StudySpace: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 2 e.

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1. Increasing Economic Linkages and Social and Political Effects
1. Transoceanic trade mainly affected mercantile groups
2. The deepening of connections across different economic regions increasingly challenged rulers and altered the lives of common people
3. Economic integration weakened some rulers while strengthening others
2. Extracting Wealth: Mercantilism
1. The lucrative mining ventures in Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World led other European powers to seek similar opportunities in the seventeenth century
2. These latecomers did not discover mineral wealth but instead exploited the fertile land to raise cash crops such as sugarcane, tobacco, indigo, and rice, as well as negotiating with Indians to establish a profitable fur trade
1. Sugar transformed the European diet
2. Public tooth pulling became a popular entertainment
3. These adventures in the Americas led Europeans to create a new economic philosophy-"mercantilism."
1. This doctrine presumed the world's wealth was fixed and that one country's wealth came at another's expense
2. It assumed that colonies existed to enrich the motherland
3. Colonies existed to generate wealth for the motherland and were forbidden to trade with the motherland's competitors
4. New colonies in the Americas
1. Holland's trading colonies
1. In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company founded a colony centered on the Hudson River in North America that initiated a thriving fur trade with the Iroquois Indian Confederation
2. In 1621, Dutch merchants had formed the Dutch West India Company to promote commerce in the Atlantic Ocean and promote Dutch participation in the slave trade
3. Although the Dutch never established an elaborate colonial presence in the Americas, they were able to profit from an extensive carrying trade across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century
1. The Dutch were often referred to as "universal carriers"
2. France's fur-trading empire
1. French adventurers explored the St. Lawrence River valley and the Great Lakes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
2. In the early seventeenth century, Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of New France in the St. Lawrence River valley
1. With relatively few settlers, the French established a thriving fur trade with Native Americans
2. This "colonization without conquest" stretched France's empire deep into North America
3. England's landed empire
1. Unlike the French, England's colonists established expansive agrarian settlements along the Atlantic seaboard of North America
1. Relations with Indians were thus more confrontational
2. Protestant refugees colonized New England
1. They fought brutal wars with Indians in the 1630s and 1670s
3. Farther south, the Virginia Company fostered the growth of a tobacco colony in the Chesapeake.
1. English settlers battled Indians for most of the century
4. By 1700, 250,000 European settlers lived in English mainland North American colonies along with 150,000 African slaves; three quarters lived in the Caribbean Islands
4. The plantation complex in the Caribbean
1. In the seventeenth century, the Portuguese sugarcane plantation model was extended into the English and French possessions in the Caribbean
2. Because of the decimation of the Indian population in the previous century, African slaves made up the vast majority of the population on these islands
3. Sugar was a "killing" crop
1. It flourished in hot and humid climates that fostered diseases to which even Africans had no natural immunities
2. European plantation owners rarely lived on their plantations, leaving managers to run them
1. These managers tended to work slaves to death
2. Sugar production included planting, harvesting, and manufacturing
3. Rarely were slaves afforded proper housing and nutrition
4. The average life expectancy for a slave who survived the Atlantic passage was three years
3. Slaves resisted as they could
1. There were a few incidents of armed insurrection
2. A more common form of resistance was flight
3. Slaves founded sanctuary "maroon" communities in the highlands
4. The most common form of resistance was subterfuge in daily work
5. No one colonial power dominated the Caribbean plantation complex
6. The wealthiest colony was the French Saint Domingue
5. The Atlantic slave trade and Africa
1. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, far more Africans than Europeans migrated to the Americas
2. Capturing and shipping slaves
1. Europeans grafted onto an existing system
2. Roughly 12 million slaves were shipped to Atlantic ports from the 1440s to 1867
3. The capture and transportation of slaves to the African coastal entrepots were conducted by African commercial networks
1. In the Bight of Biafra, the tradition of "pawnship" or the use of human "pawns" to secure European commodities in advance of the delivery of slaves was used by European merchants
