4.1.

Adopted Technologies

• Magnetic Compass

  • Developed in China

  • Used to reckon direction

• Astrolabe

  • Determines latitude and longitude

• Lateen Sail

  • Triangular-shaped sail

  • Takes wind on either side

• Astronomical Charts

  • Diagrams of stars & constellations

  • Muslims were mainly responsible for charts, but they build old Greek charts

• Europeans didn’t invent these technologies, they adopted them

• They were in contact with these innovations through the big trade routes, mainly due to the Pax Mongolica

European Innovations

• Shipbuilding Innovations

  • Caravel(Portugal)

    • Made a smaller ship

    • Made them more mobile on water and navigable

    • Also equipped with cannons, made them really good fighting ships

  • Carracks(Portugal)

    • Bigger version of the caravel

    • Could carry more cargo, so they could carry more guns

    • Those guns are key to Portugal’s reign in the Indian Ocean

  • Fluyt(Dutch)

    • Used it to overthrow the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean Trade

    • Designed exclusively for trade

    • Massive cargo ships, but smaller crews required

    • Very cheap to build

4.2.

State Sponsored Exploration

• Result of significant change in the distribution of power in European states

• Population was growing again after recovering from Black Death

• Monarchs were consolidating power again, taking power away from the nobility

• European monarchs built up their militaries, learned how to use gunpowder weapons and implemented more efficient ways to tax their people

• Huge motivator for states sponsoring maritime exploration was the increasing desire for Asian and Southeast Asian spices, most notably, pepper

• Land-based empires still controlled the routes which the spices traveled through, making the prices for them in Europe very expensive

• Europeans were motivated to find alternative routes to get to those spice countries in the East

Portugal’s Trading Post Empire

• No way to expand except by sea

• Motivations for Prince Henry to sponsor first maritime expedition

  • Technology

    • Caravel

    • Carrack

    • Magnetic Compass

  • Economics

    • Trans-Saharan Gold

    • Spices

  • Religion

    • Spreading Christianity

    • Wanted to find Prester John

• Establishing full blown colonies was expensive, so Portugal set up stable trading posts, whose sole purpose was to facilitate trade

• Vasco de Gama 

  • Setup trading posts all around Africa

  • Eventually traveled to Calicut, discovered there was more riches to be made in the Indian Ocean Network

  • Through subsequent voyages, they set up trading posts all around the region all the way to SE Asia

  • Gun advantage allowed them to control the full network

Spain’s Sea-Based Empire

• Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand agreed to pay for Christopher Columbus’s voyage

  • Reached the Caribbean Islands, believed they were the East Indies islands

  • Other explorers realized that there were two new continents discovered, eventually leading to even more expeditions

• Ferdinand Magellan

  • Sailed around the tip of South America and actually went to the East Indies

• Started colonizing the Americas

  • Led to the Trans-Atlantic trade, which proved to be more beneficial than the Indian Ocean Trade

Other States’ Empires

• Causes for Exploration

  • Political Rivalry

  • Envy

  • Desire for Wealth

  • Need for alternative routes to Asia 

• France

  • Sponsored expeditions to find a westward route to the Indian Ocean

  • Couldn’t find one because it didn’t exist

  • Eventually established French Colonies in North America, such as Quebec

  • Mainly established presence with trading posts

• England

  • Late to the game due to booming textile industry

  • Eventually established Virginia colony in North America

  • Started as a failure, but turned around with establishment of Jamestown in 1607

• Dutch Republic

  • Had gained independence from Spain

  • Emerged as the wealthiest state in all of Europe

  • Started competing for trading posts around Africa and eventually dethroned the Portuguese as the kings of the Indian Ocean trade

  • Henry Hudson sailed west to establish Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam

4.3.

