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III. European Exploration, Trade,
and the Clash of Cultures
Cape Colony and South Africa
In 1652, the Dutch established a settlement called De Kaap, “The Cape,” at
the tip of the Cape of Good Hope. The settlement served as a reprovisioning stop
for its ships outbound to India and homeward-bound to the Netherlands. This
settlement later became known as Cape Town. A few Dutch settled there to grow
fruits and vegetables, raise cattle, and provide casks of fresh water to the ships. In
time, more settlers and soldiers came to protect the colony from the native
Khoikhoi people, who resented Dutch aggression against them, and who were
unhappy at the encroachment on their lands.
By the late 1700s, their descendants, the Boers (the Dutch word for farmer)
had moved far enough into southern Africa that they came in conflict with black
Africans and fought a series of wars against them. In the early 1800s, the British
gained control of the Cape Colony and fought intermittent wars throughout the
19th century against their new subjects, the Boers. In 1910, the various Boer
colonies were recognized as the Union of South Africa, a self-governing dominion of Great Britain.
Teaching Idea
For a small nation, the Netherlands was
a worldwide commercial power in the
1500s through the 1700s. Have students
do research in print and online sources
to develop a report about the
Netherlands in this time period.
The report could take the form of a
written paper, an illustrated history, a
model, or a map. Students should conduct their research first and then discuss it with you before choosing their
medium.
New Netherland
The first settlement in the area of present-day New York City was a Dutch
trading post established by Henry Hudson in 1609. In 1626, Peter Minuit, acting
for the Dutch West India Company, purchased Manhattan Island from the
Manhattan people for $24 in trade goods. The Dutch named the city New
Amsterdam in honor of the principal city in the Netherlands and turned the settlement into a center for fur trading. The entire Hudson Valley was known as New
Netherland.
The success of the Dutch drew the attention of the English, who decided to
press their claim to the area. They based their claim on John Cabot’s 1497 voyage.
In 1664, the English captured the settlement and renamed the entire area New
York, in honor of the English king’s brother, the Duke of York. New Amsterdam
was renamed New York City.
The Duke of York gave the lower portion of New York to two friends, who
named it New Jersey after the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel. New Jersey
was a proprietary colony managed for the benefit of the two proprietors, but they
offered religious tolerance and representative government to all who immigrated
there.
C. Trade and Slavery
The Sugar Trade
São Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea, the Madeira Islands slightly northwest of
Morocco, and other islands off the west African coast that the Portuguese
explored and colonized became the first centers of sugar agriculture. Likewise,
the Spanish introduced sugar cultivation to the Canary Islands, also off the west
coast of Africa. Because sugar agriculture is labor-intensive, the Portuguese and
Spanish needed large numbers of cheap laborers. Thus the Europeans began to
trade with local Muslim merchants and other warlords for captives from the
African mainland. The workers were typically captured by political rivals and sold
as slaves.
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In the mid-1400s, some 50 years before the transatlantic slave trade began, the
Spanish and the Portuguese were buying Africans as slaves to work their sugar
plantations on the eastern Atlantic islands. Later, the plantation model was introduced in Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and in the Portuguese colony of Brazil.
Sugar Plantations on the Caribbean Islands
As one historical account states, “The story of sugar in the Caribbean goes
hand in hand with the story of slavery.” The warm, moist climate and rich soil of
the Caribbean islands were well suited to the cultivation of sugar cane. The
Spanish knew from their experience on the islands off the African coast that sugar
agriculture took vast amounts of labor, which had to be cheap in order to make
the plantations profitable. Therefore, they made great efforts to transport enslaved
Africans to work these new plantations in the Caribbean. When the English captured islands from the Spanish and colonized other islands on their own, they followed the Spanish example and that of the Portuguese in Brazil. African slaves
not only planted the sugar cane and harvested it, but also worked in the mills
where the raw cane was crushed and boiled down to make sugar and molasses.
