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Empires and Encounters 1450 C.E. – 1750 C.E. Key Concept and Focus Questions Key Concept 4.1 - Globalizing Networks of Communication and Exchange • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Describe the degree of global ‘interconnection’ after 1500 CE compared to before 1500. How did the global trade network after 1500 CE affect the pre-existing regional trade networks? What technical developments made transoceanic European travel & trade possible? What were the major notable transoceanic voyages between 1450-1750 CE? Where did Zheng He and the Chinese Treasure Fleets travel? Why did Portugal begin longer maritime voyages ca. 1430 CE? What effect did Columbus’ travels have on Europeans? What originally motivated Europeans to travel across the northern Atlantic? How did the new global connections affect the peoples of Oceania and Polynesia? What new financial and monetary means made new scale(s) of trade possible? Describe European merchants overall trade role c. 1450-1750. What role did silver play in facilitating a truly global scale of trade? What new mercantilist financial means developed to facilitate global trade? What were the economic and social effects of the Atlantic trading system? What were the unintentional biological effects of the Columbian Exchange? What foods were transferred to new geographic regions as part of the Columbian Exchange, and what were labor systems made this transfer possible? What plants/animals were deliberately transferred across the Atlantic as part of the Columbian Exchange? How did settlers’ action affect the Americas environmentally? How did the Columbian Exchange affect the spread of religions? Where did the “universal” religions of Buddhism, Christianity & Islam spread? How did the Columbian Exchange affect religion(s)? How did the arts fare during this period? Key Concept and Focus Questions • • • • • • • • • • • Key Concept 4.2 - New Forms of Social Organization and Modes of Production How did agriculture’s role change between 1450-1750? What pre-requisite conditions made these changes possible? How did labor systems develop between 1450-1750? How was peasant labor affected between 1450-1750? How did slavery within Africa compare to the pre-1450 era? How did the Atlantic slave trade affect both African societies and the economy of the Americas? How did labor systems develop in the colonial Americas? How did the post-1450 economic order affect the social, economic, and political elites? How did pre-existing political and economic elites react to these changes? How were gender and family structures affected to these changes? How did societies in the Americas reflect the post-1450 economic order? Key Concept and Focus Questions Key Concept - 4.3 State Consolidation and Imperial Expansion • How did empires attempt to administer the new widespread nature of their territories? • How did the role of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe develop in this new world-wide political order? • How did the people of various empires react to their government’s methods? • How did political rulers legitimize and consolidate their rule? • What role did religion play in legitimizing political rule? • How were ethnic and religious minorities treated in various empires? • How did rulers make sure that their governmental were well run? • How did rulers finance their territorial expansion? • What was the relationship between imperialism and military technology? • How did Europeans go about creating new global empires and trade networks? • How did pre-existing land-based empires and new empires during this era compare to previous era’s empires? • What obstacles to empire-building did empires confront, and how did they respond to these challenges? The Mughal Empire: Among the most magnificent of the early modern empires was that of the Mughals in India. In this painting by an unknown Mughal artist, the seventeenth-century emperor Shah Jahan is holding a durbar, or ceremonial assembly, in the audience hall of his palace. The overall material splendor of the setting shows the immense wealth of the court, while the halo around Shah Jahan’s head indicates the special spiritual grace of enlightenment associated with emperors. European Empires in the Americas The European Advantage • Geography and winds: Europe had a decided advantage for access to the Americas as it was a short trip across the Atlantic and the winds were steady and favorable, unlike the shifting monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean • European marginality, land-hunger, and social drives: European weaknesses, such as being on the margins of the trade networks, being relatively poor, and needing more land to feed the population recovering from the Black Death all served as push factors to drive Europeans overseas and toward the Americas • Almost all social groups had some reason to favor expansion: The poor and the elites wanted to gain land wealth, merchants wanted markets and imports, the church wanted to spread the faith, knights wanted glory, and everyone wanted gold • Western European empires were unique because they began thanks to maritime expansion European Empires in the Americas The European Advantage • Organization and technology: The near-constant, interstate rivalry manifested itself in competition on the seas • These conflicts ensured that the states and trading companies had the organization to take on the project of overseas expansion • Europeans built upon technology gained from contact with the Muslim world to create an increasingly efficient fleet of ships • Local allies: Europeans also found local allies, such as the Aztecs and the Inca, who were eager to fight against empires • The Spanish were often aided by poor natives who sought powerful alies to gain an advantage against their enemies • Germs: The single greatest advantage was one the Europeans did not understand but carried with them wherever they went: a whole host of infectious diseases European Colonial Empires in the Americas: