Copy of Copy of Exploration and Colonization

Another effect of the colonization of the Americas was what we have come to call the Columbian Exchange: movement of new plants, animals, people and goods from the Americas to the rest of the world.

The American continent had been isolated from Afro-Eurasia for many millenia, and the two parts of the world had developed flora (plants of a region) and fauna (animal life of region)along separately.

1492

Isabella's nation building

Columbus's connecting Afro-Eurasia with America

European sailors had been sticking to the waters of the Mediterranean, where they bought goods from Arab traders on the eastern shores, and transported them north and west by water and land.

Pre-modern/traditional world

Archaic (only very partial globalization)

During this period (1400s-ish to today) the world has become increasingly modern and increasingly globalised

Through:

European colonialism

Capitalism

Emergence of political ideologies: Enlightenment

Global wars

Exploration

Throughout the 1400s, the Muslim Ottoman Empire grew increasingly stronger, and Europeans of high were struggling to get hold of the fancy goods they wanted from China and India (silk, spices).

How did the Columbian exchange and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade change Africa, Europe and the Americas?

The world before the 1500s was one characterised by a very limited form of globalisation: "Archaic" globalisation

This fueled a desire to find alternative routes to tap into that rich Indian Ocean trade...

The Afro-Eurasian continent and the American Continent were two separate systems, with no links between them.

Henry the Navigator was a younger prince of Portugal, and he spent his whole life hunting down the best sailors, map makers and navigators and employed them to sail down the West African coast, edging further and further south...

Beginning in the late 15th century, through European journeys of exploration, and the subsequent colonization, these separate systems of the world were connected and turned into one, global system of interaction. This is the story we are looking at today.

European sailors were the first ones to connect the continents, they were definitely not the first to sail the open oceans of the world.

Exploration in these days invariably meant navigation on the oceans of the world: seafaring was the only technology available at this time for those who wanted to travel to the farthest corners of the world

Spanish and Portuguese Explorers-claimed and conquered land for country

Early explorers-sought trade routes to India

This was the beginning of a pattern that would last for hundreds of years: Europeans arrived somewhere foreign, found that the existing population didn't have what they considered the markings of civilization, and therefore proceeded to take over and exploit the societies and cultures they encountered.

With Henry's support, European sailors managed to chart the west coast of Africa, and in the process they discovered a number of Atlantic islands, like Madeira, the Canary Islands, and Sao Tome off the African coast. These were claimed as colonies, and settled by the Spanish and Portuguese.

European sailors were looking for:

gold

- a sea route to the spice trade

- reconnect with lost christians (Prester John)

- other possible trading ventures

and they discovered that one of the most lucrative (well-paying) trades

This was how the Portuguese began what was to become the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, more about which next week.

Initial Spanish meeting with Native tribes-confusing.

These people did not seem like the fabulously wealthy spice princes and silk emperors of China and Indonesia...they seemed different. They had no cannon, they had no stone houses, no horses, no ships....questioned the natives' humanity

Settler Colonialism

The Spanish stayed in the Americas, and gradually extended their knowledge about the continent, and power over its people and territory over the next few decades.

The Taino were the first to experience the onslaught of the Spanish, with their weapons and their diseases, but others would follow: The Aztec Empire was conquered in 1520 by Cortes, the Inca Empire in 1533 by Pizzaro

Pizzaro and Cortes and other like them turned South and Latin America into a "Vice Royalty" - an actual part of the Spanish monarch's territories, ruled by a "stand-in" king (Viceroy) on the ground.

El Dorado - a golden land?

The thing that kept the Spanish in America was mining....Europeans wanted gold, and they found some. But even more silver.

Under the mountains of Potosí, in what we today call Bolivia, a massive silver deposit was discovered.The Spanish Conquistadores put the conquered peoples of the region to work in the mines.

Around the second of these, there was a lot of debate....

Potosí

The society that emerged as a result of Spanish colonisation was very diverse.

Arab merchants had been navigating the Indian ocean since before the rise of Islam, and we still have some of their manuals with descriptions of their routes and encounters with foreign peoples.

A new kind of colonialism...

#1

Over the next couple of decades, the Portuguese established a new kind of empire in the Indian Ocean: a "trading post empire".

- Based on trade, and controlling the trade of others (cartaz system).

- No extensive territories, instead trade bases in cities along the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

- Really just tapping into a trade that had been going on for centuries, without adding much new.

Map of West Africa from the middle of the 1500. The castle depicts "Elmina" - a fort where the Portuguese traded in slaves with the local rulers.

For almost a century, these portuguese sailors tried to find a way around Africa. They knew it could be done, they just didn't know how...

This is an engraving from the 1500s of the landing of Vespucchi.

What does it tell us about how Europeans came to view Americans?

Tomas Ortiz-1525

Until the "trade winds" were discovered.

The trade winds always blow in the same direction, and by getting to know them, and allowing them to dictate the route, sailors could finally travel whenever they wanted.

Exploration, Colonization, and the Columbian Exchange