Transcript Ch. 6: The Age of Exploration

I. Exploration and Expansion:
A. Motives and Means
 From 1500 to 1800, European energy
and industry were focused outward,
to exploring and conquering the
wider world. The discovery
movement was led by the Portuguese
and Spanish, and continued by the
Dutch, English and French.
 As early as the thirteenth century,
the exploits of Marco Polo (1254 –
1324) had infused Europeans with a
desire to explore and exploit the
East, especially China.
 With the rise of the Ottoman Empire
in the Middle East, land routes to the
Orient were closed, so Europeans
began to search for sea routes to
Asia.
Marco Polo
I. Exploration and Expansion:
A. Motives and Means
 European motives for exploration have been
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Missionary
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Cortes
summed up as, “God, glory, and gold.”
Religious zeal encouraged explorers to seek out
non-Christian peoples all over the world in order to
convert them. Catholic nations, like Spain and
France, were especially active in proselytization.
A sense of adventure and the opportunity for fame
and glory accompanied exploration. Conquerors
like Hernan Cortes became world-famous for their
exploits.
The primary motivation, in most cases, was money.
Tremendous fortunes could be made from New
World silver, African slaves, and South Asian spices.
The new monarchies of the fifteenth century
(Spain, France and England) had the centralized
governments, the wealth, and new maritime
technology to pursue their global goals.
I. Exploration and Expansion:
B. The Portuguese Trading Empire
 Under the leadership of Prince
Henry the Navigator (1394 – 1460),
Portugal was the first nation to
explore the coast of Africa. In 1420,
they discovered gold in Ghana.
 In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias became
the first European to round the Cape
of Good Hope into the Indian
Ocean.
 Ten years later, Vasco da Gama sailed
all the way to India. He returned
with a cargo of spices and made a
profit of thousands of percent.
 The next wave of Portuguese ships
set off armed to the teeth, intent on
establishing permanent trading
ports.
Prince Henry
da Gama
I. Exploration and Expansion:
B. The Portuguese Trading Empire
 The Portuguese aimed to eliminate all
Melaka
competition for the spice trade in the Indian
Ocean. In 1509, an armed fleet attacked Turkish
and Indian merchant ships. The following year,
Admiral Alfonso de Albuquerque established a
fortified trading center at Goa.
 Later, Albuquerque led an expedition to Melaka
on the Malay Peninsula to destroy the Arab spice
trade and take over the market.
 From Melaka, Portuguese traders expanded their
control to the Spice Islands (the Moluccas) and
to China.
 The Portuguese had the ships and the guns to
dominate trade, but they did not have the
manpower to establish large colonies. They were
eventually out-competed in southeast Asia by the
Dutch, English and French.
I. Exploration and Expansion:
Preview
 Voyages to the Americas
 The Voyages of Columbus
 A Line of Demarcation
 Race to the Americas
I. Exploration and Expansion:
C. Voyages to the Americas
 While the Portuguese used their limited
resources to explore south and east
around Africa, the Spanish took a
decidedly different approach.
 More populous and prosperous than
Portugal, Spain had the resources to
mount expensive expeditions of
discovery and conquest.
 Spain was also newly unified as a single
nation and was intent on proving its
power to the rest of Europe. In this
frame of mind, it is easy to see why King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were
willing to listen to a Genoese
adventurer.
The “Reconquista” of Spain
Ferdinand and Isabella
I. Exploration and Expansion:
D. The Voyages of Columbus
 Educated Europeans knew that the earth was round, but there
were differing theories on its actual size.
 Christopher Columbus, a sailor from Genoa, believed that the
earth was smaller than some said. He believed he could sail west
and eventually reach China.
 Columbus persuaded the monarchs of Spain to pay for an
expedition westward by promising them access to Asian trade
routes. In October 1492, he discovered the Caribbean islands of
Hispaniola and Cuba.
 On three subsequent journeys, he landed on all the major
Caribbean islands and the Central American mainland.
Columbus was convinced that he had made it to East Asia.
I. Exploration and Expansion:
E. A Line of Demarcation
 By the early 1490s, Portugal and Spain had
laid claim to extensive sea routes. The two
powers feared that conflicts would arise over
colonies and trade access in the newly
discovered territories.
 Spain and Portugal agreed to prevent any
dispute by appealing to the pope for a ruling.
Pope Alexander VI (of the Spanish Borgia
family) agreed to mediate, and in 1494, all
parties signed the Treaty of Tordesillas.