The backers of the southern English colonies on the mainland of North
America eventually realized that the climate and soil in parts of the South were
suited to the cultivation of labor-intensive crops, such as tobacco, rice, and indigo. After the mid-1600s, the English began acquiring slaves from plantations in
the Caribbean. Although relatively poor, the planters on the mainland were able
to buy a few cast-off slaves from the West Indies and gradually were able to buy
captives direct from Africa as the basis of the economy switched to large plantation farming.
Transatlantic Slave Trade
The first Africans in the English colonies on the mainland arrived at
Jamestown not long after 1607. These first Africans are believed to have been
treated like English indentured servants, people who contracted to work for a certain period of time and were then released. By the 1680s, however, the terms of
service began to change to lifelong servitude. When tobacco cultivation took off
in the late 17th century, it was difficult to find enough workers to farm the large
plantations that the English were starting in the colony, and buying captured
Africans promised a steady supply of labor.
Importing Africans as slaves for the Southern colonies became big business
for American merchants and sea captains in the 1700s. Because the climate and
terrain of New England were not suitable for large plantation-style farms, slavery
did not take a firm hold in New England. However, there were some slaves in
those colonies, and the principal merchants trading in slaves resided in Rhode
Island. Slavery was less important in the Middle colonies, where most farms were
small and tilled by families, although again there were some slaves on farms and
in cities, where they worked in houses and as skilled artisans and craftspersons.
Teaching Idea
Create an overhead of Instructional
Master 21, The West Indies, to help
students visualize the location of the
islands of the West Indies in relation
to the North and South American continents. Point out that the West Indies
are divided into four main groups: the
Bahamas; the Greater Antilles (Cuba,
Hispaniola [Haiti and the Dominican
Republic], Jamaica, Puerto Rico); the
Lesser Antilles (Leeward and
Windward Islands, Trinidad and
Tobago, Barbados); and the
Netherlands Antilles.
Ask students questions about
which island is the largest, which
cardinal direction any group is from
another and from the mainland, the
distance between island groups and
the mainland, and so on.
Name
Date
The West Indies
Study the map. Use it to answer the questions below.
Florida
Gulf
of
Mexico
N
W
BAHAMAS
E
S
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
CUBA
DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC
G
JAMAICA
HAITI
RE
AT
ER
Hispaniola
ANT
ILL ES
LESSER
ANTILLES
Caribbean Sea
Windward
Islands
TRINIDAD
BARBADOS
& TOBAGO
NICARAGUA
COSTA
RICA
Leeward
Islands
Puerto Rico
(U.S.)
HONDURAS
PANAMA
VENEZUELA
COLOMBIA
0
0
200
200
400 miles
400 kilometers
1. About how many miles is Cuba from end to end?
800 miles (1,287 km)
Copyright ©Core Knowledge Foundation
CK_5_TH_HG_P104_230.QXD
2. What group of islands is northwest of Hispaniola?
the Bahamas
Purpose: To read and interpret a map of the West Indies
Master 21
Grade 5: History & Geography
Use Instructional Master 21.
Triangular Trade
The slave trade was part of what was known as the “triangular” trade between
the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The triangular trade was so named
because the trading networks that comprised it connected three main areas:
1. Africa, 2. the colonies in the Caribbean and on the North American mainland,
History and Geography: World
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III. European Exploration, Trade,
and the Clash of Cultures
ENGLAND
Bristol
m
r,
s,
wo
ens
lav
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Af r
ica
ns
EUROPE
AFRICA
ds
oo
rdw
ha
ed
s,
ood
od
,
vory
gold, spices, i
E
se
r,
fish, flour,
livestock, lumber
W
as
ol
de
ow
np ls
gu oo
n, , t
ro th
, i clo
We
st I
n di
es
Date
Triangular Trade Routes
ga
su
enslaved
Africans,
sugar,
molasses
N
Name
co
ilk,
rice, so, tobac
indig
Charleston
g
red
factu
manu
whal
e oil, lumb furs
er,
London
es
uri
lux
eer
NORTH
AMERICA
Boston
New York
Philadelphia
m
ru
Create an overhead of Instructional
Master 22, Triangular Trade Routes, to
orient students to the concept of reciprocal trade. Triangular trade does not
mean that the same ships went from
Africa to the Caribbean to the mainland
to Europe and back to Africa, but that
trade goods flowed along these routes.
