European & Asian Links

•Connection primarily through trade•Recall the Spanish & Portuguese get out the gate first•Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 Divides Latin America and Africa•What’s going on in the world at this time? •Trade commodities•Mughal Empire in 17th century•Wars of Religion in Europe •Protestant Reformation overlaps with political wars•Rise of Enlightenment

•Rise of Enlightenment & Colonies•Scientific Revolution

Overcoming Economic Obstacles– Overcoming Economic Obstacles

• Two important types of trade– Exploiting resources in the Americas

» Establishment of the Encomienda system» High death rate among Indians» Replacement of Indian labor with African slaves.

– Dominating trade with East Asia• Example: Dutch merchant wanting to undertake a venture in Indonesia to buy pepper and

spices. What obstacles would he face?– Capitalization

» Investment – joint stock companies– Logistics

» Establish colonies and support stations along route» State-enforced monopoly» Naval presence to deter piracy

– Risk of loss» Maritime insurance

European Empires• New empires created by Europeans were sea based

– New technologies were sea based– Difficult to move inland

» Only exception: the Americas» Even those tended to be based along the coast

• Two other civilizations had the capability to challenge Europe’s domination of the seas: the Chinese and the Ottomans– In the 15th century, Chinese explored Southeastern Pacific and Indian Oceans

» Zheng He reached India and East Africa 80 years before Portuguese– Ottoman power was land based and in the Eastern Mediterranean

» Same reason as decline of Italian trading cities such as Venice – no access to the Atlantic

» Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Netherlands all better positioned to trade in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

• Major challenge to trading empires came from rival European powers– Struggle between Portuguese, French, Dutch and English for control of Indian trade– Came to a head in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)

» British success laid the groundwork for British colonial empire

Columbian Exchange

– The Columbian Exchange• Movement of plants, animals, and disease shaped human civilization in the Old World

– Movement was mostly horizontal across bands of climate zones• The Americas ran north to south, which made movement of domesticated crops more

difficult• Most human diseases result from humans living in close proximity to domesticated

animals– E.g. the Flu, smallpox– Overtime, most people developed immunities to these diseases and they became less virulent

• Almost no domesticated animals in the Americas, so little few diseases.– No exposure to the animal diseases that humans in Old World had lived with for 1000s of years.– Smallpox and the flu wiped out whole communities in the Americas within 100 years of contact

» In 1519, a smallpox epidemic broke out in the Aztec empire» By 1600, the population had fallen 90%» When English settlers arrived in North America, they sometimes found abandoned

villages, where the entire population had died some decades before.» Hard to overestimate the death toll in the Americas from these new diseases

• Contact with the Americas also led to a great increase in the world population– The introduction of foods such as pineapples, potatoes, corn, cassava, peanuts, and tomatoes,

led to much better nutrition across the globe.– Between 1500 and 1900, the world’s population doubled from 425 million to 900 million.

Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679

• Leviathan (1651)• Myth of Natural Law • Concept of “Social

Contract” (not the work by Rousseau)

• “…Life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

• The original state of human kind is not redemption, but original sin

John Locke 1632 - 1704

• Essays on Human Understanding

• 2 Treatises on Gov’t• (both in 1690)• Hobbes is WRONG!!!• Tabula rasa• “You MUST oppose bad

government”

Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)1694-1778)

• Candide• Letters on the English• “Newton for Dummies”

Baron de Montesquieu

• Spirit of the Laws• What is the best form of

government? • Sometimes it’s

monarchy, or republic or empire

• Checks and balances

Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-78

• 1750 Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences

• 1755 Discourse on the Origins of Inequality

• 1762 Social Contract– “All men are born free,

but everywhere they are in chains”

Concept of Political Rights

• “Civil Liberties”• Religious Freedom– Wars of Religion;

Reformation• Colonization and

Empire building by conversion– Spanish vs. English• Requiremento

Effects of Enlightenment

• This is not restricted just to intellectuals in Europe• Ideas travel in this new age and new economy• Not just to the English colonies, but that’s one of

the first places to see Revolution• Part of the separation from the East; takes

European focus off the overseas (political) campaigns;– Economy is still focused on commodities exchange – Religion is still trying for missionary and conversion

missions, particularly after Jesuits are formed