Download Chapter 14

Europe and the World:
New Encounters
1500-1800
By Kylie Marsh
“God, Glory, and Gold”
On the Brink of a New World
Motives:
Fantasy literature about “other worlds” influenced people to
explore
- “The Travels of John Mandeville”
spoke
greatly of far off places he had
never seen

By reading this fiction piece, Marco Polo got interested in
gaining precious spices for money
 People from merchants to adventurers to government
officials
hoped to find precious metals and set up trade
 Others sought to explore for the purpose of gaining as much
religious faith as possible
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• European countries could not have explored without the help of the
following:
• Portolani (charts made be medieval
navigators)
• Coastal contours
• Distances between ports
• Compass readings
• The flat scale
• Ptolemy’s “Geography”
• Spherical
• Showed 3 major land masses (Europe, Asia, Africa)
• Advances in ships such as the axial rudder and combined lateen sails and
the square rig (these advances helped to sail against wind, engage in
warfare, and carry goods longer distances)
• The compass and astrolabe
• Knowledge of wind patterns in the Atlantic Ocean
New Horizons: The Portuguese and
Spanish Empires
Portugal took the lead of expansion
Their motives were to:
 Seek Christians
 Ally against Muslims
 And to get trade
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Prince Henry sent navigators on ships to search for gold
They returned with black Africans from the Senegal River
and sold them as slaves
1,000 slaves were sold per year
Prince Henry and his crew found the “Gold Coast”
• The Portuguese searched for a route to India
• Vasco de Gama sailed to Calicut searching for “Christians and
Spices”
• De Gama returned with spices such as ginger and cinnamon
• This cargo earned several thousand percent
• Portugal annually sailed to Calicut to destroy Arabic shipping and to
established a monopoly in the spice trade
• In 1509 the Portuguese Armada destroyed a combined fleet of
Turkish and Indian ships off the coast of India
• Portugal blocked off the entrance to the Red Sea (to cut off spices to
Egypt and The Ottoman Empire)
Portuguese in India
Continued
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Admiral Afonso de Albuquerque set up port facilities at
Goa
on the west coast of India
Goa became the headquarters for Portugal’s trade
Portugal continued to raid Arab ships in search of spices
Albuquerque sailed to Malacca to
 Help destroy Arab spice trade
 Provide Portugal with a way station to spice islands
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With a short, bloody battle Portugal won the city and
killed
most of the Arab population
Portugal went to China for the Spice Islands and signed a
treaty for purchase and export of cloves to the
European market
The Portuguese were successful because of their supply of
guns and seamen ships
Columbus believed that Asia could be reached by sailing west so he
persuaded the Spanish Queen to fund his mission
• Columbus took 3 ships (Santa Maria, Nina, and Pintina) and 90 men
to the Bahamas then through to Cuba
• He thought he reached Asia
• He took a total of 4 voyages
New Voyages
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South America was accidentally found be the Portuguese
(Pedro Cabral)
Americas Vespucci wrote letters describing the Americas
so they were named after him
Vasco Nunez de Balboa went through the Isthmus of
Panama to get to the Pacific Ocean
Ferdinand Magellan was the 1st to circumnavigate the
world
• These civilizations helped develop the Spanish
Civilization to be what it is today
• The Spanish conquered these civilizations with the help
of smallpox
• Smallpox was a disease that killed many townspeople
weakening them for attack of the Spanish
• The Spanish wiped out the Mayans and Aztecs in less
than 20 years
• They wiped out the Incas in 5 years
Administration of The
Spanish Empire
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Queen Isabella of Spain issued an encomienda (a system
permitting Spaniards to collect tributes from Indians
and use them as laborers)
The Spaniards were supposed to keep good care of their
laborers but they did not manage to do so and many
Indians died of disease
Bartolome de Las Casas got rid of the encomienda
The viceroy was the administrative head of the provinces
of New Spain and Peru in the Americas
Spanish was divided into New Spain and Peru
Viceroys were the king’s chief civil and military officers
 Was aided by groups called audiencias (supreme judicial
bodies)
• Catholic monarchs of Spain were given the right
to appoint bishops and clergy, build
churches, collect fees, and supervise religious
orders that sought to Christianize the
reckless people
• Catholic missionaries (Dominicans, Franciscans,
and Jesuits) converted and baptized
hundreds of thousands of Indians
• Brought along organizational and institutional
structures
New Rivals on the World
Stage

