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Moving Toward a Global Market
Since ancient times, the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa have exchanged luxury
goods and other commodities. This interaction led to the development of trade
networks such as the Silk Road between China and the Levant. Trade networks in
turn allowed for cultural interaction between the regions as the spread of Buddhism,
Christianity, and Islam indicates. Despite economic and cultural exchange, the
histories of the regions connected by trade networks were largely separate. The
situation began to change in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
After nearly 100 years of demographic, economic, social, political, and religious crises
– collectively known in European history as the “crisis of feudalism” – the various
Eurasian civilizations slowly began to recover starting in the fifteenth century.
Territorial expansion was a crucial aspect of their recovery, and the growth of
gunpowder empires at this time led to the political integration of many areas of
Eurasia. The Ottoman Empire expanded into the Mediterranean and the Balkans;
the Mogul Empire was establishing itself in India and unifying the sub-continent; and
China under the Manchus expanded into Xinjiang. European maritime expansion,
however, had the most profound, long-term effect on the world.
Europe was a marginal area in the Middle Ages, consisting of many small, warring
kingdoms. It was not as wealthy as the other Eurasian civilizations. Yet, Europeans
had an insatiable demand for the products of Asia and Africa, and the medieval trade
networks failed to satisfy their desires. Consequently, Europeans sought direct access
to African and Asian markets through transoceanic exploration. In the process, they
discovered not only maritime routes to sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, but also to
North and South America. Slowly, a new global market linking Europe, Africa, Asia,
and the Americas emerged. European control over the transoceanic trade networks
allowed Europeans to move from being at the margins of the world economy to being
at its center.
This chapter examines European expansion and the development of new trade
networks in the first global age. This expansion transformed the world, connecting
regions that had previously had limited or no contact with each other, thereby
creating a new global economy. In some places, European explorers, merchants, and
colonists tapped into existing markets and trade networks, but in other places their
arrival disrupted existing networks or required the development of new marketplaces
and new trade goods. In time, these new trade networks favored European merchants
and undergirded European economic preeminence. Transoceanic expansion also led
to intercontinental migration, most notably from Europe and Africa to the Americas.
Migration led to new cultural syntheses and cultural tensions; it also left the painful
legacy of slavery. Finally, transoceanic expansion and trade corresponded with
internal reforms within Europe that led to the emergence of stronger European
states, which dominated the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This chapter highlights the role of Europeans, particularly the Portuguese and
Spaniards, in the creation of a global market. This Euro-centric perspective should
not eclipse the fact that without the cooperation and partnership of Africans, Asians,
and Native Americans, many European achievements would have been impossible.
Non-Europeans were active participants in the encounter that brought four
continents together. African and Asian elites, for instance, often dealt with Europeans
from a position of power, and they expected to benefit from the exchange. Moreover,
prior to 1700, there were relatively few Europeans in Asia and Africa. So Europeans
had little impact on those societies. Even in the Americas where the arrival of
Europeans did radically change social relations, Native Americans were able to limit
Spanish authority and retain significant autonomy in their communities.
Portuguese Maritime Empire
It was from Portuguese shores that European explorers initially set sail. Several
factors explain why Portugal led the way in transoceanic exploration. First, Portugal
had achieved greater political stability than larger, more important European
kingdoms in the fifteenth century. Second, the Portuguese were skilled shipbuilders
and had extensive knowledge of new navigational tools (such as the compass, the
astrolabe, and portolan charts). Third, the geographical location of Portugal was
ideal to explore the coast of Africa and to take advantage of the Atlantic trade winds
and currents. Portuguese mastery of the prevailing winds, for instance, allowed for
safer and faster voyages.
Voyages of exploration would have been impossible without good ships, and the
Portuguese had the perfect vessel – the caravela or caravel – for long-distance
exploration by the early 1400s. In 1456, a Venetian sailor called the caravels, “The
best ships that sailed the seas.” The average caravel weighed 50 tons, and was about
70 feet in length and about 25 feet in beam. The wide hull displaced little water, and
the use of sternpost rudders (i.e., a rudder fixed to the stern-board of the keel, instead
of the oar-like lateral rudder) allowed for better steering. The ships typically had two
or three masts, and the use of both lateen and square sails allowed sailors to take
advantage of a wider range of wind conditions than the use of a single lateen or
square sail would have allowed. The use of lateen sails, for instance, meant caravels
needed to tack less often in contrary winds, guaranteeing a speedier return, which
made sailors more willing to risk longer outward voyages. Wind propulsion also
meant that caravels required fewer sailors than galleys, and the small crew size –
typically twenty sailors – made it possible for many more ships to ply unknown
waters. The caravel’s shallow draft also reduced the chances of the ship running
aground in unknown waters and made it easier for the crew to beach the vessel for
repairs. Finally, caravels cost less to operate than larger vessels, so voyages of
exploration could easily pay for themselves.
To keep their bearings in the open sea, sailors looked to the heavens, using the sun,
moon, stars, and constellations to mark their positions. Some stellar observations
could be made with the naked eye, but instruments such as the astrolabe, the
cross-staff, and the quadrant allowed navigators to calculate their latitude, or
north-south position, more accurately. The North Star was the primary reference
point for navigators in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Southern Cross, which the
Portuguese identified around 1500, for the Southern Hemisphere. Navigators could
not calculate their longitude (east-west position), however, until the English
developed an accurate sea clock in the mid-eighteenth century. The compass, which
had come to Europe from China via the Arabs in the thirteenth century,
compensated somewhat for navigators’ inability to calculate their precise coordinates
by allowing them to maintain their course, even in cloudy weather, with only rough
latitudinal coordinates.
In addition to the astrolabe and compass, a navigator needed charts and tables to plot
his course over the open sea. The most famous charts were the portolan charts
(portolanos) , with their “wind rose,” which indicated the orientation of the winds.
Portolan charts also included compass directions for sailing from one port to another.
They had no universal system of coordinates though, and no two charts were alike.
Tables on the declinations of the heavenly bodies allowed navigators to match their
latitude in the open sea to the latitude of known landmasses. The Portuguese added
significantly to this knowledge by calculating the latitude of places on the African
coast for future charts and tables.
Despite improvements, navigation was still rather rudimentary. For instance,
navigators relied on “dead reckoning” or estimating their east-west position by using
sand clocks and observing the speed of the hull to calculate the distance traveled from
a previously known position. Sailors were suspicious of the new navigational tools as
well. Many sailors believed that the compass was an occult instrument, and early
navigators consequently tried to hide their instruments. Navigators and captains, for
their part, believed that onions and garlic could counteract the effects of a magnet
and therefore barred sailors from bringing those vegetables on board. The
participants in the voyages of discovery were still men of their times, with medieval
tools and attitudes, even as their exploits on the high seas helped to move the world
into modernity.
Not only did it have the best ships and navigational techniques for overseas
expansion, Portugal had the will to expand. The Portuguese population recovered
sooner from the Black Death than other European populations, and by the fifteenth
century, the growing population provided the manpower to carry out exploration.
There was also wide support in Portuguese society for territorial expansion and
exploration. Expansion offered the economically stricken aristocracy leadership
opportunities as well as financial opportunities. The growing merchant class
(bourgeoisie) saw exploration as a way to expand markets and to accumulate capital.
The lower classes hoped to escape from dire economic straits and feudal rule at
home. For the crown, overseas expansion minimized internal disorders by preventing
societal pressures from building up.
Portuguese expansion initially focused on Morocco. In 1415, Portugal captured the
strategic city of Ceuta, and in subsequent years it captured other strategic points
along the Moroccan coast. In many ways, the push into Africa was a continuation of
the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Islam. The spirit of crusade continued
to motivate the Portuguese until the tragic death of King Sebastian and most of his
army at the Battle of Alcazar el Kebir (1578) in Morocco. Expansion into Morocco
also had a commercial aspect. The Portuguese hoped to reap financial rewards by
controlling various North African termini of the sub-Saharan gold trade. The
medieval ideas of crusade, which were foremost in the minds of Portuguese elites,
such as Prince Henry “the Navigator” (d.1460), were often at odds with the
commercial aspects of Atlantic exploration and expansion.
The task of mapping the African coast was slow and arduous. Cape Bojador in the
present-day Western Sahara was the first navigational obstacle. Strong northerly
winds deterred many sailors from venturing beyond that cape, fearing that they
would be unable to return. Finally, in 1434, an expedition led by Gil Eannes sailed
beyond Cape Bojador and returned. Within the next 30 years, the Portuguese had
reached Sierra Leone. Along the way, they established profitable trading posts
(feitorias) such as Arguin off the coast of present-day Mauritania. The prospect of
profits motivated further sailors to undertake voyages and investors to finance them.
In 1468, Fernão Gomes secured from the crown a five-year trade monopoly with
coastal Africa beyond Arguin. All he had to do was pay the crown 500 crusados a
year and discover 320 miles of coastline (i.e., 100 leagues) a year. Gomes profited
handsomely from this contract. In 1471, he had reached the Gulf of Guinea and
gained access to the gold producing regions in West Africa. The shoreline of the Gulf
of Guinea initially led the Portuguese to believe that they had found the all sea route
to India. On his last voyage, however, Gomes discovered that the coast turned
suddenly south at Fernando Po Island. He sailed until Cape Santa Caterina before
returning home.
After Gomes’s contract expired, Portuguese exploration slowed down until the reign
of King João II or John II (1481 – 1495). João II created a comprehensive plan to
reach India and gave Portuguese exploration a unity that it had previously lacked. In
1482, he built the first European fort in sub-Saharan Africa, São Jorge da Mina (St.
George of the Mine), commonly called Elmina, to protect Portuguese trading
interests near the Volta and Niger deltas from other Europeans. Elmina was situated
on the coast of present-day Ghana. The king also sent Diogo Cão to explore the coast
south of Cape Santa Caterina and gave Cão giant stone crosses (called padrãos) to
mark his most important landfalls. Between 1482 and 1486, Cão charted the coast to
Cape Cross on the coast of present-day Namibia, where he died. He set up his first
padrão at the mouth of the Zaire River, and his fourth marks his resting place at
Cape Cross. All future Portuguese explorers erected padrãos at key places along the
African coast.
