2. The preceding map, and the next two, are here to illustrate the great complexity,
and the impact, of the Columbian Exchange. In the first map we see the trade
routes that had been mapped out between 1492 and 1650. Although at this time the
Spanish and Portuguese, and to a lesser degree, the Dutch, dominated global trade,
this was not to last much longer; soon, the British and the French would supplant
Spain and Portugal, joining the Netherlands (the Dutch) in a three-way race for
wealth and power, in Europe and abroad.
The next two maps reveal some of the specifics of the Columbian Exchange, but the
specifics are not as complete as I would like them to be. They give you a very good
sense of the Exchange in terms of agriculture, but they do not “talk” at all about the
subsoil, or mineral wealth to be found in the Americas. Gold and silver are just the
most obvious discoveries; there was also turquoise, emeralds, jade, onyx, copper, etc.
And what of manufactured good, the guns and other weapons, the tools, and every
other thing you can name that men could make at this time in history: mirrors, books,
dishes, playing cards, clothing, furniture, shoes, alcohol, bolts of cloth…the list goes
on…and on…and on…but while I would like a map that showed all of that, I also
understand that to clutter up the map with too much writing would render it useless,
so – it is what it is.
Perhaps the strangest thing that was found in the Americas (in Nueva Espana, to be
exact, or as we like to call it: Mexico) that could be turned into profit was the
cochineal, a small beetle that, when crushed, produced a reddish dye
called…cochineal. This dye was used in the creation of HIGHLY expensive clothing
and furniture, and is still produced today in Mexico. (See the images related to this
following the maps, just ahead.)
The Columbian Exchange, Enlarged Upon
2
10. Pirates, Magicians,
and Armadas, Oh My!
Your book talks about pirates, and in
particular those of English nationality
called the “sea dogs.” The most famous
and successful sea dog of them all was
Sir Francis Drake (right), knighted by
Queen Elizabeth I on the deck of his
ship The Golden Hind (which was given
to him as a gift at the time of his
knighting). Your text discusses this,
making mention of how Drake was
knighted because of one voyage that
netted his backers 4,700% profit on
their investment. What it doesn’t tell
you is that Elizabeth was one of his
main investors, and that’s the reason
she went down to the harbor and
knighted him on the deck of his ship –
this is not the normal behavior of
queens. Any other time this would be
done in Buckingham Palace, and
everyone would come to the queen. But
Elizabeth was so thrilled to hear of the
pile of loot she was going to get as a
result of Drake’s piracy that she hiked
up her royal skirts and took herself
down to the docks just as fast as she
could get there to give the man his due.
But this raises a question – doesn’t it
seem a little odd that a queen, and
other similarly wealthy people, should
have been the financial backers of
violent, hard-bitten sea-going thieves?
Artist Unknown
10
11. So how did this modern piracy thing get
started anyway? Well, to begin with,
pirates have existed as long as sea-going
shipping has existed, and that’s going back
several thousand years. But the origins of
modern piracy are all about the tremendous
wealth that Spain and Portugal were
getting out of their American colonies in
the 1500s. The Dutch, the French, and
mostly the British decided to steal as much
of it as they could, and on the British end
of it, that meant outfitting great ships,
placing them in the hands of a capable
captain and crew, financing the cost of
their supplies, and letting them loose to
wreak havoc on enemy shipping. The
pirates were paid out of their plunder, but
they also had to compensate their backers
to the degree of x-percentage of their
investment, as well as the value of the
original investment. This then is where the
‘Golden Age of Piracy’ began (not so golden
if you were Spain and Portugal, clearly), and
this is where the idea for the ride at
Disneyland came from, and then those
wretched movies came from that. Now
think about those movies for a minute, and
try to remember the pirates themselves…
Statue of Sir Francis Drake
11
12. They looked kinda like this, right? In fact, exactly like this, and looking like this, what do they
look like, in the year 2015? They look like homeless people, like guys living on Skid Row, or
under a freeway overpass – don’t tell me you haven’t seen guys that look just like this on the
street within the last week or so, somewhere in L.A., because I know you have. And the lesser
pirates, the average crew members, look even worse, meaning even more like homeless people –
bad hair; bad teeth; dirty, ill-fitting and unmatched clothing (and hey, I’m certainly not trying
to disparage homeless people here – they deserve all of our assistance and sympathy; it’s the
pirates I’m clowning!). Now think about this: in the 1500s and after, a major ship-of-the-line,
12
13. a vessel capable of crossing oceans with possibly hundreds of men aboard, not to
mention tremendous amounts of goods, was very nearly the most expensive man-
made thing in the world, outside of grand buildings. So imagine today, a couple of
dozen homeless people being given control of a 747 Jumbo Jet, or an ocean-going
oil tanker – this boggles the imagination, no way it could happen. Did you ever ask
yourself, when watching those wretched Pirates of the Caribbean movies (you
know you’ve seen them all!), where did these clowns ever get a ship this big, and
the money to outfit it, and their weapons, and…? Right, it’s a mystery. But it’s
not, not really – wealthy investors paid people like this (of course the guys actually
running the ship, the captain and his officers were something else, often men with
some degree of education and status in society) to operate as pirates so they
could profit off of their thievery. And in order to do it, they invented something
unique in the world at that point – the joint-stock company, wherein a group of
investors would pool their wealth to finance some sort of venture to create
profits for themselves; they greater the investment, the greater the risk as well
as the potential for wealth. This my friends, is where modern corporations began
– IBN, Walmart, Microsoft, Ford Motors, Disney, Apple, Kodak, you name it –
after all, with any modern corporation, can you not buy stock, for whatever cost,
and run the risk of losing all or some of your investment, for the chance of
increasing the value of your investment to whatever degree -- ? Sure, that’s the
whole point of the stock market. So take it to the bank, folks (no pun intended):
the genesis of modern corporations can be traced directly back to the birth of
modern piracy.