1. A secret male society called "Ekpe" enforced payments of promised slave deliveries.
2. Slaves were treated horribly
2. Most died before ever leaving Africa
1. They were stuck for long periods in filthy holding camps
2. They were held in wretched conditions on slave vessels for extended periods of time
3. Roughly 20 percent of all slaves did not survive the Atlantic passage
3. Slavery's Gender Imbalance
1. Slave trade led to gender-ratio imbalances in Africa and America
1. Europeans traders preferred males, and African sellers desired to keep women as domestic workers
2. Imbalance of gender ratio in New World meant little reproduction and a need for continued purchases to increase labor force
3. Male slaves outnumbered female in the New World, but in slave-supplying regions the opposite was true
4. Female-slave labor plantations developed in parts of Africa
5. Polygyny reinforced because of gender-ratio imbalance
6. Dahomean women asserted more power and authority because of their numbers
4. Africa's new slave-supplying polities
1. In some parts of Africa, the slave trade wreaked havoc
1. Feuding to control the lucrative trade resulted in civil war in the Kongo Kingdom after 1665
2. Slavers became increasingly proficient with European firearms and easily captured many slaves from targeted populations
2. The slave trade also helped some merchants and warlords to consolidate and extend political power
1. Certain mercantile groups in central and West Africa grew wealthier
2. Long-distance trade networks fostered the growth of strong state systems
1. The Asante state encompassed 250,000 square miles in West Africa and displaced local political organizations
2. The Oyo empire performed a similar feat, linking commercial networks in tropical rain forests to the savannah areas to the north in West Africa
3. Both states benefited from access to European firearms
3. Although the slave trade enriched and empowered some Africans, it cost Africa dearly
1. The Atlantic commercial system shifted wealth from the countryside to urban areas
2. Many areas suffered severe population loss
3. Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth century
1. Europeans were not so dominant in Asian trade networks as they were in the Atlantic world. Yet by 1750 parts of Asia were beginning to feel the brunt of growing European military, political, and economic power
2. The Dutch in Southeast Asia
1. The Dutch government chartered the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1602 to challenge the Portuguese and Spanish influence in the Indian Ocean system
1. Because of Amsterdam's financial strength, the VOC was able to raise more capital than any of its European competitors
2. The VOC's goal was to achieve a trade monopoly wherever it could
1. In the 1620s, the VOC seized the city of Jakarta (which they renamed Batavia) on the island of Java and the nutmeg-producing islands known as Banda and proceeded to monopolize the nutmeg trade
2. The VOC went on to capture the cities of Melaka and Banten in an effort to control the entire spice trade in Southeast Asia
3. Chinese and English merchants continued to compete with the VOC and it never achieved the monopoly it sought
3. To avoid using bullion, the VOC became involved in inter-Asian trade such as sending textiles from India or copper from Japan to markets in Southeast Asia
4. Old cosmopolitan Asian cities were eclipsed by new European outposts.
3. Transformations in Islam
1. The Safavid empire under assault
1. The Safavid dynasty foundered in the eighteenth century for several reasons
1. Weak rulers allowed chaos to emerge
2. Afghan warriors attacked and invaded the empire
2. The transformation of the Ottoman Empire
1. When the territorial expansion of the empire slowed in the seventeenth century, intellectuals in the Ottoman Empire became concerned that the empire was in decline
2. A succession of weak rulers created a sense of crisis
3. The inflow of American silver into Ottoman commercial networks destabilized the empire
1. Merchants increasingly defied commercial regulations and traded commodities such as wheat, copper, and wool to Europeans for silver. This reduced the amount of goods available in the Ottoman Empire