In 1487, João sent Bartolomeu Dias to continue the search for a seaway to India. Dias
reached the Cape of Good Hope, the tip of Africa, in 1488. His men’s refusal to go
further forced Dias to return home. That same year, João sent two emissaries by land
to Ethiopia (believed to be the kingdom of the mythical Prester John) and India to
gather strategic information about potential Christian allies in the conflict with Islam
and commercial information on trade routes, trade sources, and places for
settlement. The Portuguese used this information to develop a strategy for expansion
in the Indian Ocean.
The Portuguese did not follow up on Dias’s accomplishment immediately. It was
Christopher Columbus’ returning from America in 1493 that prompted the
Portuguese into action. In fact, Columbus’s discoveries almost sparked a war
between Spain and Portugal because his discoveries were south of the Canary Islands
and therefore according to the Treaty of Alcácovas (1479) belonged to Portugal. To
prevent war, Pope Alexander VI intervened in 1493, dividing the non-Christian
world between Portugal and Spain according to a meridian passing 100 leagues (320
miles) west of the Azores or Cape Verde Islands. The wording of the papal decree or
bull, Inter Caetera, however, was unacceptable to the Portuguese. In the Treaty of
Tordesillas (1494), Spain and Portugal renegotiated the dividing line, making it a
meridian line passing 370 leagues (1,184 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. In the
end, neither side adhered strictly to the treaty’s clauses. Portuguese colonists
eventually settled beyond the demarcation line in Brazil, and Spain claimed
Portuguese territories in Asia. Other European powers, especially Protestant ones,
also questioned the validity of the initial papal bull and the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Nevertheless, papal bulls, such as Inter Caetera (1493), were fundamental to justify
the Spanish and Portuguese claims to possess newly discovered territories and to
legitimize their dominion.
King Manuel (1495 – 1521) finally sent Vasco da Gama to India in 1497. After
extensive preparation, da Gama’s four ships set sail in July. By skillfully using the
prevailing winds, da Gama reached the Cape of Good Hope in three months, half the
time that it took Dias. On reaching the Indian Ocean, da Gama secured a pilot
familiar with the Indian Ocean’s currents and winds to bring him to India. In 1499,
da Gama returned to Portugal, having lost a ship but with promising results.
In 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral led a larger expedition to India. The expedition was
blown off course, and he discovered Brazil on April 22, 1500. Brazil was well within
the Portuguese sphere according to the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). Cabral’s
discovery came as no surprise to contemporary Portuguese, who apparently knew
that land existed somewhere in that vicinity. This has led scholars to speculate that at
Tordesillas the Portuguese purposefully negotiated a dividing line further west than
the pope originally proposed in Inter Caetera to secure the anticipated landmass for
themselves.
While engaged in this project of exploration, Portugal also began to establish
overseas colonies in the fifteenth century. Madeira and the Azores Islands served as
the experimental laboratory for the Portuguese Empire in America. The Portuguese
began to settle Madeira around 1419, and they replicated their way of life on these
Atlantic islands. The islands were divided between several captains who had
administrative responsibilities within their areas. Villages and towns were also
established, and they eventually gained their own charters and municipal
governments. When a community was large enough, the king petitioned the pope to
create a bishopric. Agriculture was the main source of revenue from the Atlantic
islands. Initially, the Portuguese planted wheat, but the soil of the islands, especially
Madeira, was ideal for growing sugarcane. By the mid-fifteenth century, Madeira
was exporting sugar. The planting and harvesting of sugarcane was labor intensive,
and the plantations were always short of labor. The importation of African slaves
solved the labor problem. The traffic in slaves between Africa and the Atlantic
islands was soon extended to the Americas, thereby beginning the transatlantic slave
trade. Thus, in the Atlantic islands of Portugal, the prototype of the overseas
plantation (relying on the monoculture of an export crop worked by black slaves
from Africa, financed by outside capital, and often marked by absentee ownership)
took shape. The basic structure of European colonization in the Americas developed
in the Atlantic islands.
Sugarcane Workers in the Dominican Republic
Another mode of colonization employed by the Portuguese and their rivals was the
trading post. The establishment of trading posts predominated in Africa and Asia.
Essentially, trading posts allowed Europeans to tap into existing trade networks or to
establish new networks that were more convenient for African and Asian merchants.
The Europeans were often on the fringes of the intra-Asian trade, shaving off a
portion of that commerce for export to Europe. One reason Europeans played a
marginal role in Asia is that Asian merchants desired few European goods except for
silver, which was in short supply in the early sixteenth century.
Since they had little to trade with Asians, the Portuguese tried to force their way into
the Indian Ocean trading system. Governor-General Afonso de Albuquerque (1509 –
1515) is considered the founder of the Portuguese “empire” in Asia. He successfully
conquered several strategic locations (Malacca, Hormuz, and Goa, which became the
administrative capital), destroyed rival cities, and established Portuguese naval
power in the region. The Portuguese lacked the military resources to create a
land-based empire, and the military strength of the Muslim powers in the Indian
Ocean basin prevented large-scale conquest. By occupying strategic points, though,
the Portuguese disrupted existing trade networks and briefly monopolized the Asian
trade with Europe. Portuguese control over the spice trade made Portugal extremely
rich, but its monopoly only lasted about 30 years. By the 1530s, the Indian Ocean
trade networks that had been disrupted by the Portuguese were operating once
again, bringing spices and luxury goods to the Middle East to trade with Italian
merchants. The bulk of Asian goods, however, continued to arrive in Europe via
Portugal for the rest of the sixteenth century until the English and Dutch supplanted
them in Asia in the seventeenth century.
In addition to importing Asian goods to Europe, the Portuguese became middlemen
in the lucrative intra-Asian trade. The profits earned from transporting goods within
Asia helped the silver strapped Portuguese purchase more Asian goods for export to
Europe. The Dutch and English would play the same role as middlemen in the
seventeenth century. Only in the late eighteenth century did Europeans become more
than middlemen in Asia. Maintaining a seaborne empire was less expensive than
conquering territory, but it was still costly. Pirate attacks and the threats of local
Asian elites required Portugal to maintain a military presence in Asia. Despite these
risks, the Asian trade generated significant wealth for Portugal and the rest of
Europe.
Spanish Colonization of the Americas
The Spanish kings were not far behind the Portuguese in sponsoring voyages of
exploration and conquest, starting with the Canary Islands in the early fifteenth
century. They also supported the most celebrated and controversial explorer of the
period, Christopher Columbus. He was born in 1451 in Genoa and became a sailor at
a young age. While living in Portugal, he conceived his plan for a western route to
India. According to his calculations, the westward voyage from Europe to Asia was
roughly 2,500 miles, much shorter than the anticipated African route. The King of
Portugal and other European rulers hesitated to support Columbus not because they
doubted that the world was round, but because they doubted Columbus’ calculations
for the circumference of the earth; he believed it was less than 18,000 miles.
Ferdinand and Isabel, the Catholic Kings of Spain, finally agreed to sponsor
Columbus. They drew up a contract, the Patent of Santa Fe, in April 1492. The
contract made Columbus Admiral of the Ocean Sea and granted him noble status. It
also gave him administrative privileges in any newly discovered lands. The rest of the
Patent of Santa Fe’s clauses addressed financing the voyage and dividing the profits.
The Catholic Kings saw the voyage as a commercial venture, and they reserved for
themselves nine-tenths of the proceeds from the sale of precious stones, gold, silver,
spices, and other goods obtained on the voyage.
Ferdinand and Isabella
Contrary to popular legend, Isabel did not sell the royal jewels to finance the voyage.
Rather, she got a loan and ordered the town of Palos to provide two caravels for the
voyage. Columbus, however, still had to secure another vessel and a crew, which he
did after striking a deal with Martín Alonso Pinzón, a fellow captain and explorer.
Columbus also had to raise part of the money himself, which he borrowed from
Genoese bankers. Columbus’ voyage was thus a partnership. He had royal backing,
but not complete royal sponsorship. Such arrangements were typical in early voyages
of exploration.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos with three ships (Niña, Pinta, and
Santa María) and 90 men. On October 12, he made landfall in the Bahamas (possibly
Watling Island) and named the island San Salvador. He then found Cuba and
Hispaniola. Columbus dutifully claimed the islands for the Catholic Kings. On his
return, he wrote a royal minister, “I took possession of all of [the islands] for our
most fortunate King by making public proclamation and unfurling his standard, no
one making any resistance.” Columbus’ proclamation was the first of many
proclamations by Europeans claiming land in the Americas.
Columbus made four voyages to America (1492 – 1493, 1493 – 1496, 1498 – 1500,
1502 – 1504). His first voyage is the most celebrated. Not only did he “discover”
America, he also charted the best westward passage to the Americas and the best
eastward passage back to Europe. Given that his navigational techniques relied
mainly on the compass and dead reckoning, Columbus’ ability to return to the
islands on future voyages attests to his seamanship. He proved to be an inept
administrator, however. His decision to ship 500 Indians to Seville to be sold as slaves
in 1495 rankled the Catholic Kings, who considered the Native Americans to be their
subjects, and Columbus was brought home in shackles for the misadministration of
the colony in 1496. On his third voyage, he discovered the Island of Trinidad and the
delta of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, but on his final voyage he failed to discover
anything new. Columbus died in 1506 still believing that he had reached Asia.
News of Columbus’ voyages captivated Europeans and set in motion further voyages
of exploration. His initial letter to the Catholic Kings was published nine times in
1493 and another eleven times by 1500. People throughout Europe were curious
about the western lands, which the humanist Peter Martyr dubbed novus orbis or
New World, and anxiously awaited news of other voyages to the Western
Hemisphere. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator who made several trips to the
New World between 1499 and 1502, provided that news. His letter to Pier Francesco
de’ Medici describing the geography of the New World was printed in the principal
European languages. In 1507, a German mapmaker, Martin Waldseemüller,
published a map of the world in which he named the southern continent America,
after Vespucci. In time, Northern Europeans called the entire Western Hemisphere
America. The Spanish, however, called the western lands “the Indies” until the
eighteenth century.
