Transcript Conquest and Empire

Conquest and Empire
Dr. Andy Mansfield
Non-European Voyages
• Arab Merchants: all over the
Arabian peninsula and into Asia
• Polynesians: double-hulled canoes
– colonise across the Pacific
• China (Zheng He: 1405-33): Asia,
southeast Asia, Africa
- 28k soldiers and sailors
- Chinese isolation (1477)
Admiral Zheng He (1371 - c.1435)
Henry the Navigator
• Lack of Portuguese wealth so
pursue exploration:
- African Gold
- Mythical Crusaders: Prester John
- Coptic Ethiopia
• Loss to Senegal & Senegambia
• Slavery: ‘Black Gold’ (8 August
1444)
Henry the Navigator (1396 - 1460)
Portuguese Exploration
Vasco de Gama (c. 1460 - 1524)
Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480 - 1521)
1492: Christopher Columbus
• Accidental discovery
• Isabella and Ferdinand
• The most symbolic journey:
unintentional broadening of
European mind-set
• Surpassing ancient wisdom
Taking Possession of the World
• On Columbus’ return: Spanish petition Pope for title
of lands they have ‘discovered’
• 1493: Pope Alexander VI – future discoveries ratified
over non-Christians
• 1455: Pope Nicholas V gives Portugal a license to
reduce all Africa to ‘perpetual slavery’
• 1494: Tordesillas Line: Portugal and Spain
Crosby’s Columbian Exchange
• Europeans and their
descendant most successful
immigrants
• Odd worldwide distribution
• Failure in the Tropics
• Temperate ‘swarm’
Four Organisms
(1) Humans
(2) Animals – agriculture, horses & rats
(3) Weeds – exchange of crops, plants & weeds
(4) Pathogens: (‘lethal microbes’: Diamond) –
Cortes (Aztecs), Pizarro (Incas), & de Soto (North
America) = 95% of population dead
- Smallpox, Typhoid & Measles --- Syphilis
= Disease helped supplant these populations
The Exchange
Spanish Empire
• Vast unexpected wealth: war and
luxury
• No development of agriculture,
trade or economy
• Bankruptcy & Collapse (mid-C17)
• Colonies taken or Republics (C19)
Philip II (r. 1556 - 98)
Northern European Exploration
• French and English search for gold in Canada
• New focus on commerce
• Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun: ‘Golden Ball’
• Masters of the Sea: Seaborne Empires
• Navy and Merchants
• Avoiding past horrors (Rome and Spain)
• Landes on Max Weber
British Empire
• East India Company (1600)
• Competition with Dutch & French
• Harmonious Christian Empire:
commercial, benevolent & liberal
• Loss of American Colonies (1776)
• India: Cornwallis Code (1793)
George III (r. 1760 - 1820)
Modern Slavery
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All empires prior to C19 slave-owning
Slaves used from Antiquity
Portuguese & modern slavery (’Black Gold’)
Britain and slavery – (5% of economy)
‘No African Trade, no Negroes, No Negroes, No
Sugar; no Sugar no Islands, no Islands no
Continent, no Continent no Trade; that is to say
farewell to your American Trade, your West Indian
Trade’ – Daniel Defoe (1713)
Atlantic Triangle
The Slave Trade
• More Africans than Europeans to Americas
• Portuguese, British, French, Spanish, Dutch &
U.S. (by numbers in Atlantic)
• 12 million Africans – (same eastwards)
• Use of African system
• Generation of wealth: people & places
• Replaced indigenous populations
Justifications of the Trade
• Old Slavery:
punishment & war
• Bible & Qu’ran: just to
take slaves in war
• Trade not War
• Curse of Ham (Africa)
Abolition of Slavery
• 1688: French code noir
• Humanitarianism: (1833)
• The Rights of Africans
• Repatriation & Abolition
William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833)
Scramble for Africa
• Berlin Conference (1884)
• European control: childlike Africans
• Belgian Congo (rubber)
• Britain in Southern Africa
• New Imperialism