The Age of Exploration, 1500-1800

Exploration and Expansion

Africa in an Age of Transition

Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade

Exploration and Expansion

Objectives:

1. Discuss how in the fifteenth century, Europeans began to explore the world

2. Summarize how Portugal, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and England reached new economic heights through worldwide trade

Motives and Means

First Portugal and Spain, then later the Dutch

Republic, England, and France, all rose to new

economic heights through their worldwide trading

activity

Europeans had long been attracted to Asia, Marco Polo

traveled to China—Kublai Khan

Economic motives loom large in European

expansion

The spices, which were needed to preserve and flavor food, were very expensive after being

shipped to Europe by Arab middlemen

Others explored overseas to introduce the holy Catholic

faith

Others sought grandeur, glory, and a spirit of

adventure

“God, gold, and glory” are the chief motives for European expansion

Europeans had also reached a level of technology that enabled them to make a regular series of voyages

beyond Europe

The Portuguese Trading Empire

*Portugal took the lead in European exploration.

Under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the

Navigator, Portuguese fleets began probing southward along the

western coast of Africa

Portuguese sea captains heard reports of a route to India around the southern tip of

Africa

*Vasco da Gama went around the cape and cut across the Indian Ocean to the coast of

India

cargo of spices

Portuguese fleets destroyed Muslim shipping and to gain

control of the spice trade

The Portuguese then began to range more widely in search of

the source of the spice trade, eventually discovering *Melaka on the Malay

Peninsula

From Melaka, the Portuguese expeditions to China and the

Spice Islands

Due to their seamanship, guns, and ship technology, the

Portuguese dominated the spice trade

Voyages to the Americas

The Spanish sought to reach

the Indian Ocean and the spice trade by

sailing westward across the

Atlantic Ocean

The Voyages of Columbus

The Italian *Christopher Columbus sought to head westward to reach the “far

east”

Educated Europeans knew that the world was round

Columbus believed India was only 2,000 miles across the

Atlantic—4,000 miles in actuality

In 1492, Columbus (funded by Queen Isabella of Spain)

reached the Americas, where he explored the coastline of Cuba and

the island of Hispaniola

He believed that he reached the Indies—islands in the far east

The people were “Indians”

A Line of DemarcationSpain and Portugal

resolved their concerns over exploration and competition with an

imaginary line that divided their spheres of influence

The Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494—gave portugal

control over its routes in Africa and gave Spain

rights in almost all of the Americas

Race to the Americas

Government-sponsored explorers

from many countries joined the race to the Americas

*John Cabot, a Venetian seaman, explored the New

England coastline of the Americas for

England

*Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, went along on several

voyages and wrote letters describing the

lands he saw

He discovered the mainland of the “new world” later named

after him, “America”

The Spanish Empire

The Spanish conquerors of the Americas—known as

*Conquistadors

1550, the Spanish gained control of northern Mexico

under Hernan Cortes

*Francisco Pizarro led the expedition in South America

—taking the Incan Empire

The Portuguese took Brazil—located on the other side of the line of

demarcation

Queen Isabella declared the “Indians” her subjects and granted the Spanish

the right to use these people as laborers

Native Americans were used on sugar plantations

and in gold and silver mines

With little natural resistance to European

diseases, the native peoples were ravaged by smallpox, measles,

and typhus

Hispaniola, 250,000 to 500

Mexico (100 years), 25 mil to 1 mil

Native American social and political

structures were torn apart and

replaced by European systems of religion,

language, culture, and government

Economic Impact and Competition

Wherever they went, Europeans sought gold

and silver

The extensive exchange of plants and animals

between the Old and New World—known as

the *Columbian Exchange—transformed economic activity in both worlds

New Rivals Enter the Scene

By the end of the 16th century, several new

European rivals had entered the scene for the eastern

trade

*Ferdinand Magellan, discoverer of the Philippines

New territory and base of Spanish operations

At the beginning of the seventeenth

century, an English fleet landed on the northwestern coast

of India and established trade

relations

The Dutch founded new colonies in

along the Hudson River Valley

During the 1600s, the French also colonized parts of what is now

Canada and Louisiana

English settlers were founding Virginia and the Massachusetts Bay Colony

The English seized the Dutch land, “New Netherlands” and

renamed it “New York”