The Spanish king sponsored Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sea captain, to
circumnavigate the earth with five ships in 1519. Magellan’s expedition was the first
to pass the southern tip of South America, discovering the strait that bears his name,
and to sail across the Pacific Ocean. In 1521, Magellan reached the Philippines. There
he was killed in a battle with locals, but one of his ships made it back to Spain in
1522. Within 30 years of Columbus’s landfall in the Bahamas, Europeans’ knowledge
of the world’s geography had changed dramatically, and better knowledge of winds
and currents was reducing travel time, making the economic integration of the world
more feasible.
Ferdinand Magellan
Despite all the excitement, settlers did not rush to the New World. Conditions in the
Americas were difficult, and few Spaniards were willing to go. In fact, at the end of
1498 over 300 of the earliest settlers returned to Spain, seeing no future in the islands.
Although the lucrative trade that everyone hoped for did not develop right away,
within a short time, the Spanish had explored the Caribbean basin and successfully
colonized several islands. These islands provided Spain with bases to explore the
coasts of North, Central, and South America and to launch the conquest of Central
and South America.
The men who carried out this conquest are known as conquistadors. They came from
all parts of Spain, but the leaders came overwhelmingly from Extremadura (a remote
region along the border with Portugal). Most were in their twenties and thirties, and
perhaps 10 percent were hidalgos (lower nobility). Most came to America in search of
a better life. They were not bloodthirsty killers; rather, they were men who joined
these expeditions to fulfill their goals. Bernal Díaz, a conquistador, stated: “We came
here to serve God and also to get rich.” The basic motives for conquest then were
God, gold, glory, and king. These goals were often at odds and led to serious disputes
among the Spaniards. For example, the conquistadors’ rush for gold and wealth
spurred the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas to attack the economic
motivations of the conquistadors, which he feared would undermined the evangelical
mission of the Church in the Americas and destroy the Indians. Meanwhile, the
desire for glory led to infighting between conquistadors, which threatened the
political stability of the colonies. Such conflicts led to denunciations of abuse and
accusations of disloyalty as well as to debates over the meaning of conquest and the
proper relationship between Europeans and Native Americans in post-conquest
society. The Spanish struggle for justice in the conquest and the texts it generated,
such as Las Casas’ Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, eventually
provided the fodder for Spain’s enemies to construct a narrative of Spanish cruelty
and brutality in the Americas, commonly known as the Black Legend.
The conquest of the Americas was not planned. Rather, it was the result of a series of
individual initiatives. The monarchs or their representatives typically drew up an
agreement with a commander authorizing an expedition of conquest in return for a
share of the treasure. The commanders were generally responsible for financing and
organizing the expedition (generally 50 to 500 men). Expeditions had a military
structure. There was a commander, captains, a detachment of mounted men (who
held superior status and received a larger share of the spoils), and detachments of
foot soldiers. The participants, however, were not professional soldiers, and few had
military experience before coming to America. The command structure was also
slightly more democratic than that of the regular military. The commanders had to
consult with their men on important decisions. Participants normally served for
booty, allocations of land, and tribute paying vassals instead of regular pay. The
division of spoils, however, often left a group of conquistadors unhappy, which fueled
further expeditions. Royal personnel, such as notaries and treasury officials, also
accompanied the conquistadors to ensure that the terms of the patent were fulfilled
and that the crown received its rightful share of the plunder. Priests joined
expeditions to evangelize among the Indians. Some expeditions also included black
slaves, Indian auxiliaries, and women.
Because these were not professional armies, the soldiers came from a cross section of
the population. Expeditions consequently had farmers, tailors, ironsmiths, barbers,
scribes, and other skilled workers, many of whom had already acclimatized to New
World conditions. With this assortment of skills, the companies were able to survive
for extended periods of time far from European settlements and to adapt to New
World circumstances. In addition to their skills, the conquistadors brought animals
(horses, dogs, and pigs) that helped them to survive in hostile environments.
Probably the most famous conquistador is Hernán Cortés. He was born in 1485 to a
lower noble family in Extremadura. He studied law at the University of Salamanca
but did not finish his studies and became a notary. In 1506, he immigrated to
Hispaniola. In 1511, he participated in the conquest of Cuba. He impressed the
governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, who appointed Cortés to lead an expedition to
reconnoiter Mexico. In February 1519, sensing that the governor had become
suspicious of his loyalty and fearing that his commission might be revoked, Cortés
hastily left Cuba with a force of approximately 500 men, sixteen horses, and some
artillery.
Initially, Cortés followed orders exploring the coastline of Mexico, starting with the
Yucatan peninsula. There, he secured two translators, a Spaniard, Jerónimo Aguilar,
who had been stranded in Yucatan since 1511 and had learned Mayan, and
Malintzin, later known as Doña Marina, a native Nahuatl speaker (the primary
language of central Mexico) who spoke Mayan. In April, Cortés reached the Mexican
mainland and formally took possession of Mexico in the name of King Charles of
Spain. To legitimize his actions and his independence from Velázquez, Cortés and his
men founded the town of Vera Cruz, and the “townsmen” promptly elected Cortés
their captain. One ship was sent directly back to Spain with a letter to the king
attesting to their loyalty and placing themselves directly under royal rule. The rest of
the ships were destroyed to prevent anyone from reporting this transgression to
governor Velázquez.
Cortés and his men then marched inland, fighting skirmishes with the Aztecs, placing
crosses in Indian sanctuaries, and most importantly allying themselves with
Mesoamericans who were discontented with Aztec rule. By November 1519, nine
months after he had left Cuba, Cortés had entered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.
Prior to Cortés’ arrival in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec emperor Montezuma supposedly
came to believe that the Spaniards were gods and militarily invincible. To the
displeasure of his advisers, he showed little zeal in resisting them. He even welcomed
the Spaniards into the city. The encounter between Montezuma and Cortés on the
causeway into the city illustrates the problem of miscommunication and
misinterpretation. Montezuma’s welcome, “This is your house and these are your
palaces,” was interpreted by Cortés as an act of homage and the voluntary surrender
of sovereignty. This may have been a deliberate misinterpretation of Aztec courtesy,
because recognizing that their situation was precarious and fearing attack, the
Spanish took Montezuma hostage. Cortés also had to worry about his Spanish rivals.
On learning that a force loyal to the governor of Cuba had arrived in Mexico, Cortés
set off with a small contingent to attack them in May 1520, leaving Pedro de
Alvarado in charge of his main force in Tenochtitlan. While Cortés was away, the
Aztecs celebrated the Festival of Huitzilopochtli. During the celebration, Cortés’ men
under Alvarado attacked the unarmed crowd and indiscriminately killed many
people. This led to a massive uprising against the Spaniards in Tenochtitlan.
In the meantime, Cortés defeated the expeditionary force from Cuba and won the
survivors over with offers of booty. He then returned to the city with reinforcements
on June 24. The Aztecs subsequently trapped him along with the forces of Alvarado
in the city. Cortés’s situation deteriorated even more after a stone hurled at the
Spaniards inadvertently killed Montezuma, and the Aztecs elected a new emperor,
Cuauhtemoc. On the verge of defeat, Cortés decided to flee the city. In the middle of
the night, the Spanish began their retreat, fighting their way out of the city. Cortés
lost roughly 400 Spaniards, 4,000 native allies, and most of the plunder. The
Spaniards called their ignominious retreat, La Noche Triste or Sorrowful Night (June
30 – July 1, 1520).
Fortunately, for Cortés, his Native American allies did not desert him after La Noche
Triste. After eight months of preparation, he systematically laid siege to Tenochtitlan.
The Aztecs, however, tenaciously resisted forcing the attackers to destroy the city to
dislodge them. Instead of capturing a great city, the Spanish won a pile of rubble
after a 75-day siege. The inadvertent introduction of smallpox also killed many
Aztecs and weakened their resistance. On August 21, 1521, the Spanish finally
conquered the Aztecs and became lords of Mexico.
Smallpox - The Greatest Battle of Mankind
The Spaniards then established their capital, Mexico City, on the ruins of
Tenochtitlan and essentially replaced the Aztecs as overlords of central Mexico,
which the Spanish called New Spain. As long as the indigenous peoples paid tribute
and provided labor, the Spanish generally allowed the Native American communities
to govern themselves and only ruled them indirectly. The cultural and religious
conquest would take much longer than the political conquest. The unions between
conquistadors and native women, however, helped that process along as their mestizo
(mixed race) children often identified with Hispanic culture and became a bridge
between peoples as well as a bulwark against rebellion. By 1521, then, central Mexico
was basically subdued and the long process of evangelization and Hispanicization
began.
After capturing Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors had a rude awakening. Díaz
reported, “We were all disappointed when we saw how little gold there was and how
poor our shares would be.” To prevent his men from fighting amongst themselves,
Cortés financed new expeditions to the south and west in search of gold. Unlike most
of his men, Cortés did become fabulously wealthy and powerful after the conquest. In
1529, he was made a noble, becoming the first Marques del Valle de Oaxaca. At the
same time, the crown began an inquiry into Cortés’ conduct during the conquest; the
inquiry generated 6,000 pages of documents over several years (1529 – 1535). As a
result, limitations were placed on Cortés’ political authority in Mexico, but he
retained most of his post-conquest wealth. He worked tirelessly to develop sugar
plantations on his Cuernavaca estates and to profit from long-distance trading
ventures. For Cortés, one needed to develop the land, not just conquer it. Other
conquistadors were entrepreneurial as well. In fact, most had to be because the easy
wealth from silver and Indian labor and tribute (encomiendas) was limited to the
fortunate few. Spanish American society then had strong entrepreneurial aspirations
and should not be characterized as exclusively militaristic and feudal.
In spite of these realities, it was conquest and the prospect of easy wealth – “otros
Mexicos” (other Mexicos) – that drew the Spaniards on. By the early 1520s, rumors
of a rich kingdom in the south circulated in Panama. Francisco Pizarro set out to find
that kingdom in 1524 and again in 1527 – 1528. On his second trip, he reached
Tumbez at the northern edge of the Inca Empire. In January 1531, after receiving a
royal patent to conquer Peru, Pizarro led a third expedition of roughly 168 men to
Peru.
