Transcript The Age of Exploration – 16th Century

The Age of Exploration – 16th
Century
Ch. 14 Economic Expansion and New
Politics
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Demographic, Economic, and Political Changes
(late 15th C. – 16th C.)
Europe’s population rose by ~50% between 1470-1620
• Life expectancy: men 27 years; women 25 years
Movement of people from country into towns and cities as economy expands
• Countryside: Manorial lords top of hierarchy; peasants largest % (many owned land)
• Towns: merchants (bourgeoisie) wealthiest and most powerful; artisans – skilled
craftsmen; laborers – low skilled jobs
Increase in food prices
First enclosures in England
Growth of commercial trade; increase in taxes and royal revenues
– Expansion of the guild system
Growth of modern banking contributing factor to rise of market economies and capitalism:
• First in Italian city-states (Florentine Medici Family 14th-15th centuries)
• Fuggars financed monarchs (especially Hapsburgs) and merchants 16th -18th centuries
Slow and steady inflation
– Population growth led to growth of markets
– Influx of Spanish silver from the New World (financed merchants, who financed war, and
trade)
– Increase circular flow of money and rise in investments
Expansion at Home: The
Commercial Revolution
Causes:
• Population growth
• Price revolution
• Rise in capitalism led by
bourgeoisie
Features:
• Banking
• Hanseatic League
• Chartered companies
• Joint-stock companies
• Stock markets
• Enclosures
• “putting-out” industry in
textiles
• New industries
• New consumer goods
• mercantilism
The Commercial Revolution
Significance:
• Transforms Europe from rural and isolated to
developed society and emerging towns/cities
• Emergence powerful nation-states
• Brought about age of exploration
• The price revolution
• Rise of powerful and wealthy bourgeoisie
• Increased standard of living
Powerpoint: Economic Impact New
World
Fall of Constantinople 1453
• Led to: Age of Exploration
• Last Byzantine Emperor: Constantine XI (14491453)
• Conquered by Ottoman Turks, Sultan Mehmet
II (1434-1481)
– Dome of Hagia Sophia glowed red – sign from
Allah; a crescent moon and star shown in the sky
on the day the greatest Christian city became
Muslim
Age of Exploration
• The fall of Greek Constantinople to the
Ottoman Turks in 1453 permanently and
profoundly changed international affairs
• Wealthy Europeans demanded luxury goods
from Asia: spices, opiates, and silks
• Getting the goods past the Turks cost more
money, raising the price of commodities
dramatically
The Atlantic Five
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Portugal
Spain
England
France
The Netherlands
Portugal
• Motives: economic + religious
• Prince Henry the Navigator (13941460)
– Financed expeditions along
African coast (gold)
– Shipping route to India
– School
• Bartholomew Diaz (1450-1500)
• Vasco de Gama (1469-1525)
• Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512)
• BRAZIL
– 17th century: African slaves
imported for coffee, cotton,
and SUGAR production
– Significant racial mixing
Portuguese map by Lopo Homem (c.
1519) showing the coast of Brazil and
natives extracting brazilwood, as well
as Portuguese ships.
Technology
• Cartography
• Astronomy
• Instruments:
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Magnetic compass
Geometric quadrant
Mariner’s astrolabe
Cross staff
• Ships:
– Caravels (Portugal)
– Lateen sail and rope
riggings
– Axial rudder
– Gunpowder and cannons
Portuguese discoveries and explorations: first arrival places and dates; main
Portuguese spice trade routes in the Indian Ocean (blue); territories claimed
during King John III rule (c. 1536) (green)
Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494
Christopher Columbus
• Proposed a trade route to Asia by going west
thus bypassing Turks
• Ferdinand and Isabella financed expedition
along with Genoese merchants
The New World Uncovered
• Columbus lands in the Bahamas after nearly 6 weeks at sea,
naming it San Salvador
• “los indios” – people of the Indies
• “natural men” naked people without political institutions now
(lucky!) Spanish subjects
– Clothes were how Europeans judged level of civilization
• Half natives of Americas died from European diseases, others
mutilated, shot, worked to death in mines, or enslaved
– Smallpox biggest killer, but Europeans also brought measles, plague, flu
and typhus
– Syphilis was the most significant disease transmitted to Europeans from
Amerindians, and affected thousands in Europe
• 4 expeditions charted most of Caribbean islands and Honduras
• Ushered in era of European exploration and domination of New
World
Spanish Empire in the New World:
Age of the Conquistador
• Conquered entire regions and subjugated
their populations
• Empire divided into 4 viceroyalties
• Mercantilist position
– Colonies existed to enrich mother country
– Mining gold and silver priority (accounted for 25%
royal revenues)
Bartholomew de las Casas (14741566)
A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542)
Criticized treatment of
Amerindians
The Columbian Exchange
Diet
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Revolution in European diet with
importation of new plants
– Potato (S. America) became most
important new staple crop in Europe
– Others: maize, pineapples, tomatoes,
beans, vanilla, and chocolate
Plants: old world to new world – wheat,
sugar, rice and coffee
– By 1600 being cultivated in the New
World
Livestock: cows, pigs, sheep, chickens
brought to New World
– Prior to this no domestic animals
larger than alpaca or llama so little
