Causes of European Exploration

Causes of European Exploration

• Adoption of technology such as the magnetic compass from China and the astrolabe from Ancient Greece & Arab world helped in understanding of latitude.
• The lateen sail from the Arab World was essential for maritime travel. It was designed to cut through the wind
• Ship building innovations such as the Portuguese Caravel allowed better navigation inland through rivers and shallow coastal areas.
• European monarchs were centralizing power, shifting it away from traditional nobles.
• Nobles still wanted Asian goods like spices, but they were becoming expensive. With the balance of power in Europe, the decision was made to cut out the middle man.
• Mercantilism, an economic theory based on the idea of a finite amount of wealth in the world, motivated each country to seek the largest share of it, resulting in countries hoarding large amounts of silver and gold.
• Mercantilism demanded that states maintain a favorable balance of trade, taking in more gold and silver than they sent out by exporting more goods than they imported.
• Colonies were essential to mercantilism, creating closed markets for exports from the imperial parent country, enriching it.
• Joint-stock companies, limited liability businesses chartered by states and funded by private investors, allowed investors to only risk their voyage investment, encouraging them to explore. If a voyage was unsuccessful, investors would not lose their entire savings.
• States and merchants partnering led to incredible success.

Establishing Maritime Empires

• Prince Henry the Navigator brought together sailors, map makers, and shipbuilders in Portugal to discover ways to sail down the Atlantic Coast of Africa to access West African gold, eventually continuing past West Africa to the Indian Ocean.
• Portugal created a trading-post empire around the coast of Africa and throughout the Indian Ocean by using caravels and gunpowder weapons to set up trading posts called factories to control trade throughout the region.
• The Spanish crown sponsored Christopher Columbus to find a western route to Asia for the spice trade, resulting in Columbus finding the Americas, and voyages from Spain grew, eventually colonizing the lands.
• Spain demanded tribute and used coerced labor in both the Americas and the Philippines.
• The French searched for a North Atlantic sea route to Asia, but created a French presence in Canada leading to a lucrative fur trade, but did not colonize, focusing on trade, instead.
• As Spain weakened, the English started exploring the Americas.
• Sir Walter Raleigh established England's first colony on Roanoke Island, called Virginia, which was a disaster. However, Jamestown was established more successfully in 1607 in the Americas.
• The British established trade in India but were not strong enough to defeat the Mughals.
• After gaining independence from the Spanish colonies, the Dutch East India Company challenged Spanish and Portuguese control in the Indian Ocean and settled in the Americas with New Amsterdam.
• The Dutch had a monopoly over the Indian Ocean spice trade, eventually.

The Indian Ocean Network & the Columbian Exchange

• The Columbian Exchange was the transfer of new diseases, food, plants, and animals between the Eastern and Western hemispheres.

The Columbian Exchange

• Smallpox, measles, and malaria were transferred to the Americas through humans and disease vectors, like mosquitoes, resulting in 90% of Native Americans dying due to no immunity, also known as the Great Dying.
• From Europe, wheat, olives, and grapes were introduced to the Americas, as well as rice, bananas, and sugar from Africa and Asia. The diet of Native Americans diversified, and their lifespans slowly increased.
• Maize (corn) and potatoes were introduced to Afro-Eurasia, leading to healthier populations with longer lifespans. After 1700 there was a population explosion.
• Okra and rice were brought to the Americas by enslaved Africans.
• A demand for crops grown in the Americas often transferred there through the Columbian Exchange, which led to cash cropping, in which farmers focused on a specific crop to export.
• Crops like sugar were grown in the Caribbean by enslaved people for markets in the Middle East and Europe.
• Europeans introduced pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses to the Americas. These animals can be used for agricultural work and hunting to better feed indigenous populations.
• Tokugawa Japan began to resist it when large numbers of Japanese converted to Christianity, which was seen as a threat by the Shogun, who recently unified the country.
• Japan kicked out Christian missionaries, suppressed western religion, sometimes violently, and almost completely isolated itself from European powers, but continued trading with the Dutch.
• In France, the king had centralized power, removing it from the nobles and making himself an absolute monarch. The Fronde was a rebellion that started in 1648 against increased taxes, leading rural peasants to a six-year rebellion, ultimately crushed.
• Enslaved African who ran away formed maroon societies, small villages outside of the grasp of imperial authorities.
• In Jamaica, Queen Nanny led a rebellion against British colonial troops and won. Afterwards, the British and the Maroons signed a treaty recognizing their freedom.
• The Asante Empire traded items like ivory, gold, and enslaved people to Europeans, resulting in wealth gained, expanding its military, and consolidating political power in the region.
• To facilitate trade, leaders in the Kingdom of Kongo converted to Christianity, leading to the expansion of the Kongolese state's power and wealth.

