9.10 Interactions and Disruptions
Efforts to reach the Indies resulted in
the encounter between the people of
Western Europe, Africa, and the
Americas.
This encounter led to a devastating
impact on populations in the
Americas, the rise of the transatlantic
slave trade, and the reorientation
of trade networks.
Various motives, new knowledge,
and technological innovations
influenced exploration and the
development of European
transoceanic trade routes.
• explore the relationship between
knowledge and technological
innovations, focusing on how knowledge
of wind and current patterns, combined
with technological innovations,
influenced exploration and transoceanic
travel.
• trace major motivations for European
interest in exploration and oceanic trade
including the influence of Isabella and
Ferdinand.
Direct route!
• Europeans desire direct route to
Asia’s markets
• Voyages end European isolation
• Better ship building
Reorientation of Trade … BEFORE
Reorientation of Trade … BEFORE
Reorientation of Trade … AFTER
Reorientation of Trade … AFTER
Forces making Age of Exploration possible
Improved shipbuilding
• Caravel
• Spanish and Portuguese
constructed
• Inspired by Muslim ships
• Shallow draft – easier to
navigate coastlines
• Triangular (“lateen”) sails or
square ones for long journeys
• Lateen = Can be shifted to
catch wind in almost any
direction
Improved technology for
Navigation
Compass
• China
• Direction
Astrolabe
• Muslims
• Distance north or south
of equator
Mathematics from Muslims
• Algebra
• Trigonometry
Improved weaponry
– Cannons
– Armor
– Horses
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Advances in Cartography
Early 1400s – Guide to Cartography
translated into Latin from Greek
Ptolemy, 2nd century
Explorers provide new info to
update Ptolemy’s map
Navigation easier with better maps
• Gerardus Mercator
• New technique
• Improved lines for longitude and
latitude
Portugal
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First to venture out Atlantic
Down coast West Africa
Seeking sea route to Asia
1488 Bartholemeu Dias
– Discovers southern tip Africa
• Named Cape of Good Hope
• Proved ships could reach Asia by sailing around Africa
• 1497 4 ships Vasco da Gama
– Portugal to India
– 10 months to Calicut
• Ferdinand &
Isabella
• Funded
Columbus
– 4 voyages
before d. 1536
– Caribbean &
South America
– Thought found
route to Asia
• 1507 Amerigo
Vespucci
– “Dude, it’s a
new world!”
Spain
1519 Ferdinand Magellan
• Portuguese
• Spanish flag
• Find western rte. Asia
• Names Pacific
• Philippines … Magellan killed..
Skips get to Spain … 1st
circumnavigation
Transatlantic exploration led to
the Encounter, colonization of
the Americas, and the
Columbian exchange.
• map the exchange of crops and animals
and the spread of diseases across the world
during the Columbian exchange.
• investigate the population of the Americas
before the Encounter and evaluate the impact
of the arrival of the Europeans on the
indigenous populations.
• contrast the demographic impacts on
Europe and China after the introduction of
new crops with demographic impacts on the
Americas resulting from the Columbian
exchange.
Columbian Exchange
Effect on Afro-Eurasia
Effect on Americas
New foods – corn
(“maize”), squash,
chocolate, turkey,
tomato, potato,
• Depopulation from
disease and servitude
• Domesticated animals
for food and labor
• Wider variety of foods
– higher calorie cereal
grains
The discovery of the abundant mines of America, reduced, in the sixteenth century, the value of gold
and silver in Europe to about a third of what it had been before. As it cost less labour to bring those
metals from the mine to the market, so, when they were brought thither, they could purchase or
command less labour; and this revolution in their value, though perhaps the greatest, is by no means
the only one of which history gives some account.
• influx of about 150,000 tons of silver from Mexico
and Bolivia by the Spanish and Portuguese Empires
after 1500
•  reversed the downwards price trends of the
medieval period.
•  prices rose dramatically in Europe
• by a factor of six or seven times over the next 150
years
There you have it. Columbus ended price deflation by
discovering lands rich in Silver.
Impact on China
• Ming (1368-1644) and Qing
(1644-1911) dynasties
• new crops = a range of New
World crops
– had come to Asia from the
Americas via the Spanish
colonizers.
– corn, sweet potatoes, and
peanuts,
• Non-competitive with
common grain crops
because they could be
grown in marginal areas
such as on hill slopes and
where soils were dry or
sandy.
The decimation of indigenous
populations in the Americas
influenced the growth of the
Atlantic slave trade. The trade of
enslaved peoples resulted in
exploitation, death, and the
creation of wealth.
• examine how the demand for labor,
primarily for sugar cultivation and silver
mining, influenced the growth of the trade
of enslaved African peoples.