By the beginning of the eighteenth century, European powers had laid claim to most of the Western Hemisphere. Their wars and rivalries during that century led to an expansion of Spanish and English claims, at the expense of the French. European Empires in the Americas The Great Dying • 60–80 million people without immunities: Estimates are that the New World had a population of between 60 and 80 million people • As they had been isolated from the diseased, rich Old World for thousands of years, they had not developed immunities to both serious epidemic diseases and what were common endemic illness in Afro-Eurasia • Old-World diseases: Illnesses such as smallpox, measles, typhus, influenza, malaria, and yellow fever wreaked havoc in the Americas, exacting a terrible toll • Demographic collapse: In some places, 90 percent of the population died • Central Mexico went from a population of 10 to 20 million to 1 million in 150 years • It was not until the late seventeenth century that the population began to recover but in only some places • This mass death open up the continents for European conquerors and their African slaves Disease and Death among the Aztecs: Smallpox, which accompanied the Spanish to the Americas, devastated native populations. This image, drawn by an Aztec artist and contained in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex, illustrates the impact of the disease in Mesoamerica. European Empires in the Americas The Columbian Exchange • People brought germs, plants, and animals: The Europeans who came to the Americas not only brought themselves and their germs but also animals and plants • Horses and pigs played an important role in the post-Columbian development of the Americas • Corn and potatoes to Europe, Africa, and Asia: The two most significant food crops to come from the Americas were corn (maize) and potatoes • Corn became a common staple throughout the Old World, but especially Africa • Potatoes, likewise, had their greatest impact in Europe (especially Ireland) but the sweet potato was also very popular in China • Indeed, American crops such as potatoes, corn, and peanuts spread throughout China and made up 20 percent of their agricultural produce by the early twentieth century • American tobacco and chocolate, Chinese tea, and Arab coffee: As a truly global exchange developed, people began to consume a variety of stimulants from around the world • Tobacco, for example, became popular in Europe and China European Empires in the Americas The Columbian Exchange • Silver, slaves, and sugar: Global networks transported commodities such as silver from the Potosí mine in the Andes, human beings from Africa, and sugar increasingly from the Caribbean • New producers and transporters could become fabulously wealthy in this process • Europe’s prevailing economic theory was known as mercantilism • According to this theory, national prosperity was accumulated by encouraging exports and accumulating bullion (precious metals such as silver and gold) • Europe the biggest winner: Europe was the biggest winner in the Columbian Exchange, seen both in the wealth it extracted from the New World and its demographic growth • Thanks to the Columbian Exchange, the previously poor and marginal Europe could enter into trade and competition with the historically more powerful and wealthy Asian societies Plants and Animals of the Columbian Exchange: This eighteenth-century Preuvian painting illustrates two of the many biological species that crossed that Atlantic. Cattle from Europe flourished in the Americas, while cassava (also known as manioc), shown in the bottom of the picture, was native to South America but spread widely in Asia, and especially in Africa, where its edible root provided a major source of carbohydrates. Comparing Colonial Societies in the Americas In the Lands of the Aztecs and the Incas • Encomienda, repartimiento, and hacienda: These were a series of Spanish colonial legal systems for controlling land and labor • In the first, Spanish settlers were given control over a community and allowed to extract wealth and labor as they saw fit • As this system led to blatant abuses, the second system was under more direct government supervision, but still abusive • In the third system, Spaniards built large estates and paid peons low wages to work for them • The colonial economy of the Spanish Empire was based on commercial agriculture and mining • Creoles and peninsulares: “Purity of blood”: Pure-blooded Spanish were very concerned about their undiluted blood, but they also saw distinctions among themselves • Those born in the colonies were inferior to those from the Iberian peninsula, yet both were superior to mixed race, indigenous, and African individuals • Spanish men jealously guarded their women from mixed race, indigenous, and African men who might dilute the community’s blood and tarnish their honor Comparing Colonial Societies in the Americas In the Lands of the Aztecs and the Incas • Mestizo and castas: These mixed-race individuals were divided into numerous groups (castas) based on their percentage of Spanish, Indian, and African blood • As there were very few Spanish women, most Spanish men took mestiza wives, indicating an obvious gender double standard • Indians: The indigenous population suffered from both the Great Dying and from the exploitative colonial regime • Many surviving Indian women sought refuge in mixed or Spanish marriages to protect their children from colonial abuses • Native Americans who converted to Catholicism often blended their old customs into Catholic practices Racial Mixing in Colonial Mexico: This eighteenthcentury painting by the famous Zapotec artist Miguel Cabrera shows a Spanish man, a mestiza woman, and their child, who was labeled as castiza. By the twentieth century, such mixed-race people represented the majority of the population of Mexico, and cultural blending had become a central feature of the country’s identity. Four Racial Groups, taken from a series of paintings by the eighteenth-century Mexican