Chapter 14New Encounters: The Creation of a World Market

Spanish and Portuguese Voyages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Spanish and Portuguese Voyages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

1. The Silk Road ran from Chang’an to Samarkand and to the Arabian Sea. Goods such as silk, porcelain, and spices would make their way to the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Dominating this trade on the Mediterranean end were the Italian city states, especially Venice. Jealousy over the wealth generated by the trade inspired Portugal and Spain to find an alternate route to interdict the trade.

2. Portuguese ships (with northern influences) were designed for the rough seas of the Atlantic while ships of the Mediterranean were generally intended for its calmer waters. Nevertheless, ships were small which placed limitations on the amount of food and water that could be stored. It was this factor that restricted long voyages.

3. Two elements contributed to Portugal's interest in Africa. First, they wished to bypass the Muslim middlemen in the African gold trade with Europe. With limited resources in gold, much of Europe's demands were filled by gold mined in western Africa. Secondly, the Portuguese hoped to find the fabled Prester John, a Christian African king, with whom they hoped to ally to defeat the Muslims.

4. Vasco da Gama successfully made the round trip from Portugal to Calicut, India, in 1497-98. Significantly, he had to force the Indians to trade since the quality of the European goods was crude. After this first contact, every March a fleet was sent to India. By force, the Portuguese further opened up Goa, Malacca, and Macao.

5. The long and difficult route of Bartholomew Díaz (1487-88) along western Africa to the Cape of Good Hope was improved upon by Vasco da Gama (1497-99) who searched far out into the southern Atlantic to find favorable winds. This technique became common practice and led Pedro Alvares Cabral to encounter the coast of Brazil in 1500. Amerigo Vespucci accompanied many of the subsequent voyages to South America.

6. The opening of the Orient by the Portuguese provided Europe with Asian goods that had been cut to a trickle by the conquests of the Turks. It also meant that the Italian merchants could be cut out of the eastern trade. With commerce now concentrated on the Atlantic ports, the importance of Italy as a center of commerce declined.

7. Christopher Columbus offered his services to Portugal, France, and England as well as Spain. In part, approval was a result of miscalculating the distance between Asia and Portugal. This was important because no ships of the day had the capability to sail the true distance. As it was, it took 36 days to sail from the Canary Islands to landfall at San Salvador Island. The discovery by Columbus led to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 that divided the newly discovered worlds into Portuguese and Spanish spheres of influence.

8. In 1497 King Henry VII (1485-1509) of England commissioned John Cabot, a Genoese merchant living in London, to find the elusive northwest passage. Although Cabot failed, the voyage did take him to Newfoundland and provided the later basis for English claims to North America.

9. In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan, commissioned by Spain, took a fleet south and west seeking to find a direct route to Asia. His quest led to a dramatic voyage around the world. Nevertheless, Magellan was killed in the Philippines. In 1522 the only surviving ship under Magellan's navigator Sebastian del Cano returned to Spain with fifteen survivors.

Questions:1. What restrictions hampered European exploration?2. Consider the significance of each of the voyages portrayed on the map.

Exploration and Expansion Islam and the Spice Trade, Malacca Nicolò, Maffeo, and Marco Polo, 1271

Marco Polo, Travels Portuguese Maritime Empire

Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460)SlavesBartolomeu Dias, 1497Vasco da Gama, 1498Admiral Alfonso de Albuquerque

Goa, 1510 Malacca, 1511

Success of the Portuguese

European Possessions in the West Indies

European Possessions in the West Indies Slide 4

1. The island of Hispaniola was occupied by the Spanish in 1492 when Columbus was forced to establish the settlement of La Navidad at the eastern extreme of the island following the grounding of the Santa Maria. Santo Domingo was established in 1496 and served not only as the Spanish capital of Hispaniola but also the first permanent European settlement in the New World. By 1606, so many colonists had been drawn to Peru and Mexico that the Spanish crown ordered the few colonists left to move closer to Santo Domingo. French, English, and Dutch pirates took over the abandoned northern and western coasts. Pirates especially used the island of Tortuga to raid Spanish gold and silver shipping. Unable to drive the pirates out, Spain recognized French control of the western third of the island.

2. The Isthmus of Panama was occupied by Spain in 1509, the same year as Puerto Rico was conquered. In 1511, Cuba was occupied, followed by the invasion of Mexico in 1519. Florida was claimed for Spain in 1513 and the first permanent settlement, St. Augustine, was established in 1565.

3. Jamaica was claimed by Columbus for Spain in 1494 but was used only as a supply base. In 1655 the British invaded the island and by 1669 controlled it. During the 1670s, British pirates used Jamaica to attack Spanish ports and shipping.

4. British loggers first arrived in Belize in 1638 and shortly thereafter British settlers arrived. Consistently, the settlers had to fight off the Spanish from nearby territories.

5. Although Columbus first touched land in the Bahamas (perhaps Watlings Island) in 1492, the Spanish did not settle. The Bahamas remained uninhabited by the Europeans until the mid 1600s when the British began settling. Spain challenged the British in the late 1600s but was unsuccessful. In 1717 the Bahamas became a British colony.

6. In 1682 Louisiana was claimed for France by Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle. The area became a royal colony in 1699.

7. On the third voyage (1498-1500), Columbus anchored at Trinidad and from there sailed along the Venezuelan coast. The Spanish Main, as northern South America was called, was delayed in occupation until after 1535 due to the hostile natives and forbidding jungles. The Spanish did occupy Curaçao in 1527 but the Dutch captured the Antilles area in 1634 and soon settled on the other islands. In 1667 the Dutch took control of the British territory on the northeast coast of South America (modern Surinam) as part of the settlement over New York.