• investigate European and African roles in
the development of the slave trade, and
investigate the conditions and treatment of
enslaved Africans during the Middle
Passage and in the Americas.
Guns, Germs, Steel
• Geography determined
a lot
• No immunity
– Eurasians have some
immunity to animal-born
diseases
• Isolation
• Limited plants-animals
for domestication
European colonization in the
Americas and trade interactions
with Africa led to instability,
decline, and near destruction of
once‐stable political and cultural
systems.
• examine the political, economic, cultural, and
geographic impacts of Spanish colonization on
the Aztec and Inca societies.
• investigate the different degrees of social and
racial integration and assimilation that occurred
under colonizing powers, laying the foundations for
complex and varying social hierarchies in the
Americas.
• examine the social, political, and economic impact of
the Atlantic slave trade on Africa, including the
development of the kingdoms of the Ashanti and
Dahomey.
BOTH Mesoamerican and AfroEurasian Civilizations …
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Monumental architecture
Government structures – hierarchical social classes
Developments in technology, mathematics
Trade networks
Specialization of labor
Religion
Densely populated cities
Organized military
Contrast Mesoamerican and Afro-Eurasian
Civilizations …
Afro-Eurasian
• Large scale and long term
cultural diffusion over
Eurasian land mass
• Metalworking
• Domesticated animals
• High-calorie cereal grains
• Earliest civilizations –
Asia Minor - ~4K BCE
Mesoamerican
• Limited cultural diffusion due
to geography
• Recent development of
civilization
• Limited food variety due to
geography
• No domesticated animals
• No metalworking
• Lacking technology and dom.
Animals, massive reliance on
human labor
Bartolomeu de las Casas
• Letters to Ferdinand &
Isabella
• Treatment of natives
• Suggested African
slaves
– Took him up in the idea
after depopulation
New Spain
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Presidios
Pueblos
Missions
Encomienda System
Encomienda is…
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Labor system
Spanish colonization of the
Americas and the Philippines.
Crown granted a person a
specified number of natives for
whom they were to take
responsibility.
– instruct the natives
• Spanish language
• Catholic faith.
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Exact tribute from the natives
– labor
– gold
– or other products, such as in corn,
wheat or chickens.
• Was a Reconquista
institution
– adelantados were given the
right to extract tribute from
Muslims or other peasants in
areas conquered & resettled.
• Contrast with tradition back
in Spain
– encomenderos did not own
the land on which the natives
lived.
• did not entail any direct
land tenure by the
encomendero;
• “Indian” lands were to
remain in their
possession.
• system was formally
abolished in 1720
Effects of Encomienda System
• Decline of native
populations brought on
by hard labor
• Increase in Catholicism in
Western Hemisphere
– Still dominates Latin
America
– Reaction to Protestant
Reformation
• Encomienda could only
be passed down one
generation
– Third generation
sometimes reduced to
paupers
• African slave labor
See homework assignment for “The development of the
kingdoms of the Ashanti and Dahomey”
The Eastern Hemisphere trade networks
were disrupted by the European
development of new transoceanic trade
across the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic
Oceans.
Shifts in global trade networks and the use of
gunpowder had positive and negative effects
on Asian and European empires.
• explore how new transoceanic routes shifted
trade networks (e.g., Indian Ocean, the Silk Road,
Trans‐Saharan) in the Eastern Hemisphere.
• explore how shifts in the global trade networks and
the use of gunpowder affected the Ottoman
Empire.
• examine the development of European maritime
empires and mercantilism.
See homework for “new transoceanic routes
shifted trade networks (e.g., Indian Ocean, the
Silk Road, Trans‐Saharan) in the Eastern
Hemisphere.”
See homework for “shifts in the global trade
networks and the use of gunpowder affected
the Ottoman Empire.”
Mercantilism is and economic theory.
• Political dominance through trade policy (instead of or in
support of more costly military dominance)
• Maintain favorable balance of trade
– Maintain high exports and low imports
– Protect home industry and agriculture through tariffs
• Government-licensed monopolies
• Colonies
– Markets
– Resources
• Increase bullion (gold) in the country
Triangular trade is …
• First leg of the triangle
was from a European
port to Africa
– For sale and trade:
• copper, cloth, trinkets,
slave beads, guns and
ammunition.
– for
• Slaves
– tightly packed like any
other cargo to
maximize profits.
Triangular trade
• Second leg of triangle
– Middle Passage
– enslaved survivors were
sold in the Caribbean or
the Americas.
• Third leg of triangle to
home port
– From the West Indies
• sugar, rum, and
molasses
– From Virginia
• tobacco and hemp.
• The ship then returned to
Europe to complete the
triangle.
The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway
Inflation: Crash Course
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjhIzemLdos&index=26&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9