By 1531, civil conflict divided the Inca Empire. The Inca ruler, Huayna Capac, had
died from a plague, possibly smallpox, in 1525. His death led to a succession crisis
between his legitimate son, Huascar, and the son of a secondary wife, Atahualpa.
Incan ideology said that only a legitimate son could succeed to the throne. Huascar
emerged as the ruler, but he was an unlikable ruler who alienated many people.
Atahualpa then rebelled and defeated his half-brother in battle.
Pizarro and his men arrived in Peru at this crucial juncture. On November 15, 1532,
they had reached the town of Cajamarca. Atahualpa was encamped nearby with his
army. On November 16, 1532, Pizarro invited Atahualpa into the town of Cajamarca,
and Atahualpa, underestimating the Spaniards, accepted the invitation and entered
the city with just his bodyguard. At a prearranged moment, the Spanish attacked,
defeating Atahualpa’s bodyguard and capturing him. The Spaniards now held
Atahualpa hostage. This was the last time that so few Spaniards would be able to
carry out such an incredible feat.
Believing the Spanish only wanted treasure, Atahualpa agreed to pay an enormous
ransom and ordered his lieutenants to amass gold and silver plates, jewels, and
decorative artwork from all corners of the Inca Empire. A large part of the Andean
artistic heritage was then lost as the Spanish systematically melted down the various
items into gold and silver ingots. The Spanish divided amongst themselves 13,420
pounds of 22-carat gold and 26,000 pounds of pure silver. The ransom, however, was
split unevenly. Reinforcements brought by Diego de Almagro received miniscule
shares, which fostered resentment between his men and Pizarro’s men. Even though
the ransom was paid, the Spaniards did not free Atahualpa, rather they accused him
of plotting with his generals against them and of ordering his half-brother Huascar’s
murder. The Spanish consequently tried Atahualpa as a traitor and condemned him
to death. Atahualpa was burned to death in June 1533.
The Inca Empire was beheaded but not yet overthrown. Inca resistance continued
until 1572 when the Incan jungle kingdom of Villcabamba was finally defeated. The
Incas, however, were unable to dislodge the Spaniards. Many local tribes that had
always opposed the Incas helped the Spaniards, and the Incas themselves were
divided between Atahualpa’s supporters and Huascar’s supporters. Once again,
internal divisions within the Native American communities aided the Spanish
conquest and colonization in the Americas.
Although the Pizarro family became the richest and most powerful family in Peru,
the family’s fortunes quickly waned. In 1540, Hernando was jailed in Madrid, Spain,
for executing Diego de Almagro after a 1538 battle between Pizarro and Almagro
supporters. Francisco was subsequently assassinated by Almagro’s supporters in
1541. Gonzalo unsuccessfully revolted against royal authority (1544 – 1548) and was
executed. The family consequently lost its political authority, but not its wealth. On
his release from prison in 1561, Hernando managed to consolidate the family
holdings in Peru and through shrewd investments secured the family’s financial
footing by the time of his death in 1578. Hernando did not return to Peru; rather, he
used the income from Peru to establish the family in the town of Trujillo in
Extremadura. More importantly, he invested in and around Trujillo, and the credit
he and other conquistadors provided small farmers furthered economic development
in Extremadura. So the wealth of the returning conquistadors stimulated local
Spanish economies. This pattern lasted for the entire colonial period. People set out
for America to enrich themselves, and the lucky ones returned home and invested the
money.
The Spanish crisscrossed the Americas in search of riches and fame. Many of these
expeditions into the frontiers were quixotic quests in search of cities of gold. In 1539,
for instance, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and three companions miraculously
arrived in New Spain (i.e., Mexico) after escaping captivity near the Mississippi River
and walking across the American Southwest. During their journey, they heard
numerous stories from Indians about rich cities in the north, which they dutifully
reported to the Viceroy of New Spain.
The prospect of “otros Mexicos” clearly beckoned, and the Viceroy hastily planned
an expedition under the command of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to find those
cities. In February 1540, Coronado set off with an army of 200 horsemen, 60 infantry,
and over 1,000 Indian auxiliaries. He traversed much of the American Southwest and
encountered the Zuni and Hopi Indians, but failed to find cities of gold. Yet, Indian
stories of a city of gold in the great plains of Kansas lured the Spanish on, but that
city of gold turned out to be a village of straw huts. Finally, in 1542, Coronado led his
army back to New Spain. He had discovered various lands and peoples, but no riches.
Gold! The History of Man's Greatest Obsession
Coronado's expedition brought to an end the search for fabled cities and the era of
the conquistadors. People still dreamed of finding fabulous wealth, but with the
discovery of silver mines in Potosí (Bolivia) in 1545 and in Zacatecas (Mexico) in
1546, energy that had formerly been spent on conquest turned to establishing mining
towns and to developing the export economy. The mid-sixteenth century marked a
transition from the era of the conquistadors to the era of the bureaucrats, merchants,
and settlers.
The mining of silver jump-started the entire colonial economy and transatlantic
trade. The areas around the principal silver mines lacked sufficient resources to
sustain thousands of laborers and major mining operations (e.g., those regions had
poor agriculture, little water, little wood, and lacked many other necessities), so many
items had to be transported from other regions of New Spain or Peru to the mines.
Tucumán in northwestern Argentina, for example, sent thousands of mules, oxen,
and cattle to Potosí. At its peak in 1681 – 1685, Tucumán sent over 69,000 head of
livestock to Potosí. The mining operations thus spurred economic development
throughout the colonies (e.g., ranches, farms, obrajes) and created internal trade
networks.
Passing through Bolivia - Potosi
Silver also primed the Atlantic trade. Prior to the discovery of large silver deposits, it
was expensive to ship American products to Europe. The export of a few tons of
silver, however, more than paid for the transatlantic voyage, and plenty of cargo
space remained for other products, such as dyes, hides, and sugar, to be shipped
profitably to Europe. Silver then gave colonists the means to purchase European
goods and allowed non-bullion sectors of the export economy to develop.
Silver mining was a highly complex enterprise. It involved advanced technology,
many operations, and expensive supplies, like mercury. Its production also employed
thousands of people. Potosí had nearly 120,000 people in 1580. The labor force
working at the mines consisted of slave labor, forced Indian labor, and free labor.
Black slaves were generally limited to surface work, while Indian labor did most of
the underground work. Initially, the Indian labor was forced. In 1572, for instance,
the mita p
rovided about 13,000 workers a year to Potosí. Gradually, however, paid
Indian workers did almost all of the mining. The work was hard. Miners used picks
to follow the silver veins underground, making shafts and tunnels. Workers then
carried the ore to the surface on their backs, using rough wooden ladders to climb
out of the shaft. The ore was brought to the stamp mills where it was ground to a
powder and mixed with mercury in an amalgamation process to extract more silver
from the ore than through smelting. Through this amalgamation process, the output
of silver increased significantly. The workers then brought the silver to the mint
where the ingots were made into standard sized bars; the crown then took its share,
the royal fifth, and returned the rest of the bars to the owner.
The development of the colonial economy led to growing royal control over the
colonies, as increased trade made it possible for the crown to collect more taxes. The
basic principles that guided Spanish economic policy in the New World, as well as the
economic policies of other European kingdoms, were bullionism and mercantilism.
Bullionism was the theory that a kingdom’s power required a large reserve of bullion
(i.e., gold and silver). Thus, bullionism meant more gold and silver must flow into a
country than out of it. Mercantilism restricted trade between the colony and the
mother country. Mercantilist policy was meant to foster a dependent relationship
between the colony and the mother country; the colony exported its goods (often raw
materials) only to the mother country and imported goods (often finished products)
only from the mother country. This policy was meant to increase taxes and to protect
home industries and merchants from foreign competitors so that only the mother
country benefited from trade with its colonies.
To implement these policies and to prevent contraband, Spain required that all trade
with the colonies be registered in the Casa de Contratación, or House of Trade, in
Seville. It even established a convoy system or flota (fleet) to protect Spanish shipping
from pirate attacks and to ensure that silver was safely shipped back to Europe. The
fleet system proved highly effective as foreign rivals only captured two fleets (1628
and 1656). Spain also only allowed certain colonial ports to participate in the
transatlantic trade (such as Vera Cruz, Cartagena, and Portobelo). Regular fairs
occurred in those ports were colonial merchants would buy European goods and
market their own wares to merchants from Spain. Most importantly, silver
remittances were loaded on board the fleet at these fairs. The fairs consequently
became the focal point for trade and for piratical attacks. The English cakeeper,
Captain Henry Morgan, for instance, captured Portobello in 1668, and he and his
men made off with over 250,000 silver pesos in addition to silks and other luxury
items.
Bullionism and mercantilism often impeded economic development in the Americas.
Peru and New Spain, for instance, had a growing trade that the crown continually
tried to stop because that trade undermined Spain’s trade with the colonies,
particularly the export of Peruvian wines to New Spain, which competed directly
with the export of Spanish wines to New Spain. Moreover, Spain was often unable to
fulfill its part of the mercantilist compact because it either failed to produce the goods
that the colonists wanted or could not regularly provide those goods. Consequently,
colonists (even royal officials) often traded with Northern European smugglers to buy
higher quality goods at lower prices than what they could buy through the fleet
system. The establishment of Northern European colonies in the smaller, uninhabited
Caribbean islands, such as the Dutch colony on Curaçao (1634), made smuggling
easier and more profitable for both buyers and sellers. In fact, some scholars have
speculated that more goods changed hands illicitly than licitly in the
seventeenth-century trade between Europe and Spanish America. Whatever the case
may be, the seventeenth-century contraband trade in the Americas became an
important source of bullion for Northern Europeans, and this source of bullion would
ultimately help them to penetrate Asian markets.
American silver not only spurred industry and trade in the colonies and in Europe, it
also solved Europe’s balance of payment problem with Asia. That is, American silver
made it possible for Europeans to purchase the Asian goods they desired. Silver was
the only commodity that Europeans had that sold profitably in Asia. The export of
silver to Asia caused much consternation among the advocates of bullionism, but
other economic thinkers, such as Thomas Mun in seventeenth-century England,
argued persuasively that to conduct trade in Asia the export of bullion was necessary.