protein in diet
Animals
• Introduction of the horse
profoundly impacted
Amerindians
– Plains Indians (N. America)
• Turkey: most important meat
source from New World to Old
Slavery
• Huge aspect of Columbian
Exchange
Gold and Silver
• Influx of wealth to Spanish
Empire
England: late to exploration
• John Cabot (1425-1500)
• Jamestown 1607
• Far more English came to
NW comparatively
France
• Jacques Cartier (1491-1557)
• Quebec 1608
Dutch Republic (Netherlands)
• Dutch E. India Co. founded
1602
• Expelled Portuguese from
Ceylon and Indonesia (Spice
Islands)
PowerPoint: Age of Exploration
Remastered
“New” Monarchs: c. 1460-1550
• Consolidated power and created the
foundation for Europe’s first modern nationstates in FRANCE, ENGLAND, and SPAIN
– Used Roman law but declared themselves
“sovereign” and thus could make own laws
– Eastern European monarchs weaker
– Absolutism doesn’t emerge until 17th century
– Still not fully formed “nation-states”
• Identity still local or regional
• Modern nationalism emerges late 18th-early 19th
centuries
Characteristics
• Reduction of nobles’ power through taxation, confiscation of lands, and
use of mercenary armies or standing armies
– Gunpowder: increased vulnerability of noble armies
– Many nobles who supported king gained titles and offices in royal
court
– Increased political influence of bourgeoisie, who brought in more
revenues (more in France)
– Nobles resented decline in power
• Reduction of political power of clergy
– Clergy saw pope as leader, not monarch
• Created more efficient bureaucracies
• Increased public debt by taking out loans from merchant-bankers
United Spain: Ferdinand & Isabella
• United Aragon and Castile houses with marriage
• Reconquista, 1492:
– Goal to remove the last of the Moors and the Jews to Christianize
Spain
– Defeated Moors (N. African Muslims) at Battle of Granada, ending 700
years of “Reconquista”
– Expelled Jews (100,000-150,000)
• Convert, leave, or die
– Loss of Jews and Moors resulted in significant decline of Spanish
middle-class
Spanish Inquisition
• 1478 set up to ensure unity of faith in the realm (abolished in 1834)
– Could look into anyone or anything for any reason
• Answered to monarchs, not Rome
• Tomas de Torquemada, Dominican monk, Grand Inquisitor (1483-1498)
– Burned close to 2,000 people during tenure
• Targeted heretics and conversos: Jews suspected of false conversions
– Jews fled to North Africa, eastern Europe, England (despite a ban), the
Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal (massacred in 1506)
– Ireland only European country that never expelled Jews, nor subjected
them to pogroms, nor put in ghettos (Cahill).
France
House of Valois
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Louis XI (1461-83)
– Created large standing army
Charles VIII
(1483-98)
– Rivalry with Hapsburgs over Italy
– Expensive wars:
• Borrowed $
• Sold offices
Louis XII (1498-1515)
– Expanded selling offices
Francis I (1515-47)
– Concordat of Bologna (1516)
– Taille
Henry II (1547-59)
– Defeated in Italy
The Holy Roman Empire: Hapsburg Empire
• HRE made up of about 300 semi-autonomous
German states
– Center of Hapsburg power in Vienna
• NOT a “New Monarchy”
– No centralized control, no power to tax or raise
armies
• Maximilian I (r. 1493-1519)
– Sparked struggle between Valois and Hapsburgs
Charles V (r. 1519-1556) most
powerful in 16th century
• Controlled Austrian
Hapsburg lands while
ruling Spanish Empire
• Sacked Rome in 1527, thus
symbolically ending the
Renaissance
• Hapsburg-Valois Wars (c.
1519-1559) over control of
Burgundy and territories in
Italy
• Sought to prevent
Protestantism in Germany
Portrait by Titian 1548
The Splintered States: Italy and
eastern Europe
The Ottoman Empire
• Suleiman the Magnificent (r.
1494-1566)
• Militarily invincible for decades
in wars in Mediterranean and
Balkans
– Occupied Serbia, Hungary,
Transylvania, parts of N. Africa,
Arabia and western Persia
– Battle of Belgrade (1528) Serbian
army slaughtered
– Siege of Buda (1528)
– Defeated at Gates of Vienna
(1529) by Hapsburgs
– 1683 beginning of decline
The Italian Wars, 1494-1559
• 5 major city-states (Naples,
Papal States, Milan, Florence,
Venice) ended decades of
balance of power
• French, Spanish, Hapsburg
armies invaded
• By 1559 Hapsburgs controlled
most of Italy
• Venice and Tuscany under
Medici
• Papal States independent
Machiavelli (1469-1527):
The Prince 1517
• Florentine diplomat and political
theorist banished in 1513
• The Prince exalts tyranny and
amorality of rulers – statecraft based
on realistic view of corrupt human
nature
• Politics has its own morality – ruler
does what is necessary for good of
state
• Efficiency, practicality, and stability
are most important goals of ruler
– Democracy inefficient; monarchy
is best
– “the ends justifies the means”
PowerPoint: Centralization of
Power (Euro 14.3)
Essay Questions
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Who were the “New Monarchs”? How did they go about centralizing
power in their states? To what extent were they successful?
What were the causes and features of the Commercial Revolution? How
did the Commercial Revolution impact European society politically,
economically, and socially between 1500-1700?
Analyze the role that knowledge, politics and technology played in
European exploration between 1450 and 1700.
Analyze causes for the rise of the Spanish Empire and features of Spain’s
rule in the New World.
Analyze the impact of the Columbian Exchange on European society.
Analyze factors that enabled Europeans to dominate world trade
between 1500 and 1700.