 The treaty established a line of demarcation,
separating potential Spanish and Portuguese
territories. The line ran through the eastern
part of South America, granting Brazil to
Portugal. To the west, Spain received all of
North America and the majority of South
America.
Pope Alexander VI
I. Exploration and Expansion:
F. Race to the Americas
 The economic opportunities present in the
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Americas soon attracted other adventurers
and explorers.
John Cabot (1450 – 1499), a Venetian, was
hired by the English to explore the coast of
North America in 1497-98. He laid claim to
Canada.
Pedro Cabral (1467 – 1520) landed in
modern-day Brazil and claimed it for
Portugal.
Amerigo Vespucci (1454 – 1512), from
Florence, described much of the coast of the
Americas, which were named for him.
Europeans called the lands they explored
the “New World,” though it was certainly
not new to the millions of Native Americans
who had lived there for thousands of years.
I. Exploration and Expansion:
Preview
 The Spanish Empire
 Economic Impact and
Competition
I. Exploration and Expansion:
G. The Spanish Empire
 The Spanish conquistadors were remarkably
Conquistador
“Comenderos”
successful in the New World. They used a
combination of military technology,
determined leadership, and European disease
to conquer the western part of Latin America.
 Hernan Cortes defeated the mighty Aztec
empire and captured northern Mexico in
three years. Francisco Pizarro overthrew the
Inca by 1550. By 1580, Spain controlled all of
Central and South America except Brazil.
 As early as 1535, Spain had a system of
government in place for its New World
colonies. Native Americans (called “indios”)
were subjects of the Empire. Spanish
landowners were granted encomienda, the
right to use Native Americans for forced labor.
I. Exploration and Expansion:
G. The Spanish Empire
 Spanish settlers were expected to look after
native workers, but there were very few
government representatives to ensure good
treatment. Landowners used the natives
like slaves in silver mines and sugar cane
plantations.
 Backbreaking labor and poor diet added to
the terrible death toll caused by disease.
Smallpox, measles and typhus had killed
98% of the native population of Hispaniola
in under 50 years. The population of
Mexico dropped by 96% by 1630.
 Spanish settlers had also brought along
priests and missionaries. They baptized
many of the natives and enforced Christian
religion and culture. Native society was
effectively destroyed and replaced.
South American mine
Missionary in California
I. Exploration and Expansion:
H. Economic Impact and Competition
 Spain’s colonies had a direct effect on the home
Atocha treasure
New World crops
Thai Emeralds
country’s economy. They had come to the new
world in search of mineral wealth, and in
Mexico and Peru, they found huge silver
deposits. New World silver would make Spain
the richest nation in the world in the late
sixteenth century.
 Spanish colonists operated plantations and
ranches in Latin America. In addition to
European crops and livestock, they grew native
plants for export, including corn, potatoes,
cocoa and tobacco. These products generated
further wealth when sold in European markets.
 Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia also
affected European markets. They became the
primary source for spices, gems, and silk,
replacing the Italian merchant companies.
I. Exploration and Expansion
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
Preview
 New Rivals Enter the Scene
 Trade, Colonies, and
Mercantilism
 The Slave Trade
 Growth of the Slave Trade
I. Exploration and Expansion:
I. New Rivals Enter the Scene
 Beginning in the mid-1500s, other nations entered the colonialism
game. The Spanish were established in the Philippines, where they
competed with the Portuguese for southeast Asian markets.
 The Dutch founded a colony in India in 1595, and later created the
East India Company, which dominated trade in the Spice Islands.
They also founded colonies in the Hudson River area of what is now
New York State.
 England set up colonies in northwest India. They also explored coastal
North America, eventually taking over New York and Caribbean
islands from the Dutch in the 1660s.
 French entrepreneurs explored eastern Canada and much of the
Mississippi River valley. They also competed for trade in India and the
Caribbean.
British
French
Spanish
I. Exploration and Expansion:
J. Trade, Colonies and Mercantilism
 European nations competed with one another to
establish colonies in the sixteenth century as part
of the Commercial Revolution.
 The theory of mercantilism, popular in Europe at
the time, said that the wealth of a nation was
measured by its supply of gold and silver (called
bullion). To bring in more bullion, a nation should
have a favorable balance of trade, meaning that it
exports more valuable products than it imports.
 Colonies were important to a mercantilist
economy because they provided cheap raw
materials and markets for expensive manufactured
goods, thus creating a favorable balance.
 Nations also stimulated trade by subsidizing new
industries, building new transport systems, and
taxing foreign imports (called tariffs).
