Maritime Innovations
Key Innovations:
Sextant: Improved navigation accuracy
Chronometer: Precise timekeeping at sea
Shipbuilding advancements: Stronger, faster ships
Maritime Impact
Impact:
Facilitated global exploration and trade
Enhanced naval warfare capabilities
Key Maritime Figures
Key Figures:
John Harrison: Invented the marine chronometer
James Cook: Utilized new maritime technologies for exploration
Portuguese expansion in 1450-1750
Exploration Motives: Trade routes, wealth, spread of Christianity
Key Explorers: Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral
Colonial Territories: Brazil, Angola, Mozambique
Impact on Indigenous Peoples: Forced labor, diseases
Decline: Competition, economic challenges
Colombian exchange
Exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies
Between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia
Resulted in significant cultural and ecological impacts
Led to the spread of crops like maize, potatoes, and tomatoes
Contributed to the Columbian Exchange theory
Resistance to imperial expansion in 1450-1750
Tokugawa, Japan: Shogun wanted to trade for gunpowder, European converted Japanese people. This resulted in the complete isolation of Japan from the rest of the world’s influence except for the Dutch.
Local level: Fronde (France): Series of rebellions due to increased taxation.
Resistance from the enslaved: Maroon Society, pockets of free people of color who resisted European strategies to crush their power.
Economic growth in 1450-1750
Mercantilism: Economic policy to increase state wealth
Triangular Trade: Exchange of goods between Europe, Africa, and the Americas
Asante Empire
Asante Empire provided enslaved people, gold and ivory making them extremely wealthy allowing to expand
The Congo
Congo made ties with Portuguese through gold+copper. King converted to Christianity to facilitate trade which led to expansion.
Indian Ocean Change/Continuity
Change: Power grabs of European states to establish a holding
Continuity: Middle Eastern and Asian people continued to use this network despite the entrance of Europeans and even saw higher profits due to the stimulus provided by the foreigners.
Silk Roads in 1450-1750
Continued to still mainly be controlled by Asian powers as in previous centuries.(Ming, Qing and Ottoman Empires).
European Change/Continuity
Change: Movers of goods, wealth and laborers between Eastern and Western Hemispheres=European wealth. (Sugar: African plantations) (Silver: from Americas, used to trade with China, commercializing Chinese Economy)
Labor
Mostly coerced labor
-African Slavery (made up the bulk of slave labor in the Americas)
-Indentured Servitude
-Indigenous Slavery
Changes/Continuities in Labor
Changes: Chattel Slavery (Total ownership which is race based, however previous to the Atlantic trade, it was not race based.)
Continuities: Mi’ta System (Inca system: required citizens to provide a certain amount of labor per year, Spanish adopted and took advantage.)
Christianity in the Americas 1450-1750
Spread of Christianity through European colonization
Conversion of indigenous populations
Establishment of missions and churches
Syncretism with indigenous beliefs
Role of Christianity in justifying colonization and subjugation
Jesuits (missionaries)
Changing Social Hierarchies
Jews: Spanish+Portuguese expelled Jews who fled to Ottoman Empire
New Political Elites: Casta System based on how Spanish one was (Erased cultural diversity)
Qing dynasty reserved high power positions for ethnically Manchu people, excluding Han
Monarch power increased and high class power decreased, ex Peter the Great.