UNIT 4: Transoceanic Interconnections c. 1450 - 1750

Unit 4

• Transoceanic Interconnections

• c. 1450 - 1750

• expansion of European maritime empires driven by exploration, trade, and colonization (particularly in the Americas, Africa, and Asia)

Causes of European Expansion

Technological: Maritime Technologies

• astrolabe, monsoon winds, magnetic compass, lateen sail

• Portuguese Caravel: smaller, faster, can go through shallow waters

  • allowed for more efficient navigation and travel across Atlantic and Indian oceans

Economic: Trading of Luxury Goods

• Mercantilism: an economic system that focused on growing a nation's wealth by exporting easily produced goods in exchange for limited imports (between the mother country and smaller states)

  • gold and silver

• favorable balance of trade: when states organize their economies around exports and avoid imports as much as possible

Political: Growth of State Power

• European monarchs were growing stronger than they have before

• Goods on the Silk Road were overpriced by the time they got Europe so the alternative to find a new route where they could trade on their own terms was vital (Indian Ocean)

Joint-Stock Company

where multiple investors contribute their resources to fund a project, sharing profits and risks

Dutch East India Company: VOC

• the Dutch monopolized the Indian Ocean trade, spreading their influence; allowing it to control trade routes, establish trading posts, and even wage wars

• facilitated the spread of goods globally

• growth of capitalism and international trade

Columbian Exchange

the transfer of new diseases, foods, plants, and animals between the Eastern and Western hemispheres (New World = Americas | Old World = Eurasia & Africa)

Disease:

• immunity to certain illness were only apparent to the certain hemispheres; coming into contact with new diseases led to mass sickness

• Europeans introduced - smallpox, measles, malaria

  • indigenous populations were devasted with population decline,

  • The Great Dying

Food & Plants:

• affected populations in both the Old and New Worlds

  • Old World food when introduced: varied their diets and slowly increased life span - more caloric foods (banana, wheat, corn)

  • New World food when introduced: varied their diets and increased life span - population expansion

  Animals:

• animals introduced allowed for more extensive travel and resources

  • Old World introduced - pigs, sheep, cattle

  • Horse: allowed for better military defense, leather, land travel

Cash Crops

growing crops to export and make profit

• Carribean: Sugarcane

• Americas: Corn

• Eurasia: Rice

Global Balance of Power

shifting significantly towards the Europeans

Main Motivation of European Imperialism

ways to spread Christianity

Tokugawa Japan

• many of the population had converted to Christian faith

• Shogun saw this as a threat to the unification of Japan

  • exiled all Christian missionaries from Japan (brutality and violence)

• RESISTANCE TO IMPERIALISM

The Fronde

• located in France under the political doctrine of absolutism: all political power under the Monarch

• series of rebellions

• challenged the growing power of the monarch

Causes:

• financial difficulties - increasing taxation was imposed on the people for expansion

resistance to Absolutism - where monarchs wanted to consolidate power and control

Outcome:

• a more centralized state

• weakened nobility

• king who would rule with absolute power (absolutism became stronger)

• RESISTANCE TO IMPERIALISM  

Asante Empire

• West Africa

• produced gold, ivory, enslaved people

• wealth accumulated allowed them to expand their military and imperialize

Kingdom of the Kongo

• Southern Africa

• trades with the Portuguese - gold, copper, enslaved people

• converted to Christianity - facilitate trade with Christian states

• immense expansion of the empire

Indian Ocean Network: CHANGE & CONTINUITY

Change:

• European states got introduced into the trading post

  • increased profits for the powers and merchants

• Atlantic system: Africa + Europe + Americas - particularly driven by the transatlantic slave trade and the exchange of goods, labor, and culture

  • sugar was introduced

  • silver was a luxury export/import

  • used to purchase luxury goods from China

  • coerced labor - indigenous labor

  • indentured servitude - a labor system where individuals contracted to work for a specific period

Continuity:

• Middle East and Asian empires continued using the network

• Silk Roads were still controlled entirely by Asian land-based powers

  • Ming China, Qing, Ottoman Empire

• peasant and artisan labor continued to keep producing unique goods

Chattel Slavery

enslaved people are treated as property, with no legal rights or freedoms, in which the purchaser has total ownership over the enslaved person

• race based

• hereditary

Polygyny

one man marrying more than one woman

Indentured Servitude

contract bounding peasant to work for a particular amount of time (usually 7 years)

Encomienda System

a forced labor system used by the Spanish to distribute indigenous Americans among them

• Americans forced to provide labor for the Spanish in exchange for food and protection

Hacienda System

state owners directly employed indigenous people, who had low wages, high taxes, and large debt to landowners

• worked on large plantation fields - haciendas

Christianity in the Americas

• Jesuits were sent by Catholics to convert the indigenous people

• indigenous groups continued to privately practice their own beliefs

  • syncretism - the blending of some Christian beliefs and practices with indigenous beliefs and practices

Casta System

Spanish imposed social hierarchy:

• classify all of the Americas' various races and racial combinations, as well as where Spaniards were born