#7 Social Studies- America is Discovered

In 1492, while Spain was under the rule of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus received permission and support to find a faster trade route to China and East Indies. He believed that by sailing directly west, instead of south around the Cape of Good Hope as other explorers had done, he would discover a more direct route. It is because of this historic journey, during which he landed in an unknown hemisphere, that we celebrate the discovery of America.


The Reformation Divides Christianity


The Catholic Church suffered a great upheaval in 1517, when a German monk named Martin Luther made a list of complaints against the church. These 95 complaints sparked another split in Christianity. The new group was called Protestants; their split from the Catholic Church started a reformation period throughout Europe. The Reformation gave local noblemen the chance to stop the payment of taxes to Rome and seize local Roman Catholic land for themselves.


  The royal family of England also had quarrels with Roman Catholic Church. King Henry VIII wanted to annual his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, since after 18 years of marriage she had not produced a son to be the next heir to the English throne. The Pope refused to give the king an annulment of his marriage so he would be free to marry Anne Boleyn. In 1529, Henry VIII took control of the church in England, and by 1534 the Act of Supremacy had given the king power over the English church. 


  After Henry VIII's death, his first daughter, Mary Tudor, inherited the throne. She was raised as a Catholic and attempted to return England to Catholicism. Because of her persecutions of those who did not follow her lead back to the Roman church, she was given the nickname Bloody Mary. When Mary died, her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth I, became queen.


  In the 1500s, Philip II of Spain attempted to centralized power over all Europe. The Netherlands in northern Europe had long been establishing itself as a center of trade and banking. Philip II sent many troops to reassert Catholic theology over the Dutch who, with the help of Calvinist preachers, were becoming increasingly Protestant. The Dutch revolt won their independence in 1581 with some support from the English, who did not want to see Catholic rule spread to their own shores. The Spanish sent a fleet of ships called an armada to England, only to have them sink in a terrible storm as they approached the English Channel.