Definition and Causes

• Columbian Exchange 

  • Transfer of new diseases, food, plants, and animals between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres

• Causes

  • When Spain sent Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic, he made contact with 2 previously unknown continents

  • It was because of this contact between the New World and the Old World that the Columbian Exchange began to occur

Effects: Disease

• When Europeans arrived in the New World, they brought disease vectors(rats & mosquitos) with them

• Since the indigenous population in North and South America had never experienced these diseases before, disease ended up devastating the population

• Malaria

  • Introduced by African Slaves being transported for labor

• Measles

  • Highly contagious, spread fast in densely populated areas

• Smallpox

  • Killed half to 90% of the indigenous population in Mexico through South America

• Made European takeover much easier

Effects: Plants & Food

• European Settlers brought:

  • Wheat, grapes, olives(native to Europe)

  • Bananas, sugar(native to Asia and Africa)

  • Indigenous americans mostly maintained traditional diet, but slowly adopted new foods

    • Diversified diet and increased lifespan

• American Foods to Europe:

  • Potatoes, manioc, maize

  • Diversified diets, healthier population, significant population growth

  • Some foods, like maize, were also introduced to Africa and Asia

• Cash Crops

  • Method of agriculture in which food is grown primarily for export to other places

  • New World foods grown as cash crops on European controlled plantations in the Americas

  • Planted single crops on massive plantations that was worked through coerced labors

  • Growing sugarcane in Caribbean colonies

    • Africans mainly did the intensive and exhausting labor

    • Sugar was exported to markets in Europe and the Middle East

    • Africans also transferred food

      • Okra, Rice to the Americas

Effects: Animals

• Animals introduced from Europe to America had biggest effect

• Europe to America

  • Domesticated animals(pigs, sheep, cattle)

  • Multiplied like crazy, set up foundation for future ranching economies

  • New animals also caused dire environmental consequences that put significant strains on indigenous farmers

  • Horse fundamentally changed the society of several indigenous peoples in North America by allowing them to more effectively hunt herds of buffalo

4.4.

European Trade Ascendancy

• Motives for Imperialism

  • Gold

  • God 

  • Glory

• Portuguese

  • First to establish trading post empire throughout Africa all the way to SE Asia

  • Realized merchant ships in the area were lightly armed

  • Loaded caravels/carracks with huge firepower and established dominance

  • Once Portuguese inserted themselves into Indian Ocean trading network, they weren’t as interested in participating peacefully as they were owning and controlling it by force 

• Spain

  • Set up operation in the Philippines 

  • Difference between Spain and Portugal

    • Portugal: Content with set up small trading posts

    • Spain: Set up full blown colonies

  • Used tribute system, taxation, and coerced labor 

• Dutch

  • Used fluyts to takeover as kings of the Indian Ocean, deposing of the Portuguese

  • Dutch used many of the same methods as the Portuguese to establish dominance and control over the Indian Ocean

  • Transformed trading posts in Indonesia into full blown colonies by the end of the 18th century

• British

  • Lacked military power to take India from the Mughal Empire

  • Set up a few trading posts along the coast of India

  • By the end of the 18th century, transformed trading posts into full blown colonial rule in India

• Continuity in trade

  • Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, and SE Asian merchants who had been using the trade network for centuries before the arrival of Europeans continued to use it

  • European entrance into the trade network increased profits, not only for Europeans but also for those merchants

  • Long established merchants like the Gujaratis in the Mughal Empire continued to make use of the Indian Ocean trade even while Uropeans sought to dominate it, and in doing so they increased their power and wealth

Asian Resistance

• Tokugawa Japan

  • By early 1600s, Japan, which had been previously weakened by metric buttloads of internal fracturing was united under a shogun from the Tokugawa clan

  • First was open to trading with Europeans, soon realized that they were a threat to the the new-found unification they just achieved

    • Europeans weren’t content with just buying and selling with others, many wanted to convert those people to Christianity

  • By the second half of the 1600s, lots of Japanese people had converted to Christianity, which seemed like a recipe for renewed cultural fracturing to the shogun

    • Expelled Christian missionaries from Japan

    • Suppressed the faith with violence

• Ming China

  • Motives for Zheng He voyages were to create a situation in which most of the maritime trade in the Indian Ocean was processed through the Chinese state