2. This illegal trade did not enrich the imperial coffers, and the government had to resort to deficit spending.
3. Deficits, shortages, and the inflow of silver sparked inflation
1. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, artisans and peasants revolted in what were called the Celali revolts against the state
2. This instability led many regions of the empire to seek more autonomy
3. Egypt, the wealthiest province, achieved virtual autonomy by the seventeenth century
4. Financial reforms taken by the Koprulu family, who controlled the office of grand vizier, arrested the financial difficulties in the middle of the seventeenth century
5. In the 1680s the Ottomans once again threatened central Europe
6. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Ottomans had lost Hungary and talk of decline had begun once again
3. The Mughal empire
1. The Mughal empire continued to expand its territory in the Indian subcontinent, but by the end of the seventeenth century the dynasty found it increasingly difficult to rule effectively over such a large and diverse realm
2. The Mughals encouraged foreign commerce, but never opted to become a naval power or expand its territory overseas
1. In the seventeenth century, the empire prospered as European demand for Indian products, especially cotton textiles, increased dramatically
2. Imported silver fueled economic growth
3. Indian farmers also adopted New World crops that increased agricultural production and helped sustain a large population surge
3. Increased population and wealth, however, empowered regional and local rulers who increasingly demanded more autonomy
4. Under Aurangzeb (1658-1707), the Mughals continued to expand their territory in southern India, which drained the treasury
1. Aurangzeb raised taxes and imposed additional taxes on non-Muslims
5. After Aurangzeb's death, there were widespread revolts against central authority
1. Many regions achieved their independence or autonomy
6. Although Mughal authority declined, India continued to prosper and to actively trade in the international economy
4. From Ming to Qing in China
1. As with the Mughal dynasty, increased prosperity led to the splintering of central control in Ming China during the seventeenth century
1. Merchants in particular defied commercial regulations. The government thus failed to reap the profits of long-distance trade
2. Administrative problems
1. As with the Ottoman empire, the quality of Ming leadership declined in the sixteenth century
2. Zhu Yijun, the Wanli Emperor (1573-1620) avoided governing for years
3. He and other emperors had little impact on the vast bureaucracy
3. Economic problems
1. Pirates, officially labeled Japanese but quite often Chinese, constantly raided coastal ports
2. Silver caused numerous problems
1. In times of influx it caused inflation
2. In times of shortages, peasants had to scramble to acquire silver in order to pay their taxes. This dislocation often led to revolts
3. An overall silver shortage in the 1630s and 1640s led to an economic slowdown and, correspondingly, to higher taxes
4. Collapse of the Ming
1. Economic problems hamstrung the government's ability to cope with natural disasters and food shortages in the early sixteenth century
2. Several formidable rebellions appeared
1. One led by Li Zicheng captured Beijing and ended the Ming dynasty in 1644
5. The Qing dynasty
1. The beneficiaries of the Ming collapse were the Manchus, a neighboring group north of China
2. The Manchu formed the Qing (Pure) dynasty and by the end of the seventeenth century had embarked on impressive economic and territorial expansion
3. The Qing were successful early on because of their flexibility and respect of local traditions
1. The Qing continued to rule under Confucian principles
2. Newly acquired territories in Tibet and Mongolia retained their local administrative institutions
6. The Qing Dynasty Asserts Control
1. They decreed that all Han Chinese shave their foreheads and wear a braided queue in the back
2. They banned intermarriage with Manchus
3. They decreed that Han Chinese wear Manchu garb
7. The Qing oversaw a huge population increase as stability returned
1. New World crops helped support this large population
8. Expansion and trade under the Qing
1. The Qing still carefully regulated long-distance trade
9. European merchants could only trade in the city of Canton under sponsorship of Chinese merchants.
1. The Qing revival reinforced the Chinese sense of cultural superiority
4. Tokugawa Japan
1. Japan tended to deal with external pressures better than its Asian counterparts
2. Unification of Japan
1. During the sixteenth century, Japan was wracked by civil war between various feudal warlords, or daimyo
2. At the end of the century one warlord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, came out on top of the other warlords
3. On Hideyoshi's death, another daimyo, Tokugawa Ieyasu, attained power
1. In 1603 he took the title of shogun (military ruler in the emperor's name) and passed it to his son
4. The Tokugawa moved the administrative capital to Edo (modern-day Tokyo)
5. Under the new regime, villages paid taxes to daimyos, who in turn transferred resources to the shogun
1. Peace brought prosperity as farmers became more productive and the government improved the realm's infrastructure
1. Population doubled in the seventeenth century
3. Foreign affairs and foreigners
1. The Tokugawa banned Christianity and expelled all missionaries
2. The Tokugawa also limited trade to Dutch merchants, who were allowed to remain at a small island near Nagasaki and unload just one ship per year
3. The Tokugawa did not completely isolate Japan from the world
1. Trade flourished between China and Japan
2. The shoguns gathered reports and publications from Chinese and Dutch emissaries
3. Much of the periphery of the empire escaped close supervision
4. The regime also tried to create buffer zones between Japan and other powers
1. Ry?ky?s in the south
2. Ezo in the north
5. This carefully regulated interaction helped build the dynasty by limiting domestic upheavals brought on by greater contact as in the cases of Ming China and Mughal India
4. Transformations of Europe
1. Expansion and dynastic chaos in Russia
1. After 1480, the Muscovy state expanded rapidly across much of north central and northeast Eurasia and expanded trade networks to help consolidate a powerful political order
1. Expansion into the steppe land eliminated attacks from descendants of the Mongols
2. Trade enhanced government coffers
2. Internal feuding plagued the regime in the sixteenth century
3. In 1613, the crown passed to the Romanov dynasty, which imposed order
1. They centered as much power as possible in their own hands
2. Nobles had to serve as bureaucrats
3. Peasants were made the serfs of nobles to sustain the crown and the nobility's wealth
4. Under Peter the Great (1682-1725), Russia, as it became known, expanded westward to the Baltic and southward into the Caucasus
5. Thousands of Russian natives immigrated into Siberia in the eighteenth century, helping Russia consolidate an empire that stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific
2. Economic and political fluctuations in Western Europe
1. Economy of Europe continued to grow, but it was affected by developments throughout the world and the Thirty Years War.
