PRESENTATION OUTLINE
2: The political structure in the americas during the 14th century based on Roman law and Roman legions. It promoted trade, tolerance, and Greek culture. It was a republic governed by a broad swath of citizens from the elite merchant and banking families. They used a method of sortition to draw candidates for public office. During the late 13th and 14th centuries, popular revolts led to periods when public office was also shared among citizens from the middle and lower artisan class.
3. In Spanish America, the mix of diverse peoples gave ride to a new social structure. In the Spanish-American social hierarchy, an exceptionally well defined pecking order based on birth, the Creoles come second. At the top of the social tree are Spaniards born in the Iberian peninsula who have come out to America.
4. The Portuguese showed so much interest in Brazil because of its rich territory and valuable natural product. The person the Portuguese brought in to work on these lands was John III in 1533. He divided the coastline into 15 sections, each about 150 miles in length.
5: French and English settlers frequently clashed with native peoples who resented intrusions on their hunting grounds, but the conflicts differed from the campaigns of conquest carried out by the conquistadores in Mexico and Peru. English settlers ne- gotiated rights to American lands by treaty, but native peoples did not appreciate the fine points of English law and frequently mounted raids on farms and villages.
6: In 1494 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the world along an imaginary north-south line 370 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Is- lands. According to this agreement, Spain could claim any land west of that line, so long as it was not already under Christian rule, and Portugal gained the same rights for lands east of the line. Thus Portugal gained territory along the northeastern part of the South American continent, a region known as Brazil from the many brazil- wood trees that grew along the coast, and the remainder of the Western Hemisphere.
