A variety of internal and external factors contribute to state formation, expansion, and decline. Governments maintain order through a variety of administrative institutions, policies, and procedures, and governments obtain, retain, and exercise power in different ways and for different purposes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain how rulers employed economic strategies to consolidate and maintain power throughout the period from 1450 to 1750.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

KC 4.1.IV.C - Mercantilist policies and practices were used by European rulers to expand and control their economies and claim overseas territories. Joint-stock companies, influenced by these mercantilist principles, were used by rulers and merchants to finance exploration and were used by rulers to compete against one another in global trade.

KC 4.3.III.ii - Economic disputes led to rivalries and conflict between states.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Competition over trade routes:

§Muslim-European trade rivalries in the Indian Ocean

§ Moroccan-Songhai competition over trade routes

As societies develop, they affect and are affected by the ways that they produce, exchange, and consume goods and services.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the continuities and changes in networks of exchange from 1450 to 1750.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

KC 4.1.IV.D.i - The Atlantic trading system involved the movement of goods, wealth, and labor, including slaves.

KC 4.1.IV - The new global circulation of goods was facilitated by chartered European monopoly companies and the global flow of silver, especially from Spanish colonies in the Americas, which was used to purchase Asian goods for the Atlantic markets and satisfy Chinese demand for silver. Regional markets continued to flourish in Afro-Eurasia by using established commercial practices and new transoceanic and regional shipping services developed by European merchants.

KC 4.2.II.A - Peasant and artisan labor continued and intensified in many regions as the demand for food and consumer goods increased.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Increased peasant and artisan labor

§Labor used for production of wool and linen in Europe

§ Labor used for production of cotton in India

§ Labor used for production of silk and porcelain in China

The processes by which societies group their members and the norms that govern the interactions between these groups and between individuals influence political, economic, and cultural institutions and organization.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain how political, economic, and cultural factors affected society from 1450 to 1750.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

KC 4.2.III.C - Some notable gender and family restructuring occurred, including demographic changes in Africa that resulted from the slave trades.

KC 4.1.IV.D.ii - The Atlantic trading system involved the movement of labor—including slaves—and the mixing of African, American, and European cultures and peoples, with all parties contributing to this cultural synthesis.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

§ Vodun

§ Christianity and indigenous Mesoamerican cultures

Mercantilist policies

• used by European rulers to expand and control their economies and claim overseas territories.

Joint-stock companies

• influenced by these mercantilist principles, were used by rulers and merchants to finance exploration

• used by rulers to compete against one another in global trade.

• Private merchants advanced funds to launch these companies, outfit them with ships and crews, and provide them with commodities and money to trade

• enjoyed government support, but the companies were privately owned enterprises

• Unhampered by political oversight, company agents concentrated strictly on profitable trade

• Their charters granted them the right to buy, sell, build trading posts, and even make war in the companies’ interests

English East India Company

• founded in 1600

• 1601, for example, five English ships set sail from London with cargoes mostly of gold and silver coins valued at thirty thousand pounds sterling. When they returned in 1603, the spices that they carried were worth more than one million pounds sterling.

• Indian cotton and tea from Ceylon had begun to overshadow the spice trade, and English and French merchants working from trading posts in India became the dominant carriers in the Indian Ocean.

• 1746--French forces seized the English trading post at Madras, one of the three principal centers of British operations in India.

VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) (United East India Company )

• established in 1602.

• The first Dutch expedition did not realize the profits as their British counterpart, but it more than doubled the investments of its underwriters.

• Dutch vessels were most numerous in the Indian Ocean, and they enabled the VOC to dominate the spice trade.

• Dutch forces expelled most Portuguese merchants from southeast Asia and prevented English mariners from establishing secure footholds there.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Competition over trade routes:

§Muslim-European trade rivalries in the Indian Ocean

Case Study: Afonso d’Alboquerque

• Equipped with heavy artillery, Portuguese vessels were able to overpower most other craft that they encountered, and they sometimes trained their cannon effectively onshore

• The architect of their aggressive policy was Afonso d’Alboquerque, commander of Portuguese forces in the Indian Ocean during the early sixteenth century.

