State Building, Expansion, and Conflict 1450-1750

• Expansion and overtaking increased during this time period. The creation of gunpowder, cannon, and gunships helped build new fortresses and fortified cities capable of defending against gunpowder artillery

  • Statecraft: Old and New Techniques of Technology
  • Nation-states emerged
  • Political and Administrative centralization became more sophisticated and led to a higher degree of state consolidation and efficiency. Features of a modern government became more common
  • State-building techniques included architectural displays, and religious authority
  • Many states depended on bureaucratic elites
  • Some governments started a parliamentary systems
  • The nations of Europe started to create empires
  • Empire-Building- The Age Of Exploration and Colonization
  • The nations of Europe started to explore, discover and mapped major oceans and landmasses
  • Europe eventually became the planet’s dominant civilization
  • Many parts of the world remained under European control
  • Motivation and Capabilities
  • Europe’s primary motivation for exploration was economic
  • Europe wanted direct access to goods such as silk and spices
  • Europe explored further using the astrolabe, compass, and the sternpost rudder
  • Europeans were developing stable sailing ships
  • Europeans depended on gunpowder weaponry for faster and easier colonization
  • Europeans invented galleons and gunships for greater firepower quantity
  • The Iberian Wave: Portugal and Spain
  • The first European nations to systematically explore the wider Atlantic world were Portugal and Spain, on the Iberian peninsula
  • Around 1410 Prince Henry the Navigator started Portugal’s exploration efforts
  • Portugal reached the southern tip of Africa and named it the Cape of Good Hope because it was an important step to India
  • The Italian captain Christopher Columbus started his voyage in 1492
  • The lines of demarcation declared which parts of the New World would be given to Portugal, and which to Spain
  • Portugal and Spain formed maritime empires in the New World
    • maritime empires: which overseas colonies were fully under their control
  • Mainlands fell into the hands of conquistadors: generals who bought huge parts of North and South America under Spanish control
  • Conquests were completed due to military advantages such as horses and gunpowder weapons
  • Spain’s and Portugal’s successes in the Columbian Exchange were measles and smallpox. The diseases killed indigenous Americans in massive numbers
  • Mining was important to Spanish and Portuguese explorers
  • They collected cash crops from plantation monoculture, the most important being sugarcane
  • New Spain was ruled by a viceroyalty: “in place of the king”
  • Colonial economic activity was run by the House Of Trade
  • Spanish and Portugal colonization led to coerced labor
  • The Spanish wanted to enslave American natives by the encomienda system but the system was deemed inhumane by the Catholic clergy
  • Instead they used the mitt’s system, and relied heavily on African slaves, which led to the rapid rise of the Atlantic slave trade
  • Thee Northern Wave: The French, Dutch and English
  • Other European nations began to explore and colonize, France, the Dutch Republic, and England
  • They wanted to use a Northeast or Northwest Passage to ex[;pre
  • They discovered rich fishing and whaling grounds
  • In 1620, France created the Company of New France in North America
  • France and England had the French and Indian Wars in which England took Canada from France
  • This led to the Seven Years’ War
  • Dutch explorers disrupted Spanish trade and attached their ports
  • Dutch created the Dutch East India Company
  • In 1670, England created the Hudson’s Bay Company which intruded into Canada and French colonies
  • The English relied on coerced labor, indentured servitude, and The Atlantic Slave Trade for labor
  • In 1600, England created the British East India Company to manage economic and military relations with Southeast Asia
  • Russia in Siberia and America
  • The Russian government set the Bering Expedition to explore the waters separating Siberia from North America
  • The fur trade stimulated the Russian settlement
  • Native Siberians were subjected to the coerced-labor system known as yasak: paying tribute and hunting fur bearing animals for Russians
  • Major States and Empires

  Europe had become the world’s most powerful region

  • Europe

  • Most parts of Europe became nation-states and were politically and administratively centralized

  • Europe followed two forms of monarchy: absolutism and parliamentarism

  • Absolutism followed the divine right: monarchs reign by the will of God

  • Serfdom eventually disappeared from Europe, except for Russia

  • Parliamentarism: The ruler governed with a lawmaking body appointed by the aristocracy or elected by some or all of the people

  • The Middle East

  • Ottoman and Safavid states are gunpowder empires because of their ,assert of weaponry and effective use of it

  • Ruled by the circle of justice ideology

  • Devised the devshirme system: recruiting civil servants and elite troops

  • Used a musketeer infantry system known as janissaries: ensalving sons of Christian families and placing them in positions of civil servitude

  • Used the millet system: sorted and administered non-Muslims according to religious categories

  • Unbelievers paid jizya, or tax

  • Africa

  • A long term European presence was established

  • Effects of the Atlantic slave trade were still being endured

  • West Africa had the most powerful states

  • The Ashanti kingdom leaders sold gold and slaves to Europeans in exchange for gunpowder and muskets

  • Omani arabs stood upto Portuguese rule in East Africa

  • East Asia

  • Zheng He led global exploration

  • Influx of silver led to inflation and economic breakdown

  • Agricultural yields decreased, soil worsened, population grew, and famines occurred regularly

  • The new Qing dynasty emerged

  • China sold high amounts of tea, silk and porcelain but allowed few imports due to the policy of trade protection

  • Rulers came to power from the mandate of heaven

  • Japan was ruled by shoguns, but the emperor took control

  • Japan was reunified by warlords and harsh social stratification

  • Japan continued to follow the Confucian ideology

  • South Asia

  • The Mughal Empire was established in India

  • It was considered a gunpowder empire

  • The economy thrived due to a cotton trade

  • Akbar The Great bought the peak of the Mughal Empire

  • He attempted to outlaw sati

  • His grandson Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal

  • Bombay, now Mumbai was ceded to the British East India Company

  • The Americas

  • Both continents fell under European control

  • War and State Rivalries

  • Eurasian states experienced military revolution: nations fully incorporated gunpowder weaponry into their way of war

  • Europe was separated under Catholic-Protestant religious wars

  • Ottoman-European conflict

  • 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Turks

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