Facing Each Other: Europeans and Amerindians confront each other in the Americas, 1492-1691

Primary documents on Europeans encounters with

1) the native peoples of the Caribbean and Mexico in the 1492 and the 1520s and

2) those of the Northeastern woodlands during the 1630s and 1690s. Questions for study:

What attitudes toward native peoples did Europeans express in their writings?

What attitudes toward Europeans did native people hold?

 What evidence do you find for change over time--or persistence--in the attitudes of Europeans (and those of native peoples)?

Did Jesuit attitudes toward other peoples depend upon their perceived degree of civilization and economic development?  Compare Matteo Ricci on the Chinese and Jean de Brébeuf on the Huron in New France.

Close reading	Analysis
	OPLV: · Origin · Purpose · Value · Limits -Historical meaning -Historical significance (value) -Historical Connections

Major issue and argument in European expansion, colonization, empire-building

· What was the nature of Amerindian peoples, culture, and government?

· What justified their conversion to Christianity, their subordination, and the appropriation of their land, wealth, labor power, and so forth?

Europeans answered these questions in various ways that shifted in time. Two major examples of the 16th century were the arguments of two Spanish writers

· Sepúlveda in 1544, Democrates Secundas (Lim, document 7): Christian Spain was justisfied in conquering heathen barbarians.

· Las Casas in 1551, In Defense of the Indians (Lim, document 8): Amerindians were not barbarians but rational human beings who ought to be Christianized but not enslaved, abused, or exploited. To enslave, abuse, or exploit them would be unchristian and uncivilized.

Historical Connections with Roberts, p. 250-272. Society and Belief, ca. 1500-1750

Persistence, Change, & Geographic Variation
Social Order & Social Hierarchies	Nobilities & Aristocracy Rank & status	Women
	Economic arrangements in the commercial and agrarian worlds	East: lords and servile peasants in Prussia, Poland, Hungary West: seigneurial lordship and free peasants in France, western Germanies, Spain. Italy: urban landowners and rural tenant farmers England: Large landowners, substantial tenant farmers, and agricultural laborers
Fragmentation of Christianity
	Orthodox and Roman churches
	Luther’s revolt in 1517
	European Reformation	Calvinists Lutherans Anglicans (Henry VIII) Anabaptists
	Wars of the Reformation	Wars of Religion in France, 1562-1598 Thirty-Years’ War, 1618-1648
	The Catholic Counter-Reformation	Council of Trent, 1543 Reform of clergy Reform of laity—weekly mass, tighter regulation of family life: baptism, marriage Devotional intensity and religious fervor among clergy and laity Missionary work within and abroad Society of Jesus.