4.5 - Maritime Empires Maintained and Developed

Wealth Measurement in the 17th Century

Gold and Silver: Wealth of a country was measured by the amount of gold and silver in its coffers.

Mercantilism: The name for this economic theory. Mercantilists believed the world's wealth was limited, so one country could only get richer if another got poorer. Rulers used it to justify building colonies, taxing imports, and controlling trade.

Economic Strategies:

Export Maximization: Countries aimed to sell as many goods as possible to obtain gold and silver.
Import Minimization: Countries avoided spending precious metals on foreign goods.
Colonies' Role: Colonies existed to send raw materials (sugar, tobacco, furs, silver) to the home country and buy its finished goods. They were usually allowed to trade only with their home country, as under Spain's system that sent all colonial trade through Seville and England's Navigation Acts (1651).
Controlling the Economy: Rulers granted monopolies, raised tariffs on foreign goods, and supported home industries. In France, Louis XIV's finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert followed these ideas in the 1660s and 1670s.

Accumulation of Capital

Role of Entrepreneurs: Entered long-distance markets, shifting capital to laborers, who then became consumers and investors.

Church Restrictions: Despite these, lending money at high interest rates became common.

Western Hemisphere Wealth: Increased actual wealth with the influx of gold and silver.

Commercial Revolution

Definition: Transition to a trade-based economy using gold and silver.

Causes:

Development of European overseas colonies.
Opening of new ocean trade routes.
Population growth.
Inflation from increased gold and silver circulation, known as the Price Revolution.

Joint-Stock Companies:

Formation: Investors bought shares, shared profits and risks, and benefited from limited liability.
Driving Force: Enabled exploration and colonization with reduced risk to investors.
Royal Charters: Rulers gave these companies charters with a monopoly on trade in a region. The English East India Company (1600) and the Dutch East India Company, or VOC (1602), are the main examples. The VOC could build forts, keep an army, make treaties, and wage war, so it acted almost like a state.
Tools of Competition: Rulers used these companies to compete for trade without paying for everything themselves. The Virginia Company paid for Jamestown (1607), and the VOC fought the English and Portuguese for control of the spice trade in Indonesia.

Commerce and Finance

Dutch Dominance:

Trade Routes: Set up routes to Latin America, North America, South Africa, and Indonesia.
Ship Technology: Faster and lighter ships gave the Dutch a trade advantage.
Financial Pioneers: Early stock exchange (1602) and international currency trade (1609).
Economic Impact: Dutch standard of living was the highest in Europe.

Financial Bubbles:

France and England: Speculative schemes led to economic crises, bankruptcies, and widespread damage.

Examples: The two most famous bubbles both burst in 1720: France's Mississippi Company and England's South Sea Company. Investors bid share prices far above what the companies were worth, and when prices crashed, many were ruined.

Triangular Trade

Structure:

Segments: European goods to Africa, enslaved Africans to the Americas, American goods to Europe.

What Moved: Europe sent cloth (much of it Indian cotton), guns, iron goods, alcohol, and cowrie shells (from the Maldives, used as money in West Africa) to Africa. Africa supplied enslaved people. The Americas sent sugar, tobacco, rum, and silver back to Europe. Goods, wealth, and forced labor all moved through this system.

Goods Traded: Sugar was the most profitable; rum and tobacco also significant.

Economic Impact: Financed fortunes in Britain, France, and the Netherlands.

Rivalries for Indian Ocean Trade

Portuguese Victory (1509): At the Battle of Diu in the Arabian Sea, the Portuguese defeated a combined fleet of Mamluk Egypt, the Sultanate of Gujarat, and the ruler of Calicut. Muslim merchants and Venice had both profited from the old spice route through the Red Sea, and Portugal's sea route threatened it.

Ottoman Response: The Ottomans also fought the Portuguese for Indian Ocean trade in the 1500s. They sent fleets into the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, failed to take the Portuguese fort at Diu in 1538, and sent cannons and gunners to the Sultanate of Aceh in Sumatra.

Moroccan Conquest (1591): Morocco's sultan, Ahmad al-Mansur, wanted control of the trans-Saharan gold and salt trade. He sent an army across the Sahara that used guns to defeat the much larger Songhai army at the Battle of Tondibi, even though attacking a fellow Muslim state drew religious objections. The Songhai Empire collapsed.

Economic Aftermath: Depleted Moroccan coffers and shifted regional power dynamics.

Long-Term Effect: Morocco could not control the region from across the desert, and more West African gold was already going to European traders on the Atlantic coast, so the trans-Saharan trade kept declining.
European Trade Wars Too: England and the Dutch Republic fought three Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652 to 1674) mainly over trade and shipping, and England took New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664. All of these show economic disputes turning into wars between states.

Change and Continuities in Trade Networks

Global Circulation of Goods: Silver from the Americas fueled Asian markets; European demand for Asian goods increased.

Where the Silver Came From: Spanish colonies mined huge amounts of silver, above all at Potosí (in present-day Bolivia, found in 1545) and Zacatecas in Mexico, using forced Native labor like the mit'a (see 4.4).
Why China Wanted It: China's huge economy needed money, and Ming paper money had lost value. In the 1570s and 1580s the Single Whip reforms required most taxes to be paid in silver, so demand soared and silver was worth more in China than in Europe.
How It Moved: Silver crossed the Pacific on the Manila galleons and crossed the Atlantic to Europe, where merchants used it to buy Asian goods. Chinese silk and porcelain, Indian cotton cloth, and spices then flowed to markets in Europe and the Americas.
Effects: Spain grew rich but also ran up huge debts, and the flood of silver helped push prices up across Europe (the Price Revolution). China's economy became tied to world silver supplies.

