World History: 1450-1750 events

Transoceanic Interconnections: 1450 - 1750

• Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage connected the Eastern and Western hemispheres, leading to the first global trade networks and setting the stage for historical events in the centuries that followed.

Establishment of Maritime Empires

• European states sought a transoceanic route to Asia from 1450 to 1750, starting with Portugal and Spain.
• Europeans established trading post empires in the Indian Ocean, leading to inadvertent contact with the Americas.

Global Exchanges

• Trans-Atlantic trade connected the Americas, Europe, and Africa for the first time.
• European colonists developed plantations in the Americas to grow sugar and other crops for sale in the global market, fueling the trade in enslaved Africans.
• Trans-Pacific trade also flourished, with silver mined in Latin America as the major commodity.
• The Columbian Exchange involved the transfer of crops, animals, and disease, altering life everywhere:
  • Introduction of potatoes, corn, and tomatoes to Europe led to population growth.
  • Deadly pathogens, such as small pox and measles, devastated the populations of the Americas.

Change and Continuity

• Regional commerce and established states in Afro-Eurasia continued to flourish despite increasing European influence.
• The Mughal, Ottoman, and Qing Empires expanded, creating ethnically diverse states.
• Peasant and artisan labor intensified across the globe as demand for goods and food increased, setting the stage for the revolutions after 1750.

Technological Innovations (1450–1750)

• Cross-cultural interactions resulted in the diffusion of technology and facilitated changes in trade and travel between 1450 and 1750.

Developments in Maritime Technology

• Inventions enabled Europeans to venture long distances on the ocean.
• Magnetic compass helped steer ships, and was originally from China.
• The astrolabe was improved by Muslim navigators in the 12th century, and it helped sailors determine their latitude.
• Developed by the Portuguese, it is a small, three-masted sailing ships which allowed sailors to survive storms at sea better than earlier ships.
• Advances in cartography (mapmaking) and knowledge of current and wind patterns improved navigation.
• Demographic pressures, primogeniture laws, and religious dissent pushed Europeans into exploration and trade.

Developments of Transoceanic Travel and Trade

• Europe was never totally isolated from East and South Asia.
• Indian Ocean trade routes had long brought silk, spices, and tea to the Mediterranean.
• Islamic traders had long known of land routes from China to Baghdad, Constantinople, and Rome.
• In the 16th century, Europeans became more active in the Indian Ocean seeking wealth and new converts.
• Europeans faced competition from Middle Eastern traders, such as those based in Oman.
• Omani-European rivalry was one reason for Columbus's search for a new route to India.
• Columbus's voyages connected people across the Atlantic Ocean, where European traders linked Afro-Eurasia and the Americas.
  • From the Americas, they purchased sugar, tobacco, and rum.
  • From Africa, they purchased enslaved people.
  • From Asia, they purchased silk, spices, and rhubarb.
• Trade transformed Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France, and Holland into maritime empires.
• In Southeast Asia, Europeans conducted business mostly with women, who traditionally handled markets and money exchange.

Classical, Islamic, and Asian Technology

• Western European countries developed naval technology, combining classical Greek knowledge with new ideas developed by Islamic and Asian sailors and scholars.
• Al-Andalus (now Spain) was a place where Islamic ideas diffused into Europe.
• Portuguese ruler Prince Henry the Navigator supported exploration, financing expeditions along Africa's Atlantic Coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.

Advances in Ideas

• Scholars improved the safety of sailing like Newton, whose discovery of gravitation increased accurate calculations of tides.
• Increasingly accurate records on the direction and intensity of winds helped sailors navigate confidently.
• Improvements in astronomical charts improved navigation.

Advances in Equipment

• Developments in ship equipment made sailing safer and faster:
  • Ships moved adroitly with a new type of rudder, imported from China.
  • Astrolabe (improved by Muslim navigators) could determine latitude.
• The compass is the primary direction-finding device ised in navigation and the magnetic compass, originally from China, allowed sailors to steer a ship in the right direction.
• The lateen sail, used by Arab sailors and in the Indian Ocean, could catch the wind on either side of the ship, allowing it to travel in different directions.
• The combination of navigational techniques led to a rapid expansion of exploration and global trade.
• The introduction of gunpowder (another Chinese invention) aided European conquests abroad.
• Sea pirates, such as the Dutch Sea Beggars, also used gunpowder. Navigational techniques continued to spread, with Russia's Tsar Peter the Great observing military and naval technology in Western Europe in 1697 and hiring technicians to build Russia's military and naval power.

Exploration: Causes and Events (1450-1750)

• States expanded authority and controlled resources. Conquests brought new wealth, especially silver, through taxes and trading opportunities.
• Rivalries motivated states' expansion efforts. Europeans believed it was their Christian duty to convert people.
• Expensive voyages required state support.

Portuguese Exploration

• Led the way in maritime innovations and European exploration.
  • Prince Henry the Navigator: first European monarch to sponsor seafaring expeditions and began importing enslaved Africans by sea. (1394-1460)
  • Bartholomew Diaz: Sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
  • Vasco Da Gama: Sailed to India in 1498 and claimed territory for Portugal.
• Portuguese ports in India were key to expanding trade in the Indian Ocean and points farther east.
• Afonso de Albuquerque won a short battle with Arab traders and set up a factory at Malacca in present-day Indonesia in the early 16th century.
• Portuguese superior ships gave them control of both the African and Indian coasts.
• Portugese won victory over a Turkish-Egyptian-Venetian fleet at Diu, India, in 1509.

