NEED to Know - Exploration and The Commercial Revolution

Time Period:  1450 - 1700

AP Focus:

Explain the technological factors that facilitated European exploration and expansion from 1450 to 1648.

Explain the motivations for and effects of European exploration and expansion from 1450 to 1648.

AP Content Focus:

1. Technological Innovations 

Influence of the Renaissance:

  • learning - new technology - astrolabe, compass, caravel

  • Military Innovations - better weapons - guns and gunpowder

  • individualism - potential of man - Conquistadors 

  • rise of the New Monarchs - funded exploration expeditions

2.  Motivations - 3 Gs

Wealth - Gold

  • primary motivation - access to gold and silver, spices and luxury goods - silk

  • more wealth = more power for the nations

  • pushed the development of Mercantilism - state controlled economy driven by bullion

Religion - God

  • Spain and Portugal - need to spread faith = unity of the colonies - common cultures

  • justification for colonization - European superiority - need to Christianize heathens

  • Religious Persecution - allowed for a place for religious dissenters - Puritans, Huguenots

  • Jesuits - missionaries - spread Catholicism - Spanish Latin America

Power and Competition = Glory

  • territorial expansion and access to resources created competition between European states

  • Large Territories = power

  • Great wealth = power

  • pushed for the creation of stronger and more advanced militaries

3.  Trade Networks

16th Century - Spanish Empire - most dominant

17th Century - English, French and Dutch - most dominant

  • competition for trade and land holdings = Colonial Conflicts

Colonial Conflicts:

  • Asiento - control of the Slave Trade (GB will gain control)

  • War of the Spanish Succession - Louis XIV wanted grandson on Spanish throne - would then control most of the New World

  • French and Indian (colonies)  / Seven Years War (Europe) - same war

Know this material:

Important Figures:

- Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan

- Conquistadors:

- Hernan Cortez

- Francisco Pizarro 

Treaty of Tordesillas 

  • Pope divided the world between Spain and Portugal - leading Catholic States

  • Line of Demarcation 

  • Spain - Western Hemisphere except Brazil

  • Portugal - Eastern Hemisphere

Important Regions:

1. Portugal

- acquired lucrative Spice Islands 

- regions under control already dominated by other groups - Arab traders - always fighting

- terrible treatment of indigenous people, no permanent settlements, no political structure

- too small to maintain - will lose to the Dutch

2.  Spain

- funded by the monarchs - Ferdinand and Isabella

- Encomienda - political and social structures of power - enslaved indigenous people

- Economic Wealth - mining - silver and gold / Hacienda - plantation economy - food

- enslavement of Africans - sugar production and mining

- unifying element - forced Catholicism - successful - 99% of Latin America is Catholic

- brought only male population - bred with indigenous - Mestizos 

- impact of smallpox

3.  Dutch

- took over the Portuguese empire

- trading companies - Dutch East India - no King

- some level of kindness to indigenous peoples - did not force culture or treat poorly - business 

- main priority = MONEY - very successful

4.  France

- large territorial holdings - Caribbean, regions along Mississippi, and Canada

- did little to develop - few permanent settlements - trading posts

- Caribbean - Haiti - very wealthy from sugar

- best relationship with indigenous peoples - lived amongst them

- attempted Mercantilism - never really enforced

5.  English

- most successful - 13 colonies, Caribbean, and India

- permanent settlements - families seeking profit or escaping religious settlement

- established political structures - representative bodies - all were citizens of the King

- colonial development  - Stuart monarchs - James I, Charles I, Charles II, William and Mary

- Jamestown (King James I Stuart) was the first settlement 

- cash crops - sugar, tobacco, timber, and eventually cotton

- used slave labor

- treatment of the Native Americans - dependent on if the English were in times of need

- extremely successful with mercantilism - Navigation Laws - Oliver Cromwell

AP Focus:

Explain the economic impact of European colonial expansion and development of trade networks.

Explain the social and cultural impact of European colonial expansion and development.

The Columbian Exchange:

  • one of the greatest historical changes to our world

  • no contact between the Old and New Worlds

  • New World benefited from domesticated animals, but was almost destroyed by diseases such as smallpox; slavery was also a huge negative

  • Old World gained an abundance of food products - potato and corn - that saved the European populations such as the Irish and Russians

Economic Focus:

  1. Commercial Revolution:

- influx of money and new food products

- increase in population - more access to food

- diversification of labor

- nation-states – devaluing currency - Spain had no idea how manage wealth from New World

  1.  The Price Revolution:

- gradual rising prices – increase in inflation – wages remain static

- no rebellion because price increase was so slow

  1.  Domestic System – Putting-Out – England – end of the Guilds

- dominant in England - rural areas - peasants created textiles - cottage to cottage

- diversification of labor

- foundations for the textile industries in the Industrial Revolution

- destroyed the Guild System - medieval labor unions that controlled the production of certain goods

  1.  Mercantilism:  17th and 18th Centuries

- favorable balance of trade

- colonies

- bullion

- government control

- need for a powerful navy

Big Picture Ideas:

- Global Economy

- colonization of world - European domination 

- foundations for industrialization - diversification of labor - more products = more jobs

- colonies will cause conflicts within the European states - Colonial Wars - French and Indian