Chapter 23: Transoceanic Encounters and Global Connections

Vocabulary

• Vasco de Gama: Vasco de Gama was a Portuguese mariner who landed in Calicut, India in 1498. His goal was to obtain “Christians and spices”. He was the first sailor to enter into Indian Ocean trade, and paved the way for other countries, like Britain and France to follow into the Indian Ocean basin. 

• Lateen sails/compass/astrolabe: These were some innovations in sailing instruments that made sailing easier. Lateen sails were triangular shaped and could catch wind from all directions. Compasses were used to calculate direction, and astrolabes were instruments used in measuring latitude. 

• Volta do mar: The Volta do mar was what the Portuguese mariners named the westerly winds that they used to travel from the New World back to Portugal. They did this because it was much safer and more reliable then going against the easterly trade winds. 

• Prince Henry: Prince Henry was a Portuguese prince. When he came into power in 1415, European exploration was stimulated. Under his rule, Portugal established hundreds of new trading posts in new places all over the world. 

• Vitus Bering: Vitus Bering was a Danish navigator that worked for the Russian Navy. He is credited as being the first European to discover Alaska and the Aleutian Islands – thus many geographical features bear his name; the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, etc. 

• Magellan’s Circumnavigation: The first voyage around the world to be completed. Only 35 of the original 280 sailors survived, and Magellan was included in the death tolls. The path went as follows; from Portugal to South America, under South America, north along the South American coast, to the Philippine Islands, to the Indian Ocean, under Africa, and then back to Portugal. 

• Trading post empires: Portugal built the first trading post empires. The idea was to establish posts that could control trade routes by forcing merchants to stop there and pay duties there. Portugal had hundreds of these built all over African coasts and around the Indian Ocean basin. 

• English East India Company: This company was established with 1600 by England. This was a private company, although it had the support of the English government. It experienced great financial success, especially in its early years. The English East India Company was critical in the early development of global trade networks. 

• Occupation of Siberia: Russians traded for furs and pelts that were hunted by indigenous Siberian peoples. If they resisted the Russians, they would be raided or attacked until they eventually complied. By 1763, enough Russian migrants had moved to Siberia to alter the opinion towards Russia to a more positive one. 

• Seven Years’ War: The Seven Years’ War was a war that lasted from 1756 to 1763. This war took place all over the world – in India, Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. Britain and Prussia were facing off against Russia, France, and Austria. This war set English dominance over the world for the next 150 years. 

• “Columbian Exchange”: A global diffusion of plants, food, crops, animals, human populations, and diseases between the eastern and western hemispheres. Some of the worst diseases were smallpox, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, and influenza. However, the positives outweighed the negatives. The food crops and animals that were exchanged brought large population increases, albeit the diseases bring down populations. 

• Manila Galleons”: A sleek, fast, heavily armed ship that could carry large amounts of cargo. These played a large role in the global trade that was developing. 

Focus Question #1

            Compare and contrast the Portuguese motives and efforts in exploration with those of the Spanish.

            To describe the Portuguese motives in exploration, a phrase was created; “God, Glory, and Gold”. Simply put, the Portuguese sought to explore to spread their religion, go down in history, and to gain riches. The Spanish were similar in their motives; however, they searched for a shorter route to Indian Ocean Trade and ended up discovering the Americas.

            Famous explorers can be found from both Portugal and Spain. Two from Portugal were; Vasco de Gama, who was the first to enter the Indian Ocean and the network of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean Basin, and Ferdinand Magellan, who was the first mariner to circumnavigate the world. An equally famous explored for Spain was Christopher Columbus, who was the “first” to discover the new world in 1492.

            The governments of both Spain and Portugal supported exploration, with Portugal’s perhaps more so. Portugal was also at the forefront of all European countries’ exploration.

Focus Question #2

            How were indigenous people treated when Europeans encountered them? Cite specific examples from the Americas, Asia, and Siberia.

            Indigenous peoples were treated, for the most part, as inferiors when Europeans encountered them. The location was not prevalent, indigenous peoples were treated as inferiors all over Africa, South America, North America, Siberia, and throughout the Indian Ocean Basin.

            When Europeans encountered the indigenous peoples in North, Central, and South America, they at first were extremely cautious. However, when they found that the majority of these people posed no serious threat to them or their control over their new acclaimed territory, they sought to expand and to boot them out of the land they had been inhabiting for who knows how long.

            In Siberia, Russians came seeking furs and pelts, which they could sell for large profits in Russia. However, when some Siberian native tribes refused to comply with the trade offers from the Russians, the Russians would coerce them into doing so. This coercing took form in raids, mass slaughters, and the taking of hostages.

Focus Question #3

            What were the consequences of the Columbian Exchange for both the old world and the new world?

            The immediate consequences of the Columbian Exchange were for the majority, negative, such as; diseases like smallpox and measles and these caused unknown casualties to native populations in the new world. However, the long term effects of this were dramatically positive. These positives such as the diffusion of food and animals between the western and eastern hemispheres caused large increases in population.

            When Columbus reached the New World, he brought invisible killers with him – diseases. These diseases that had become, for the most part, moot in the eastern hemisphere, wreaked havoc on those who came in contact with them in the western hemisphere because they had never been exposed to them before and had no defenses against them. The most deadly of the diseases brought over was smallpox, but measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, and influenza also took large tolls of lives.

            Diffusion occurred between both hemispheres. Some of the crops that went from the new world to the new world were maize, tobacco, and tomatoes, while a couple examples going from the old world to the new world are cotton and sugar.