Download Transoceanic Encounters and Global Connections

Transoceanic Encounters and Global
Connections
The Columbian Exchange
Why Not China?
• In 1405 the Chinese Admiral
Zheng He led the first of seven
voyages to the Indian Ocean
and the east coast of Africa
• Largest ships in the world (400
feet) carrying 28,000 sailors
and soldiers
• Collect tribute from and trade
with all societies encountered
on the voyages.
• After last expedition in 1431,
the Ming Emperor forbids any
further voyages and scraps the
entire fleet. Why?????
Motives for European Exploration
Why have the motivations for European exploration and
colonization been summarized as “Gold, God and Glory”?
• Gold: (economic motive).Desire for material wealth;
precious metals, raw materials (timber) spices, slaves, and
land to grow valuable crops (sugar, coffee, tobacco).
• God: Christian crusading and missionary tradition. Spain
and Portugal recently completed the “reconquista”. Fall of
Grenada in 1492. Anti-Muslim. Search for “Prestor John”
• Glory: Competition for power between European nations
Another factor was the desire to understand the world a
product of the European Renaissance and Scientific
Revolution.
What Spurred European Exploration?
• Riches to be had in Asia!
• After the collapse of the
Mongol Empire, the trade
routes to Asia were blocked or
hampered by Ottoman Turks
and monopolized by Venice.
– Collusion between Venice and
Ottomans
• Ottomans brought goods to
Mediterranean.
• Venice brought it to the rest of
Europe.
• Middle men jacked up the prices.
Istanbul
The Lure of Spices
Europeans went looking for another way to get to
Indian Ocean to avoid dealing with middlemen
– Spices were in great demand to “spice up”
the boring and bland European diet
– Indian pepper, Chinese
Ginger and cloves and
Nutmeg and Mace from the
Spice Islands (the Maluku
Islands or Moluccas in what is
now Indonesia.)
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Country Involved: Portugal
• Prince Henry “the
Navigator” got things
started.
– NOT a sailor, but the son of
King John I of Portugal.
– But he set up a school for
navigators in Sagres,
Portugal—the first in Europe.
– Also sponsored voyages into
the Atlantic and down the
west coast of Africa.
Portuguese Explorations
•
Portuguese explorers discovered
– Azores (1427) uninhabited; settled
in 1439)
– Madeira Island
– Cape Verde Islands
• Italian investors help Portuguese
establish sugar plantations using
African slave labor
• At trading posts in West Africa,
European horses are traded for gold
and slaves.
• Other nations soon joined in the
African slave trade.
• Between 1500 and 1800, African
slaves were the largest source of the
population of the New World.
Portuguese Naval Innovations
– Mapmaking (cartography)
• Before, maps described
coastlines not shipping routes.
• Now they showed charts of
the open sea.
– Use of magnetic compass for
determining direction.
– Use of astrolabe (Arab invention)
and cross staff for figuring out
latitude at sea by measuring the
angle of the sun or pole star above
the horizon.
– Fast ships—caravel—for sailing
across or against wind, using a
combination of triangular lateen
sails and square sails.
Portuguese Explorers
•
•
•
1488 Bartholomeu Dias
discovered southern tip of Africa (Cape of
Good Hope)
– Proved you could get to East Asia by
sailing around tip of Africa.
1497 Vasco Da Gama rounds Cape of Good
hope and sails to India, making it possible to
trade directly with Indian merchants
– In Calcutta he purchased pepper and
cinnamon.
– He couldn’t get Indian merchants to trade
with him for Portuguese goods, which
were regarded as worthless.
– They would only accept gold or silver.
• 1519 -1522 Ferdinand Magellan,
circumnavigation of the world. Magellan
killed in the Philippine Islands. The
survivors complete the journey.
The Portuguese Trading Post Empire
The Portuguese build forts to protect their trading posts in the Indian
ocean
• Mozambique in East Africa
• Harmuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf
• Goa on the west coast of India
• Malacca in Malaya in Southeast Asia
They also received permission from the Chinese Emperor in 1557 to
establish a trading post at Macao, a port on the Pacific ocean in
southern China.
But Portugal was a small nation with a small population, and it could not
maintain its dominance of trade against larger nations such as Spain
and France.
nd
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Country Involved: Spain
• Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of
Aragon united two major kingdoms of
Spain.
– In 1492 they completed the Reconquista
with the capture of Grenada, ending Muslim
presence in Spain since the 7th century.
– After political unity, Isabella tried to achieve
religious unity.
• Even before Inquisition (started by Philip II
later on) she forced conversions on Muslims
and Jews (Moriscos and Maranos)
• Some killed; many went into exile (150,000)
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
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Columbus, a navigator from Genoa in Italy
believed that, by sailing west across the
Atlantic for 2,500 miles, he could reach
Japan.
The distance was actually 13,000 miles and
included the width of the North and South
American continents.
Columbus, sponsored by Fernando and
Isabella 0f Spain, led four expeditions from
1492-1502.
