Unit 4 flashcards

Causes of European expansion

  • Adoption and innovation of maritime technologies

    • Technologies came from Greek, Islamic, Asian worlds

      • Magnetic compass: China

      • Astrolabe - Greek

      • Lateen sail - Arab

      • Made it possible to navigate on seas

    • INnovations in shipbuilding

      • Caravel - smaller than merchant ships, better navigation, faster

    • Improved understanding of regional wind patterns

  • Growth of state power

    • Centralization of power, monarchs had power over economic decisions/interregional trade

    • Land=based trade routes controlled by land empires in ASia, incentives to explore sea-based trade

  • Economic causes

    • Mercantilism - state-driven economic system based on monopolizing mineral wealth

      • Favorable balance of trade - focused on exports rather than imports

      • Colonies existed to enrich imperial parents

    • Joint-stock company

      • Limited liability business funded by private investors

        • Investors pooled money to fund expeditions/trade companies

      • Dutch east India company - monopoly on Indian ocean trade

Portugal

  • Prince Henruy the Navigator sailed down atlantic coast of AFrica, by 1440s eyed Indian ocean and established trading post empire

Spain

  • Columbus expedition, led to first colonization of Americas

  • Opened trans-atlatnic trade

  • Also set up operations in Phillipines colony, using tribute collection and forced labor

France

  • Westward expeditions led to colonization of areas of Canada, led to wealth from fur trade

England

  • Sponsored explorations of the Americas

  • Tried to take over india, instead managed only to establish trading post states along coast

Dutch

  • Took over control of Indian ocean trade from portuguese

Columbian exchange

  • Transfer of new disease, food, plants, and animals - environmental phenomena

  • Disease

    • Europeans introduced smallpox and measles and malaria into the Americas, killed indigenous populations

  • Food and plants

    • Greatly affected populations in new world and europe

    • Europe brought olives, wheat, grapes to Americas, brought potatoes and maize back

      • Population greatly increases because of new cheap rops

    • Plantations were established for cash crops

      • Method of agriculture focused on a single crop for export (ex. sugarcanE)

  • Animals

    • Europe introduced HOrse to Americas, led to easier agriculture and easier hunting for nomads

Resistent to imperial expansion

  • Resistance from some Asian states against intrusion of Western powers in the Indian ocean

    • Tokugawa Japan

      • Open to new trade with Europe, but one of the big motivations for European imperialism was the spread of Christianity

      • Viewed Europe as a threat to Japanese unification, convertd to isolationist policy

  • Resistance on local level in European states

    • In response to absoilutism in France, series of rebellions called Fronde occurred in France

      • To finance imperialism, new edicts were passed increasing taxation on French subjects

      • French nobility felt threatened, led peasants in rebellions for 6 years, ultimately crushed

  • Resistance from the enslaved

Expansion in AFrica

  • Expansion of maritime trading networks also fostered growth of AFrican states who participated in them, connection the states to global economic linkages

    • Asante empire supplied gold, ivory, enslaved people

    • Kingdom of the Kongo supplied gold, copper, slaves

Change and continuity in networks of exchange

  • Indian ocean network changes

    • Entrance and massive power grabs of European states into network

  • Indian ocean continuity

    • Middle eastern, south Asian, East Asian, Southwest Asian merchants continued to use Indian ocean network

    • Merchants continued to profit from Indian ocean trade even with European dominance

    • Overland routes like Silk road were still almost entirely controlled by Asian land-based powers

  • West changes

    • Opening of Atlantic trade routes

    • Sugar - high demand

    • Silver was also in very high demand, and there was a big supply in Americas

      • Used to purchase luxury goods in China

      • Goods that silver purchased were traded on the ATlantic system

    • Coerced labor

      • Forced indigenous labor

      • Indentured servitude

      • African enslavement

  • Changes in labor systems

    • Europeans used new and existing labor system in Americas

      • Continuity - Mita system, required subjects to provide labor on state projects for certain number of days per year

      • Continuity - enslavement was used

        • However, previously enslavement was not race-based and enslaved people often assimilated into cultures where they worked

      • Changes - Chattel slaver, purchaser has total control over slave, race based

      • Indentured servitude

        • Laborer signs contract binding them to a certain person in exchange for protection and stuff

      • Encomienda

        • Like feudalism

      • Hacienda

        • Indigenous forced to work fields of large plantations

        • NOt different form slavery

  • Social effects of AFrican slave trade

    • Significant gender imbalance bc men labor was preferred, sold into slavery more

    • Changing family structures

      • Ment married more than one woman

    • Cultural synthesis

      • Marriage/reproduction between slaves/black people and white colonists

      • Growing emergence of creole languages

  • Changing belief systems

    • Religion was a significant justification for colonization

    • Lots of conversion to Christianity

      • Some resistance

    • Religious syncretism, blending of Christianity and local indigenous beliefs

  • Changing social hierarchies

    • Ethnic and religious diversity