4.5 Maritime Empires Develop

Economic strategies to consolidate and maintain power

• Mercantilism

  • wanted more exports than imports

• Joint-stock companies

Joint-stock companies

• owned by investors who bought stocks or shares in them.

• driving force behind the development of maritime empires

  • allowed continued exploration as well as ventures to colonize and develop resources

Triangular Trade

Europeans desire for enslaved workers in the Americas

• Atlantic trading system

  • European ships would carry manufactured to West African States to trade for slaves

  • then the slaves would be carried to the Americas

  • from there ships were loaded up w sugar or tobacco to back to Europe

Muslim-European Rivalry in the Indian Ocean

Moroccan Conflict with the Songhai Empire

Changes of Networks and Exchange

Facilitated by monopolies and flow of silver

• Atlantic System

  • movement of goods, wealth, and laborers between Old and New World

• Importance of Sugar

• Silver Mining

• Coerced labor system

Effects of Silver

• Satisfied Chinese Demand for Silver

  • further commercialized their economy

• Increased Profits

  • silver purchased Asian goods, these then circulated in the Atlantic system → more profits

Continuities

• Afro-Eurasian Markets Thrived

  • Markets across Afro-Eurasia continued to flourish and increase their reach

• Asian Land Routes

  • Land Routes like Silk roads were controlled by Asian land-based powers.

• Peasant and Artisan labor

  • intensified → West Euro:wool and linen, Indian:cotton, China:silk

Social Effects of Atlantic Slave Trade

• Gender Imbalance

  • Sugarcane plantation had brutal conditions, so more African men were taken

• Changed family structure

  • rise in polygyny

• Cultural Synthesis

  • Mixing of African languages and European language. (Creole)

Belief systems

• Spain and Portugal sent missionaries to colonies to spread christianity among the indigenous people, sometimes forced.

• Africans blended Christianity with religious traditions

  • Vodun

• Some enslaved African traveling across the Atlantic practiced Islam, bringing them over to the Americas.