• Alboquerque’s fleets seized:

  • • Hormuz in 1508

    • Goa in 1510

    • Melaka in 1511.

• From these strategic sites, Alboquerque sought to control Indian Ocean trade by forcing all merchant ships to purchase safe-conduct passes and present them at Portuguese trading posts.

• Ships without passes were subject to confiscation, along with their cargoes

• Alboquerque’s forces punished violators of his policy by executing them or cutting off their hands.

• Alboquerque was confident of Portuguese naval superiority and its ability to control trade in the Indian Ocean.

• Limitations:

  • • Although heavily armed, Portuguese forces did not have enough vessels to enforce the commander’s orders.

    • Arab, Indian, and Malay merchants continued to play prominent roles in Indian Ocean commerce, usually without taking the precaution of securing a safe-conduct pass

    • Portuguese ships transported perhaps half the pepper and spices that Europeans consumed during the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century (1500s)

    • Arab vessels delivered shipments through the Red Sea, which Portuguese forces never managed to control, to Cairo and Mediterranean trade routes.

§ Moroccan-Songhai competition over trade routes

Context

• Portuguese and Spanish seized coastal cities in Northwest Africa/Morocco

  • • provoked a militant response

• The Sa'adi family (claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad) led the resistance to Portuguese aggression

• climaxed in victory at the battle of al-Qasr al Kabir in 1578.

Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur

• naval expeditions

  • • raided port of Salé (Spanish contolled city in Morocco)

    • raided European shipping as far as Great Britain

• Corsairs

  • • sea raiders working out of Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya

    • attacked European merchants

      • • took ships and cargo

        • enslaved Europeans on the ships

    • similar to what Europeans were doing in the Indian Ocean to Muslim merchants

Invasion of Songhai

• 1591--2,500 musket bearing soldiers from Morocco crossed the Sahara and confronted the Songhai's 40,000 foot soldiers and defeated them

  • • Songhai military consisted of full-time soliders, but the king never modernized his army

• What was at stake:

  • • control of the Trans-Saharan Trade route

      • • gold

        • est. 2.5 million enslaved Africans crossed the Sahara and Red Sea between 1200-1500

global circulation of goods

global flow of silver

The Manila Galleons

• sleek, fast, heavily armed ships capable of carrying large cargoes—regularly plied the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco on the west coast of Mexico

Spanish colonies in the Americas

• Mexican and Peruvian silver mines

• Potosí (Bolivia)

  • • 1570's- 160,000 people

    • Native American miners worked in conditions so horrendous that some families held funeral services for men drafted to work the mines

    • One Spanish priest referred to Potosí as a “portrait of hell.”

• silver made its way to China via Manila, where a thriving domestic economy demanded increasing quantities of silver, the basis of Chinese currency.

• demand for silver was so high in China that European merchants exchanged it for Chinese gold

• Europeans later traded profitably for more silver as well as luxury goods in Japan

Manila

• 1565 - Spanish took Cebu and Manila in almost bloodless contests

• By 1575 Spanish forces controlled the coastal regions of the central and northern islands, and during the seventeenth century they extended their authority to most parts of the archipelago

• it quickly became the hub of Spanish commercial activity in Asia.

• Chinese merchants were especially prominent in Manila. They occupied a specially designated commercial district of the city, and they accounted for about one-quarter of Manila’s forty-two thousand residents in the mid-seventeenth century

• Asian luxury goods were purchased to be sent to Mexico or went to Peru

• most Asian luxury goods went overland across Mexico and then traveled by ship across the Atlantic to Spain and European markets.