U.S. balance of
trade, 1970 - 2002
I. Exploration and Expansion:
J. Trade, Colonies and Mercantilism
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
A. The Slave Trade
 Slavery was not new in the 1400s. African
cultures had taken slaves from one another
for centuries. Some slaves had been sold,
mostly in southwest Asia, where they were
usually used as servants. Slavery as practiced
by Europeans changed dramatically with the
discovery of the New World.
 The coast of Brazil and the islands of the
Caribbean have the ideal climate for growing
sugarcane, and huge plantations were
established. Sugarcane requires lots of backbreaking labor, and the Native American
population had been decimated by disease.
 Plantation owners began transporting slaves
from the west coast of Africa to work on the
sugar plantations as early as 1518.
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
B. Growth of the Slave Trade
 The slave trade soon became an integral part of
mercantilism. In what is known as the triangular
trade, manufactured goods from Europe were
taken to Africa and exchanged for slaves. The
slaves were transported to the Caribbean and
North America and sold. The profits were used to
buy raw materials like lumber and molasses,
which were taken back to Europe and sold at a
profit.
 As the slave-based economy of the American
colonies became more profitable, the demand for
Africans skyrocketed. An estimated 275,000
slaves were transported in the sixteenth century,
more than a million in the seventeenth century,
and six million in the eighteenth. By 1888, a total
of ten million people had been taken from west,
central and east Africa.
French slaver
Slaver routes
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
B. Growth of the Slave Trade
 One reason for the rapid rise in the number
Slave ship
Sugar plantation
of imported slaves was the high death rate.
 Africans were packed by the hundreds into
tiny, unventilated slave ships. They spent
almost the entire sea journey chained to
wooden platforms. Human waste collected
on the floor. Food was limited, to save space
and money. Thousands died before they
reached the Americas. This was known as
the middle passage.
 Slaves taken directly from Africa had no
natural immunity to European or American
diseases, which killed thousands more.
Slaves born in the Americas had a higher
survival rate, but slave owners usually felt it
was cheaper to import adult slaves than to
raise slave children to working age.
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
Preview
 Sources of Slaves
 Effects of the Slave Trade
 Political and Social Structures
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
C. Sources of Slaves
 Prior to European involvement in the early
1500s, most African slaves were taken as
prisoners of war by neighboring kings.
 European traders would exchange firearms,
gold and cloth for slaves along the coast of
West Africa. As demand for slaves increased,
African traders had to collect slaves from
farther inland.
 Some African rulers became worried about
the damage caused by the slave trade. King
Afonso of Bakongo sent a letter of complaint
to the king of Portugal in 1526.
 European powers ignored these protests, as
the slave trade had become very profitable.
King Afonso
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
D. Effects of the Slave Trade
 Increased demand for slaves led to an increase in warfare. Slave-
taking kingdoms along the coast, armed with European
weapons, raided inland communities more and more often.
 The slave trade always had a devastating effect on the
individuals who were taken, their families, and the communities
that were deprived of their young people.
 Some areas suffered more than others. The nation of Benin, a
thriving and creative kingdom in the early 1500s, it deteriorated
to the point of lawlessness and human sacrifice in less than a
hundred years.
Emperor Oba of Benin
18th century slave raiders
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
E. Political and Social Structures
 Until the beginning of the nineteenth
century, European involvement in Africa
was limited to the slave trade. England,
Portugal, the Netherlands and France set
up trading posts along the West African
coast to trade for slaves, ivory and other
products.
 Europeans did not encroach very far into
the interior of the continent, with two
exceptions. The English and Dutch
colonized large sections of South Africa,
and the Portuguese settled in
Mozambique. Otherwise, the vast
majority of Africa remained unexplored
by whites, who called it “the dark
continent.”
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
F. Traditional Political Systems
 For the most part, African political structures remained
unchanged by contact with Europeans.
 Many societies were governed by kings with centralized
authority. The king of Benin was a semi-divine figure with
unquestioned powers.
 Other cultures operated like federations, with several
autonomous states linked together through lineage groups. The
Ashanti civilization of the Gold Coast was structured this way.
 Some areas had no political structure beyond the village elder,
such as the Igbo culture. These areas saw the greatest
concentration of slave-raiding activity.
Oba, King
of Benin
Ibo village elders
Ashanti king’s stool
II. Africa in an Age of Transition &
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
Preview
 Foreign Influences
 Emerging Mainland States
 The Arrival of Europeans
 A Shift in Power
II. Africa in an Age of Transition:
G. Foreign Influences
 Foreign influence in Africa was
largely indirect. Europeans
introduced new agricultural
products to the continent, which
changed Africans’ diets and farming
practices.
