PLEASE HELP ME You learned that Europeans had different motives for exploration and settlement in North America. How did those motives affect the ways in which the colonies developed? Think about the social, economic, and political institutions and ideas that formed in the colonies.

Explanation:

The year 622 brought a new challenge to Christianity. Near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a prophet named Muhammad claimed he received a revelation that became a cornerstone of the Islamic faith. The Koran, which contained the revelations received by Muhammad, identified Jesus Christ not as God but as a prophet. Islam spread throughout the Middle East and into Europe until 732.

Soon thereafter, European Christians began the Crusades, a campaign of violence against Muslims to dominate the Holy Lands—an area that extended from modern-day Turkey in the north along the Mediterranean coast to the Sinai Peninsula—under Islamic control, partially in response to sustained Muslim control in Europe. The city of Jerusalem is a holy site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims; evidence exists that the three religions lived there in harmony for centuries. But in 1095, European Christians decided not only to reclaim the holy city from Muslim rulers but also to conquer the entire surrounding area.

The Crusades provided the religious ideology for the Reconquista, which in turn inspired Atlantic colonization. The Reconquista, or reconquest, refers to the 800 years of violence and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula after the failed Crusades. The Crusades and the Reconquista cemented religious intolerance, and the Christians looked to colonization partly as a means of continuing religious conquests. Particularly in the strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal, religious zeal motivated the rulers to convert Native Americans and sanctify Christian global dominance.

Violence in Jerusalem during the Crusades. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The lure of gold: finding new routes to trade Eastern goods

Despite the consequent religious polarization, the Crusades dramatically increased maritime trade between the East and West. As Crusaders experienced the feel of silk, the taste of spices, and the utility of porcelain, desire for these products created new markets for merchants.

Merchants’ ships brought Europeans valuable goods, traveling between the port cities of western Europe and the East from the 10th century on along routes collectively labeled the Silk Road. However, transporting goods along the Silk Road was costly, slow, and unprofitable. Muslim middlemen collected taxes as the goods changed hands. Robbers waited to ambush treasure-laden caravans.

As well as seeking a water passage to the wealthy cities of the East, sailors wanted to find a route to the exotic and wealthy Spice Islands in modern-day Indonesia, whose location was kept secret by Muslim rulers. The lure of profit pushed explorers to seek new trade routes to the Spice Islands and to eliminate Muslim middlemen.

A map of the land trade route from Europe to Asia along the Silk Road. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

A thirst for glory: European competition for global dominance

Competition between the Portuguese and the Spanish motivated both nations to colonize quickly and aggressively. Prince Henry the Navigator spearheaded Portugal’s exploration of Africa and the Atlantic in the 1400s. Portuguese sailors successfully navigated an eastward route to West Africa, where they established a trading foothold. Portugal then spread its empire down the western coast of Africa to the Congo, along the western coast of India, and eventually to Brazil and the Atlantic islands. Although the Portuguese did not rule over an immense landmass, their strategic holdings of islands and coastal ports gave them almost unrivaled control of nautical trade routes.

Henry the Navigator. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The travels of Portuguese traders to western Africa also acquainted the Portuguese with the African slave trade, already widely in practice in West Africa and funded by sugar production on the newly colonized Atlantic islands. Upon discovering the immense global market for sugar, the Portuguese began to trade enslaved people across the Atlantic to toil on the sugar plantations. The Portuguese fort Elmina Castle, located in modern-day Ghana, became more of a holding pen for enslaved Africans from the interior of the continent than a trading post, as the markets for slave labor in both Europe and then the New World boomed.

Portuguese colonization in the 1400s inaugurated an era of aggressive European expansion across the Atlantic. The Spanish, threatened by the Portuguese monopoly on enslaved Africans and expansion in the Atlantic, started their own colonization project with Christopher Columbus in 1492. The competition between the two nations continued and drew more and more Europeans to the New.

Filial Piety represents the virtue that parent and children should have. It is extended to cover kings and their subjects, bosses and employees etc. It is the behavioral standard between elders and youngers. Essentially it is the Elders should love the youners and the youngers should repsect their elders. Most people, including many Chineses, Koreans and Japanese, have distorted it and emphasize only on the youngers must always respect and obey their elders. This is not so. The elders (such as parents and bosses and even kings) have the responsibility of caring for their youngers. Children must obey parents. However, when children have grown up to be adult and mature men and women, then they have the responsibility of making sure their parents do not make mistakes and suffer for their mistakes. Adults have the responsibility of caring, but not fool heartedly obey, their parents.