13
14. As I suggested earlier, Spain and Portugal were not
thrilled about the activities of these pirates, and
their ambassadors at the court of Elizabeth I
complained mightily about these goings-on…all to no
avail. Elizabeth acted as if she had no idea how such
dreadful men could be up to such shenanigans, and all
the Spanish and Portuguese could do was grind their
teeth in aggravation – until they decided to do more.
The King of Spain and the ruler of the Spanish Empire
was Philip II (pictured right), and by the mid-1580s he
was well and truly fed up with England, her queen, and
her queen’s sea dogs. Elizabeth was an affront to all
the Catholic kings of Europe not just because of her
pirates, and not just because she was a Protestant
(think about what the book has told you about the
hostility between Catholic and Protestant in the
aftermath of the Reformation), but also because she
was a woman and in control of one of the most
powerful countries in Europe. The deeply Catholic
Philip decided that it was for him to end all of this,
and he set upon a plan to launch the mightiest naval
invasion the world had ever seen, in order to attack
and conquer England, remove Elizabeth from power
(and maybe marry her, there is some debate about the
legitimacy of this possible motive) and force the
people of England back into the embrace of the
Catholic Church. To this end he assembled a fleet of
14
15. some 130 ships, loaded with more than
30,00 troops, and sent them north to
subdue the English.
Elizabeth was wise to this well in
advance due to the good work of her
spies, and she summoned all of her
ministers to a council of war. One of
these men was John Dee (left), adviser
to the Queen on matters astronomical
and scientific over the course of
several decades. In addition to these
areas of study, Dee was also known as
an alchemist and bibliophile, and an all-
around scholar, legendary in his own
lifetime. His legend was built upon
many things, chief among them: he may
or may not (that’s always a fun thing to
find mid-sentence, hmm?) have turned
lead into gold and interviewed
thousands of angels through a scrying
stone, all of whose names began with
the letter ‘A.’ He also may or may not
(there it is again!) have told Queen
Elizabeth that he would save England by
summoning a “Protestant Wind” from
15
16. the north to come down and hurl the ships of the Armada upon the rocks, defeating the invasion with no Englishmen lost…he then (may or
may not have) went to the southern-most tip of England, summoned said wind, and performed the greatest feat of magic in English
history…maybe? Or maybe not? But forget maybe or maybe not – it’s a fact that an unseasonable storm DID thunder down from the
north, into the English Channel, destroying a third of the Armada, leaving the rest to be defeated by the Royal Navy, forever crushing
Philip’s dreams of defeating the English and their pesky sea dogs, not to mention spoiling his (supposed) notion of a hot date with
Elizabeth. This epic naval defeat is considered to be the beginning of the end for Spanish supremacy in Europe…as well as the beginning
of the beginning (I guess I can say that, right?) of England’s climb to the top of the heap as the greatest power in Europe. But that
comes later.
Defeat of the Spanish Armada, artist unknown
16
17. John Dee Performing an Experiment Before Queen Elizabeth I
Henry Gillard Glindoni, date unknown
17
21. OK, a primitive, hand-drawn map for you (by yours truly), because I can’t find anything online
to serve my purposes. What do you see here before you? Behold…NEW FRANCE! If you are
unfamiliar with the geography of the northeastern part of our country, around and beyond
the Great Lakes, this map might be hard for you to make sense of, in which case you can look
at the next map and relate it to what I have drawn here.
