The Age of Exploration – 16th Century

Ch. 14 Economic Expansion and New Politics

Demographic, Economic, and Political Changes (late 15th C. – 16th C.)

• Europe’s population rose by ~50% between 1470-1620• Life expectancy: men 27 years; women 25 years

• Movement of people from country into towns and cities as economy expands• Countryside: Manorial lords top of hierarchy; peasants largest % (many owned land)• Towns: merchants (bourgeoisie) wealthiest and most powerful; artisans – skilled craftsmen; laborers – low

skilled jobs• Increase in food prices• First enclosures in England• Growth of commercial trade; increase in taxes and royal revenues

– Expansion of the guild system• Growth of modern banking contributing factor to rise of market economies and capitalism:

• First in Italian city-states (Florentine Medici Family 14th-15th centuries) • Fuggars financed monarchs (especially Hapsburgs) and merchants 16th -18th centuries

• Slow and steady inflation– Population growth led to growth of markets– Influx of Spanish silver from the New World (financed merchants, who financed war, and trade)– Increase circular flow of money and rise in investments

Expansion at Home: The Commercial Revolution

Causes:• Population growth• Price revolution• Rise in capitalism led by

bourgeoisie

Features:• Banking• Hanseatic League• Chartered companies• Joint-stock companies• Stock markets• Enclosures• “putting-out” industry in textiles• New industries• New consumer goods• mercantilism

The Commercial Revolution

Significance:• Transforms Europe from rural and isolated to

developed society and emerging towns/cities• Emergence powerful nation-states• Brought about age of exploration• The price revolution• Rise of powerful and wealthy bourgeoisie• Increased standard of living

Powerpoint: Economic Impact New World

Fall of Constantinople 1453

• Led to: Age of Exploration• Last Byzantine Emperor: Constantine XI (1449-

1453)• Conquered by Ottoman Turks, Sultan Mehmet

II (1434-1481)– Dome of Hagia Sophia glowed red – sign from

Allah; a crescent moon and star shown in the sky on the day the greatest Christian city became Muslim

Age of Exploration

• The fall of Greek Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 permanently and profoundly changed international affairs

• Wealthy Europeans demanded luxury goods from Asia: spices, opiates, and silks

• Getting the goods past the Turks cost more money, raising the price of commodities dramatically

The Atlantic Five

• Portugal• Spain• England• France • The Netherlands

Portugal• Motives: economic + religious• Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-

1460)– Financed expeditions along

African coast (gold)– Shipping route to India– School

• Bartholomew Diaz (1450-1500)• Vasco de Gama (1469-1525)• Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512)• BRAZIL

– 17th century: African slaves imported for coffee, cotton, and SUGAR production

– Significant racial mixing

Portuguese map by Lopo Homem (c. 1519) showing the coast of Brazil and natives extracting brazilwood, as well as Portuguese ships.

Technology

• Cartography• Astronomy• Instruments:

– Magnetic compass– Geometric quadrant– Mariner’s astrolabe– Cross staff

• Ships:– Caravels (Portugal)– Lateen sail and rope

riggings– Axial rudder– Gunpowder and cannons

Portuguese discoveries and explorations: first arrival places and dates; main Portuguese spice trade routes in the Indian Ocean (blue); territories claimed during King John III rule (c. 1536) (green)

Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494

Christopher Columbus

• Proposed a trade route to Asia by going west thus bypassing Turks

• Ferdinand and Isabella financed expedition along with Genoese merchants

The New World Uncovered• Columbus lands in the Bahamas after nearly 6 weeks at sea, naming it San

Salvador• “los indios” – people of the Indies • “natural men” naked people without political institutions now (lucky!)

Spanish subjects– Clothes were how Europeans judged level of civilization

• Half natives of Americas died from European diseases, others mutilated, shot, worked to death in mines, or enslaved– Smallpox biggest killer, but Europeans also brought measles, plague, flu and typhus– Syphilis was the most significant disease transmitted to Europeans from

Amerindians, and affected thousands in Europe

• 4 expeditions charted most of Caribbean islands and Honduras• Ushered in era of European exploration and domination of New World

Spanish Empire in the New World: Age of the Conquistador

• Conquered entire regions and subjugated their populations

• Empire divided into 4 viceroyalties• Mercantilist position

– Colonies existed to enrich mother country– Mining gold and silver priority (accounted for 25%

royal revenues)

Bartholomew de las Casas (1474-1566)

A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542)

Criticized treatment of Amerindians

The Columbian Exchange

Diet• Revolution in European diet with importation

of new plants– Potato (S. America) became most

important new staple crop in Europe– Others: maize, pineapples, tomatoes,

beans, vanilla, and chocolate• Plants: old world to new world – wheat, sugar,

rice and coffee– By 1600 being cultivated in the New World

• Livestock: cows, pigs, sheep, chickens brought to New World– Prior to this no domestic animals larger

than alpaca or llama so little protein in diet

Animals• Introduction of the horse

profoundly impacted Amerindians– Plains Indians (N. America)

• Turkey: most important meat source from New World to Old

Slavery• Huge aspect of Columbian

ExchangeGold and Silver• Influx of wealth to Spanish Empire

England: late to exploration• John Cabot (1425-1500)• Jamestown 1607• Far more English came to