Increased peasant and artisan labor

§Labor used for production of wool and linen in Europe

§ Labor used for production of cotton in India

§ Labor used for production of silk and porcelain in China

• China’s population tripled between 1500 and the late 1700’s to 350 million

• Ming era-Intensification of peasant labor in silk textile production

• Qing

• European demand for all things Chinese continued from the Ming period and increased:

• Silk

• Porcelain

• Tea

• Also:

  • Cloisonne jewelry

  • Tableware

  • Lacquered and jeweled room dividers

  • Carved jade and ivory (which originated in Africa and carved in China)

• • Peasants-by the late 18th century, an economic divide existed between urban areas wealthy from trade and the rural countryside

  • Qing inability to maintain their vast empire led to peasant migration in search of seasonal labor-low status jobs

• Barge pullers

• Charcoal burners

• Night soil carriers

• Many peasants drifted to cities

• Begging

• Protestitution

• theft

Demographic changes in Africa that resulted from the slave trades

• Population

  • • slowed Africa’s growth at a time, but did not result in the kind of population collapse that occurred in the Americas

    • this slowed growth occurred at a time of population growth in Europe and Asia

      • • sub-Saharan Africa represented about 18 percent of the world’s population in 1600, but only 6 percent in 1900

  • Economics

    • • slave trade stimulated little positive change in Africa because those Africans who benefited most from the traffic in people were not investing in the productive capacities of African societies

      • no technological breakthroughs in agriculture or industry increased the wealth available to African societies

  • Governance -- Decentralization

    • • larger kingdoms such as Kongo and Oyo slowly disintegrated as access to trading opportunities and firearms enabled outlying regions to establish their independence.

  • Social--Role of Women

    • • African women were almost everywhere active farmers, with responsibility for planting, weeding, and harvesting in addition to food preparation and child care

        • • Men cleared the land,built houses,herded the cattle,and in some cases assisted with field work

      • women were expected to feed their own families and were usually allocated their own fields for that purpose.Many also were involved in local trading activity

      • Ivory Coast-- women had traditionally grown cotton for their families’ clothing

      • Cameroon -- estimated that women’s working hours to be forty-six per week

      • Though clearly subordinate to men, African women nevertheless had a measure of economic autonomy

§ Vodun

• derived from various West African traditions and featured drumming, ritual dancing, animal sacrifice, and spirit possession.

• Over time, they incorporated Christian beliefs and practices such as church attendance, the search for salvation, and the use of candles and crucifixes and often identified their various spirits or deities with Catholic saints.

§ Christianity and indigenous Mesoamerican cultures

In 1535, the bishop of Mexico proudly claimed that he had destroyed 500 pagan shrines and 20,000 idols. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, church authorities in the Andean region periodically launched movements of “extirpation,” designed to fatally undermine native religion.They destroyed religious images and ritual objects, publicly urinated on native “idols,” desecrated the remains of ancestors, held religious trials and “processions of shame” aimed at humiliating offenders, and flogged “idolaters

The Virgin of Guadalupe

• According to Mexican tradition, a dark-skinned Virgin Mary appeared to an indigenous peasant named Juan Diego in 1531

• Belief in the Virgin of Guadalupe represented the incorporation of Catholicism into the emerging culture and identity of Mexico.

  • • combined both Mesoamerican and Spanish notions of Divine Motherhood

Taki Onqoy (dancing sickness)

• religious revivalist movement in central Peru in the 1560s

• Possessed by the spirits of local gods, or huacas, traveling dancers and teachers predicted that an alliance of Andean deities would soon overcome the Christian God, inflict the intruding Europeans with the same diseases that they had brought to the Americas, and restore the world of the Andes to an imagined earlier harmony

• called on native peoples to cut off all contact with the Spanish,to reject Christian worship,and to return to traditional practices

• female dancers in the Taki Onqoy movement sometimes took the names of Christian saints,seeking to appropriate for themselves the religious power of Christian figures

Santeria in Cuba

• derived from various West African traditions and featured drumming, ritual dancing, animal sacrifice, and spirit possession.

• Over time, they incorporated Christian beliefs and practices such as church attendance, the search for salvation, and the use of candles and crucifixes and often identified their various spirits or deities with Catholic saints.

Candomble and Macumba in Brazil

• derived from various West African traditions and featured drumming, ritual dancing, animal sacrifice, and spirit possession.

• Over time, they incorporated Christian beliefs and practices such as church attendance, the search for salvation, and the use of candles and crucifixes and often identified their various spirits or deities with Catholic saints.