Download Lecture 18—Conquest and Exploitation: The

Lecture 18—Conquest and Exploitation: The
Development of the Translatlantic Economy
Transformation of Four Continents: The European voyages of discovery that began in
the 15th century brought about massive changes in Europe, Africa, and the two American
continents, linking them into a single economy and reshaping societies in all four
continents through massive migration and unfortunately often massive death. New foods
and goods were introduced to all four continents and a triangle trade developed in which
African slaves were sent to the New World, New World cash crops were sent to Europe
and European manufactured goods were sent to Africa. This made some people very rich
and brought immeasurable misery to others.
Periods of European Expansion:
1. 1492-1689: The Colonization of the New World by Spain, Portugal, France,
the Netherlands, and England. Limited colonization in Asia.
2. 1689-1830: The Struggle for Trade between England, France, and Spain.
Spain and England lose many of their colonies, though England retains
Canada and India and Spain retains Cuba and Puerto Rico. France pretty
much loses everything.
3. 1870s-1940s: Europeans colonize Africa and Asia very heavily.
4. 1950s-Today: Africa and Asia regain their independence from European rule.
European Power: Over these centuries, Europeans ruled the world despite being
outnumbered. Other nations were treated as inferiors and forced to serve European
interests. Technological superiority of production and military weaponry enabled
Europeans to outfight and subdue anyone until their own rulership over areas leaked their
secrets to the rest of the world.
Trading Empires: The sixteenth to eighteenth century empires were heavily based on
Mercantilist theory as a justification for their creation.
Mercantilism: This was the predominant economic theory of the 18th century
which proposed a series of measures designed to increase a nation's wealth, which
was measured by how much gold and silver it had.
1. Zero-Sum Game: Ultimately, trade is a zero-sum game in which for one
country to profit, other countries must get poorer. The goal, then, is to ensure
you're the one profiting by selling more than you buy. You want to make sure
you can export more than you import, so that you turn a profit in gold and
silver.
2. Colonies: A nation should acquire colonies in foreign lands in order to obtain
goods which cannot be produced at home, such as tobacco, spices, cotton,
sugar, rice, etc., for Europeans.
3. Restriction of Trade: Colonies are only allowed to produce raw materials to
be sold to the mother country and only allowed to buy the mother country's
goods.
4. Home Industry: The mother country then takes these goods and processes
them into salable form. Some finished goods are sold back to the colonies
(see point 2.)
5. International Trade: The remaining finished goods are sold to other
European countries in return for gold and silver. Profit!
The Realities of Mercantilism: Most countries could not meet all the needs of
their colonies and smuggling was rife. (One British Prime minister used the
English Coast Guard to smuggle French wine into England! And the Founding
Fathers of America were about 50% made up of very wealthy smugglers like John
Hancock, the first man to sign the Declaration of Independence!) This also
promoted piracy to steal each other's gold and silver, which the Spanish were
especial victims of. Sometimes these incidents turned into actual wars. The War
of Jenkin's Ear was fought from 1739-1748 after a Spanish privateer cut off
British captain Robert Jenkin's ear due to his raids on Spanish shipping, for
example.
Spanish Empire in the Americas
The Conquistadores: Petty nobles and children of large familes who sought to
gain noble status by carving out lands for Spain in the Americas.
The Fall of Mexico: Hernan Cortez was appointed to open trade with the
Aztecs. Instead, he mounted a conquest of Mexico (1519 to 1521), allying
himself with tribes hostile to the Aztecs and eventually defeating them
through his superior military technology and the outbreak of a plague.
This was an incredible victory.
The Fall of the Incas: After a failed try, Francisco Pizarro reached the
Inca empire in the aftermath of a civil war, captured its ruler by a surprise
attack, killed him, and brought down the empire, though it took years to
suppress all resistance. The consolidation of Incan authority made it easy
for the empire to collapse with its leader gone. (Especially as the Spanish
set up a puppet Emperor to help in their conquest)
The Limits of Spanish Expansion: Spanish conquest could only be
easily sustained in places like Mexico and Peru where you could wipe out
the warriors at the top and get the Indian peasantry to then serve you. It
also required mineral wealth to sustain long-term rule. Many
conquistadors got lost and died of disease and battle.
The Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America
Spread the Faith: Missionaries accompanied and followed the
Conquistadores, spreading Catholicism by persuasion and sometimes the
sword. The mission of conversion was used to justify military conquest.
Old temples were torn down, old texts burned, and the Indians forced to
adopt Catholic practices they usually didn't understand.
Royal Control: The Kings of Spain had more power over the colonial
church than the Church back home, which was saying something.