First meets the Taino (Arawak) in the
Bahamas in October, 1492; also visits Cuba
and Hispaniola.
From his contact on, an exchange between
the Old and New Worlds of plants, animals,
pathogens, and culture: “the Columbian
Exchange”
The Columbian Exchange
Impact of Diseases
• By 1650, Native American
population in Latin
America was 1/10th of
what it was in 1500.
– That is, if there were 30
million people in Latin
America (Meso- and South
America together), then
fifty years later there were
just 3 million.
Benefits to Europe
• Gold and silver from America brought
tremendous wealth to Europe (Spain, in
particular)
– Spain’s wealth got pumped into
fighting Reformation forces, among
other things. (Philip II)
• Trade expanded in Europe; cities grew
wealthy. Increasingly powerful
“bourgeoisie”; an expanding capitalist
economy
• Diet improved among Europeans and
Africans, thanks to introduction of corn,
beans, and potatoes, stimulating
population growth.
• Poor Europeans sought immigration to
New World to improve their lives.
El Escorial
The Spanish Trading Post Empire
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In 1565, Spanish forces arrived in
the Philippines.
The Philippines had no central
government and the Spanish were
able to control the coastal regions
of the main islands by 1575.
Spanish rulers pressured the
Filipinos to convert to Roman
Catholicism.
The city of Manila became the hub
of Spanish trade in Asia.
The Manila Galleons carried
goods from the Philippines to
Mexico.
Competition between Spain and Portugal
• Spain and Portugal were major competitors
in expedition and conquest.
– To settle differences, they asked Pope
Alexander VI (Spanish by birth) to settle claims.
– Alexander VI drew a “line of demarcation”
down the middle of the Atlantic from North
pole to South pole.
• Spain was to get the west; Portugal the east.
– Line was renegotiated in 1494 in Treaty of
Tordesillas.
• In Latin America, it roughly corresponds to the
border dividing Brazil and the rest of Spanishspeaking South America.
Explorers: England
• In search of the Northwest Passage:
explorers imagined way to get to Asia
by sailing north.
• 1497-98 under Henry VII, John
Cabot—an Italian—explored parts of
Canada.
– Claimed Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
• Not much happening for about 70
years, then Martin Frobisher explored
Labrador.
• First attempt at settlement in Roanoke,
VA in 1588; first permanent in
Jamestown, VA in 1607.
Exploration of the Pacific
Captain James Cook leads three expeditions to the Pacific.
Adds Australia, New Zealand
and Pacific Islands to European Maps. Killed in Hawai’i in 1779
Explorers: the Netherlands
• 1609 Henry Hudson—
Englishman—explored North
America for the Netherlands.
– Again, looking for Northwest
Passage.
• First, he went through Arctic
Ocean.
• Next, he explored eastern part of
US: sailed up the river (later
named for him) and claimed it
for Netherlands.
The Trading Companies
• To engage in overseas exploration, colonization and trade, English and
Dutch merchants created joint stock companies, the predecessors of the
modern corporations.
• These were private companies, concerned only with profit.
• Queen Elizabeth I chartered the East India Company in 1600. It later
took control of most of the Indian subcontinent.
• The Dutch United East India Company (VOC) was chartered in 1602
and established control of what later became the Dutch colony of
Indonesia.
• New Netherlands, with its center in New Amsterdam (New York) was
also a colony established by the VOC.
Explorers: France
• Looking for gold and markets for
French goods.
• 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano explored
coast from Maine to North Carolina.
Sailed into New York harbor.
• 1530s Jacques Cartier explored St.
Lawrence River and eastern Canada.
• 60 years goes by then Samuel de
Champlain explored St. Lawrence
region in 1603
– First permanent French settlement in North
America in 1608 in Quebec.
Colonial Empires
• After exploration, the 5 European nations
set up colonies:
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Spain
Portugal
France
Great Britain (England)
Netherlands
Spanish Colonial Empire
• Mid-16th century New
Spain included:
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–
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Mexico
Central America
Most of South America
Western part of North
America
– Florida
– Several Caribbean islands
– In the Pacific: the
Philippine Islands
Portuguese Empire
• Portugal:
– Brazil
– Trading posts on coasts of
• Africa
• India
• China (Macao)
French Empire
• New France:
– Eastern Canada
– Mississippi Valley
– Trading colonies in
Caribbean and
India.
• New Netherland
Netherlands
– Hudson River Valley
– Caribbean islands (St.
Martin, Curacao)
– Parts of South America
– South Africa
– Present-day Indonesia
(Java)
– Sri Lanka
Great Britain
• After several wars with
Netherlands, Spain and
France, Great Britain won:
– Canada
– India
– New Netherland (renamed
New York)
– Several Caribbean islands
(Jamaica, Bahamas,
Barbados, and more…)
• By mid 18th century, Great
Britain had:
– 13 colonies on Atlantic
coast of North America.