2. The Thirty Years War
1. A war fought between Protestant princes and the Habsburg Catholic emperor for religious predominance in Central Europe
2. A struggle for continental control between Catholic powers, namely the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs and the French
3. Dutch sought independence from Spain so they could trade and worship as they liked
4. Brutal war cost lives of civilians and mercenary soldiers
1. Protestants saved by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus II at one battle
2. Fighting, disease, and famine wiped out one third of Germany's urban population and two fifths of its rural population
5. Treaty of Westphalia signed in 1648.
1. Agreed to a rough balance of power between Catholics and Protestants
2. Dutch got independence
3. Costs of war caused discontent among Spain, France, and England that would continue
4. Central Europe devastated and took more than one hundred years to recover
6. War transformed war making in Europe
1. Enhanced the powers of larger, centralized states
2. Increase size of standing armies
3. Army became more professional
4. Weapons more standardized and efficient
5. War cost more and led to public debt
3. Western European Economies
1. To finance wars depended on taxing peasants
2. Commercial expansion led to rising merchant class willing to invest capital on new endeavors
3. Some countries, such as Spain, lost ground because of rising military costs
4. Dutch mercantile class used advantages in shipbuilding and financial practices to prosper
5. England and France also emerged as commercial powerhouses in the seventeenth century
1. State set policies that promoted national business and drove out competition
1. Navigation acts
6. Economic development was not limited to port towns.
1. Reforms and improvements in agriculture spurred food production
2. England's agriculture became more commercial with "enclosure movement"
3. Dynastic Monarchies: France and England
1. All European monarchs tried to centralize authority around a ruling household during the seventeenth century. Some succeeded better than others
2. The Bourbon dynasty strived toward "absolute" rule, where the kings answered only to God
1. Versailles symbolized their goal, as it served as a place where the nobility came to seek the benefits from the king and where the king could thus keep watch over the nobility
2. Other dynasties-the Habsburgs and the Romanovs, for example-tried to emulate the Bourbons' pretensions
3. No dynasty achieved "absolute" power despite their efforts
3. England different than France in that it allowed women to rule as queens in their own right
1. Parliament remained important because monarchs needed commoners to raise funds
4. In England, the Stuart dynasty's efforts to achieve absolute power provoked civil war with Parliament
1. Eventually, with the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689, the Stuart kings agreed to rule in conjunction with Parliament, leaving England's nobility and merchant classes a permanent say in public affairs
5. These political struggles stimulated much political writing such as Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and John Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government
4. Mercantilist wars
1. The ascendance of new powers such as France and England intensified commercial rivalries in Europe
1. In the eighteenth century new mercantilist wars to control sea lanes and colonies emerged
2. European powers accordingly built large navies
3. These wars culminated in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), the first world conflict
1. This war was fought in Europe, the Americas, and India
2. The British empire was the clear winner with the most lucrative overseas empire
5. Conclusion
1. Economic integration between 1500-1650 unsettled the world. More and more people were drawn into long-distance commercial networks
2. These networks fostered further European colonization in the Americas and an explosion in the Atlantic slave trade, with diverse repercussions in Africa
3. In Eurasia, economic integration challenged the legitimacy of the Ottoman and Mughal empires while contributing to the downfall of the Ming dynasty in China
4. Newer powers in England, Russia, and Japan were able to use this process to further consolidate and/or expand their power. But even in these new regimes, the pace of change was often unsettling

 

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