DBQ: European Exploration

Transcription

1 In your response you should do the following: DBQ: European Exploration Thesis: Present a thesis that makes a historically defensible claim that responds to all parts of the question. Argument development: Develop and support a cohesive argument that recognizes and accounts for historical complexity by explicitly illustrating relationships such as contradiction, corroboration, and/or qualification. Use of the documents: Utilize the content of the documents to support your stated thesis. Sourcing the documents: Explain the significance of the author s points of view, author s purpose, historical context, and/or audience of at least four documents. Contextualization: Situate the argument by explaining the broader historical events, developments, or processes immediately relevant to the question. Outside Evidence: Provide an example or additional piece of specific evidence beyond those found in the documents to support or qualify the argument.. Synthesis: Extends the argument by explaining the connections between the argument and ONE of the following: A development in a different historical period, situation, era, or geographical area, A course theme and/or approach to history that is not the focus of the essay (such as political, economic, social, cultural, or intellectual history), OR a different discipline or field of inquiry (such as economics, government and politics, art history, or anthropology). DBQ Prompt: Using the documents provided and your knowledge of world history, analyze the causes for European exploration of the New World.

2 Document 1 Theodore de Bry, woodblock artist from the Netherlands, 1504; de Bry based this engraving and several more like it on accounts from Native Americas concerning the Spaniards. Document 2 Ferdinand II, Spanish monarch, The Requirement of 1513 a statement, read aloud, in Spanish to Native Americas, by a conquistador or royal ambassador after discovering an island and encountering a tribe of Indians. I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the King as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will inter powerfully against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way that I can. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to his majesty. I will take your women and children and make them slaves. The deaths and injuries that you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of his majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me.

3 Document 3 Albrect Dürer, a German painter, 1520, from a statement from his personal diary, after viewing the Aztec treasures brought back to Europe by Hernan Cortez. I saw the things which have been brought to the king from the new land of gold, a sun all of gold a whole fathom broad, and a moon all of silver of the same size, also two rooms of the armour of the people there, with all manner of wonderous weapons...clothing, beds and all manner of wonderful objects of human use...i saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and I marvelled at the subtle ingenia of men in foreign lands... Document 4 Father Bernardino de Sahagún, from his book, General History of the Things of New Spain. de Sahagun was a missionary who learned the nahuatl (Aztec) language and wrote accounts of memories of surviving Aztecs from 1519 to The Spaniards appeared to be much delighted...they seized upon the gold like monkeys, their faces flushed. For clearly their thirst for gold was insatiable; they starved for it; they lusted for it; they wanted to stuff themselves with it as if they were pigs. They went about feeling the streamers of gold, passing them back and forth, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves. Document 5 Pedro de Cieza de Leon, 1537, who as a teenage de León joined the Spanish effort in the New World, become an explorer, and wrote the earliest historical account of the conquest of Peru. The History of Peru is based largely on interviews with conquistadors, as well as with Indian informants.

4 Pizarro [stranded on a small Pacific island off South America] was downcast when he saw they all wanted to go. He quietly composed himself and said that of course they could return to Panama and the choice was theirs. He had not wanted them to leave because they would have their reward if and when they discovered a good land. As for himself, he felt that returning poor to Panama was a harder thing than staying to face death and hardship here...pizarro replied that they had come from Spain...they had left their lands to explore these parts...but primarily, and above all, to let them know that the idols they worshipped were false, and that to save their souls they had to become Christians and believe in the God the Spaniard worshipped, who was in heaven...those that take Him as their God...will live in heaven forever. Document 6 Bartolomé de las Casas, 1542, Spanish missionary to Hispaniola, from his writing entitled A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, which he sent to Philip II of Spain. the Spaniards spared no age, or sex, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid wagers [bets] among themselves, who should with a sword at one blow cut, or divide a man in two the Spaniards perpetrating innumerable robberies and villainies as before; whereunto they added unheard of cruelties by murdering, burning, roasting, and exposing men to be torn to pieces by dogs; and finally by afflicting and harassing them with un-exampled oppressions and torments in the mines, a certain governor burned the largest regions and most ample kingdoms sending thousands to Hell by his butcheries. This ruler found out new inventions to rack, torment, force, and extort gold from the Indians.

5 Document 7 Data from the United States Geological Survey Report on Historical Silver production in the Americas 2001 and the Silver Institute s Report on Historic Silver Mining, Silver Production Pre-discovery of America Location Time Period Annual Production Period Total Europe 1001CE-1492CE 3 million ounces 1.5 billion ounces Asia 1001CE-1492CE 4 million ounces 1.9 billion ounces total 3.4 billion ounces Post-discovery of America Bolivia million ounces 1 billion ounces Mexico million ounces 1.5 billion ounces Peru million ounces 0.6 billion ounces Europe and million ounces 3.6 billion ounces Asia total 6.7 billion ounces