21
23. A beaver skin, or, as it was more commonly referred to, a pelt.
23
24. The official seal of the colony of
New Netherlands, whose main
community was New Amsterdam,
and is now New York City. New
Amsterdam was primarily located on
the eastern side of the East River,
in what is now Brooklyn, and was the
Dutch Breukelen, which means
marshland. A myth grew up after
the British took over in the 1660s
that the name ‘Brooklyn’ was an
English bastardization of ‘broken
land,’ which was attributed to the
fact that the Brooklyn area (at
least at that time) was not only
marshy, but very uneven in terms of
the terrain. Notice on the seal how
the Dutch colonists, unlike the
British Puritans to the north
(coming up later in the slideshare),
were entirely unapologetic about
their motives in colonizing North
America: beavers, or to put it
another way, “We’re here for the
money!”
24
25. The Protestant Reformation and Its Impact Upon Europe and
Surrounding Areas (Most of Christendom at This Time)
25
26. The European Migration to New England. That’s a nice, formal title, but let’s elaborate upon it a bit. First, the overwhelming majority of these immigrants
were English. Next, the purple lines below indicate movements of colonists from one colonial area to another. In addition, this map technically covers a bit
more than New England, which is all of the states that are east of New York, that is to say: VT, NH, CT, RI, MA, and ME (if you didn’t learn your state
abbreviations in grade school like you should’ve, now’s the time for catch-up – I’m short on space here); we also see movement into NJ and NY. I’m using
present-day names just to visually orientate you. The main thing we care about is how strong the immigration of Puritans into Massachusetts is – that was their
main destination, because it was the only colony that was governed BY Puritans, and mainly FOR Puritans.
26
28. King Philip’s War, aka Metacomet’s Rebellion
Your book does a good job of relating the main facts
about this conflict between the colonists of New
England and many of the Indian tribes of that region.
But I’d like to add a few things to the tale. You may
wonder why King Philip, or Metacomet, pictured at
right, had two names? When the English colonists met
Native American leaders who impressed them in some
particular way, they tried to find a great figure from
history who reminded them of the Indian leader, and
when they did, they bestowed an “honorary” name upon
the individual as a token of their respect. Metacomet
was known for his courage and ability to make good
decisions, which reminded the colonial leaders of Philip
of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father, so they
gave him the name. OK, Dave, so what’s the point? I
want you to understand that they really respected this
man, as they did many of the Indian leaders of the
time. No doubt, the English (or all of them except
Roger Williams), considered the Indians to be inferior
to themselves overall, but they also recognized that
they were the superiors of the English in many ways –
better farmers and hunters, more skilled at
woodcraft, etc.
The map on the following page is the next thing I want
to talk about – take a look at it with this in mind: the
first European colonists arrived in this region in 1620
(the Pilgrims at Plymouth), and by the early 1670s, so
many had followed that they had spread out and filled
up the land to an astonishing degree – just look at the
28
29. areas of white settlement, and
look at the scale of miles, and
think: in only two generations,
about fifty years, the colonists
had laid claim to/negotiated/or
won in war (with the Pequots in
1637) about 30% of the land of
New England, or what any of
these Indian tribes would have
referred to simply as the “world,”
as they had no larger frame of
reference. Look at tribes like
the Pocumtucks or the
Pennacooks – they were located in
the interior so that by the 1670s
they had not yet truly felt the
pinch of the land hunger of the
colonists; but then look around
Plymouth and Rhode Island, at
the Narragansetts and
Wampanoags; they were amongst
the earliest tribes to encounter
the colonists, and in one way or
another had lost almost all of
their lands by the time of King
Philip’s War.
29
30. So why didn’t they fight back, Dave? These guys were supposed to be tough, right? Did they
just let the colonists take everything from them - ?
Same story as the Aztecs, just a different place and time, folks – disease.
Your book gives you the numbers: in fifty years, 120,000 Native Americans had diminished to
16,000; and some scholars argue the original population was more like 250,000, making the loss
of life even more horrific. Think about what happens to a society when it loses appr. 85% of its
population that fast. Who dies first?
The old and the young, the people’s past and memory of who they were, the living repositories
of their knowledge of themselves; and the future, the promise of hope and happiness and
survival – they were the first to die. And the colonists are not only taking more land, but they
are also NOT dying, which seems to show that their God IS stronger than the supernatural
powers worshipped by the Indians – which is what the colonists had been saying all along.