Portugal and Spain were the 1st to
explore (which happened in the 15th
century) then the Dutch, French,
and
British followed
• Portuguese built forts on the west and east coasts of
Africa and dominated the gold trade
• Dutch soon took over the West African coast trade and
Portugal trade in the Indian Ocean
Origins of Slave Trade
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1,000 slaves were taken to Portugal each yr.
Cane sugar increased the number of slaves sold because
they needed more laborers
Growth of Slave Trade was due to:
 10,000,000 slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries
 Triangle trade (between Europe, Africa and America)
○ Sold guns, gin, cloth in exchange for slaves
○ Tobacco, molasses, sugar, rum, coffee, and cotton were sold
from Europe
○ 2,000 slaves were sent to America each year

So many slaves because there was a high death rate
• The journey across the ocean of slaves from Africa to the
Americas was the middle passage
• 300-450 slaves were packed into one boat without bathrooms or
room to stand up
• The voyage usually took at least 100 days
• Mortality rates were at 10%
• The Africans who survived the trip were exposed to new diseases
and lots of them died
• Death rates were lower for slaves raised in the New World but
owners rarely encouraged their slaves to reproduce (buying a
new slave was less expensive than raising a baby until
adolescence)
Slaves and Their Effect
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At the beginning of the slave trade, most slaves were
prisoners of war
The white men who went in to Africa to collect slaves went to
the coast to gather slaves, but once demands increased
they had to travel inward
Protest of the Africans were usually ignored by the
Europeans
Often other Africans sacrificed their neighbors as slaves
The effects were devastating in all areas
Slave trade often led
families into poverty
 Depopulation of some areas
 Deprived African cities of the strongest and youngest men and women
 The political need to supply slaves led to increased warfare and violence

Portugal never dominated trade in southeast Asia
They lacked numbers and wealth to overcome local resistance
Empire was too large and the country too small to maintain it
The Spanish established themselves in a the region when Magellan
landed in the Philippines
• Spanish were about to gain control of the Philippines and become a
major Spanish base in trade
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• Silk went to Mexico in return for silver from the mines of Mexico
• The primary threat to the Portuguese was when the Dutch and the
English arrived (they were better financed than Portugal)
• The Dutch seized a Portuguese fort in the Moluccas
• The Dutch drove the English traders out of the spice market
• Portuguese established limited trade relations with Thailand, Burma,
Vietnam
• The founders of the Mughal empire were from a mountain range
and the leader was Babur
• His grandson created the greatest Indian empire since two thousand
years earlier
• The first to arrive in India were the Portuguese and they
dominated trade in the Indian Ocean
• The British and English arrived and increased steadily the trade
• The Dutch concentrated on the spice trade
• Sir Robert Clive was an aggressive British empire- builder who
eventually became the chief representative of the East India Co.
• He combined the British control in Bengal
• In the Battle of Paisley, the British beat an army 10 times bigger
• During the 7 years war, the British forced the French to withdraw
from India
Portuguese fleet dropped anchor off the coast of China
The Ming dynasty ruled from 1369-1644
A major epidemic wiped out the Ming dynasty
Manchus created the Qing dynasty after the fall of the
Ming dynasty
• Qing dynasty was very peaceful
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• European economy was affected by things such as the
price revolution, joint stock company, mercantilism
and banks.
• Some banks included The House of Fugger and the Bank
of Amsterdam.