 This is an important chapter as it marks the beginning of a new period in world history: the early modern era c. 1450 -1750.
 Though cross-cultural interactions had taken place for millennia prior to this era, after 1500 these interactions were much more sustained and much more disruptive to all the peoples involved.
 As you read and work on this chapter, pay particular attention to the impact of technology and trade on political institutions and global interactions

The European Reconnaissance of the World’s Oceans
 What makes European exploration unique compared to other exploration (like that of the Ming Chinese) is that it will link the eastern hemisphere with the western hemisphere and Oceania.
 Will built great power, influence, and wealth for
Europe.
 Expeditions will also lead to accurate geographic knowledge, networks of communication and transportation, the commerce of desired products and resources, and the unintentional exchange of diseases.

European Reconnaissance of the
World’s Oceans
 Motive for Exploration
 Basic Resources
 Lands suitable for crops
 Need to establish trade routes outside of Muslim control to reach Asian (spices) and African (gold, ivory, slaves) markets
 Desire to spread Christianity

European Reconnaissance of the
World’s Oceans
 The Technology of Exploration
 Much of the technology needed for the European voyages of exploration came from Chinese or Arabic sources
 Examples – Stern Rudder, Magnetic Compass, Triangular
Lateen Sail
 New technologies allowed European to sail into the open oceans where they developed new knowledge of wind patterns.

European Reconnaissance Into the
World’s Oceans
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Portuguese, and then the Spanish, took the early lead in
European voyages of exploration into the Atlantic.
Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1415)
 Sponsored a series of voyages along the west African coast to establish ports for the trading of African goods.
Bartolomeu Dias of Portugal (1488)
 Sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian
Ocean (Da Gama went all the way to India 1499)
 Gave Europe a foothold in the Indian Ocean
Christopher Columbus (1492)
 Sponsored by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, reached
Americas unintentionally while trying to find western route to India.

European Reconnaissance of the
World’s Oceans
 Voyages of Exploration: From the Atlantic to the
Pacific
 Vasco Nunez de Balboa – 1513 first sighted the Pacific
Ocean while searching for gold in Panama.
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Ferdinand Magellan – 1519-1522 explored the Pacific and eventually circumnavigated the world under the flag of
Spain.
 Only 35 of his original 280 member crew survived.
Captain James Cook
 English explorer who first mapped and explored much of the
Pacific Ocean in the eighteenth century over the course of 3 voyages.

Trade and Conflict in Early Modern
Asia
 A key result of the voyages of exploration was the potential for commercial opportunities for European nations who built trading posts as footholds in regions where prior commercial powers had dominated for centuries.
 Eventually, following the Seven Years’ War in 1763,
Britain would come to dominate world trade and build a vast empire in the nineteenth century.

Trade and Conflict in Early Modern
Asia
 Trading-Post Empires
 Portuguese were the first to establish trading post empires throughout Africa and Asia.
 Tried to control Indian Ocean trade but eventually did not have man or naval power to enforce their demands
 English and Dutch merchants also built trading posts in the Indian Ocean regions.
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Joint-stock companies
East India Company and United East India Company

Relied on funds from private merchants and used them to build trade empires and for England and the Dutch.

Trade and Conflict in Modern Asia
 European Conquests in Southeast Asia
 European interaction in the eastern hemisphere was much different than in the western hemisphere.
 Europeans were not able to forcefully overtake established states in the east like India and China as they did with the indigenous people of the western hemisphere.
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Most of interactions were through peaceful trade
Two exceptions were the Philippines and Indonesia

Spanish and Dutch were most influential in this area
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Spanish goals: Promote trade and spread Christianity
Dutch goals: Control trade and make $$$

Trade and Conflict in Early Modern
Asia
 Foundations of the Russian Empire in Asia
 Russian expansion in this era was land-based and took two directions:
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Central Asia

Overtook Mongol khanates which gave control over the Volga
River, offering opportunities for trade with the Ottoman
Empire, Iran, and India by way of the Caspian Sea.
Northeastern Eurasia

Control of Siberia and its furs brought Russia great wealth

Trade and Conflict in Early Modern
Asia
 Commercial Rivalries and the Seven Years’ War
 Effort to establish markets and monopolies lead to war between the Europeans and the indigenous peoples and also between the European nations themselves.
 Dutch, English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese fought each other on land and sea throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries over these trade rivalries.
 The Seven Years’ War, also known as the “great war for empire” is the most significant of these conflicts as its outcome laid the foundation for 150 years of British imperial domination across the world.

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Global interactions of this era resulted in an unprecedented exchanged in the biological and commercial realms.
The Columbian Exchange
 The global diffusion of plants, food crops, animals, human populations, and disease pathogens which took place after the voyages of exploration by Columbus and other European mariners that changed the entire world.
 Areas that had been isolated for thousands of years were now exposed to new goods, ideas, people, and diseases.
 Disease like smallpox and the flu initially took large tolls on previously unexposed populations, but eventually the Columbian exchange lead to huge population growth due to the introduction of new food and animals.

 The Origins of Global Trade
 Truly global trading system emerged in which mariners from European nations carried goods around the world by way of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans:
 Silver, Sugar, tobacco, textiles, guns, furs, and enslaved human beings were carried as valuable cargo from one port to another.