In the end, Europeans did export silver to Asia, and one third of all the silver mined
in the Americas may have ended up in China. American silver then not only
jump-started the colonial economy, but it allowed Europeans to purchase Asian
goods, which was crucial for the creation of a global market and in time allowed
Europe to move from being on the periphery of the world economy to being at its
center.
What the Spanish accomplished in Mexico and Peru was unique. Nowhere else in the
New World did Europeans win such decisive victories over the Native Americans and
gain large empires in so short a time. What factors explain this success? Spaniards
certainly had superior weapons, but firearms and cannons were of limited use. There
simply were too few. When Cortés landed at Vera Cruz, for instance, he had a few
cannons and only thirteen muskets. Most of the fighting was done on foot with sword,
pike, and crossbow. The advantage of the Spanish weaponry also proved short-lived.
Firearms were slow, and gunpowder lost its potency in humid conditions. The few
horses were probably more valuable militarily than as weaponry. No horses existed
in the Americas prior to the Spanish arrival, and the horses frightened the natives.
Horses also gave Spaniards greater mobility and striking power. Pizarro found that
charging horses could easily break enemy ranks and guarantee victory. The
psychological advantage of guns and horses did not last forever: indigenous people
gradually responded, reducing the superiority of Spanish weaponry.
Mexica/Aztec Weapons
Different approaches to war were probably more crucial to victory than superior
weapons. Aztec strategy, for instance, was to capture their enemies, while the
Spaniards fought to kill their opponents. The different approaches allowed the
Spanish to break Aztec battle formations and win victories against larger forces.
Indian auxiliaries were also crucial for victory. Cortés, for instance, had some
200,000 native allies during the siege of Tenochtitlan. With the exception of Pizarro’s
capture of Ataluapha, all subsequent campaigns of conquest relied on massive native
help. In fact, many natives used the Spanish as allies in their internal struggles
against their enemies. Some Mayans were even proud of their part in the Spanish
conquest of the Yucatan, believing that by aiding the Spanish they had won a victory
over their own enemies.
Disease was the silent ally in the conquest. The introduction of Old World diseases
devastated native populations. Small pox weakened Aztec defenses and likely led to
the death of the Inca Emperor, creating the civil disorder that opened the door to
Pizarro. The Spanish did not purposefully spread diseases and did not fully
understand the pathologies that led to such catastrophic epidemics. They wanted to
convert the natives and use them as labor, but the spread of deadly diseases made the
conquest and colonization of the New World easier. The population of central
Mexico, for example, went from about 25 million in 1519 to less than 2 million in
1580, and the population of Peru went from about 10 million in 1530 to about 1.5
million in 1590. The sudden loss of people left large tracts of farmland vacant, which
the Spanish converted to pasture, essentially replacing people with livestock.
Finally, the Spanish skillfully used native symbols of the supernatural to their
advantage. Many historians now believe that natives crafted the stories of the
Spaniards as returning gods after the conquest to rationalize their stunning defeat.
Nonetheless, the Spanish grasped important aspects of Native American culture and
used them to their advantage. For instance, the Spanish understood that in central
Mexico and the Andes conquerors could impose their deities on the conquered and
that Spanish victories could be seen as confirmation of the superiority of the
Christian God over Native American gods.
Only in the Americas were the technological and cultural differences sufficient to
allow the Europeans to carve out large empires in the sixteenth century. The
Portuguese, for example, were unable to gain anything more than footholds in Africa
and Asia at this time. Moreover, only in the highly civilized parts of America (Mexico
and Peru) did the Spanish defeat enemies accustomed to one group conquering
another and then placing themselves at the head of the tribute system and imposing
their gods on local deities. Thus, in a sense, the Spanish were simply another imperial
power. From the point of view of most natives, the Spanish just replaced the Aztecs
or the Incas as masters. On the frontiers, the Spanish found it difficult or impossible
to subdue the less centralized, more nomadic peoples, who quickly assimilated horses
and other Spanish techniques into their own military culture.
The story of the Spanish conquest and colonization of America is normally told from
the Spanish perspective and Native Americans consequently recede into the
background. Yet, throughout the colonial period, Native Americans continually
challenged and contested Spanish rule. They competed with Spaniards for wealth.
Native laborers and entrepreneurs diverted a substantial share of Potosí’s riches into
their own hands. Andean chiefs continued to play a political role. In the 1560s, for
instance, they offered King Philip II 100,000 ducats to let the encomiendas (a lifetime
grant to Indian labor) lapse. As late as the 1680s, large parts of Spanish America
were still controlled by Native Americans or ruled jointly by Native Americans and
Spanish settlers in an uneasy alliance. By incorporating Christian symbols and
practices into native religious understanding, Native Americans retained certain
pre-conquest practices. The Spanish clergy struggled to suppress syncretic practices,
but also recognized the need to tolerate certain pagan practices as harmless folk
superstitions. The encounter between Native Americans and Europeans then was
ongoing, and Native Americans continued to play an active role in their destiny. They
were not pawns in the hands of Spaniards.
Africa and the Slave Trade
The gold of sub-Saharan Africa, not the spices of Asia, was the initial goal of
European expansion in the early fifteenth century. Sub-Saharan West Africa had
been linked to the Eurasian and Mediterranean trade networks since the eighth
century. The Sanhaja Berbers made the first trans-Saharan journey, exchanging
rock salt for gold, and Berbers from Algiers and Tripoli established rival
trans-Saharan trade routes. The trade between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa
led to the emergence of several powerful states in West Africa – Ghana (700 – 1200),
Mali (1200 – 1500), and Songhai (1350 – 1600).
In addition to salt, Berber traders brought Islam to West Africa (see Chapter 8). The
expansion of Islam in sub-Saharan Western Africa was tied to trade. There was no
conquest. In fact, even today, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the words “trader” and
“Muslim” are synonymous. The link between trade and Islam was so tight that some
merchants who had converted to Islam reverted to their former pagan cults on
returning to a peasant life.
The spread of Islam also brought literacy. Schools and universities were established
to teach the Koran – the most famous being the University of Sankore in Timbuktu in
present-day Mali. It had a large and valuable collection of manuscripts in several
languages, and scholars traveled long distances to study there. The schools also
trained skilled bureaucrats for the West African empires, and written Arabic helped
those bureaucrats to keep imperial records. The intellectual tradition survived the
collapse of the great West African empires. A nineteenth-century European was
surprised “to find in this out of the way place (Timbuktu) a man not only versed in
all the branches of Arabic literature, but who had even read, nay, possessed a
manuscript of those portions of Aristotle and Plato which had been translated into
Arabic.” Families continue to possess these valuable manuscripts to the present day,
and twenty-first century people are just as surprised as their nineteenth-century
predecessor to learn of the treasure trove of written records of the history of black
Africa in the legendary city of Timbuktu.
Islam was crucial for creating coherent and cohesive empires of different ethnic and
religious groups in West Africa, but Islam remained the religion of the ruling elite
and was never fully embraced by the subject people. Consequently, syncretism was
widespread in sub-Saharan West Africa. In the early fourteenth century, the great
traveler, Ibn Battuta, described the mixing of Islamic and animist customs in Mali.
Such syncretism led some Arabs to doubt the sincerity of West African Muslims. The
relationship between West Africa and the broader Muslim world would remain
problematic until well into the twentieth century.
Mali (1200 – 1500) was the principle empire in West Africa in the middle ages. It
gained independence with the fall of Ghana, and Mari Diata, or Sundiata “The Lion
Prince,” began Mali’s expansion between 1230 – 1234. By the fourteenth century,
Mali was a powerful empire. Its power came from controlling the trans-Saharan gold
trade and a highly productive agrarian sector. The most renowned ruler of Mali was
Mansa (i.e., Emperor) Musa (1307 – 1337), who made the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca
in 1324. Musa went in regal style. His entourage supposedly totaled more than 70,000
people, including a retinue of 500 slaves, each carrying a gold staff. He also brought
24,000 pounds of gold to distribute as alms and gifts. He gave so much gold to the
poor of Cairo that gold lost a fifth of its value in Egypt. Musa’s pilgrimage
demonstrates the incredible wealth of West Africa, and stories of this wealth quickly
spread throughout Europe. In 1375, Spanish mapmakers in Catalonia produced an
Atlas in which the Mali Empire was identified by a dignified black king holding a
large nugget of gold. The map was geographically inaccurate, but the prospects of
gold south of the Sahara Desert attracted European explorers. Mali’s decline began
in the mid-fourteenth century, but a weakened state continued to exist into the
sixteenth century.
7 The Kingdom of Mali: Built on Gold
Songhai (1350 – 1600) was the last and the largest of the West African empires. Like
previous empires, Songhai relied heavily on the trans-Saharan trade networks for its
wealth and power. By 1465, Sunni Ali Ber (1462 – 1492) had conquered Timbuktu
and Djenne – the two principal termini for the trans-Saharan trade – and much of
the former Mali Empire. Yet, after Fernão Gomes sailed into the Gulf of Guinea
(1471), the trade patterns in Western Africa gradually shifted from the
trans-Saharan caravan routes to the West African ports. In time, this shift negatively
affected the Songhai Empire.
Muhammad Turé, better known as Askia the Great, (1493 – 1528) usurped the
throne in 1493 and under him the empire reached its zenith. According to one
contemporary, “He was obeyed with as much docility on the farther limits of the
empire as he was in his own palace, and there reigned everywhere great plenty and
absolute peace.” He reformed the army, improved the banking and credit systems,
and supported intellectual centers. Leo Africanus, a sixteenth-century visitor to
Timbuktu, noted, “In Timbuktu, there are numerous judges, doctors and clerics, all
receiving good salaries from the king. He pays great respect to men of learning.
