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Early American Imperialism

Decent Essays

This part of the story began, not in the Americas, nor in Europe, but in the Middle East. Carrying the message of the new prophet Mohammed out of the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began making major inroads into western Asia and northern Africa in the seventh century, eventually encroaching on Europe’s southern and eastern frontiers. In 1095, Pope Urban II responded to a request for aid from the Byzantine emperor, whose dominions were under attack by Muslim invaders, launching the era of the Crusades. For two centuries, European-based Christians battled with Muslims in the Holy Lands and elsewhere. For the elite classes who engaged in crusading, provincialism died away, replaced by new information and contacts in the wider world. Soon Europeans would begin turning this new knowledge and these new tools against the people from whom they were appropriated. …show more content…

With the aid of crusaders, Portugal attained independence in 1147. By 1380 Portugal’s King John I had united that country’s various principalities under his rule. In Spain, unification took much longer, but in 1469 Ferdinand and Isabella, heirs to the rival thrones of Aragon and Castile, married and forged a united Spanish state. Twenty-three years later, in 1492, the Spanish subdued the last Moorish stronghold on the peninsula, completing the Reconquista. At the same time, other European states were also waking up to new realities. Consolidation began in France in around 1480, when Louis XI took control of five rival provinces to create a unified kingdom. Five years later in England, Henry Tudor and the House of Lancaster defeated the rival House of York in the Wars of the Roses, ending nearly a century of civil war. As in Spain and Portugal, the formation of unified states in France and England opened the way to new expansive

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