    • Didn’t work, resulted in isolationist trade policies that shut down sea based trade in China

  • When Portuguese came to trade in early 1500s, could only do so through bribery and various underhanded tactics

    • Ming Officials found out, expelled them, which further isolated China from the growing European dominance in the Indian Ocean

Expansion of African States

• Asante Empire

  • Key trading partner with Portuguese and later the British

    • Provided highly desired goods

      • Gold, ivory, and enslaved laborers

  • Made the Asante stupid rich and enabled them to expand their military and further expand/consolidate their power throughout the region

  • Used this new power in military to repel the British from colonizing the region for a long time

• Kingdom of the Kongo 

  • Made strong diplomatic ties with the Portuguese, whose main goal was to obtain gold, copper, and enslaved laborers 

  • In order to further facilitate this economic relationship, the king and the nobles converted to Christianity

    • This relationship later deteriorated, but the connection between Portugal and the Kingdom of the Kongo massively enriched the state

Economic and Labor System

• Colonial economies were largely structured around agriculture

• Used new and existing labor systems to keep economy purring

  • Existing labor systems

    • Spanish used the old mit’a system

      • Implemented it largely for massive silver mining operations 

  • New Labor systems

    • Chattel Slavery

      • Enslaved africans were transported by the millions to work on plantations in the Americas

      • Chattel: property

      • Laborers were treated as property and could be used at the will of the owner

      • Race based

      • Slavery became hereditary

    • Indentured Servitude

      • Laborer could sign a contract to work for a set amount of time(usually 7 years)

      • Many poor Europeans used this to pay for their passage to the colonies

      • Once their contract was up, they could go free and live their lives

    • Encomienda System

      • Spanish invented this system

      • Used to force indigenous people into working for colonial authorities 

      • Indigenous people provided labor in exchange for food and protection, similar to feudalism

      • Basically slavery

    • Hacienda System

      • Also invented by the Spanish

      • Large agricultural estates owned by elite Spaniards on which indigenous laborers were forced to work the fields, whose crops were exported and sold on a global market

      • Difference between Encomienda and Hacienda Systems

        • Encomienda: Focused on controlling the population

        • Hacienda: Focused on economics of food export

Development of Slavery

• Continuity

  • African Slave Trade

    • Regular feature in Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Networks

  • Cultural Assimilation

    • Often assimilated into the cultures into the cultures in which they were sold

  • Domestic Work

    • In Islamic World, African slaves became domestic servants with a high demand for enslaved women

  • Slaves held Power

    • In Islamic World, enslaved people could hold significant military or political positions 

• Change

  • Agricultural Work

    • Males purchased 2:1 which impacted demographics of African states

  • Trans-Atlantic Trade Larger

    • 12.5 million africans sold to plantation owners in the Americas

  • Racial Prejudice

    • In the Americas, slavery became identified with blackness which justified the brutality of slavery

    • To be identified as black meant to be identified as less than human, which provided the owners the justification to treat their slaves brutally with a clear conscience 

4.5.

Economics of Empire Building

• Mercantilism

  • Definition

    • State driven economics system that emphasize the buildup of mineral wealth by maintaining a favorable balance of trade

    • Saw world’s wealth as a pie, goal was to get the biggest piece

    • Since they defined wealth by minerals, such as gold and silver, then that means there is only so much “pie” in the world

    • The bigger the slice one country gets, the smaller the slice for everybody else

      • Creates profound competition between states

    • Mercantilist economies strove to maintain a favorable balance of trade

      • More exports than imports

  • Mercantilism was a powerful motivation for establishing and growing empires because once a colony was established, it created a kind of closed market to purchase exports from the imperial parent country

  • Big factor in the development of maritime empires 

• Joint - stock companies

  • Definition

    • Limited liability business, often chartered by the state ,which was funded by a group of investors

    • Limited liability - Investors could only lose the money they invested in the business

