictate the rhythm of life. Everyone in Europe’s feudal society had a job to
do and worked hard. The father was the unquestioned head of the family. Idleness meant hunger. When the
land began to thaw in early spring, peasants started tilling the soil with primitive wooden plows and crude
rakes and hoes. Then they planted crops of wheat, rye, barley, and oats, reaping small yields that barely
sustained the population. Bad weather, crop disease, or insect infestation could cause an entire village to
starve or force the survivors to move to another location.
Early summer saw the first harvesting of hay, which was stored until needed to feed the animals in winter. Men
and boys sheared the sheep, now heavy with wool from the cold weather, while women and children washed
the wool and spun it into yarn. The coming of fall meant crops needed to be harvested and prepared for winter.
Livestock was butchered and the meat smoked or salted to preserve it. With the harvest in and the provisions
stored, fall was also the time for celebrating and giving thanks to God. Winter brought the people indoors to
weave yarn into fabric, sew clothing, thresh grain, and keep the fires going. Everyone celebrated the birth of
Christ in conjunction with the winter solstice.
THE CHURCH AND SOCIETY
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. In 1054, the eastern branch of Christianity,
led by the Patriarch of Constantinople (a title that because roughly equivalent to the western Church’s pope),
established its center in Constantinople and adopted the Greek language for its services. The western branch,
under the pope, remained in Rome, becoming known as the Roman Catholic Church and continuing to use
Latin. Following this split, known as the Great Schism, each branch of Christianity maintained a strict
organizational hierarchy. The pope in Rome, for example, oversaw a huge bureaucracy led by cardinals, known
as “princes of the church,” who were followed by archbishops, bishops, and then priests. During this period,
the Roman Church became the most powerful international organization in western Europe.
Just as agrarian life depended on the seasons, village and family life revolved around the Church. The
sacraments, or special cerem