Portuguese Trade with East Asia

• Initial Portuguese visits had little impact on Chinese society.
• Traders were followed Roman Catholic missionaries who failed to win many converts among the scholar-gentry
• They constructed forts stretching from Hormuz to Goa to Malacca to control trade.
• Portugal had a global trading post empire, one based on small outposts rather than control of large territories but lacked the workers and ships necessary for its maintenance.
• Portugal lost to rivals in East Asia and Japan in the 17th century challenging by Dutch and English.
• The Dutch captured Malacca and built a fort at Batavia in Java in 1620 and monopolized the spice trade, resulting in forcing England to focus on India.
• The Portuguese traveled to Japan to trade and formed Catholic settlements that would later be outlawed

Spanish Exploration

• The Spanish annexed the Philippines in 1521.
• The Portuguese explorers like Vasco da Gama, were the first Western Europeans to reach the Indian Ocean by sea.
• Ferdinand Magellan led the government-sponsored voyage that was the first to circumnavigate the globe during his voyage of the Philippine Islands in 1522.
• They returned in 1565 to conquer the Filipinos, who put up fierce resistance with Manila as a Spanish commercial center.
• Due to the Spanish and Portuguese occupations, many Filipinos became Christians.

The Lure of Riches

• Columbus and other explorers sought a new route to Asia and precious resources. The Spanish found little of value while in contact.
• European interest in the Americas was rekindled when Spain contacted the Aztecs and Incas. In addition, enslaving Americans and later black Africans was profitable.
• China was a consumer of silver from the Western Hemisphere that was transported across the Pacific Ocean to East Asia on Spanish galleons.
• China used the Manila trading port and soon began using silver as its main form of currency.

French Exploration

• Spain's rivals in Europe were France, English, and Dutch explorers.
• Between the 1500s and 1600s, the French government searched for a northwest passage.
• French trader La Salle explored the Great Lakes and followed the Mississippi River, he claimed this vast region for France.
• French rarely settled permanently and the colonies grew slowly
• The European population of New France in North America grew to 70,000 in 1754 from trading for furs with the Natives.

English Exploration

• In 1497, the English king sent John Cabot to America who claimed lands from Newfoundland south to the Chesapeake Bay.
• In 1558, England declared itself a major naval power defeating most of the Spanish Armada.
• In 1607, about one hundred English traveled approximately and constructed Jamestown, Virginia.

Comparing Transoceanic Voyages, c. 1300-c. 1800

• China (Zheng He) was aiming to open up trade networks with India, Arabia, and Africa to spread Chinese culture and decided not to continue exploring.
• England (John Cabot) was aiming to find a sea route to the East going west from Europe and claimed land in Canada to establish a shorter, northerly route across the Atlantic.
• Portugal (Vasco da Gama) wanted to open a sea route from Europe to India and China and expanded trade and cultural exchange between India and Europe.
• Spain:
  • Christopher Columbus hoped to find a sea route to India and China going west from Europe, but Spain led the European exploration and colonization of the Americas.
  • Ferdinand Magellan demonstrated that Europeans could reach Asia by sailing west and Spain established links between the Americas and Asia across the Pacific Ocean.

Dutch Exploration

• In 1609, Henry Hudson explored the East Coast of North America but The Dutch claimed the Hudson River Valley and settled New Amsterdam.
• Dutch merchants bought furs and tobacco and sent these goods to the Netherlands exchange for manufactured goods they could sell throughout North America.

Topic 4.3: Columbian Exchange

• Focuses on how the initial contact and subsequent domination of the Americas by European colonizers was disastrous for the native peoples due to a range of factors
• superior weaponry
• disease

Three broad traditions of culture

• indigenous American
• European tradition
• African

Diseases and Population Catastrophe

• Smallpox lead to drastic spread of the diseases, killing many native peoples of the Americas.
• Mesoamerican people consumed little meat before interaction with colonists. Another component is livestock in both directions

Introduction of new crops and livestock

• Colonists began to settle in the Americans, so did rat & disease
• Animals, along with Meditterranean foods were introduced

Cash Crops and Forced Labor

• The coerced arrival of enslaved peoples because of the need for a labor force.
• Africans brought okra and rice. Enslaved people were needed because disease.
• In South America, Spanish profited most from silver.
• Portuguese focused its endeavors on sugar cane. As disease had decimated laborors.

Slavery & Engenhos

• Sugar profitability led to transatlantic slave trade and the constant plantation of Africans
• Enslaved people died from backbreaking working conditions. As high as a 5-10 percent loss.

Growing Cash Crops

• Other plantations returned with sugar and tobacco, where sugar eclipsed the silver

African presence in America

• Were brought in as captives but retained aspects of Africa, with a diaspera dispersion. African were not able to transplant there languages
• With colonizers' language such as spanish, and French blended new languages known as creoles

Influence of African music

• Introduced elements from their traditions that influenced later songs, to help them ensure long with the people

Food

• Africans also brought in their knowledge for food,
• A dish such as gumbo are popular for them with the southern united states has origin in African cooking
• With influence of music and much African cultures as a profound

Topic 4.4: Maritime Empires

• The new empires of Europe by political, religious, and economic, rivalries New Asia markets and the use of trading markets in the administration is a big component. African plantations use a new coerced labor The shock of the song, and the need led for Africans, led to cultural changes

State Building and Empire Expansion

• States Claim Lands, And are explored maritime empires. States also wanted power, through the act of exploration they claim

Trading Post In Africa and Asia

• Regions of east and west Africa were targets of countries was the late 15tgth centuries
• prince henry was keenly intersted in navigation technology.

Africa

• Some states grew wealthy out of Europe. The kingdom of Domery grew stronger.