chapter 19 W.H

Chronology of Transoceanic Encounters

• $1394–1460$ Life of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal
• $1488$ Bartolomeu Dias’s voyage around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean
• $1492$ Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the western hemisphere
• $1497–1499$ Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India
• $1519–1522$ Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world
• $1565–1575$ Spanish conquest of the Philippines
• $1768–1780$ Captain James Cook’s voyages in the Pacific Ocean

The Technology of Exploration

• Ships strong enough to survive adverse conditions
• Rudder at the stern, a Chinese invention
• Square sails and triangular lateen sails; ability to tack to advance against the wind
• Magnetic compass, a Chinese invention
• Astrolabe to determine latitude; later replaced by cross staffs and back staffs

Winds and Currents

• Body of practical knowledge about winds and currents
• In the Atlantic and Pacific, trade winds
• In the Indian Ocean basin, monsoon winds
• Prevailing winds and currents often forced indirect routes
• Volta do mar: return through the sea, sailing out into the open ocean to catch favorable winds

Motives for Exploration 1

• Combination of motives: basic resources and lands for cash crops
• Desire to establish new trade routes to Asian markets
• Desire to expand the influence of Christianity
• Portuguese mariners were initially most prominent; began in the thirteenth century, in search of land and resources

Motives for Exploration 2

• Need for maritime trade routes to the markets of Asia
• Spices such as pepper and ginger
• Collapse of the Mongol empires and spread of bubonic plague made Silk Roads less safe
• Europeans sought to bypass Arab mariners who brought Asian goods to Cairo
• Direct access to African markets for gold, ivory, and enslaved people

Motives for Exploration 3

• Goal of expanding Christianity drove Europeans into the larger world
• Persuasion or violence; in practice motives combined and reinforced each other
• Vasco da Gama: Portuguese mariner; first to sail around Africa to India, seeking Christians and spices

European Voyages: from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic

• After $1415$, Prince Henry conquered the Moroccan port of Ceuta; sponsored voyages down the west African coast; forts at São Jorge de Mina and other locations
• Vasco da Gama: four armed merchant ships from Lisbon to Calicut; lost many crew to scurvy; pepper and cinnamon profits; by the late $16th$ century, English and Dutch mariners followed into the Indian Ocean

Christopher Columbus

• Genoese navigator Cristoforo Colombo; sponsored by Fernando and Isabel of Spain
• Departed from Palos in southern Spain in August $1492$
• Picked up supplies in the Canaries
• In October $1492$, landfall at an island in the Bahamas
• Taíno: native inhabitants of Guanahaní; Columbus renamed San Salvador
• Columbus believed he reached Asia; called Taíno “Indians.”

Magellan

• Ferdinand Magellan sailed for Spain; sought and found a strait leading to the Pacific in South America
• Reached Guam followed by the Philippine Islands; where he was killed in a local political dispute
• The survivors sailed home through the Indian Ocean; circumnavigated the globe

The Pacific

• It took European explorers almost three centuries to chart the features of the Pacific
• The Spanish established a trade route between the Philippines and Mexico
• The English, and later the French, sought a northwest passage from Europe to Asia
• In the sixteenth century, Sir Francis Drake scouted the west coast of North America as far north as Vancouver Island
• By $1800$, Russian mariners were scouting the Pacific Ocean as far south as the Hawaiian Islands

Captain James Cook

• Led three expeditions in the Pacific
• Charted eastern Australia and New Zealand; then New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Hawai\'i
• Spent months at a time learning the manners, customs, and languages of Polynesian peoples
• Died in a scuffle with the indigenous people of Hawai\'i

Ecological Exchanges and the Columbian Exchange

• Columbian exchange: the global diffusion of plants, food crops, animals, human populations, and disease pathogens that took place after the voyages of Columbus and others
• Involved lands with radically different flora, fauna, and diseases; infectious diseases brought devastating losses to indigenous peoples
• Smallpox, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, influenza
• Indigenous peoples had no inherited or acquired immunity
• Disease epidemics sometimes destroyed entire societies; a major epidemic in the Americas caused large declines in population
• Spread of food crops and animals across continents
• Population growth: worldwide from about 425 million in 1500 to about 900 million in 1800
• Transoceanic migration involved both voluntary and forced movement; enslaved Africans formed the largest demographic group

The Origins of Global Trade

• Voyages of European merchant mariners encouraged a genuinely global trading system: European manufactured goods; silver and agricultural products from the Americas; trade in humans
• Manila galleons: sailed between Manila (Philippines) and Acapulco (Mexico) from 1565 to 1815; silver flowed to China
• Animal commodities: sable and beaver pelts; hunting affected many species; large numbers of deer, codfish, whales, seals
• By the eighteenth century, mass markets emerged for coffee, tea, sugar, and tobacco

Trade and Conflict in Early Modern Asia

• Europeans built fortified trading posts in the eastern hemisphere but could not impose rule on large Asian populations and centralized states
• Russian explorers established presence in central Asia and Siberia, laying foundations for a Eurasian empire
• Commercial and political rivalries led to conflicts

Trading-Post Empires

• Portuguese mariners built the earliest trading-post empire; by the mid‑sixteenth century, more than fifty trading posts between west Africa and east Asia
• Afonso de Albuquerque: seized Hormuz, Goa, and Melaka; Arab, Indian, and Malay merchants remained prominent; Portuguese influence weakened by the late sixteenth century
• English and Dutch merchants built trading posts on Asian coasts; English at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta; Dutch at Cape Town, Colombo, and Batavia
• They sailed faster, cheaper, and more powerful ships; joint‑stock companies: East India Company (1600) and VOC (1602)

European Conquests in Southeast Asia

• In the western hemisphere, Europeans built territorial empires; in the eastern hemisphere, limited conquests in two island regions: Philippines and Indonesia
• Miguel López de Legazpi: commander of Spanish forces in the Philippines in 1565; named the islands after King Philip II
• No central government and no organized resistance in the Philippines; Spanish authority extended in the seventeenth century; Manila became a bustling hub; Chinese merchants remained prominent

Jan Pieterszoon Coen

• Architect of Dutch policy in the islands of Indonesia; focused on the spice trade
• Founded Batavia on the island of Java in $1619$
• By the late seventeenth century, the VOC controlled all the ports of Java as well as most important spice islands; used alliances with local authorities to maintain order; monopoly profits

Foundations of the Russian Empire in Asia

• Russians laid the foundations for a vast land empire; took over several Mongol khanates in central Asia; gained control over the Volga River; later expanded into the Caucasus; Siberia posed formidable challenges

Siberia

• Siberia was home to about twenty-six major ethnic groups; languages and religions varied
• When Russians attempted to collect tribute, some groups readily entered into exchange; others resisted
• Like other frontiers, epidemics took a toll on indigenous populations; Russian migrants founded towns with Orthodox churches

European Commercial Rivalries

• Dutch expelled Portuguese; by the early 1700s, French and English merchants dominated India tea and cotton
• Conflicts spilled over into the Caribbean and the Americas