artist Andres de Islas, illustrates the racial mixing that took place in the Spanish empire and some of the new vocabulary invented to describe it. Top left: The offspring of a Spaniard and Indian is a mestizo. Right: A Spaniard and a mestiza produce a castizo. Bottom left: The child of an Indian and a mestiza is a coyote. Right: And the child of an Indian man and African woman is a chino. Comparing Colonial Societies in the Americas Colonies of Sugar • Portuguese Brazil’s monopoly (1570–1670): After learning about sugar from Arabs in the Mediterranean, the Portuguese pioneered sugar production in Brazil and enjoyed a century-long monopoly until the British, Dutch, and French got involved in the Caribbean • Labor intensive and an international mass market: Sugar production and refining was extremely labor intensive and required a type of organization similar to the industrial factories yet to come • Labor demands could not be met by the local population after the Great Dying, so slaves were imported from Africa • Large-scale importation of new slaves continued into the nineteenth century to meet the demand for labor • The commodity was consumed by a mass market over seas, making the plantation complex an important development in world history Comparing Colonial Societies in the Americas Colonies of Sugar • African slaves and mulattoes: Some 80 percent of the Africans taken to the New World went to sugar plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean • These colonies maintained large populations that were born in Africa and recently enslaved, in contrast to North America where most slaves were born in the New World • Brazil had a large population of mixed-race individuals with African lineages, known as mulattoes • Rather than the clear racial divisions of North America (white, red, and black), Brazil had numerous categories of mixed races with differing levels of social status Plantation Life in the Caribbean: This painting from 1823 shows the use of slave labor on a plantation in Antigua, a British-ruled island in the Caribbean. Notice the overseer with a whip supervising the tilling and planting of the field. Comparing Colonial Societies in the Americas Settler Colonies in North America • British get the leftovers: As Spain and Portugal were wealthier and seized more colonies first, the British were left with the “dregs” of the Americas • New England seemed under-productive and lacked wealthy mines • British society in transition: British society was changing at the time with intense disputes between kings and nobles, civil war, and a rising merchant class • Catholic–Protestant conflicts encouraged large numbers of dissenting religious groups to leave for the freedom of the colonies • British colonists sought to escape rather than recreate European traditions in the Americas • Class equality with gender inequality: In the New England colonies, they established familyrun small farms, unlike the hereditary land estates of Old England or the large haciendas and plantations to the south • British North America was dominated by smallscale independent farmers working their land • While the intense social stratification of Europe was not imported to New England, the conservative Protestant communities were extremely patriarchal and restricted women’s rights Comparing Colonial Societies in the Americas Settler Colonies in North America • Pure settler societies with little racial mixing: These were colonies of settlement with few surviving indigenous people and few African slaves • As British women came in large numbers, the white population was self-replicating and there was little mixing of the races • British North America experienced the least racial mixing and was the least willing to recognize the offspring of interracial unions • Protestantism and weak royal control: Unlike the Catholic colonies to the south, the Protestants had much less interest in converting the native people, but they did encourage literacy amongst the white population • Protestants tended to encourage literacy so people could read the Bible • Also in contrast to the Spanish colonies, there was no strong royal bureaucracy • Rather, there were trading companies, wealthy sponsors, and self-governing communities The Steppes and Siberia: The Making of a Russian Empire Experiencing the Russian Empire • Russia expanded beginning in the sixteenth century to secure its borders from attack • Conquest and yasak: After the Russian state used its military to conquer an area, the local population would be forced to pay yasak or tribute • In Siberia, this would be in the form of “soft gold” or furs, the region’s main export at the time • Settlers put pressure on pastoralists: As Russian settlers moved in, they spread their language and religion and also disrupted the pastoralists’ way of life • Soon the local population became dependent on the Russian merchants for alcohol, sugar, grain, and other imports • Epidemic diseases impacted the previously isolated local population as happened in the Americas The Russian Empire: From its beginnings as a small principality under Mongol control, Moscow became the center of a vast Russian Empire during the early modern era. A Cossack Jail: In the vanguard of Russian expansion across Siberia were the Cossacks, bands of fiercely independent warriors consisting of peasants who had escaped serdom as well as criminals and other adventurers. This seventeenth-century jail was part of an early Cossack settlement on the Kamchatka Peninsula at the easternmost end of Siberia. It illustrated Russian wooden architecture.. The Steppes and Siberia: The Making of a Russian Empire Russians and Empire • Russia becomes multiethnic: By conquering a variety of peoples in the west, south, and east, Russia had numerous different ethnicities and religions to its holdings • Wealth of empire: The empire brought in great wealth from furs to agricultural produce to trade with the Far East • Peter the Great (r. 1689–1725) and the West: In the West, Russia competed with other states and empires and