Monopolies:

Chartered by Rulers: Exclusive trading rights granted to merchants or joint-stock companies.
Spanish Tobacco Monopoly: Profits from tobacco enriched the Spanish government significantly.

Regional Markets: Continued to thrive, facilitated by improved shipping and increased output of goods like wool, linen, cotton, and silk.

Old Practices Kept Working: Asian and African merchants kept using long-standing tools like credit, partnerships, and family and religious networks. For example, Armenian merchants based in Persia ran trade networks that reached from Europe to India and Southeast Asia.
New Shipping Services: European merchants also carried goods between Asian ports, not just to Europe. The Dutch, for example, shipped Japanese silver and copper to China and India.

More Work for Peasants and Artisans: As world demand for food and consumer goods grew, peasant and artisan labor did not fade away. It continued and grew, with families working longer and producing more for markets.

Western Europe: Under the putting-out system, merchants delivered raw wool and flax to rural families, who spun and wove them into wool and linen cloth at home.
India: Huge numbers of weavers made cotton cloth (calico and chintz) that European companies bought for markets in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
China: Peasant families raised silkworms and wove silk, and workshops in Jingdezhen made porcelain, much of it for export.

Effects of the Atlantic Slave Trade

African Societies:

Population Decline: Loss of people slowed population growth and led to economic dependence on European goods.
Political Impact: Societies like Dahomey and Oyo became richer from the trade, increasing intergroup warfare.
Gender Imbalance: Predominance of women led to polygyny and shifts in traditional gender roles.

Why: Roughly two-thirds of the Africans shipped across the Atlantic were male, because planters wanted men for heavy field work and African sellers often kept women and children as laborers and wives. This left many West and Central African societies with more women than men, so women took on more of the farming.

Introduction of New Foods: Crops like maize, peanuts, and manioc improved diets and spurred population growth.

Political and Cultural Changes for Indigenous Peoples

Colonial Administration:

Spanish and Portuguese Rule: Replaced indigenous political structures with colonial administrations.
Viceroys and Audiencias: Administered and monitored Spanish colonies, but slow communication hindered direct control.

Cultural Changes:

Loss of Indigenous Culture: Conquistadors destroyed native books and documents, erasing cultural history.
Language and Religion: Spanish and Portuguese languages and Christianity became predominant in Latin America.
Creole Resentment: By 1750, many American-born Spaniards (creoles) were wealthy landowners and merchants but resented that Spanish-born peninsulares held the top government and church posts. This tension later helped fuel the Latin American independence movements of the early 1800s (Unit 5).
Mixing of Peoples: Most early Spanish and Portuguese colonists were men, and many had children with Native and African women. This created large mixed-race populations (mestizos and mulattoes) and new kinds of families, which shaped the casta system (see 4.7).
Cultural Blending: All three groups shaped the new colonial cultures. Native peoples contributed foods like maize and chocolate and words like canoe and hammock. Africans contributed music, foods, and religious practices. Europeans brought Christianity and their languages. A famous example is the Virgin of Guadalupe: according to tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared in 1531 to a Native man, Juan Diego, near Mexico City, and she became a symbol honored by Native people and Spaniards alike.

Effects on Belief Systems

Syncretic Belief Systems in the Americas:

African Religions: Blended with Christianity, resulting in syncretic practices like Santería, Vodun, and Candomblé.

How It Worked: Enslaved Africans were often forced to become Catholic, so many kept their own beliefs by linking African spirits with Catholic saints. In Cuban Santería, for example, the Yoruba thunder god Changó is linked with Saint Barbara. Vodou grew in Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) and Candomblé in Brazil.

Islam in the Americas: Enslaved Africans introduced Islam.
Catholic Missionaries: Successful in converting Latin Americans, resulting in a predominantly Roman Catholic population.

Global Interactions and Religious Conflicts:

Sufism and Sikhism: Sufism influenced Sikhism; both sought personal salvation.

Sikhism as a Syncretic Faith: Founded by Guru Nanak in the Punjab around 1500, Sikhism drew on Hindu devotional (bhakti) ideas and Islamic, especially Sufi, ideas. It teaches devotion to one God and rejects caste divisions (see 3.3).

Religious Conflicts: Sunni-Shi'a split fueled Ottoman-Safavid conflicts; Protestant-Catholic divide influenced European colonization.

Examples: The Sunni Ottomans defeated the Shi'a Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran (1514). Overseas, Catholic and Protestant rivalry shaped who settled where: English Puritans settled New England, while Spain tried to keep non-Catholics out of its colonies. In Japan, fear of Christian influence led to its ban.

Missionaries in Asia: Catholic orders like the Jesuits spread Christianity along trade routes. The Philippines became mostly Catholic under Spanish rule. In China, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (arrived in China in 1582) adapted his teaching to Confucian customs and won some converts among scholars. In Japan, many converted before Christianity was banned (see 4.4).
Islam Keeps Spreading: Islam continued to spread in Southeast Asia, especially in the Indonesian islands and the Malay Peninsula, carried by merchants and Sufi teachers.

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