1.7 - Rivals on the World Stage

European Maritime Empires and the Treaty of Tordesillas

• Portugal was one of the first European nations to explore and establish a maritime empire, driven by the desire to access the lucrative spice trade in the Indian Ocean.

• Prince Henry the Navigator sponsored voyages down Africa's Atlantic coast in the mid-1400s, looking for West African gold and a sea route to Asia. After his death in 1460, Portuguese captains kept going south, and Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip in 1488.

• Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa and reached Calicut, India, in 1498, opening a direct sea route to the Indian Ocean spice trade. Later Portuguese commanders, especially Afonso de Albuquerque, used force to set up fortified trading posts throughout the region (see 1.8).
• This created what is known as a trade post empire, where the Portuguese controlled trade routes rather than large territories.

• Spain joined the maritime empire game by commissioning Christopher Columbus to find a westward route to the Indian Ocean.

• Instead of reaching Asia, Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492 and then reached Cuba and Hispaniola. This led to Spain claiming large territories in the Caribbean, Central America, North America, and most of South America (except Brazil, which went to Portugal).

• Despite having fewer men, Spanish Conquistadors like Hernán Cortés were able to topple large indigenous empires, largely due to the devastating effects of European diseases like smallpox.
• Hernán Cortés (1519 to 1521) conquered the Aztec Empire with a few hundred Spanish soldiers, helped by thousands of Native allies like the Tlaxcalans, who hated Aztec rule, and by a smallpox epidemic in the Aztec capital in 1520.
• Francisco Pizarro (1532 to 1533) conquered the Inca Empire, which had just been through a civil war between two brothers, Atahualpa and Huáscar.
• The Spanish also had steel weapons, guns, and horses, which the Aztecs and Incas had never faced before.

• The Pacific: Magellan's expedition for Spain (1519 to 1522) crossed the Pacific, and Spain began colonizing the Philippines in 1565 and founded Manila in 1571. From 1565, the Manila galleons sailed between Acapulco (Mexico) and Manila, carrying American silver to trade for Chinese silk and porcelain.

• Why Spain became dominant: Silver from mines like Potosí (found in 1545) and Zacatecas in Mexico poured into Spain, and the crown took a fifth of it. This wealth paid for the armies and fleets of Charles V and Philip II in their wars against France, the Ottomans, the Dutch, and England. From 1580 to 1640 the king of Spain also ruled Portugal and its empire. All this made Spain the dominant state in Europe in the 1500s.

• Limits: Spain spent more than it earned. Philip II's government defaulted on its debts several times, and the flood of silver drove up prices (see 1.10).

• Tensions between Portugal and Spain over newly claimed lands in the Americas led to the intervention of Pope Alexander VI.

• The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) drew a line of demarcation to resolve these tensions:
• Spain was granted all lands west of the line.
• Portugal was granted all lands east of the line.
• Despite the agreement, both nations occasionally disregarded the line as they expanded their overseas empires.
• Pope Alexander VI first drew a line in 1493, but Portugal objected. In the Treaty of Tordesillas, the two kingdoms negotiated directly and moved the line to 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This is why Portugal got Brazil, which sticks out east of the line.
• Other European states, like England, France, and the Netherlands, never accepted the treaty and ignored it.

• France, England, and the Netherlands soon followed in establishing their own maritime empires:
• France focused on trade, particularly in North America and Canada, and formed alliances with indigenous groups like the Huron Confederacy to capitalize on the fur trade.
• Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608, and France also took Caribbean sugar islands like Martinique and Guadeloupe (1635).
• England established settler colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America and in the Caribbean, driven by economic competition and the lucrative tobacco trade.
• The English East India Company was chartered in 1600, Jamestown in Virginia was founded in 1607, and Barbados (settled in 1627) and Jamaica (taken from Spain in 1655) became sugar colonies.
• The Dutch focused on trade, competing with the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean while also establishing colonies in North America.
• The Dutch East India Company (1602) made Batavia (Jakarta) its Asian base in 1619 and took Malacca from Portugal in 1641. The Dutch also founded New Amsterdam (later New York) in the 1620s, held part of Brazil from 1630 to 1654, and set up Cape Town in 1652.

• Coercion: Europeans used force to take land and control trade. Examples include the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Incas, Portuguese forts and the cartaz (a pass Asian merchant ships had to buy or risk being attacked), and the Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands for nutmeg (see 1.6).

• Negotiation: Europeans also made deals with local rulers, especially where they were too weak to use force. The Portuguese built Elmina castle on the Gold Coast (1482) with a local ruler's permission and were allowed to settle at Macau by Chinese officials around 1557. The French depended on trading alliances with the Huron and other Native peoples for furs, and the Treaty of Tordesillas itself was a negotiated deal.

• Under mercantilism, states believed there was only so much wealth to go around, so one country's gain in trade was another's loss. This competition led to conflicts and rivalries among European powers in the 1600s and 1700s.
• England vs. Spain: English privateers like Francis Drake raided Spanish treasure ships and ports, one reason Philip II sent the Spanish Armada in 1588 (see 2.4).
• Dutch vs. Portuguese: In the 1600s the Dutch took many Portuguese trading posts in Asia and fought Portugal for Brazil and for slave-trading ports in Africa like Elmina, which they captured in 1637.
• England vs. the Dutch: England's Navigation Act (1651) tried to cut the Dutch out of England's trade, and the two fought three Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652 to 1674) over trade and shipping. England took New Amsterdam in 1664.
• The asiento: This was a contract from the Spanish crown that let a foreign company supply enslaved Africans to Spain's American colonies. It was so valuable that Britain won it in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) after the War of the Spanish Succession (see 3.6).
• Seven Years' War (1756 to 1763): Britain and France fought in North America, the Caribbean, and India as well as in Europe. Britain won Canada and became the leading European power in India (see 5.3).