Transcript Ch.15GlobalCommerce1450-1750x

“Gold and silver are no doubt
subject to fluctuations, from the
discovery of new and more
abundant mines; but such
discoveries are rare, and their
effects, though powerful, are
limited to periods of
comparatively short duration.”
David Ricardo
Ch.15 Global Commerce 1450-1750
Commerce joined with empire were the twin
drivers of globalization during the early modern
era
 Created new relationships, disrupted old
patterns, brought distant peoples into contact
w/one another, enriched some, &
impoverished/enslaved others
 From the various “old worlds” or the premodern
era, a single “new world” emerged, accompanied
by growing inequalities
 European empires in the Americas grew out of an
accident – Columbus’s unknowing encounter with
the Americas – but in Asia, the voyage(14971499) of Portugal’s Vasco da Gama was certainly
no accident

Vasco da Gama’s journey sailed to India for the
first time. It was the outcome of a deliberate,
systematic, century-long Portuguese effort to
explore a sea route to the East, by creeping
slowly down the West African coast, around the
tip of South Africa, up the East African coast, &
finally to Calicut in southern India in 1498.
There Europeans encountered an ancient & rich
network of commerce that stretched from East
Africa to China.
The biggest motivation was the desire for tropical
spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves, &
above, all pepper – which were used as
condiments, preservatives, & sometimes
aphrodisiacs
 Chinese silk, Indian cottons, rhubarb for
medicinal purposes, emeralds, rubies, &
sapphires were also in great demand
 During the 15th century, Europe’s population
was growing again, recovering from the disaster
of the Black Death, and its national monarchies –
in Spain, Portugal, England, and France – were
learning how to tax more effectively & build
substantial military forces equipped with
gunpowder weapons
 Europe’s cities were growing too

Some European cities were becoming centers of
international commerce, giving birth to a more
capitalist economy based on market exchange,
private ownership, & the accumulation of capital
for further investment.
For Europeans, the source of Eastern goods lay in
Muslim hands
 Muslim Egypt was the primary point of transfer
into the Mediterranean basin
 The Italian commercial city of Venice largely
monopolized European trade in Eastern goods,
annually sending convoys of ships to Alexandria
in Egypt
 Venetians resented the Muslim monopoly on
Indian Ocean trade, and other European powers
disliked relying on Venice as well as on Muslims
 This encouraged the search for a sea route

In addition, many Europeans were persuaded
that a mysterious Christian monarch, “Prester
John”, ruled somewhere in Asia or Africa.
Joining with his mythical kingdom to continue
the Crusades & combat a common Islamic enemy
was also a goal of the Portuguese voyages.
But few products of an economically less
developed Europe were attractive in Eastern
markets
 Europeans were required to pay in gold or silver
for Asian spices/textiles
 This persistent trade shortage contributed much
to the intense desire for precious metals
 Portuguese voyages along the West African coast
were seeking access to African goldfields
 The enormously rich silver deposits of Mexico &
Bolivia provided a temporary solution
 But European trade goods were crude &
unattractive in Asian markets & Europeans were
unable to compete effectively

Yet the Portuguese soon learned that most Indian
Ocean merchant ships were not heavily armed &
lacked the onboard cannons that Portuguese
ships carried. The Portuguese saw that their
ships could outgun/outmaneuver competing naval
forces, while their onboard cannons could
devastate coastal defenses.
This advantage allowed the Portuguese to
quickly established strengthened bases at several
key locations within the Indian Ocean world
 Bases were est. at Mombasa (East Africa),
Hormuz (entrance to the Persian Gulf), Goa (west
coast of India), Malacca (Southeast Asia), and
Macao (south coast of China)
 With the exception of Macao, which was gained
through bribery and negotiations with Chinese
authorities, Portuguese bases were obtained
forcibly against small and weak states
 The Portuguese created a “trading post empire”
in the Indian Ocean, and aimed to control
commerce by force of arms