Mendicant Friars: The travelling orders of monastic missionaries were
horrified by the harshness of Spanish rule and became strong critics of it.
Bartolome de las Casas (1474-1566) was the most famous of these. His
book A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552) vividly
described the sufferings of the Indians and would become a major
component of the "Black Legend", a historiographical tradition which
depicted all Spanish dealings with the Indians in the most hideous of
terms. He was successful in pushing the monarchy to increase some
protections for the Indians, though ironically, he proposed the importation
of Africans to take over some of the work, thus leading to suffering for yet
another group.
Conservatism: In the end, the Colonial Catholic Church became a pillar
of conservatism, supporting Spanish rule and forcing religious uniformity
on all.
The Exploitation of the Spanish Empire
Gold and Silver: By the mid-sixteenth century, silver mining was at the
heart of the Spanish colonial economy. Spanish colonists were too few to
meet labor needs, so first Indians, then Africans were forced to work the
extractive industries of the colonies.
Encomienda: In the early years, Spanish conquistadores in the colonies
were given encomienda grants, enabling them to command the labor of
nearby Indian villages. The Spanish monarchy disliked the system and
eventually suppressed it, however.
Repartimiento: It was replaced by the Repartimiento system in which
Indians owed a fixed number of days of labor per year to be spent on
Spanish economic enterprises and public works. It was copied from Incan
draft practices. It was sometimes very harsh, as employers knew the
current workers would only be around a short time, so why spare them?
The Hacienda: This was a plantation system based on land grants to
Peninsulares (Whites born in Europe) and Creoles (Whites born in the
colonies). Laborers on the hacienda owned labor services to the owner.
They were also usually required to buy goods for every day life from the
owner, trapping them in a state of debt peonage where they couldn't earn
enough to pay off the money they owed him.
Population Decline: This hard labor contributed to a massive collapse of
the colonial population in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. By
1630, for example, Mexico had lost 95% of the population it had in 1520.
This was a contributing factor to the introduction of African slaves.
Commercial Regulation and the Flota System(sixteenth to eighteenth
century AD): Spain ruled the colonies through a royally appointed
council (The Council of the Indies) and through the Viceroys of New
Spain (Mexico) and Peru. Power and appointments flowed from the top
down. Spain set up a rigid trade monopoly which didn't work well since
Spain could not actually meet the colonial need for manufactured goods.
The House of Trade in Seville regulated all trade and all trade flowed in
theory through the port of Cadiz. In practice, smuggling and piracy were
rife and unstoppable. Trade was conducted in the flota system: A yearly
convoy of ships hauling goods to America and gold and silver back from
America. It stopped at fixed ports to sell goods and get precious metals.
Colonial Brazil:
Founded: The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillias gave the eastern region of
modern Brazil to Portugal (along with Africa and Asia...). Portugal had
only small resources to spend on it and created a system of 'captaincies'
which essentially made private individuals the lords of chunks of the new
colony. The natives were mostly nomads, so they imported African slaves
as they had in the Azores in the 1430s.
Slavery: Sugar production was the heart of Brazillian slavery. Gold
mining would emerge as important in the 18th century, allowing the
Portuguese kings to rule without a legislature.
Trade: Portugal's control over trade with Brazil was lighter than that of
Spain with its colonies. Government control was also lighter; plantations
essentially governed themselves and didn't need the kind of central control
Spanish mining did.
French: Convert, Trade, and Intermarry
Trading Colonies
1. French colonies in NA designed as trading posts
2. Fur trading was the primary activity
3. Settlement was limited
4. European goods used to entice Indians into permanent trading
networks
5. This could lead to inter-Indian strife for good fur grounds—Beaver
Wars between Hurons (French) and Iroquois (Dutch—organized into
the Great League of Peace and Power). Hurons lost.
Conversion
1. Jesuits and others had to persuade; they couldn’t force
2. Tendency towards syncretism
Intermarriage
1. Many fur traders lived among the indian tribes; a fair amount of
intermarriage ensued. This helped to build French ties to Indian nations.
Frontier Conditions
France's colonies in the Americas never really went beyond the frontier
stage and the culture of New France was not very sophisticated by
comparison to the 18th century English colonies.
English: Convert, Displace, or Kill
Goals
1. Settlement for family agriculture
2. Trade with the Indians
3. Search for wealth in south turned into production of cash crops using
slave labor
4. English goals generally required exclusive control of the land
Conversion
1. English did not try very hard to convert the Indians—they lacked
monastic orders and the Anglican church was generally short on
ministers to spare.
2. You did get some attempt made in New England with the Praying
Villages.