Have students identify the goods
that were carried on each leg of the
route and hypothesize why certain
products were exported or imported
from each region. For example, the climate and soil in the Caribbean were
good for raising sugar cane, which was
transported as sugar and molasses to
places that were not suited to growing
this crop.
and 3. Europe. As you can see from the map below, goods were transported in different directions, depending on who had what, and who needed what. For example, slaves might be shipped from Africa to the Caribbean and put to work growing sugar cane and making molasses. Then the molasses they produced might be
shipped to New England, where it would be made into rum that would be
shipped to Africa for sale. Or, slaves might be shipped first to the Caribbean and
then onto the southern part of North America. There they would produce a crop
like rice, which could be shipped to England.
guns, clo
th, ir
on,
b
Teaching Idea
SOUTH
AMERICA
S
Study the map. Use it to answer the questions below.
0
0
750
750
1,500 miles
1,500 kilometers
ENGLAND
Bristol
whal
e oil, lumb furs
er,
Charleston
ga
su
s
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
ens
lav
r,
ed
Af r
ica
ns
Slaves were shipped from the west coast of Africa. The area affected by the
slave trade extended from Senegal to Angola. At different times in the 400-year
history of the slave trade, the major areas of exportation shifted from region to
region along the coast.
EUROPE
AFRICA
ds
oo
rdw
ha
E
se
,
vory
gold, spices, i
fish, flour,
livestock, lumber
N
as
ol
od
de
ow
np ls
gu oo
n, , t
ro th
, i clo
We
st I
n di
es
W
m
r,
m
ru
enslaved
Africans,
sugar,
molasses
o
,w
London
es
eer
co
ilk,
rice, so, tobac
indig
uri
lux
ds,
guns, clo
th, ir
on,
b
NORTH
AMERICA
Boston
New York
Philadelphia
goo
red
factu
manu
The Middle Passage
SOUTH
AMERICA
0
S
0
750
750
1,500 miles
1,500 kilometers
1. What items were exported from Boston?
2. What items were imported to Africa?
guns, cloth, iron, beer, rum, gunpowder, tools
3. By what route were people brought to North America to be sold as slaves?
from Africa to the West Indies to North America
Purpose: To read and interpret a map featuring the triangular trade routes
Master 22
Grade 5: History & Geography
Use Instructional Master 22.
Copyright ©Core Knowledge Foundation
whale oil, lumber, and furs
The leg of the triangular trade network between Africa and the Americas was
known as the Middle Passage. It was during the Middle Passage that Africans were
transported in chains to the American colonies. Slave raiders—Africans armed
with guns supplied by European slave traders—would kidnap enemies or just hapless men, women, and children who were in “the wrong place at the wrong time,”
and march them in chains to the coast. There, the Africans would be put into slave
factories, or holding pens, until a slave ship came to pick them up.
On board the slave ship, the Africans would be chained together and packed
below decks in tight spaces for six to ten weeks with little food and water. They
might be allowed on deck in good weather for exercise and fresh air. Sometimes,
Africans jumped to their deaths from the railings rather than endure further suffering. If the weather was bad, slaves would be kept below decks for long periods
of time. Many caught fatal diseases; others went insane from the dark, claustrophobic, unsanitary conditions. For those who survived, the Middle Passage ended
in the Caribbean or in the Southern colonies, where the Africans would be
marched off the ship in chains to be examined by prospective buyers and sold at
auction. 40
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