Download Exploration and Exploitation in the Americas

Exploration & Conquest
in the “New World”
Or
Voyage Across, Young Man
Outline
• Periods of Exploration • Reasons for Exploration • The Columbian
– Commerce
Exchange
–
–
–
–
Mercantilism
Imperial Expansion
Religion
Adventure
European Global Exploration
Periods of European Expansion
Portuguese port city of Calicut, India
•
15th-17th centuries
•
18th –early 19th centuries
•
19th –early 20th centuries
– Spain & Portugal  Asia, S. America & Caribbean
– Britain, France & Netherlands North America & Asia
– Spain vs. France vs. Britain, esp. W. Hemisphere & Asia
– Race for colonies in Africa, Middle East & Oceania
Why Expansion?
• Commercial Wealth
– Trade w/o Muslim middle man
• Asia & Africa
• Imperial Expansion
– Portugal - need for resources
– Spain – control spice routes
• Religion
– 'infidel' muslims
– ‘save souls’
• Adventure
– Esp. sons of younger nobles
• Opportunity for fame & riches
Commerce
• Exploration
– new markets
– resources
– faster access markets in the Orient
• Trade rivalries between European
powers  need for naval power
– protect trade routes
– Coastal waters
• Mercantilism –
– Gov’t encouraged expansion trade
•  gov’t treasuries
•  merchant class   political
influence
Mercantilism
• Govt supplied resources and
protection to aid trade
– Supported piracy agst other
nations  ex. Drake
– Disrupt competition & avoid
war
• Royal charters to individuals for
regions, goods, etc.
–
–
–
–
Dutch East India Co. (VOC)
Hudson Bay Company
British East India Co.
Cadbury, Lipton
• Govt rec'd royalties (ie. Tax) on
goods produced and traded.
Map – The Columbian Exchange
The Columbian
Exchange
Gold, Silver
Cotton, Tobacco, Syphillis
Wheat, Sugar, Rice, Coffee
Old World
New World
Corn, Potatoes, Beans, Vanilla, Chocolate
Horses, Cows, Pigs
Smallpox, Measles, Influenza, Bubonic Plague, Typhus, Diphtheria, Scarlet Fever
Africa
Enslaved Africans
Imperial expansion
Euro. claims in W. Hemi - 1750
• Europe worn down by war
– Religious wars
– Regional wars
• Discovery of W. Hemisphere 
vast land, few people, lots of
resources
• Discovery of gold, silver, etc. 
frenzy for control of entire
region  war
– Spain vs. Portugal
– Britain vs. France
• Seven Years War
(1756-63)
Religion
• Reformation  Catholic
Church in search for new
souls to save.
• Missionaries accompany all
explorations
• Immediately begin to seek
converts among the native
people
– Often force conversion at sword
or gunpoint
• Establish missions in military
bases
Adventure
• Some motivated by
adventure, greed & search
for fame
• Often younger sons of
nobles
– Little/no inheritance
– Military, clergy, exploration
• Exploration  opportunity
for wealth, fame, honour
Fransisco Pisarro
Exploration & Colonization of
The Americas
Or
I found you, now you’re mine
The Spanish Caribbean
Indigenous = Taino
 Columbus builds fort @ Santo Domingo
 Taino conscripted to mine gold

No gold
 Encomiendas: land grants to Spanish
settlers

Crown needs to make $$$ on exploration
 Brutality & smallpox   population
Taino Indians, Dominican Rep., 1500 CE
Conquest of Mexico & Peru
 Hernan Cortés
 Aztec & Incawealthier, more
complex than Caribbean societies
 Conquers Aztecs 1519-1521
 Francisco Pizarro
 Conquers the Inca, 1532-1533
 1540 Spanish control Inca empire
 Both aided by internal strife &
epidemic disease amongst native pop.
Politics W/in the Iberian Empires
 1570 - Spanish colonial govt. formalized
 Governed by viceroys
 reviewed by audiencias
 Similar to missi dominici
 Held vast power w/in jurisdictions
 Treaty of Tordesillas grants Brazil to
Portugal
 Mediated by Pope to prevent war
 East of Line – Portuguese exploit
 West of Line – Spanish
 Brazil ÷ nobles, w/ governor to
oversee
Politics W/in the Iberian Empires
Colonial American society

European-style society in cities

indigenous culture persisted in
rural areas

More exploitation than settlement

Still, many Iberians settled btw.
1500-1800
 Opportunities in new land
 Free of social constraints
Colonization—Spanish Style
Colonization of North America
France & England
 Colonization on east coast, exploration
of west coast
 Sought fur, fish, trade routes early
17th century
 Suffered from isolation & food
shortages
 Jamestown & Roanoke colonies fail
 Colonial govt.
 Private investors, royal governors, &
institutions of self-government
Jamestown Colony 1607
Colonization of North America
Relations w/ indigenous people
 Settlers interrupt migrations of
indigenous peoples
 Seized lands justified w/ treaties
 Natives raided farms & villages
 Attacks reprisals by settlers
 1500 - 1800, native pop.  90%
Colonial Justice
Colonial Society: South America
Formation of multicultural societies
c. 1550 - 1750
 People of varied ancestry lived together
under European rule
 Social hierarchy Iberian colonies:
 Whites (peninsulares & creoles)
 Mixed (mestizos & zambos)
 Africans & natives = bottom
 mestizo emerge as new social class
 See themselves as superior to other
‘coloured’ peoples
 Want to be like creoles (criolles)
 Creole marginalise mestizo
 Brazil more mixed:
 mestizos, mulattoes, zambos
 Mixed African most prevalent
among Brazil’s coloured pop.
Colonial Society: North America
 French & English more focused on
settlement than Spanish
 Greater gender balance among settlers