Trade
1. The English did trade for furs with the Indieans
2. The New England and Virginia colonies were very dependent on
Indian assistance early on
3. But eventually became less important than in French colonies.
The Problem of Land
1. English had a hunger for land in all colonies.
2. Everything from legitimate purchase to fraud to violence were
conducted.
3. Unfortunately, both sides had different understandings of land law—
the Indians sold use rights, but the settlers thought they were buying
full sovereignty.
4. The end result was eventually war.
War
1. New England
a. The gradual pressure of settlers on Indian land led to King Philip
(Metacom)’s War (1675-1676). 1000 settlers, 3000 Indians died;
the Indians had waited too long, however, to strike.
2. Virginia
a. There was an ongoing conflict between the interior fronteirsmen
and the planter-dominated legislature of the seaboard; the former
wanted to crush the indians, the latter wanted peaceful relations.
b. The unfortunate Susquehannocks were attacked by settlers; they
fought back sending settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon on a killing
spree. He then fought the Colonial government; the rebellion
finally had to be put down by English troops.
The Caribbean: The British and the French built similar colonies in the Caribbean
based on the use of slaves to produce cash crops—sugar, cotton, tobacco, indigo, rice,
etc.
Slavery in the Americas
Establishment: The Portuguese began the enslavement of Africans in the Azores
to produce tropical produce in the 1430s, setting the model for later slave systems.
The French and the Dutch and the Spanish copied the Portuguese model of the
plantation early on; the English only came to it after experiments with small
family farming and indentured labor didn't work out.
Sugar: In the Caribbean, the key to the spread of slavery was the cultivation of
Sugar.
The Transatlantic Trade: Slave plantations were linked into the triangle trade.
Europe exported manufactured goods to Africa, African slaves were bought with
the goods and sold for money in the Caribbean, then sugar and cotton and other
cash crops were purchased and sold in Europe for a profit. Britain's north
american colonies sold food to the Caribbean and heavily smuggled its produce.
Gang system: The gang system divided slaves into gangs, work groups, typically
sorted by skill, experience, health, and age. Each gang was assigned different
kinds of tasks (at different times of the year)—children watched over the
livestock, the elderly might engage in weeding and cleaning up after the other
gangs, the healthiest men and women would work in the fields to clear the fields,
plant the seed and harvest it later, and so on. They were overseen by overseers
and drivers; in some cases, one slave would be chosen to oversee the others,
sometimes it was whites.
Conditions: Slavery was harsh with slave codes that heavily restricted the
freedom of the slaves. Their masters usually could kill or maim or rape them at
will. And there was little incentive to relent on work levels; it was cheaper to buy
a young slave than to feed an old one who couldn't work. Half the slaves died
within the first ten years. (And half to a third had died on the way to the
Colonies...)
Prejudice: The practice of slavery increased pre-existing prejudices against the
less technologically advanced African kingdoms, leading to modern racism.
Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
African Artisanry: Africa had many expert metalworkers capable of producing
exquisitely beautiful art and access to lots of iron, gold, and silver. However,
Africans would not progress, as Europeans would, to the mechanization of artisan
work (IE, the Industrial Revolution.)
African Trade: Africans exported slaves, gold, silver, ivory, and art, while
importing cloth, metal tools, alcohol, and guns.
African Slavery: Slavery was common in Africa; much of the work of farming
and artisanry was done by slaves taken in war or condemned for crimes; slaves
had some hope of eventual freedom, and it was like classical-era European
slavery: Not on any basis or race or ethnicity.
The Effects of the Slave Trade: As the African elite developed a taste for
European goods, they began attacking each other to get more slaves and raiding
tribes of the interior. Coastal nations grew and flourished, using European
military technology to subdue their neighbors to sell said neighbors to the
Europeans to get more European goods, which would facilitate further conquest.
States such as Dahomey and the Ashante flourished off the slave trade. Large
areas of Africa were devastated to get slaves. This process became dominant after
1650 as the desire of Europeans for African slaves mounted in scale. Between
1640 and 1690, the number of slaves sold to Europeans doubled.
African Middlemen: Africans had to dominate the African side of the trade
because disease tended to wipe out Europeans who stayed too long in Africa.
Size: Between 1700 and 1810, about 60% of the total number of slaves ever
taken by Europeans were removed from Africa. Over 20% were taken from 1811
to 1870. The total export numbers remain debated. 11 million slaves reached the
Americas, but it's not clear how many died on the way to the Americas (perhaps
1/3rd to ½.) An additional 15 million appear to have been enslaved but not sold to
Europeans.
Consequences: It is unclear whether improvements in African agriculture due to
introduction of corn and cassava offset this population drain. However, current
estimates show African population growth was seriously stunted by slavery,
causing it to fall behind the industrializing regions. The loss of so many young
men promoted a culture of polygamy.