Seeking a monopoly on spice trade, Portuguese
authorities in the East tried to require all
merchant vessels to purchase a cartaz, or pass,
and to pay 6 to 10 percent on their cargoes. They
partially blocked the traditional Red Sea route to
the Mediterranean and for a century or so
monopolized the highly profitable route around
Africa to Europe. Yet they never succeeded in
controlling much more than half of the spice
trade to Europe.
The Portuguese became involved in carrying
Asian goods to Asian ports, selling their shipping
services because they were largely unable to sell
their goods
 By 1600, the Portuguese trading post empires
were in steep decline
 This small European country was overextended
 Asian states such as Japan, Burma, Mughal
India, Persia, etc., actively resisted Portuguese
commercial control
 Other European countries gradually challenged
Portugal’s efforts to monopolize the spice trade to
Europe
 Spain was the first to challenge Portugal’s
position
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In an effort to catch up, Spaniards est. themselves
on the Philippine Islands, named after the
Spanish king Philip II. The Spanish first
encountered the region during the famous roundthe-world voyage (1519-1521) of Ferdinand
Magellan, a Portuguese mariner sailing on behalf
of the Spanish Crown.
The Philippines’ proximity to China and the spice
islands (small and militarily weak societies) &
the absence of competing claims encouraged the
Spanish to est. colonial rule on the islands rather
than to imitate a Portuguese-style trading post
empire. The Philippines remained a Spanish
colonial territory until the end of the nineteenth
century, when the United States assumed control
following the Spanish-American War of 1898.
With Spanish rule came a missionary effort,
which turned Filipino society into the only major
outpost of Christianity in Asia
 On the southern island of Mindanao, Islam was
gaining strength & provided an ideology of
resistance to Spanish encroachment for 300 years
 Mindanao is still a contested part of the
Philippines into the 21st century
 The two most important competitors in the
context of spice trade were the Dutch and
English, who entered Indian Ocean commerce in
the early 17th century
 They quickly overtook & displaced the
Portuguese (often by force)
 They competed with each other

Around 1600, both British and Dutch organized
their Indian Ocean ventures through private
trading companies, which were able to raise
money & share risks among a substantial
number of merchant investors.
The British East India Company & the Dutch East
India Company received charters from their
respective governments granting them trading
monopolies & the power to initiate war/to govern
conquered peoples. They est. their own parallel
& competing trading post empires, with the
Dutch focused on the islands of Indonesia and the
English on India.
Somewhat later, a French company est.
settlements in the Indian Ocean basin
 Operating in a region of fragmented & weak
political authority, the Dutch acted to control not
only the shipping but also the production of
cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace
 With much bloodshed, the Dutch seized control of
a number of small spice-producing islands, &
forced them to sell only to the Dutch, destroying
the crops of those who refused
 While Dutch profits soared, the local economy of
the Spice Islands was shattered, & their people
impoverished
 The British were largely excluded from the rich
Spice Islands by the Dutch monopoly

The British fell back on India, where they est. 3
major trading settlements during the 17th
century: Bombay (India’s west coast), & Calcutta
& Madras (both on the east coast). Although
British naval forces soon gained control of the
Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, on land they
were no match for the powerful Mughal Empire,
which ruled most of the Indian subcontinent.
The British could not practice “trade by warfare,”
(like the Dutch did in Indonesia)
 Rather they secured their trading bases with the
permission of Mughal authorities/local rulers, (w/
substantial payments and bribes)
 British merchants focused more on Indian cotton
textiles
 Hundreds of villages in the interior of southern
India became specialized producers
 In the second half of the 18th century, both the
Dutch and British trading post empires slowly
evolved into a more conventional form of colonial
domination, in which the British came to rule
India and the Dutch controlled Indonesia

The European presence in Asia was far less
significant. To the great powers of South & East
Asia – Mughal India, China, and Japan –
Europeans represented no real military threat
and played minor roles in their large and
prosperous economies.
When Portuguese traders & missionaries first
arrived in Japan in the mid 16th century
(followed by Spanish, Dutch, and English) Japan
was plagued by endemic conflict
 Lords, known as daimyo, each with his own
squad of samurai warriors were in conflict with
each other
 In these circumstances, the Europeans found a
hospitable welcome for their military technology,
shipbuilding skills, geographic knowledge,
commercial opportunities, & even religious ideas
proved useful/attractive to various elements in
Japan
 But by the early 17th century, a series of
remarkable military figures had unified Japan