More families & couples
 Allowed marriage w/in own groups

English frowned on interracial marriages
 Relations w/ French traders & native
women métis (Euro + native)
 Cultural borrowing: plants, crops,
deerskin clothes
Spanish Colonial Economy: Mining
 Silver & gold basis of Spanish wealth
 Two major sites of silver mining:
Zacatecas (Mexico) & Potosi (Peru)
 Global significance of silver
 20% of silver went to royal treasury
(the quinto)
 Funded military & bureaucracy
 Went to European, then to Asian
markets for luxury goods

Potosi Silver Mine
Manila Galleons
Spanish Colonial Economy: Agriculture
 Haciendas  basis of Spanish Am.
production
Produced foodstuffs for local use
Encomiendarepartimiento
Encomienda system seen as abusive
Repartimiento replaces conscript &
slave w/contract labour
free laborers by mid-17th century
 Native Resistance
Rebellion, indolence, retreat
Difficult to register complaints
Portuguese Colonial Economy
 Originally harvested Brazilwood


Hard, rot resistant, ideal for ship-building
Over-harvesting  need for new crop
 Sugar and slavery in Brazil
 Economy relies on sugar production
 Brazilian life revolved around the sugar
mill, or engenho
 Combined agricultural & industrial
enterprises sugar processing on site
 Sugar planters landed nobility
Brazilian Sugar Plantation
Portuguese Colonial Economy
 Growth of slavery in Brazil
 Natives were not cultivators resisted
farm labor
 Disease  indigenous pop.
 Imported African slaves for cane &
sugar production after 1530
 deaths  births  demand for
slaves
 1 ton of sugar = 1 human life
Slaves Harvesting Sugarcane
North Am. Colonial Economy

Fur traders
 Fur trade extremely profitable
 Natives trapped for & traded w/
Europeans
 Blankets, iron tools (knives, axes, pots),
cloth

Fur Traders
Impact of fur trade
 Environmental conflicts among native
tribes competing for resources
 Rapid decline of fur animals
North Am. Colonial Economy

European settlement encroaches on natives
Threatens hunting, fishing & tribal lands


Develpment of Plantation Cash crops
tobacco, rice, indigo, & cotton


Indentured labor in 17th & 18th centuries


Replaced by Slaves in late 17th century
New England merchants participate in slave
trade, distillation of rum from Caribbean sugar
Triangular or Atlantic Trade network


Tobacco Plantation
British Mfr goods – African slaves – American Cotton & Rum
Colonial Religion: Christianity
 Spanish missionaries
 Est. mission schools & churches
 Some record native languages
& traditions
 Attracted many proselytes
 French & English missionaries
 English not interested in
native conversion
 French moderate success
Indians @ Mission Ventura
Labour systems
Spanish America
Brazil
mita & encomienda systems dominate mine &
agricultural economies.
in native populations  shift to the
repartimiento system.
immigration from Europe
plantation society based on sugar mills
(engenhos).
Little reliance on slavery, except in Caribbean
mortality rate among native
1st to import African slaves
1888 - last to abolish slavery
Caribbean
North America
sugar plantation economy
Fur trade & subsistence farming.
Absence of native labour
Plantations worked by indentured
servants from Europe
African slave labour (contrast
17th
Late
c. African slaves.
Tobacco, Rice, Indigo
Late 18th c.  #slaves  cotton gin
19th c. immigration from Europe &
indentured labour from Asia (esp. West)
Slavery in Canada eliminated @start of
19th c.
1865 -- 13th Amend abolished slavery in
U.S.A
Hawai’i).
Hawai’ian islands
sugar plantation economy
Native resistance to labour
introduction of indentured labour from Asia
China, Philippines, Japan
The Pacific: Australia


1770 British captain James Cook
explored east Australia
1788, England est. 1st settlement
in Australia as a penal colony


Penal Colony: Australia
Replaced Georgia after U.S.
independence
Free settlers outnumbered convicted
criminal migrants after 1830s
The Pacific Islands
 Spanish voyages after Magellan
 Indigenous Chamorro resisted
decimated by smallpox
 Philippines become major entrepot
for silk from China in exchange for
silver from New Spain

Chamorro Church Village
Manila Galleons: Acapulco  Manila
 Impact:
 Huge transfers of silver to China
 Occasional skirmishes w/natives
 Whalers visit after 18th century
 Missionaries, merchants, planters
& disease follow