There is a big demand for books in manuscript, imported from Barbary. More profit
is made from the book trade than from any other line of business.” Upon Askia’s
death, however, factional struggles among his successors weakened the empire, and it
fell to a Moroccan army in 1591. The region soon disintegrated into a number of
small states. For nearly two centuries after the Moroccan invasion, no strong
indigenous Muslim state emerged in West Africa. Islam remained the religion of the
towns and traders, but most of the people living in the territories of the former Mali
and Songhai Empires reverted to pagan religions. By the time strong Islamic states
such as the Sokoto Caliphate (1804 – 1903) reemerged in West Africa in the
nineteenth century, it was too late to hold back British and French incursions.
The coastal regions of sub-Saharan West Africa were more isolated than the rest of
Africa. The people there had no experience with non-blacks prior to the Europeans’
arrival. A member of the first Portuguese crew to visit the Senegal River in 1455
reported, “They marveled no less at my clothing than at my white skin.” These
Africans were perplexed by the white Europeans – were they sorcerers or evil spirits?
– but they were also curious about the items that the Europeans offered them. For
Africans, the initial encounter was one of fear and curiosity. In time, Africans along
the coast became accustomed to Europeans and traded with them, but Africans from
the interior were still afraid of the “evil spirits” well into the eighteenth century.
Coastal states, such as Benin, Oyo, and Kongo, were strong enough to resist
European domination. They had effective armies, and their war canoes could harass
European ships and repel naval attacks. Moreover, the climate and prevalence of
diseases that the Europeans lacked immunity made the region inhospitable to
European settlers. In the late fifteenth century, King João acknowledged these facts
by negotiating commercial treaties with African countries. Starting with the
Portuguese, Europeans built trading posts, such as Elmina, along the African coast
with the permission of the local ruler and in accordance with local restrictions. That
is, African rulers dictated the terms of trade, and Europeans often paid them rent for
the right to maintain trading posts in their kingdoms. Despite restrictions, these
trading posts made it easier for European merchants to purchase goods from the
African interior that might otherwise have been inaccessible to them.
Elmina Castle
The Portuguese made their most significant inroads in the Kingdom of Kongo. Diogo
Cão reached Kongo in 1483. He left four missionaries there and took four Kongolese
back to Lisbon to become translators. Kongo was a great power. It had a population
of 2.5 million people, many towns, and a developed bureaucracy and tax system. The
kingdom, however, faced internal rebellion and external threats, and the Portuguese
seemed to promise both spiritual and military benefits to the ruling elites. In 1491, for
example, Portuguese auxiliaries marching under a cross helped the manikongo (i.e.,
King) Nzinga Nkuwu put down a rebellion. After the battle, seeing a potential new
source of divine aid, the manikongo explored Christianity. On Christmas Day 1491,
the manikongo and his heir, Nzinga Mbemba, later known as Afonso I (1506 – 1543),
were baptized. Nzinga Nkuwu soon abandoned Christianity, but Afonso did not. On
becoming manikongo, Afonso made Christianity the state religion and renamed the
capital São Salvador. Afonso invited missionaries to the kingdom and sent nobles to
Portugal for instruction. His son, Henry, was even consecrated a bishop in 1520.
From Afonso’s reign on, Kongo was nominally a Christian kingdom. Traditional
religion, however, did not disappear. Many people continued to follow traditional
practices, and converts often syncretized traditional and Catholic practices, most
notably in regard to polygamy. Religious differences between traditionalists and
Catholics fueled factional struggles among the Kongolese elite, and these struggles
threatened to undermine the kingdom on several occasions.
The Kongolese alliance with Portugal and interaction with other Europeans had a
destructive side. Portuguese craftsmen, military auxiliaries, missionaries, and goods
had to be paid for, and the Kongolese lacked sufficient commodities to export. The
only way to meet their balance of payments was through the sale of slaves. A series of
letters from King Afonso to the king of Portugal indicates that the slave trade
strained relations. In the mid-1520s, Afonso complained that Kongolese were
kidnapping one another (including nobles) to pay for European goods and that
Portuguese traders were encouraging this through unlawful trade practices. This was
unacceptable to Afonso, who asked the king of Portugal to stop further trade with his
kingdom. Despite such problems, Afonso maintained cordial relations with
Europeans because he needed European missionaries and goods to retain power. In
1540, he was also more sanguine about the slave trade. His wars with neighbors
provided many foreign prisoners to be sold abroad, which brought the kidnapping
within Kongo to an end; and when a neighboring kingdom sold him slaves from
further inland at a low price, it became profitable for Kongo to resell those slaves to
the Portuguese.
African slavery Fall of the Kongo
Regional wars and civil conflict produced a large number of slaves for export,
making it possible for Kongo to pay for its imports, but it also created a vicious cycle
as the Kongolese elite needed a constant supply of war captives to purchase European
goods to meet their consumer needs and to pay European missionaries and
auxiliaries to maintain their political power. Trade with Europeans then increased
the wealth of the Kongolese elites and the prestige of Kongo’s rulers, but maintaining
that trade so that it benefited the Kongolese people was a difficult task.
Wars on foreigners to acquire slaves led to retaliation, and these external threats to
the kingdom forced Kongo to solidify its alliance with Portugal. Portuguese
mercenaries, for example, helped the Kongolese to fend off conquest during the Jaga
Wars (1568 – 1569). After the wars, most of the Portuguese settled in Africa and
founded the city of Luanda, the first major European settlement in sub-Saharan
Africa, in 1575. Luanda itself only survived an attack in 1579 thanks to the
intervention of a Kongolese army on behalf of the Portuguese. This illustrates the
existence of reciprocity between Kongo and Portugal. In time, Luanda became the
major departure point for slaves from the region to America. Kongo consequently
became the African state most affected by the arrival of the Europeans, and the state
that was most involved in the export of slaves. It might be easy to conclude that
Kongo was a victim of European incursions, but Kongo’s rulers had their own
reasons for entering into close relations with Europeans. At various points, the
Portuguese alliance saved the kingdom, but in the long run the slave trade created
persistent turmoil in the region. In the early eighteenth century, for instance, the
kingdom almost collapsed during a civil war between King Pedro IV and Dona
Beatrice Kimpa Vita, who claimed to be Saint Anthony. Dona Beatrice led a large
peasant army seeking to establish a millenarian kingdom and end the slave trade.
Pedro finally defeated Dona Beatrice and had her executed in 1706, but the kingdom
never regained its former glory after this date.
The strength of African states meant that trade between Africans and Europeans was
a partnership. Local rulers sanctioned it, and then middlemen made it work. Many
local Africans acted as brokers and interpreters, and all trade with the interior
depended on them. Portuguese, and later other European agents, slowly established
themselves along the African coast, having children with local women and learning
African languages. These European middlemen and their descendents helped to
connect the Atlantic trade with African trade networks. They also helped to create a
new hybrid culture along the African coast among African and European
middlemen. The use of “pidgin” languages, usually simplified European languages,
was common. Most pidgin languages were a variation of Portuguese, but by the
eighteenth century a version of almost all Western European languages could be
found spoken along the African coast, even German. Since Europeans were highly
susceptible to African diseases, their presence along the African coast was always
small. Few could survive in tropical Africa, and approximately half died within a
year of their arrival from local diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever. Only with
the discovery of vaccines in the nineteenth century was a large European presence in
sub-Saharan Africa possible. Prior to vaccines, Europeans had no choice but to be on
the margins of the African trade and work with native rulers.
Trade with Africa was also more varied and complex than typically thought. African
commerce has often been depicted as a triangular trade. European traders brought
salt, cloth, firearms, metal, beads, and rum to Africa for slaves. Slaves were
exchanged in America for plantation products, such as sugar, molasses, and tobacco,
which were then brought back to Europe in the hold of the slave ships. Although such
voyages took place, slaves did not become the most valuable African export until the
late seventeenth century. Until then, most European goods were exchanged for gold.
Even after slaves became the principal export from West Africa, it varied from
region to region. The area between the Benin coast and the Zaire or Congo River, for
instance, sold slaves and little else for a long period of time. In other regions, the
exchange was more diversified. Slaves made up three-quarters of the exports from
areas between Gambia and the Gold Coast in the eighteenth century, but a quarter of
exports consisted of pepper, ivory, and timber. In other places, non-slave exports
remained more important. For instance, cotton cloth was the main export from the
kingdom of Benin until the late eighteenth century. Africans also did not sell slaves
cheaply, and they effectively played the different Europeans off each other to get
higher prices for their “goods.” So the idea that Europeans bought slaves for trinkets
of no real value is inaccurate. In fact, European vessels destined for African ports
regularly carried cargos of greater value than vessels sailing to non-African ports.
The growing demand for slaves in the eighteenth century also strengthened the
Africans’ trading position, and they sold slaves for three to four times more in 1800
than in 1700.
Slave Trade
Slavery had existed in Africa since ancient times. The nature of servility varied from
region to region. In Islamic Africa, the institution of slavery was the most developed,
and there were laws to protect slaves. Muslims also used slaves in the military and
government, and those slaves could obtain high office. In fact, Sakura, a court slave,
governed the Mali Empire from 1298 – 1308. A majority of slaves were female
household slaves who worked as servants, agricultural laborers, or concubines. Some
women were even adopted by the families that owned them. On the whole, African
slavery appears to have been less permanent and more flexible than American
slavery. Oppressive forms of slavery, however, did exist in Africa. Mining gold and
producing export crops was grueling work and differed little from the types of work
slaves did in the Americas.
Most slaves were acquired through warfare. To prevent revolt or flight, war captives
were commonly sold in markets far from their home country. This practice led to the
development of extensive slave trade networks. In the middle ages, most slaves went
to markets in North Africa and the Arab world. On his return from Mali in the early
fourteenth century, for example, Ibn Battuta joined a caravan bringing 600 female
slaves north. In its nearly 1,000 years of active trade, the Arab slave trade removed
roughly 10 million Africans from their homeland. The slave trade consequently was
an important part of the economy in many parts of Africa. Although much of the
trade was directed inland to the trans-Saharan caravan routes, Europeans were able
to tap into existing slave networks and gradually shift that trade to coastal ports.
With the development of American plantations worked by slave labor, European
demand for slaves sky-rocketed and radically changed the direction of the slave
trade. After 1650, most slaves went into the transatlantic trade instead of the slave
trade to North Africa and the Arab world.