So when a fiery leader like Metacomet comes along, and rallies the spirits of the warriors in a
bid to turn back the clock, to take back what is theirs, to defeat the English and drive them out
of their lands…they bought into it, or many of the Indians did, a half dozen tribes, those
mentioned by your text as well as the Podunks, Massachusetts, and Nashaway. Other Indians,
like the remaining Pequots, fought on the side of the colonists.
OK, so what do the English think of this, when the attacks begin? Well, to begin with, you have
to understand that the English thought there were FAR more than 16,000 Indians living in their
region; they’d have told you that they were GREATLY outnumbered by the Indians because they
believed that to be the case. So their initial reaction to the outbreak of hostilities was to go
into a panic, because they believed they’d be overwhelmed by a superior enemy. Once the
governments of the various colonies began to exchange letters and information, they got a
clearer picture of what it was they were up against…and that’s when they got mad…and after
mad they they got organized…and after organized, they got even. 30
31. Native Americans and Europeans (all of them, not just the English) had very different ideas
about how to make war. Two Indian tribes might have fought on and off for a month, and if
each side lost a dozen men, it would be considered a great and horrifically violent conflict – for
the British, this was just a weekend of heavy drinking and shenanigans in central London. In the
European part of the world where, for many centuries, territory and resources had been at a
premium, the English had learned the art of total war. Total war meant destroy your enemy,
utterly; kill not just the men, but their women and children if needs be; destroy their crops,
burn their homes, poison their water supply. None of this made any sense to the Indians – they
never learned to fight like this because there had never been any reason – killing too many men
would, in fact, have been seen by them as a great crime, because it would diminish the people’s
ability to produce enough babies to remain strong. They never set out to destroy an enemy
people.
Let one example underline the true difference between the European and the Native American
way of making war: let’s say that a conflict between two Indian clans broke out in late July, and
they fought back and forth, with daring raids and counter-attacks for three or four weeks;
about that time one of the warriors would have said, ‘Brothers, it is nearly time to harvest the
crops – the war is over.’ And both sides would have agreed to stop fighting, and maybe even
agreed to start the hostilities up again the following spring, six-seven months later. So why
stop fighting? Because if they didn’t harvest the crops at the right time, they’d all go to waste,
and if that happened, there would not be enough food for the clan during the winter, the
women, children, and elderly might hunger, and if it was the men’s job to fight, was it not just
as much their responsibility to do their part to feed their people?
So there was no fighting during the crucial time of the crop harvest.
But the English, and other Europeans had a different rule book for war. They came from
MUCH larger societies, where there was much greater competition for resources, and where
there were plenty of men to take care of the farms, and do many, many other things, and lots
of men left over to go out and fight…all day…every day…according to the rules of total war. 31
32. So when the colonists got mad after the early attacks in 1675, and they compared information,
they decided to form an alliance between the various colonies, the New England Confederacy.
They shared information, strategies, and resources, and they brought the hammer down on the
Indians, and before too very much time went by, the Indians were defeated. They were out-
numbered, out-gunned, out-diseased, and out-warred; one might consider it a miracle that any
of them survived at all, but they did.
Over 2500 colonial lives were lost, but perhaps as many as 13,000+ Indian lives; somewhere
between 60-80% of the native population was lost as result of the war. And 20% of the towns
of MA and RI were burned to the ground.
Metacomet himself was killed, and once dead, was drawn and quartered, and his limbs and torso
were hung in trees; his head was mounted on a pike and was displayed at the gate of Fort
Plymouth for two decades, and his wife and children were captured and sold into slavery in the
sugar islands of the Caribbean, to destroy, root and stem, any possibility of Metacomet’s
vengeance coming back on the people of New England.
I have read here and there that Metacomet’s head, before being displayed at Fort Plymouth,
was paraded to every town in New England, to show people, in person as it were, that their
great nemesis was well and truly dead. That may or may not be true. But whether it is or is
not, the whole affair was terrible from start to finish, and doubly so when you consider that
the official seal or sigil of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (or Society) was an image of an
Indian, with bow in one hand and arrow in the other, saying with a cartoon art word balloon,
‘Come over and help us.’
Well, the English colonists certainly did help the Indians of New England – they helped nearly
all of them straight into the grave.
What? You think I’m making this up? It’s right on the next “page”…
32
37. Bacon’s Rebellion: The Burning of Jamestown, 1676, Artist and Date
Unknown. The original Jamestown was never rebuilt and the site was only
rediscovered in 1994; since then, over 1 million artifacts have been
discovered there by archaeologists.
37