annexed lands as far west as Poland and in the south parts of the Ottoman Empire • Despite numerous victories, the contact with the West showed some of Russia’s backwardness • Tsar Peter the Great decided that he had to reform Russia and pull it into the future by a process of Westernization, including shaving beards and building ships in the Baltic • Contact with China and Islam: While a European empire, Russia was also an Asian empire that had contact with China and an increasing Muslim population • What kind of empire?: Russia built a massive collection of territories by annexing its neighbors by force • Russia was quite authoritative and their expansion occurred at the same time that their distinctive state was taking shape Asian Empires Making China an Empire • Qing expansion in the West (1680-1760): The Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) was a foreign Manchu regime headed by conquerors form the north • While the were resented by many ethnic Chinese, they did try to use Confucianism to justify their rule • For security purposes, they engaged in an eightdecade campaign in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia • Colonial?: Was this colonial expansion? In many was it was comparable to European overseas colonial rule as an ethnically distinct group conquered another group at a great distance • However, the empire was built for security purposes and not economic goals or settlement • Indeed, few ethnic Chinese ventured into the “Wild West” and these regions (central Asia) maintained their traditional culture and lifestyle • Economic downturn in Central Asia: As the Qing expanded west and Russia expanded east, Central Asia, once home to the nomadic pastoralists and the cosmopolitan merchant cities of the Silk Roads, soon found itself to be a neglected backwater on the periphery of two great landed empires • Nomadic people no longer enjoyed political independence and economic prosperity • The rise in maritime trade only made matters worse China’s Qing Dynasty Empire. Chinese Conquests in Central Asia: Painted in 1759 by an Italian Jesuit missionary and artist at the Chinese court, Giuseppe Castiglione, this image portrays Machang, a warrior involved in the westward extension of the Chinese empire. The painting was commissioned by the emperor to honor Machang’s bravery in battle. Asian Empires Muslims and Hindus in the Mughal Empire • 20 percent Muslim: The ruling dynasty and about 20 percent of the population were Muslim and most of the population followed a form of Hinduism • Akbar (r. 1556–1605): The emperor recognized the diversity of his realm and made many accommodations for Hindus • While he did disapprove of sati and other religious restrictions on women, his rule was a time of great tolerance • He removed the jizya tax on non-Muslims and sponsored a House of Worship where issues of faith could be debated amongst scholars of all religions • He sponsored a culture that fused a variety of traditions • Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624): This Muslim reformer attacked Sufism and the intrusion of Hindu practices and holidays into the Muslim community • He argued for a purified Islam • Aurangzeb (1658–1707): As emperor, he overturned many of Akbar’s tolerant policies, reimposed the jizya, destroyed temples, banned dancing girls, and stopped music at court • His reign marked a downturn in Hindu–Muslim relations and provoked bitter reactions from many Hindus The Mughal Empire. Asian Empires Muslims and Christians in the Ottoman Empire • “The Sword of Islam”: The Ottoman Sultan became the most powerful leader in the Islamic world and combined absolute political, military, and religious authority • Decrease in women’s autonomy yet many rights: While many Turkic women lost their pastoral freedoms as the Ottomans converted to Islam and became urbanized, Ottoman law gave them many rights and protections • Within the sultan’s court, elite women had great influence on their men • New importance of Turkic people in the Islamic World: The rise of the Ottoman Empire as the most powerful Islamic state and its control of the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem made Turks prominent people in the Islamic world Asian Empires Muslims and Christians in the Ottoman Empire • Balkan, Armenian, and Orthodox Christians: While the conquest of Anatolia and Constantinople had eliminated the majority of the Christian population, there were many surviving communities in the Balkans (where few Turks settled) that negotiated arrangements with the Turks • The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople signaled that the Islamic world held the upper hand against the Christians • Many Jews also found a place within the tolerant empire • Devshirme: This was a special tax on Balkan Christians whereby they had to turn over young boys to be raised and educated as elite Ottoman administrators • Fear and admiration in the Christian West: While the Ottomans were tolerant of Christians within their realm, they launched a series of wars on Christian Europe • While Europe feared the Great Turk, they also admired the power and culture of the empire The Ottoman Empire: At its high point in the mid-sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire encompassed a vast diversity of peoples; straddled Europe, Africa, and Asia; and battled both the Austrian and Safavid empires. The Ottoman Siege of Vienna, 1683: In this late-seventeenth-century painting by artist Frans Geffels, the last Ottoman incursion into the Austrian Empire was pushed back with French and Polish help, marking the end of a serious Muslim threat to Christian Europe. Reflections: The Centrality of Context in World History • Contextual thinking: World history considers many different topics that require us to put diverse areas of the world into a proper context. • Not all empires are equal: Contextual thinking allows us to compare the European empires in the Americas with the Ottomans and the Asian empires in terms of violence and impact upon the conquered peoples.