The creation of a transatlantic slave trade did not end the trade within Africa itself.
Yet, the internal African trade and the transatlantic trade normally did not compete.
Europeans preferred male slaves for plantations, while Africans preferred female
slaves for households. So the internal markets valued females more highly, while the
external markets valued males more highly. In the eighteenth century, this led to
serious distortions in population ratios. In parts of West Africa there were 100 adult
females for every 70 adult males. This gender gap led to population decline in those
regions. The distortions in population ratios also created a shortage of males at
precisely the point in time when European demand for male slaves was increasing. In
the eighteenth century, then, the supply and demand equation for male slaves
favored African rulers and slave traders, giving them more negotiating power in the
transatlantic trade with Europeans. The profitability of the slave trade also led to
many kidnappings of individuals. In his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of
Olaudah Equiano (1789), Olaudah Equiano describes how he and his sister were
kidnapped from their village and eventually separated, and how he was sold to
various Africans before entering the transatlantic slave trade.
Transatlantic Slavery Documentary
The Atlantic slave trade was very different from traditional African slavery and the
Arab slave trade. Large numbers of healthy men, women, and children – between 11
and 12 million – were transported to distant lands. Approximately 9 – 10 million of
them survived the crossing. So roughly 15 – 20% died during the “Middle Passage.”
An unknown number of people (perhaps four million) also died from the local
African conflicts that the trade provoked. A majority of the slaves brought to the
Americas came from West Africa between Senegal and Kongo. The slave trade rose
rapidly from roughly 600,000 in the sixteenth century to two million in the
seventeenth century, five million in the eighteenth century, and three million in the
nineteenth century. More slaves went to Brazil than to any other destination.
The staggering number of people forcibly removed from Africa has led to scholarly
debates on the role of the slave trade in undermining African polities and economies.
Earlier scholarship suggested that the slave trade irreversibly harmed Africa and led
to nineteenth-century colonization. Recent scholarship, however, has called into
question those assumptions. It notes that the value of foreign trade was too small a
percentage of the overall African GDP for the slave trade and the introduction of
foreign goods to undermine local industry and economies. While the slave trade did
increase warfare and raiding, thereby creating instability and removing essential
workers from the local economy, not all African societies were transformed into
slave-export economies. Demographic studies also indicate that the overall population
of sub-Saharan Africa continued to grow throughout this time. The removal of so
many people, possibly 100,000 a year at the peak of the transatlantic slave trade in
the 1780s, did not significantly lower population growth. In fact, the introduction of
American staples, like manioc and corn, into the African diet increased the rate of
population growth in some regions. More research is necessary to ascertain the
impact of the slave trade on Africa, but recent scholarship suggests a more qualified
assessment than earlier thought.
The transatlantic slave trade made a significant mark on the demography of the
Americas. In fact, more blacks crossed the Atlantic than whites prior to the
nineteenth century, with blacks accounting for more than 60% of all migrants. By
1800, a community of roughly five million Africans lived in the New World, the
African Diaspora. It was long assumed that the horror of the Middle Passage so
traumatized Africans that they were essentially blank slates on arrival. Now it is clear
that Africans found ways to maintain their culture and create a new culture in the
Americas. Moreover, New World society was not completely foreign to Africans.
Many slaves brought to America from Kongo, for instance, were Christians or
familiar with Christianity. Their exposure to Western religion and culture made it
easier for these individuals to adapt and develop slave communities in the Americas.
The nature of slavery also changed in the Americas, where it became a more
permanent condition with one race enslaving another race. The status of slaves was
also lower in the Americas, and there were fewer legal protections for slaves. More
destructive was the development of a new understanding of slavery, which took on a
racial component, and blackness began to mean slavery and inferiority in the New
World. That is, some Europeans came to believe that the black African was not fully
human, so slavery was a desirable condition for him. At the same time that this race
based understanding of slavery emerged, abolitionists, such as William Wilberforce,
began to condemn the cruelty of the slave trade and of the conditions of slavery,
emphasizing the spiritual equality of mankind, which derived from their Christian
God.
The abolitionists eventually prevailed. Britain and the U.S.A. both outlawed the slave
trade in 1807 and 1808 respectively. Most other European states followed by 1815.
Britain then outlawed slavery in all its territories in 1833. Slavery, however, was not
abolished in the U.S.A. until 1863, and not in Brazil until 1888. The continuing
existence of slavery in the Americas in the nineteenth century meant that those
traffickers who managed to elude the British patrols sent to stamp out the trade
could make hefty profits. Consequently, many Africans continued to procure slaves
for European slave traffickers, and the last known transatlantic slaver made the
crossing to Cuba in 1867. Slavery within Africa continued until the late nineteenth
century, and more people were enslaved within Africa at that point than in any time
previously. In fact, the Berlin Conference (1884 – 1885) justified colonization in part
to bring slavery to an end.
Simplistic interpretations of African victimization at the hands of Europeans prevent
a clear understanding of this complex exchange and portray Africans as naïve and
unable to understand the nature of international trade. African states were too
powerful not to benefit from the Atlantic exchange; and European traders
complained about the exorbitant prices that they paid for slaves and other
commodities. In the long run, Europe might have profited more from the exchange,
but in the short run, the terms of trade were probably more equal financially among
the European and African slave traders.
European Influence in Asia
In 1500, most states around the Indian Ocean were small principalities or city-states.
There were also three expanding Islamic empires – Ottoman, Safavid, and Mogul (see
Chapter 14). Although it was politically fragmented, the Indian Ocean basin was
economically united. There was lively trade between the various ports in the region.
Trade networks, often based on cultural affinity (mainly Islam), facilitated
long-distance trade between different ethnic and linguistic groups. The Indian Ocean
trade networks extended to China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, creating the largest
and richest economic zone in the world.
The prevailing winds and currents dictated the direction and timing of intra-Asian
trade, making it difficult for a single ship to travel from Arabia to China in a timely
manner. Therefore, merchants developed transfer points or entrepôts to link
independent shippers from Arabia to China and thereby facilitate the efficient
transfer of goods between regions. For instance, different ships would complete
different legs of the Arabia to China voyage: one ship would sail from Hormuz to
Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), another from Ceylon to Malacca, and another from
Malacca to China. The use of transfer points allowed for more goods to be
transported over longer distances in a shorter period of time.
This type of trade, however, required letters of credit, shared understandings of basic
commercial practices, and consistent legal enforcement of contracts. Islam facilitated
this, and by 1300 most merchants and ruling elites in the Indian Ocean basin were
Muslims. Hindu tradition and Neo-Confucian ideas also facilitated intra-Asian trade;
but the role of Islam, especially in the ports between Africa and Indonesia, was
crucial and, just like in West Africa, the spread of Islam was linked to trade.
In 1498, then, the Indian Ocean basin was interconnected with sophisticated
commerce and maritime trade networks. This system was too resilient to collapse
with the arrival of a few Portuguese warships, and it endured until the 1700s. The
arrival of the Portuguese, however, led to a major political shift in the Western
Indian Ocean basin. The Mameluk Empire (1260 – 1517) had been the most
important power in the Indian Ocean. In 1507, the Portuguese destroyed the
Mameluk fleet and went on to occupy Hormuz (1508) at the entrance of the Persian
Gulf. The Mameluk emperor turned to the Ottomans for help to rebuild his fleet, and
in 1513 a Mameluk-Ottoman force repulsed the Portuguese attack on Aden and
prevented Portugal from gaining control of the Red Sea. Mameluk dependence on the
Ottomans, however, set the stage for Ottoman Sultan Selim’s conquest of the
Mameluk Empire in 1516 – 1517.
The Ottomans now became an Indian Ocean power, and they maintained 40 to 50
warships in the Indian Ocean in the 1530s and 1540s. Turkish merchants also vied
with the Portuguese for control of the Asian-Middle East trade. Turkish influence
was not limited to the Arabian Sea. In 1568, a Turkish fleet helped the Muslim state
of Acheh in northern Sumatra repel a Portuguese attack. The Turks were able to
keep enough trade routes free of Portuguese control so that by the 1530s the flow of
Asian goods to the Levant, present-day Middle East, had returned to its earlier levels.
The result was to weaken the Portuguese monopoly and to reduce Portuguese profits
from the Asian trade.
The other major Asian states – Safavid and Mogul – also helped to keep open
alternative trade routes to Europe and to prevent Portugal from gaining complete
control over the Asian-European trade. By the mid-sixteenth century, trade was
regularly being carried out between the Safavid Empire and Russia. Some English
merchants tapped into this trade, creating the Muscovy Company (1555), and
brought a small quantity of Asian goods to England via that route.
Although the Portuguese presence in Asia probably never exceeded 15,000 men and a
few dozen warships, they quickly grasped the structure of the intra-Asian trade
networks and sought to monopolize that trade by controlling its choke points. As
already discussed, Governor-General Albuquerque implemented this policy in the
early sixteenth century. The Portuguese were able to create a maritime empire
because most Indian Ocean states were small city-states. A Portuguese fleet of 8 to 10
heavily armed ships was highly effective against such city-states, which had few
defenses from sea borne artillery barrages. The Portuguese also used their artillery
aggressively: Da Gama bombarded at least two African towns in 1498. Portuguese
ships were also slightly better built than Indian Ocean vessels. Finally, rivalries
between the various city-states and principalities prevented them from working
together against the Portuguese threat. The Portuguese also tried to impose a
licensing system on merchant ships whereby Asian merchants needed to purchase
licenses from the Portuguese to sail in the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese Empire was
always stretched thin, and they were never able to impose complete control on Asian
commerce, but their initial use of force allowed them to gain a lasting foothold in the
Asian trade.
Force was not an option with China and Japan, so the Portuguese negotiated formal
trading agreements with those countries. In 1542, Portuguese merchants first arrived
in Japan. Missionaries were never far behind Portuguese merchants in Asia. Trade
and evangelization went hand in hand for both the Portuguese and the Spaniards.