Question:1. How did the Europeans divide the newly discovered lands of the West Indies and the mainland? Were there any impediments?

Voyages to the New World Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), 1492 John Cabot, 1497 Pedro Cabral, 1500 Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 Mexico, 1519-1522, and Peru, 1531-1536

Administration of the Spanish Empire Encomienda Casa de Contratación Council of the Indies Viceroy Audiencias Impact of expansion on Europe and the Americas

Other European States Involved in Expansion England Holland France

AfricaPortuguese in east Africa

Gold trade Mwene Matapa

BantuSouth Africa

Zulu Afrikaners

Fort Jesus, Mombasa, Kenya. Built by the Portuguese inthe sixteenth century

The Slave Trade

The Slave Trade

1. The first European enslavement of Africans came in 1441 when the Portuguese took back to Lagos for sale twelve captive Berbers from south of what is now Morocco. Because the Portuguese came to control the most important slave collection points of the Cape Verde Islands1 São Tome, São Jorge da Mina, and Angola, they were involved in the international slave trade from its inception.

2. In 1501 the Spanish government issued its first laws for the export of slaves to America. At this time the slaves were more often white (Spain and North Africa) than black. In 1505 a ship from Spain arrived in Hispaniola carrying seventeen Hispanicised black slaves. The slave trade became massive when in 1510 royal orders were given for the transport of slaves to the Indies. In 1518 the first cargo of slaves arrived directly from Africa to Hispaniola. In 1513 the Spanish crown began licensing the slave trade to the Indies through contracts (asientos). Licensed slaves were to be taken from Guinea or any other part of Africa and shipped to Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Yucatan, or New Spain. The Portuguese were involved in contraband slave trade to Spanish possessions until 1580 when the Portuguese crown fell to Spain and the activity became legal.

3. The importation of black slaves into Brazil was legalized in 1549 but blacks were not imported in any great numbers until 1570. The sources of Portuguese slaves to Brazil were the port of São Paulo de Luanda and Mozambique.

4. Although English colonies in the Caribbean and later on the North American coast faced similar shortages of labor as the Spanish and Portuguese, they relied on indentured servants to fill the void. Nevertheless, black slaves were imported. In 1619, seventeen slaves were brought to Jamestown by the Dutch. By 1650 black slavery was well entrenched in the English Caribbean and mainland colonies.

5. A typical slaving expedition leaving Spain in the sixteenth century could last from eighteen months to four years. Depending on the state of the local markets, it could take up to a year to obtain a cargo of slaves. Once the slaves had been procured, it would take two months or more to cross the Atlantic to the Americas, depending on the currents, winds, and destination.

6. Only about two percent of the slaves destined for America came from Mozambique. About 23 percent of the slaves came from Angola and the Congo, 75 percent from Senegambia and the Gold Coast. Sixty percent of the slaves were destined for the West Indies and Spanish America, 35 percent for Brazil, and only 5 percent to British North America/United States. Seventy percent of all Portuguese slaves came from Angola.

Question:1. From where did the slave trade originate and who controlled it?

Songhai King Askia Mohammed (1493-1528)

Slave trade African slavery Portuguese

São Tomé, 1490Sugar

Atlantic passage Mortality rates Obtaining slaves Effects of the slave trade

Political and Social Structures of Africa Limited European penetration of Africa Altering of trading empires

Involvement in the slave tradeSplintering of the Congo EmpireBeninAshanti

Impact of IslamAbd al-Wahhab, Wahhabi reformism

Southeast Asia in the Era of the Spice Trade Political systems on the mainland

Activities of the ThaiExpansion of the Vietnamese

Arrival of the West

State and Society in Precolonial Southeast Asia Buddhist kings

Burma, Ayuthaya, Laos, and Cambodiakarma

Javanese kingswahyuBlend of Buddhist and Islamic political traditions

Islamic sultansMalay peninsulaRule according to the Shari’ah

Vietnamese emperors

The Pattern of World Trade

The Pattern of World Trade

1. One of the consequences of the Portuguese exploration of the African coast was the discovery of sources of gold as well as ivory and slaves. Pushing their exploration on to India in the sixteenth century, the Portuguese were able to establish a monopoly over the spice trade thereby considerably damaging the Muslim middlemen. Establishing a headquarters at Goa in 1510, the Portuguese ranged further east to Malacca and the Moluccas (Spice Islands) in search for spices. Later, the Spanish, Dutch, English, and French would interject themselves into the Asian trade. While spices were the mainstay of the international trade, silk textiles were also a prominent trade item.

2. In Spanish and Portuguese America the quest for gold and silver was ultimately fulfilled in Mexico and Peru. When the colonial economies expanded, they came to produce sugar in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Brazil, hides in South America, coffee in Brazil.

3. In North America, furs from the north were a major export. In the south, tobacco and rice drove the economies. In the northeast, the Grand Banks proved to be one of the world's great fishing grounds.

4. As capitalism and wealth grew in Europe, there was more and more demand for the goods from overseas. Meanwhile, trade was not only international but also regional, especially in Asia where tin, copper, gold, agricultural products, cloth, textiles, and ceramics were exchanged. For the colonizing powers, the availability of luxury goods and raw materials from overseas was counterbalanced the opening of markets for goods produced in the mother countries. Mercantilism ruled the day as each state sought to close it markets to its own businessmen, this being especially so with Spain and England. The ultimate objective was to cut out the foreign middlemen.

Questions:1. What was the importance of developing a world trade for theEuropeans?2. What was the role of mercantilism in the world trading pattern?3. How integrated was the world economy?

Economy Expansion before the Europeans Spices Southeast Asia an importer of manufactured goods Exports of tin, copper, gold, fruits, ceramics

Daily life Rice farmers, traders, hunters, fishermen

Changing religious beliefs