NW comparatively

France• Jacques Cartier (1491-1557)• Quebec 1608

Dutch Republic (Netherlands)• Dutch E. India Co. founded

1602• Expelled Portuguese from

Ceylon and Indonesia (Spice Islands)

PowerPoint: Age of Exploration Remastered

“New” Monarchs: c. 1460-1550

• Consolidated power and created the foundation for Europe’s first modern nation-states in FRANCE, ENGLAND, and SPAIN– Used Roman law but declared themselves “sovereign”

and thus could make own laws– Eastern European monarchs weaker – Absolutism doesn’t emerge until 17th century– Still not fully formed “nation-states”

• Identity still local or regional• Modern nationalism emerges late 18th-early 19th centuries

Characteristics• Reduction of nobles’ power through taxation, confiscation of lands, and

use of mercenary armies or standing armies– Gunpowder: increased vulnerability of noble armies– Many nobles who supported king gained titles and offices in royal

court– Increased political influence of bourgeoisie, who brought in more

revenues (more in France)– Nobles resented decline in power

• Reduction of political power of clergy– Clergy saw pope as leader, not monarch

• Created more efficient bureaucracies• Increased public debt by taking out loans from merchant-bankers

United Spain: Ferdinand & Isabella• United Aragon and Castile houses with marriage• Reconquista, 1492:

– Goal to remove the last of the Moors and the Jews to Christianize Spain

– Defeated Moors (N. African Muslims) at Battle of Granada, ending 700 years of “Reconquista”

– Expelled Jews (100,000-150,000)• Convert, leave, or die

– Loss of Jews and Moors resulted in significant decline of Spanish middle-class

Spanish Inquisition• 1478 set up to ensure unity of faith in the realm (abolished in 1834)

– Could look into anyone or anything for any reason• Answered to monarchs, not Rome• Tomas de Torquemada, Dominican monk, Grand Inquisitor (1483-1498)

– Burned close to 2,000 people during tenure• Targeted heretics and conversos: Jews suspected of false conversions

– Jews fled to North Africa, eastern Europe, England (despite a ban), the Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal (massacred in 1506)

– Ireland only European country that never expelled Jews, nor subjected them to pogroms, nor put in ghettos (Cahill).

France

House of Valois• Louis XI (1461-83)

– Created large standing army• Charles VIII (1483-98)

– Rivalry with Hapsburgs over Italy– Expensive wars:

• Borrowed $• Sold offices

• Louis XII (1498-1515)– Expanded selling offices

• Francis I (1515-47)– Concordat of Bologna (1516)– Taille

• Henry II (1547-59)– Defeated in Italy

The Holy Roman Empire: Hapsburg Empire

• HRE made up of about 300 semi-autonomous German states– Center of Hapsburg power in Vienna

• NOT a “New Monarchy”– No centralized control, no power to tax or raise

armies

• Maximilian I (r. 1493-1519)– Sparked struggle between Valois and Hapsburgs

Charles V (r. 1519-1556) most powerful in 16th century

• Controlled Austrian Hapsburg lands while ruling Spanish Empire

• Sacked Rome in 1527, thus symbolically ending the Renaissance

• Hapsburg-Valois Wars (c. 1519-1559) over control of Burgundy and territories in Italy

• Sought to prevent Protestantism in Germany

Portrait by Titian 1548

The Splintered States: Italy and eastern Europe

The Ottoman Empire• Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1494-

1566)• Militarily invincible for decades in

wars in Mediterranean and Balkans– Occupied Serbia, Hungary, Transylvania,

parts of N. Africa, Arabia and western Persia

– Battle of Belgrade (1528) Serbian army slaughtered

– Siege of Buda (1528)– Defeated at Gates of Vienna (1529) by

Hapsburgs– 1683 beginning of decline

The Italian Wars, 1494-1559• 5 major city-states (Naples, Papal

States, Milan, Florence, Venice) ended decades of balance of power

• French, Spanish, Hapsburg armies invaded

• By 1559 Hapsburgs controlled most of Italy

• Venice and Tuscany under Medici• Papal States independent

Machiavelli (1469-1527): The Prince 1517

• Florentine diplomat and political theorist banished in 1513

• The Prince exalts tyranny and amorality of rulers – statecraft based on realistic view of corrupt human nature

• Politics has its own morality – ruler does what is necessary for good of state

• Efficiency, practicality, and stability are most important goals of ruler– Democracy inefficient; monarchy

is best– “the ends justifies the means”

PowerPoint: Centralization of Power (Euro 14.3)

Essay Questions1. Who were the “New Monarchs”? How did they go about centralizing

power in their states? To what extent were they successful?2. What were the causes and features of the Commercial Revolution? How

did the Commercial Revolution impact European society politically, economically, and socially between 1500-1700?

3. Analyze the role that knowledge, politics and technology played in European exploration between 1450 and 1700.

4. Analyze causes for the rise of the Spanish Empire and features of Spain’s rule in the New World.

5. Analyze the impact of the Columbian Exchange on European society.6. Analyze factors that enabled Europeans to dominate world trade

between 1500 and 1700.