unit 4 (1450-1750)

• Causes of European expansion during this period


  • Technological
  • Political
  • Economic
• Technological cause: European adoption and innovation of Maritime technology


  • Adoption of technologies like magnetic compass, astrolabe, and lateen sail from classical Greek, Islamic, and Asian world
  • Innovations in ship building like the Portuguese Caravel
  • Improved understanding of regional wind patterns
• Political cause: Growth of state power


  • European monarchs grew more powerful at the expense of nobility
  • Monarchs played a significant role in economic decisions like finding sea-based trade routes to Asia
• Economic cause: Mercantilism


  • State-driven economic system that saw the world's wealth as a fixed pie
  • Goal was to maintain a favorable balance of trade through exports and avoiding imports
  • Created motivation for expanding empires through overseas colonization
• Economic cause: Joint stock companies


  • Limited liability businesses funded by private investors and chartered by the state
  • Allowed states and merchants to be interdependent in expanding influence and wealth
• Main European players in Maritime Empires


  • Portugal
  • Spain
  • France
  • England
  • Netherlands
• Portuguese trading post empire


  • Established barebones trading posts (factories) to control trade in the Indian Ocean region
  • Facilitated by fast ships like the Caravel and Carrack loaded with cannons
• Spanish colonial empire


  • Established full colonial control over territories like the Americas and Philippines
  • Used methods like tribute collecting and coerced labor to maintain control
• French empire


  • Sponsored westward expeditions to find a North Atlantic sea route to Asia
  • Established presence in Canada and focused on fur trade
• English empire


  • Sponsored exploration and established first colony in Virginia
  • Lacked naval power to take over India initially, but later transformed trading posts into colonial rule
• Dutch empire


  • Gained independence from Spain and became most prosperous state in Europe
  • Dutch East India Company (VOC) challenged Spanish and Portuguese control of Indian Ocean trade and gained a monopoly
• Colombian Exchange


  • Transfer of diseases, food, plants, and animals between Eastern and Western hemispheres
  • Devastating impact of European diseases on indigenous populations
  • Introduction of American crops like maize and potatoes to Europe, Africa, and Asia
  • Introduction of horses enabled more effective hunting by indigenous Plains peoples
• Examples of resistance to European expansion

  • Resistance from Asian states like Tokugawa Japan
  • Resistance from local populations in Europe like the Fronde rebellion in France
  • Resistance from enslaved Africans in the form of Maroon societies in the Caribbean and Brazil
• Tokugawa Japan initially welcomed European trade but later suppressed Christianity and isolated itself from European influence
• The Fronde rebellion in France was a series of peasant and noble rebellions against absolutist policies that financed imperial expansion
• Maroon societies were communities of free blacks, mainly runaway slaves, that resisted colonial authorities in the Caribbean and Brazil
• Maroon Societies


  Small pockets of free blacks, mainly made up of runaway slaves, that existed in most European colonies in the Americas
• Maroon Societies


  • In Jamaica, led by Queen Nanny, they rebelled and fought back against colonial troops, eventually leading to a treaty in 1738 recognizing their freedom
• The expansion of Maritime trading networks fostered the growth of some African States who participated in them, thus connecting these states to the global economic linkages these networks represented
• Asante Empire

  • They were able to provide highly desired Goods that European Traders were after like gold, ivory, and enslaved people, which made them so rich that they were able to expand their military and consolidate political power over more and more of the region
• Kingdom of the Congo


  • They made strong diplomatic ties with the Portuguese and provided them with things like gold, copper, and enslaved people, and the king converted to Christianity to facilitate trade with Christian states, which led to the expansion of their power and wealth
• Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian and Southeast Asian merchants who had been using the Indian Ocean Trade Network for centuries before the arrival of the Europeans continued to use it even with the presence of European powers
• European entrance into the Indian Ocean Trade Network increased profits not only for Europeans but also for many of the existing merchants who had always used the network for trade
• Long-established Merchants like the Gujaratis continued to make use of the Indian Ocean trade even while Europeans sought to dominate it, and they significantly increased the power and wealth of the Mughal Empire through their ongoing participation
• Despite growing European dominance on the sea, Overland routes like the Silk Roads were still almost entirely controlled by various Asian land-based Powers most notably Ming China, the Qing after it, and the Ottoman Empire
• Peasant and Artisan labor continued and even intensified in many regions as demand for food and consumer goods increased as a result of multiplying trade connections, such as the increase in cotton production in South Asia and silk production in China for export
• The opening of the Atlantic system of trade was completely new thanks to Columbus, and it was the movement of goods, wealth, and laborers between the eastern and western hemispheres that made Europeans stupid rich and powerful
• Sugar


  King of the goods traded in the Atlantic system, with colonial plantations in the Caribbean specializing in the growth of sugar cane for export
• Silver


  King of the wealth in the Atlantic system, with the Spanish mining silver in the Americas and using it to purchase luxury goods from China, further developing the commercialization of their economy
• Much of the labor in the Atlantic system came from coerced labor, whether it was forced indigenous labor, indentured servitude, or African slavery, and eventually enslaved Africans made up the bulk of the Imperial labor force in the Americas
• Mita system


  An existing labor system developed by the Inca Empire, which the Spanish used for their silver mining operations, requiring subjects to provide labor on state projects for a certain number of days per year
• Chat slavery


  • A new form of slavery in the Americas where the purchaser had total ownership over the enslaved person, it was race-based and hereditary, and significantly impacted the demographics of various African states
• Over the course of about 350 years, over 12.5 million Africans were sold to plantation owners in the Americas as part of the transatlantic slave trade, which was far more massive than the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean slave trades
• Social effects of the African slave trade


  • Profound gender imbalance in West African states, changing of family structure leading to the rise of polygyny, and cultural synthesis resulting in the emergence of Creole languages in the Americas
• Indentured servitude


  A labor arrangement where a laborer would sign a contract binding them to work for a period of time, usually 7 years, after which they could go free
• Encomienda system


  A Spanish labor system that divided indigenous Americans among Spanish settlers who were then forced to provide labor in exchange for food and protection
• Hacienda system


  A Spanish labor system where indigenous laborers were forced to work on large plantations, similar to slavery
• Catholic missionaries, many of them Jesuits, were sent by Spain and Portugal to their colonies in the Americas to convert the indigenous people, leading to religious syncretism as some indigenous groups outwardly adopted Christianity but privately continued their own beliefs
• Vodoun


  A new faith that resulted from the blending of African animist beliefs with Christian doctrines and practices in the Americas
• In Spain and Portugal, Jews were expelled, while the Ottoman Empire opened its doors to the displaced Jews, some of whom rose to prominence in the Ottoman Court