Under the leaderships of a supreme military
commander known as the shogun, who hailed
from the Tokugawa clan, Japan’s civil wars came
to an end. Successive shoguns came to view
Europeans as a threat their country’s new unity.
They expelled Christian missionaries & violently
suppressed the practice of Christianity.
Shogunate authorities also forbade Japanese
from traveling abroad & banned most European
traders altogether, permitting only the Dutch,
who appeared less interested in spreading
Christianity, to trade at a single site
 For two centuries (1650-1850), Japanese
authorities largely closed their country off from
European commerce, although they maintained
their trading ties to China and Korea
 Despite the European naval dominance in Asian
waters, Asian merchants did not disappear
 Even more than the spice trade of Eurasia, it was
the silver trade that gave birth to a genuinely
global network of exchange

The mid 16th century discovery of rich silver
deposits in Bolivia & Japan suddenly provided an
increased supply of the precious metal. Spanish
America alone produced perhaps 85% of the
world’s silver during the early modern era.
Spain’s sole Asian colony, the Philippines,
provided a critical link in this emerging network
of global commerce.
At the heart of the Pacific web, was China’s huge
economy & its growing demand for silver
 In the 1570s, Chinese authorities consolidated a
variety of taxes into a single tax, which the
population now had to pay in silver
 This sudden new demand for silver caused its
value to skyrocket
 Foreigners with silver could now purchase far
more of China’s silks & porcelains than ever
before
 This demand set silver in motion around the
world, most of it winding up in China & other
parts of Asia

At the world’s largest silver mine (now Bolivia) the
city of Potosí arose from high in the Andes. The
city’s Native miners worked in conditions so
horrendous that some families held funeral
services for men drafted to work the mines. In
Spain, silver enriched the Crown but this blend of
wealth did not fundamentally transform the
Spanish economy.
The mix of silver in Spain generated more
inflation of prices than real economic growth
 An economy laced with monopolies &
regulations, an aristocratic class that preferred
leisure to enterprise, & a crusading insistence
on religious uniformity all prevented the
Spanish from using their silver windfall in a
productive fashion
 When the value of silver dropped in the early
17th century, Spain lost its earlier position as
the dominant Western European power
 Japan, another major source of silver
production, did better
 Tokugawa shoguns used profits from silver to
defeat rival feudal lords & unify the country

The shoguns allied with the merchant class &
developed a market-based economy & invested in
agricultural and industrial enterprises.
Japanese state & local authorities acted
vigorously to protect & renew Japan’s dwindling
forests, while millions of families took steps to
have fewer children by practicing late marriages,
contraception, abortion, & infanticide. The
outcome was the dramatic slowing of Japan’s
population, the easing of an ecological crisis, and
a flourishing highly commercialized economy.
These conditions were the foundations for
Japan’s remarkable 19th century Industrial
Revolution.
In the early modern era, major items of global
commerce were: furs, silver, textiles, & spices as
 The early modern era witnessed a period of
cooling temperatures & harsh winters, this
“Little Ice Age” may well have increased the
demand for furs
 Conditions pushed higher prices
 Native American Indians supplied furs to
European merchants. As they became trapped in
commercial relationships, they grew dependent
on European trade goods
 Many died from diseases carried by Europeans
 Many animal species were depleted

Beyond germs and guns, the most
destructive of the imported goods was
alcohol – rum & brandy, as well as whiskey.
Native American societies were decimated
due to the mix of disease, dependence,
guns, alcohol, & the growing invasion of
European colonial empires.
Fur trade for Siberians was similar to North
America. Russian authorities imposed a tax
or tribute, payable in furs, on every ablebodied Siberian male between 18-50 years
of age. Many Russian hunters & trappers
also competed with Siberians.
STRAYER QUESTIONS
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What drove European involvement in the world of Asian
commerce?
To what extent did the Portuguese realize their own goals in the
Indian Ocean?
How did the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and British initiatives
in Asia differ from one another?
To what extent did the British and Dutch trading companies
change the societies they encountered in Asia?
What was the world historical importance of the silver trade?
Describe the impact of the fur trade on North American native
societies.
How did the North American and Siberian fur trades differ from
each other? What did they have in common?