Probably the most famous mission in Asia was that led by St. Francis Xavier, S.J.,
(1506 – 1552) to Japan in 1549. Xavier and his colleagues spent two years in Japan
translating the Catholic catechism into Japanese, establishing churches, and
baptizing people. The Japanese Catholic church established by Xavier remained
vibrant until the persecutions of the early seventeenth century. In 1555, the
Portuguese leased Macao from China. Once again, Jesuit missionaries followed the
trade routes. The most famous Jesuit to go to China was probably Matteo Ricci (1552
– 1610), whose knowledge of mathematics and astronomy impressed Chinese officials
and won him a place at court. However, Ricci and future Jesuits were less successful
at winning converts. The colony of Macao survived until 1999. In both Japan and
China, the Portuguese traded with the rulers’ consent.
Matteo Ricci
The arrival of the Dutch and the English in the early seventeenth century changed
the dynamics in the Indian Ocean. Portugal was no longer the only European power
plying Asian waters, and it would shortly be eclipsed by its rivals. From the Asian
perspective, the arrival of the Dutch and British simply meant more Europeans to
play off each other. Most local Asian elites were still more interested in their own
affairs than the activities of the Europeans, provided that those activities did not
impinge on their policies. In turn, the Europeans generally tried to accommodate
those rulers, because the Asian trade was more important to them than the European
trade was to Asian potentates.
The English East India Company (EIC) was formed in 1600. It was a joint stock
company, which sold shares to investors to raise money. Joint stock companies
limited risks because investors could only lose their original investment. Nonetheless,
the EIC was initially under-funded and could maintain only a small trading presence
in Asia, typically resident agents in an Asian port, especially in India. By the late
seventeenth century, the EIC was reorganized and worked on a larger scale. Silver
earned by selling American products – sugar and tobacco – in Europe was used to
buy Indian goods. By this time, the English wanted cotton textiles from India. These
were the rage in Britain and West Africa, where Indian cotton textiles were
exchanged for slaves, and the demand was so great that a regional economy
developed in India to produce textiles for export to Europe and Africa. This
development marked a major shift within the Indian Ocean regional economy.
Previously, the Europeans bought goods that were already circulating within that
economy, and European purchases were not essential for the economy to operate.
Now, a segment of that economy was dependent on exports to Europe for its
livelihood. Trade with Europe was becoming indispensable to some Asian producers.
At the same time, the EIC encouraged the development of non-company ships to
transport goods within Asia. The result was that the English dominated some parts of
the intra-Asian trade by 1700.
The EIC’s position had improved after a century of trading, but it was still reliant on
the good will of the Mogul Emperor to prosper. The English crackdown on piracy in
the 1690s was in response to Mogul threats to close its ports to the EIC after English
pirates, including the infamous Captain William Kidd, captured the Indian vessels
Gunj-i-Suwaee (1695) and Quedah Merchant (1698). The threatened embargo would
cripple the English East India Company, and the English Parliament responded to
pressure from Mogul India and the EIC by passing a new act to suppress piracy in
1700. Securing trade and addressing piracy then pushed the English government and
other European governments to clarify legal statutes and to establish a legal system
encompassing the globe. This was a slow process, but it culminated in the
development of international law.
The Dutch East India Company was formed in 1602. The Dutch company was well
financed and sent a large well-armed fleet to Asia. Instead of wresting the choke
points from Portugal, the Dutch went straight to the source of spice production,
establishing a factory in 1620 at Batavia (Jakarta) on the island of Java. In time, the
Dutch established plantations in Indonesia and made the production of spices there
dependent on European demand. The Dutch gradually captured from the Portuguese
Malacca (1641), Sri Lanka (1658), and most notably the exclusive trade concession
with Japan (circa 1650). Like the English, the Dutch gradually replaced local
shippers in Indonesia by 1700. The result was that gradually Asian ship owners and
merchants were marginalized in the regional trade. Dutch and other European
merchants and captains went from being marginal players to main players in the
transport of goods within Asia.
The Dutch Trade with Asia
The most significant shift in Asia took place in eighteenth-century India. The Mogul
Empire was established in 1524, and it managed to limit Europeans to a few scattered
coastal regions of the subcontinent until the mid-eighteenth century. With the
weakening of the Mogul Empire after 1707, however, Muslim warlords and
governors began to declare their independence and created their own states. Hindus
also regained independence in the north-central Deccan peninsula where the
Marathas Confederacy established itself after 1740. These divisions allowed
Europeans, especially the British and the French, to become more active in Indian
affairs in the eighteenth century.
At first, neither the British nor the French had territorial aspirations in India. Each
simply sought commercial expansion. To safeguard trading interests, agents of the
French and English East India Companies in India quickly became enmeshed in the
political struggles between the new states emerging out of the Mogul Empire.
Through their military and commercial aid to the new rulers, the European agents
built up a clientele of native allies. In time, this led to a French-British rivalry for
control of India, and this rivalry turned violent in 1744 and again during the Seven
Years’ War (1756 – 1763). The Indian phase of the Seven Years’ War saw the British
win a resounding victory over the French and their Indian allies at the Battle of
Plassey (1757). This victory destroyed French power in India and gave Britain direct
administrative control over the important Indian region of Bengal. The stage was
now set for the creation of the British Raj in nineteenth-century India and for the
emergence of European economic and political supremacy in nineteenth-century
Asia.
Conclusion
The opening of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans by the Spanish and
Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries changed the history of the world.
In 1500, the world still consisted of regions with their own separate histories. By
1800, the world was more interconnected than ever before, and we can begin to
discern a unified narrative of world history. At the heart of this narrative is the
creation of a global market incorporating Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
This chapter has introduced the main themes of how the world moved from being
largely separate regions connected by some trade networks to a more unified global
market.
The history of this process has long been told from a European perspective, primarily
because Europeans initiated the transoceanic expansion that led to the global
marketplace. Yet, throughout the entire period under review, Europeans were still
marginal players in the world economy. Asians dominated the world economy until
at least 1800 when roughly 80% of the world’s economic production originated in
Asia. Nonetheless, it was Europeans who were building the worldwide trade networks
that ultimately led to their preeminence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Without the cooperation and partnership of Africans, Asians, and Native Americans,
however, Europeans would have been far less successful at establishing those
networks and creating an interconnected world in the early modern period. Except
for in the Americas, Europeans were unable to carve out large land based empires
and normally traded under terms set by local Asian and African elites. Even in the
Americas, native peoples managed to adapt to the changing circumstances and
maintained a level of agency in the economic and social development of colonial
Spanish America that is easily overlooked in European accounts of colonization. This
chapter has hinted at the vibrancy of local cultures and the need of Europeans to
treat Asians, Africans, and Native Americans as partners in the development of new
marketplaces.
A more nuanced view of the encounter between Europeans and non-Europeans does
not negate the dynamism of early modern Europe. It was, after all, Europeans who
undertook transoceanic expansion. Their desire for luxury goods prompted small
groups of Europeans with limited resources to venture far from home and to
establish footholds across the globe. Their tactics were often brutal and
unscrupulous; for example, the kidnapping of Atahualpa in Peru. Yet, it was these
bold adventurers who found the major sea-lanes that connected the world and carved
out large parts of the Americas for European settlement. The inability of European
governments to finance expansion completely meant much of the costs of expansion
were borne by private individuals. In time, transoceanic expansion became too
expensive for individual investors, and Europeans developed joint stock companies to
raise capital and limit risk. These forerunners of modern corporations allowed
Europeans to create networks of credit that spanned the globe and made it possible
for European merchants to engage in trade at unprecedented levels.
By 1700, Europeans had achieved a global network of trade and finance. At the heart
of this network was the Atlantic economy. The Atlantic economy was small compared
to the Asian economy, but it was a dynamic economy. New consumer demand for
sugar and other products drove this economy along, creating more trade between
Africa, America, and Europe. In the Americas, European colonies produced raw
materials to exchange with the mother countries for finished goods and thereby
created a dependent economic position that favored metropolitan Europeans. Africa
was never fully integrated into this Atlantic economy, but there was enough
integration of African markets for the Europeans to obtain a steady supply of slaves
for their New World plantations that produced sugar and other export crops. Of
course, the most important American export throughout the entire early modern
period was silver. Without the influx of New World silver, Europeans would have
had little to trade with Asians. For instance, between 1660 and 1720, bullion
constituted 87 percent of the Dutch East India Company’s exports to Asia. American
silver allowed Europeans, who had been marginal players in the world economy with
a perpetual trade deficit, to participate in the Asian trade. The global network of
trade and finance that resulted from transoceanic expansion allowed Europeans to
gain a dominant position politically and economically in the world in the nineteenth
century.
Transoceanic expansion also led to the exchange of goods and ideas at a level never
before seen. The most influential was the exchange of food, animals, and diseases.
Historians have called this exchange, the “Columbian Exchange,” because it began
with Columbus’ arrival in the New World. In the Americas and Pacific Islands,
exploration, conquest, and colonization brought Old World diseases, such as
smallpox, to people who were not immune to them. In the Caribbean, for instance,
the indigenous population disappeared in less than fifty years. Millions of people died
from the spread of Old World diseases. Demographic estimates for the total number
of people who may have died from Old World diseases in the Americas and Pacific
Islands between 1500 and 1800 are around one hundred million people. The
demographic collapse in the Americas also helped to make European colonization
possible and led to the creation of a new population and culture combining
Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans.
The Columbian Exchange
The exchange of animals and vegetables changed the world in a positive way too. The
new foods from the Americas (e.g., potatoes, corn, and turkeys) made possible the
eighteenth-century “population explosions'' in Europe, Africa, and Asia. In China,
for instance, New World crops, which could survive harsher climates, doubled the
amount of land under cultivation and led to the tripling of the population. The effects
of the Columbian Exchange can still be seen today – 37 percent of Chinese food
consists of vegetables indigenous to the Americas.
This exchange is not just historical. The processes begun in the early modern period
continue to the present day. For example, plants, animals, and diseases continue to
spread throughout the world with both positive and negative results. The intentional
introduction of soybeans in North America in the twentieth century has dramatically
increased food supplies, while the unintentional arrival of Chinese beetles in New
York City on container ships in the late twentieth century has led to the deadly
infestatio...