Trade, Colonies, and Mercantilism

Many trading posts and colonies in the Americas

and the East

*Colony—a settlement of people living in a new

territory, linked with the patent country by trade and direct government control

Increased international trade

*Mercantilism—a set of principles that dominated

economic thought in the 17th century

The prosperity of a nation depended on a large supply of

bullion, or gold and silver

*Balance of Trade—the difference in value between

what a nation imports and what it exports

Objectives:

1. Discuss how in the fifteenth century, Europeans began to explore the world

2. Summarize how Portugal, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and England reached new economic heights through worldwide trade

Africa in an Age of Transition

Objectives:

1. Explain how European expansion affected Africa with the dramatic increase of the slave trade

2. Characterize the traditional political systems and cultures that continued to exist in most of Africa

The Slave Trade

Traffic in slaves was not new

The Primary market for African slaves was

Southwest Asia, where most slaves were used as

domestic servants

15th century, 1000 slaves brought to Portugal a

year

Cane sugar was introduced to Europe from South west Asia

during the Middle Ages

During the 16th century, *plantations were set up along the coast of Brazil and on

islands in the Caribbean to grow

sugarcane

Growth of Slave Trade

In 1518, a Spanish ship carried the first boatload of African

slaves from Africa to the Americas

*Triangular trade

European merchant ships carried guns and cloth to Africa;

Trade for slaves

Trade for tobacco, molasses, sugar, a raw cotton

As many as 10 million African slaves were

brought to the Americas between the early 16th

and the late 19th centuries

The journey of slaves from Africa to the

Americas became known as the *Middle Passage—the middle portion of the

triangular trade route

Sources of Slaves

Most slaves in Africa were prisoners of war

Europeans bought them from local African merchants at slave markets for gold or

guns

Local merchants ignored the depopulation occurring in

coastal regions and continued to sell slaves

Effects of the Slave Trade The salve trade led to the depopulation of some areas,

and it deprived many African communities of their youngest and strongest men

and women

The slave trade had a devastating effect on some

African states

*Benin, in West Africa, was an advanced civilization

wiped-out by gradual depopulation from slavery

The race perception among many

Europeans

Objectives:

1. Explain how European expansion affected Africa with the dramatic increase of the slave trade

2. Characterize the traditional political systems and cultures that continued to exist in most of Africa

Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade

Objectives:

1. Summarize the Portuguese occupation of the Moluccas in search of spices and how the Dutch pushed the Portuguese out

2. Relate how the arrival of the Europeans greatly affected the Malay

Emerging Mainland States

Conflicts did erupt among the emerging states on the

Southeast Asian mainland

New kingdoms arose in Vietnam and the Malay

Peninsula

Muslim merchants attracted to the growing spice trade

dominated most of the Indonesian shipping

The Arrival of Europeans

In 1511, the Portuguese seized Melaka and soon

occupied the *Moluccas and the

spice trade

They set up small settlements and

trade posts along the coast

A Shift in Power The situation changed with the arrival of the English and *Dutch

traders, who were better financed than were the

Portuguese

The Dutch gradually pushed the Portuguese out

They also reduced the English influence to a sing port on the

coast of Sumatra

The Dutch established a central fort in 1619 on the island of *Java

Impact on the Mainland

Portuguese and then Dutch influence was mostly limited to the Malay Peninsula and

the Indonesian Archipelago

The Portuguese established limited trade relations with

several *mainland states

The Mainland states of Burma, Thailand,

and Vietnam had begun to define themselves as

distinct political entities

They had strong monarchies that resisted foreign

intrusion

Religious and Political Systems

Particularly in the non-mainland states and the Philippines, Islam and

Christianity were beginning to attract converts

Buddhism was advancing from Burma to Vietnam

Traditional beliefs, however, survived and influenced the

new religions

Objectives:

1. Summarize the Portuguese occupation of the Moluccas in search of spices and how the Dutch pushed the Portuguese out

2. Relate how the arrival of the Europeans greatly affected the Malay