    • A government approved this business and in doing so often granted it trade monopolies in various regions

    • Big innovation in how business were funded as they were privately funded, not state-funded

  • In order for mercantilism to be an instrument of imperial expansion, the state and its merchants had to become intimately tied together in a type of mutual interdependence

    • State used merchants to expand its influence in far off lands

    • Merchants relied on state to keep their interest and activity safe while granting them monopolies in various regions of trade

    • Joint stock companies became the main tool by which this mutual arrangement led to expanding empires

  • Dutch East India Company

    • Chartered in 1602 by the Dutch state who subsequently granted the company a monopoly on trade in the Indian Ocean

    • As the Dutch defeated the Portuguese for control in the trade network, 2 effects happened

      • Company’s investors became exceedingly rich

      • Dutch imperial government was able to expand its power and influence across many place throughout the Indian Ocean

    • French and British also developed joint stock companies of their own for similar purposes namely trade and imperial expansion

      • Led to a growing rivalry between states which sometimes led them to war, as it did in the Anglo-Dutch war

• While states like the Brits, French, and Portuguese were joint-stocking their way to control/power, states like Spain and Portugal were mainly funding their trade and imperial ventures through the state

  • This is one significant reason why their influence on the world stage was waning

Trade Networks: Change and Continuity

• Change

  • Rise of the Atlantic system

    • Movement of goods, wealth and laborers between the Eastern and Western hemispheres

  • Importance on Sugar

    • Colonial plantations especially in the Caribbean specialized in the growth of sugarcane and with that abundance sugar, prices became to decrease and demand increased like mad in Europe

  • Silver was King

    • In Bolivia, Spanish heavily exploited a massive silver mine in Potosi, as well as in other colonie, and that silver was transported back to Spain

    • From there, it was injected into the wider European economy and it was used to purchase good from Asia, which had a two-fold effect

      • Satisfied growing Chinese demand for silver

        • Further developed the commercialization of their economy

      • Increased Profits

        • The goods silver purchases in Asian markets, like silk, porcelain, and steel, were traded across the Atlantic system resulting in more profits

  • Coerced Labor

    • Forced Indigenous Labor

    • Indentured Servitude

    • Enslaved Africans

  • All of this was established and maintained by the global flow of silver and trade monopolies granted by heads of the state to chartered joint-stock companies

• Continuity

  • Afro-Eurasian trade markets thrived

    • Regional markets across Afro-Eurasia continued to flourish and increase in their reach

    • Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, and SE Asian merchants who had been using the trade network for centuries before the arrival of Europeans continued to use it

    • European entrance into the trade network increased profits, not only for Europeans but also for those merchants

  • Asian Land Routes

    • Overland routes, like the Silk Roads, were almost entirely controlled by Asian land-based powers, notably Ming and Qing Dynasties

  • Peasant and Artisan Labor

    • Most people in the world continued to work in the same ways as they always had

    • Peasants were still subsistence farmers, which means they grew only what they needed to survive

      • With the increasing demand for goods facilitated by new connections, peasants produced more and more agricultural goods for distant markets

      • As demand for cotton increased in Europe, peasant farmers in South Asia increased their production for export

    • Artisans: Skilled laborers who made goods by hand

      • As demand for goods like silk from China and rugs from the Middle East, artisans also increased their production

Social Effects

• African Slave Trade

  • Gender Imbalance

    • Since most of the work in the Americas was highly intensive agricultural work, most of the slaves purchased were men

  • Changed family structures

    • Because many West African states were being depleted of their male population, that led to an increase in the practice of polygeny

      • Polygeny: Men marrying more than one women

  • Cultural Synthesis

    • Happened in the Americas

    • Enslaved Africans came from various states and cultures and spoke various languages

    • When they arrived in the Americas, it only took them about one generation to cease speaking their own languages and adopt Creole languages

      • Creole Languages, developed as a synthesis of European and African languages

Changing Belief Systems

• Spanish and Portuguese Christianity in South America

  • Weren’t only interested in building empire, but also in making sure everyone was Christian

