AP World History Unit 4

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.