Continuity in Networks of Exchange

• Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, and Southeast Asian merchants continued to trade in Indian Ocean trade networks. Europeans entering the market increased Asian profits, and for some, they got stronger.
• The Gujarati merchants increased the wealth of the Mughal Empire through trade with Europeans.
• The Silk Roads were controlled by Asian land-based powers like the Ming and Qing China, and the Ottoman Empire.
• Asian peasant and artisan laborers continued to increase production as demand for their goods grew, like cotton in South Asia and silk in China.
• The Atlantic System was the movement of goods, wealth, and laborers between the eastern and western hemispheres, leading to vast increases in wealth.
• Sugarcane was grown on plantations, and silver was mined by coerced labor in the Americas, enriching Spain and satisfying China's demand for silver.
• Trade in the Atlantic system was maintained through coerced labor such as forced indigenous labor, indentured servitude, and African slavery.
• Native Americans were forced to work for part of the year in Spanish mines, similar to the Inca Mita system. The Incan Mita was for public benefit, while the Spanish Mita was for private gain.

Changes in Labor System

• Chattel slavery is defined as slavery in which the enslaved person is owned as property. In the Americas, it was race-based and hereditary.
• Before 1500, the older Afro-Eurasian slave trade networks were not race-based.
• Agriculture in the Americas relied on enslaved males, changing the demographics of African states, leading to a gender imbalance in West Africa and the rise of polygyny, in which men marry more than one woman.
• The trans-Atlantic slave trade was massive in comparison with earlier systems.
• Blackness became identified with enslavement and justification for brutality.
• Cultural synthesis took place in the Americas with the development of creole languages in the Caribbean and Brazil, a mix of European, African, and Indigenous languages.
• Indentured Servitude. was used mostly by the British in North America, in which servants were bound to work for seven years and then could go free.
• The Spanish used the Encomienda System. The Spanish divided indigenous Americans among Spanish settlers, forcing them to provide labor in exchange for food and protection, or similar to feudalism.
• Haciendas were huge plantations on which Native Americans were forced to work, about land ownership and forced labor.
• Christian missionaries like the Jesuits spread Christianity to the American colonies.
• Some converted to traditional Catholicism, others created syncretic forms of faith blended Christianity with indigenous practices, as well as blending animistic beliefs practiced by Africans in the Americas with Christianity, which created syncretic religions like Vodun.

Changing Belief Systems & Social Hierarchies

• After the Reconquista to remove Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal kicked out all Jews. But the Ottoman Empire opened its doors to Jewish people fleeing persecution.
• The Casta system was imposed by the Spanish, and based on ancestry and race, with the purity of Spanish blood. It lead to a small group of Spanish elites being at the top of the social hierarchy.
• The Qing dynasty created a new system of elites by holding the best bureaucratic jobs for those who were ethnically Manchu, meaning the majority of the population could not hold them, which then led to Manchu elites in China.
• Elites, like the boyars in Russia, struggled to maintain control against Peter the Great, becoming an absolute monarch leading nobles to rebel. The outcome was the abolition of the rank of boyar.
• Anyone seeking a position of power had to get it directly from the state.