  • Both of them sent missionaries to their colonies, and in doing so, used the Church as an instrument to spread Christianity among the indigenous people

    • European culture was introduced/imposed upon the indigenous population 

    • Because the church made prodigious use of the printing press, these ideas spread rapidly throughout their colonial holdings

  • In some cases, indigenous groups outwardly adopted Christianity, but privately continued to practice their own religious beliefs

    • Met with violent retaliation from colonial authorities

  • Even though widespread conversion was their aim, it was slow progress, which led to syncretic blending of Christianity and native belief systems

4.6.

Local Resistance

• Along with European maritime expansion came increased efforts to centralize their power in order to maintain economic and political control over their global possessions

• Neither the people in the home countries, nor the people in the colonies enjoyed being crushed under the imperial control of the the government

  • Led to significant pockets of resistance

• Fronde

  • In France

  • Louis the 14th advertised a new political doctrine known as absolutism in which monarchs consolidated all power beneath themselves

  • Louis wanted more wars for expansions, but wars of expansion don’t pay for themselves

    • So, several new edicts were passed that increased taxation among French subjects, and so the French nobility, whose power had been under threat from the growing power of the monarchy, lead peasants in spontaneous rebellions, known as the Fronde

  • Resistance was crushed and the monarchy only increased in power

• Queen Ana Nzinga’s Resistance

  • In Africa

  • Ruled over Sub Saharan kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba

  • Was growing concerned over the relentless encroachment of Portuguese merchants in west africa

  • Allied with the Dutch and the Kingdom of the Kongo in order to fight back against the Portuguese armies, which she successfully did

• Pueblo Revolt

  • In North America

  • Had suffered terrible abuses as a result of oppressive Spanish missionary efforts

  • Pueblo had been forced into coerced labor for the Spanish projects and suffered the effects of disease

    • Effects: Population dwindled to about 25% of its pre-colonial numbers

  • In 1680, the Pueblo organized under a local leader named Pope and violently rebelled against the Spanish, killing many missionaries and leaders in the process

    • Were able to temporarily eject the Spanish, but a decade later the Spanish returned in power and regained control over the region

• Because of the relentless efforts of European states, to expand their empires and consolidate power under themselves, the various groups that suffered the effects of the expansion resisted, sometimes successfully, sometime unsuccessfully

Resistance from the Enslaved

• Millions of enslaved Africans were purchased and transported the dreaded Middle Pass and inserted into the brutal and coercive machine of agricultural output

• Enslaved laborers didn’t simply accept their fate, but instead rebelled against it

• Maroon Societies

  • Caribbean and Brazil

  • In most of the European colonies that majored in enslaved labor for agricultural and work, there was usually a small population of free blacks

  • Because of the exceedingly harsh conditions of plantation life, enslaved Africans sometimes ran away and joined these communities of free blacks, which were known as maroon societies

    • Especially numerous in the Caribbean and Brazil 

  • Maroon communities served as an endless enticement for their workers to abandon the fields and flee

  • In Jamaica, the British colonial authorities tried to crush the communities on the Island, but the Maroon communities fought back

    • Since the these communities were located deep in the interior and well fortified by natural features(mountains and thick forests) the colonial militia failed to wipe them out

    • A treaty was signed in 1738 that recognized the freedom of this maroon community

• British Colonies

  • North America

  • Stono Rebellion of 1739

    • South Carolina had a major agricultural operation that specialized in the export of rice and indigo

    • Sent enslaved Africans by the thousands until the overwhelming majority of the people in the colony were enslaved

    • In 1739, after suffering all the abuses that come with enslavement, a 100 enslaved people stormed the local armory and traveled through the countryside killing their enslavers indiscriminately 

    • Ultimately the local militia crushed this rebellion, but the event struck fear into the slaveholding colonies

