CLASS READINGS
Unit 2
Exploration and Colonization · New readings will be added one at a time.
Section 1 · Europe and the Age of Exploration
Europe Before the Age of Exploration
What changes in Europe helped make long-distance ocean voyages possible?
The Silk Road, Crusades, and Spice Trade
How did older trade networks help create European demand for new ocean routes?
Why Did Europeans Explore?
Why did European rulers, merchants, and sailors support long-distance ocean voyages?
Technology That Made Exploration Possible
How did sailors combine ships, instruments, maps, and experience to travel farther across the ocean?
Maps, Cartography, and the Mercator Projection
How did maps help ocean travelers, and why does every flat world map distort Earth?
Portugal and the Search for a Route to Asia
How did Portuguese voyages create a sea route around Africa to the Indian Ocean?
Section 2 · Voyages and European Claims
Christopher Columbus and the Voyage of 1492
What happened during Columbus’s first voyage, and why should it not be called the ‘discovery’ of America?
The Columbian Exchange
How did the movement of living things and people after 1492 reshape societies on both sides of the Atlantic?
Disease and Demographic Change in the Americas
Why did epidemics cause such severe population loss in Indigenous communities after European contact?
The Treaty of Tordesillas and Dividing the Atlantic World
How did Spain and Portugal try to divide overseas claims, and whose rights did their agreement ignore?
Spain Builds an American Empire
How did Spain turn overseas claims into an American empire, and how did Indigenous and African peoples respond?
Cortés and the Conquest of the Mexica Empire
How did Cortés and his Indigenous allies defeat the Mexica Empire, and why is the story more complex than a simple Spanish victory?
Pizarro and the Conquest of the Inca Empire
How did Pizarro’s forces capture Atahualpa, and why did the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire continue for decades?