 Commercial contact with Europeans
encouraged African trade routes to
relocate closer to the coast. This led
to the rise of a powerful state in
Morocco and the decline of Songhai.
 While the Portuguese established
some missionary stations, the
spread of Christianity in Africa was
very slow in the 1500s. Instead, Islam
came to dominate the northern and
eastern coasts.
Catholic missionaries
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
A. Emerging Mainland States
 By 1500, independent states on the
Southeast Asian mainland had been forming
for hundreds of years.
 Siam (modern-day Thailand) extended its
control far south. They came into conflict
with the Burmese and were forced to
relocate their capital to Bangkok.
 The kingdom of Dai Viet conquered Champa
and the Mekong River delta to the south,
outlining the modern borders of Vietnam.
 Muslim merchants had been attracted to the
spice trade in the Malay Archipelago. They
established themselves along the coasts, and
Islam became the majority religion in the
area. The Muslim state of Melaka came to
dominate the spice trade and regional
politics.
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
B. The Arrival of Europeans
 Melaka was seized by the Portuguese
admiral Albuquerque in 1511. The
sultan was defeated and control of
the Melaka Straits came into
European hands. The Portuguese
used this base to conquer the
Molucca Islands, known to the West
as the Spice Islands.
 The Portuguese did not have the
resources or manpower to establish
large colonies in Southeast Asia.
Instead, they founded coastal
settlements as trading posts and
provisioning stations.
Admiral Albuquerque
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
C. A Shift in Power
 The English and Dutch organized large-scale trading corporations to
raise money and private armies with which to conquer the East Indies.
 In the early 1600s, forces of the Dutch East India Company drove the
Portuguese out of the Moluccas and established a colony there. In 1619,
the Dutch built a fort at Batavia, on the island of Java. They came to
control the entire island, as well as Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in a short period
of time. The Dutch gradually took over all of the major spiceproducing islands and ran them as vast plantations.
 The English had been major players in the East Indies in the early era
of the spice trade, but by the end of the 1600s, they were reduced to a
single city in Sumatra.
Dutch East Indies fleet
Cloves
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
Preview
 Impact on the Mainland
 Religious and Political Systems
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
D. Impact on the Mainland
 Initially, the European presence in the
Baganmyo, Burma
17th Century map of Vietnam
East Indies had little direct impact on
mainland states. The Portuguese made
contact and established treaties with
Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and the
Angkor kingdom. Later, European
nations would compete for trading and
missionary privileges within these
states.
 In 1527, a civil war split Vietnam into two
states. European powers took sides in
the conflict, attempting to gain
economic concessions and political
influence in the region.
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
D. Impact on the Mainland
 Foreign influence in Vietnam and other
mainland states did not last long. By the early
seventeenth century, most trading enterprises
had been closed. French Catholic missionaries
attempted to stay, but the Vietnamese
government forced them out.
 The mainland of Southeast Asia was able to
resist European domination for two reasons.
 By the time of European exploration, Vietnam,
Burma and Thailand were established
monarchies with powerful, centralized
governments. The Malay peninsula, by
contrast, was not united or well-organized.
 Whereas the Spice Islands were full of
products that Europeans wanted, the mainland
held very little of interest for outsiders. This
made large-scale trade less profitable.
King Mongkut of Siam
Shwedagon Pagoda
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
E. Religious and Political Systems
 Between 1500 and 1800, the religious make-
Ayutthaya, Thailand
Binondo Church, Manila
Mosque at Depok, Java
up of Southeast Asia changed. In the
islands, Islam and Christianity took hold.
On the mainland, Buddhism came to
dominate. In all cases, traditional forms of
belief continued to structure society.
 New religions and contact with the West
influenced political structures in the
region. Four distinct styles of kingship
emerged in this era: Buddhist kingship,
Javanese kingship, Muslim sultanate, and
Vietnamese empire.
III. Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade:
E. Religious and Political Systems
 Buddhist kings (Burma, Thailand, Laos,
Cambodia): In the Buddhist tradition,
the king is regarded as spiritually
superior to everyone else.
 Javanese kings (Island of Java): This form
of kingship is similar to the Buddhist
model, but influenced by Indian social
structures. The king is semi-divine.
 Islamic sultans (Malay peninsula,
Indonesia): The sultan was a mortal, but
tasked with defending Islam. The
government was staffed by aristocratbureaucrats.
 Vietnamese emperor (Vietnam): Based
on the Chinese model and
Confucianism, the mortal emperor ruled
with the Mandate of Heaven.
Emperor of Vietnam
Sultan of Brunei