4.7

Responses to Ethnic Diversity

• Ranged from expulsion to relative tolerance

• Types of treatment the Jews experienced in various states

  • Expulsion

    • Jews in Spain and Portugal

      • In 1492, Spanish finally completed Reconquista, which was a centuries long effort to rid the state of Iberian Peninsula of Muslim rule

        • Finally reestablished Christianity as the religion of the region

      • The Spanish issued a decree expelling all Jews from their kingdom because they were afraid that the Jews that converted to Christianity would be tempted to renounce if any Jews remained to influence them

        • Many Jews fled to Portugal to seek refuge, but instead got another kick in the face

        • Because of a new marriage alliance with the Spanish Crown, Portugal also expelled Jews from their land

  • Tolerance

    • Jews in the Ottoman Empire

      • Hearing the news of the Jewish expulsion, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II opened his empire to the displaced Jews, who then immigrated in droves

      • Because of the relative tolerance of the Ottomans toward the Jews, some of them rose to prominence in the Ottoman court, while others contributed to the economic and cultural environment

      • Jews were required to pay the jizya, which was a tax that only non-Muslims had to pay and they were only permitted to live in designated parts of urban areas

• Qing Dynasty

  • Established by the Manchu People

  • Although the Manchu rulers took some efforts to adopt certain aspects of the traditional chinese culture( Confucian principles of leadership) they made a sharp division between ethnic Manchu and Han people in their empire

    • Retained the civil service exam to staff imperial bureaucracy, but the highest positions were reserved for Manchu people and ethnically Han people were banned from these positions

    • Han men were required to wear their hair in the traditional braided queues of the Manchu

      • The imposition of this hairstyle was a humiliation for the ethnic Han because it was a constant reminder of their foreign domination

• Mughal Empire

  • Under the leadership of of Akbar, a profound tolerance was extended to ethnic and religious minorities

    • Not only did u refuse to implement the jizya(even though it would later be reintroduced), he also funded the construction of churches for Catholics and temples for Hindus and mosques for Muslims

Rise of New Elites

• In terms of social hierarchies, the new economic opportunities of increasing global trade and the increased political power of imperial ventures led to the rise of new political elites

• Spanish Casta system in the Americas

  • Almost none of the Spanish nobility traveled to the New World

  • Therefore, the most powerful conquistadors that established Spain’s Empire in the New World worked to impose a new social hierarchy on the people there

  • The result was the casta system 

    • Organized their colonial society into a ranked social hierarchy that was based on race and heredity

    • Hierarchy:

      • Peninsulares: Those born on the Iberian Peninsula, situated on top

      • Creoles: European descent, but born in the New World

      • Under both were the castas, which grouped the remaining members of society based on race and ethnicity

        • Mestizos: People of European and Indigenous ancestry

        • Mulattoes: People of European and African ancestry

        • On the bottom of everything were enslaved Africans and the indigenous people

• Prior to the imposing of the casta system, native people were part of a wide variety of linguistic and cultural groups, but the casta system erased much of that cultural complexity and ordered their society by the standards of a small minority of Spanish elite

Struggles of Existing Elites

• Russian Boyars

  • Made up the aristocratic land-owning class in Russia and they exerted great power in the administration of the empire for centuries

  • When Peter the Great rose to power, he got hung up on absolutism and took all kinds of measures to remove power from the boyars and consolidate it under himself

  • Boyars went ahead and protested this curtailment of their power and Peter responded by abolishing the rank of boyar in Russia

    • He also required that anyone who seeked employment in the Russian bureaucracy to serve the state directly

    • The hierarchical power of the boyars had officially waned

• Ottoman Timars

  • Land grants made by the Ottoman state to an aristocratic class in payment for service to the government, usually military service

  • The aristocrats that controlled the timars grew exceedingly rich and powerful through taxation of the people living on those parcels of land

  • However by the 16th century, Ottoman sultans began increasingly taking over these timars and converting them to tax farms which directed revenue directly to the state

  • Therefore, existing elites in the Ottoman Empire found themselves powerless and landless