Trading Empires
1450 - 1750
Empires: Dutch
• Dutch East India Company – “universal carriers”
In 1660, employed 12,000 people and had 257
ships. Sought monopolies and large profits.
• North America (fur trade along the Hudson river,
New Amsterdam)
• Caribbean islands for plantation settlements
• Cape Town South Africa – way station
• Southeast Asia – spice trade (nutmeg in Banda
islands, cloves in Melaka and pepper in Banten)
Empires: Spain
• Columbus’ voyage
• Arrival of Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in
Peru
• Took over existing tributary empires: labor
(mita), silver, gold, and foodstuffs
• Demographic impact: disease, death, and
mestizos
Spain
Empires: Portugal
• Search for Maritime route to Asia
• Advanced naval technology: caravels, carracks,
astrolabe and compass
• Established fortresses along the Gold Coast –
sugar plantations and African slave labor
• Indian Ocean trade and Da Gama: Malindi, Sofala
and Kilwa, Calicut and Goa, and later Macao
• Atlantic trade with conquest of Brazil – sugar
plantation
Brazil: Plantation colony
• Portuguese due to
Treaty of Tordesillas
1494
• African slave labor
used to support the
plantation complex
(sugar)
• Largest producer of
sugar in world first
half of 17th C.
Empires: African
• Characteristics of:
• Stateless societies - organized
around kinship
• Forms of government
– Kongo (Congo) – Diving Right
– Songhay (Niger/Mali) – Emperor of conquered territories (no
local rule)
– Oyo & Benin (Nigeria) – Independent city-states
– Ashanti (Ghana/Ivory Coast) – Union of states. Gold-trading and
transitioned to slave-trading
• Some large centralized states – increased unity came from
linguistic base – Bantu, Christianity and Islam, as well as
indigenous beliefs
• Trade – markets, international commerce, taxed trade of
unprocessed goods.
Gender and Empire
• How might colonial conquests
influence gender roles?
Demographic and Environmental
Changes
• Predict what the consequences of increased
integration and empire building be on
population? On the environment? Think
long and short term.
Land Based Empire vs. Sea Based
Empires
Ben Needle
Kell High School
Marietta, GA
Ben.needle@cobbk12.org
Land Based
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Self-defense extremely important
Examples?
Ottoman, Russian, Mughal, Ming
Relatively Large
Expensive
– Focused on agriculture and not industry
•
Many were located in arid & uninhabitable area
• Involved in forced labor
– no longer in WE
• Power was centralized
• Between 1500 and 1800 had the
largest administrative and economic
systems because they were more of a
threat to each other
Sea Based
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Few strategic concerns
Examples?
Spain, Portugal, England
Relatively Small
Self-sufficient
• Settled in profitable areas
• Involved in forced labor
– Increasingly brutal
• Power “divided” amongst lands
• Benefited from private investors or
joint-stock companies
Labor Systems
1450 – 1750
Types of Labor
• What are the two main types of labor systems?
• Paid and Unpaid
• When were paid systems used?
• Indentured servants/Debt Peonage
• Who were these indentured servants?
• Europeans who came over during the first wave of imperialism.
• Debt Peonage (enforced servitude)
• Debtor provides service until their debt is paid off
• Basis of tenant farming and sharecropping in post-Civil War
south.
• Kept former slaves tied to land
• Common in 19th and 20th Century Latin America
• What was the second labor force of imperialism?
• Indigenous people
Indigenous Labor in the New World
• What were encomiendas and the mita system?
• Land granted to Spanish Conquistadors in Latin America
– This land included the Indian Laborers living there
• Forced labor system replacing indentured servants with Indian
slaves
– Based off of the Incan labor system
• What were Potosi and Huancavelica?
• Largest silver mine and source of mercury
• What was the similarity between Viceroyalities and
Capitancies?
• V = Spanish representative of the king
• C = Portuguese representatives of the king (Brazil)
• Why were Europeans “forced” to turn slave labor in the
New World?
• Indigenous people were dying and the emergence of plantations
demanded far more labor
The Emergence of Slave Labor
• Why was there little need for slave labor in the
Northern American colonies?
• Crops requiring large numbers of laborers were
grown in the south
• What crops require large amounts of labor?
• Rice, tobacco, sugarcane, cotton
• As the New World colonies increasingly turned to
plantation crops, the need for slave labor
skyrocketed
The Slave Trade
• Involved approximately 20 million
Africans (survived)
• Triangular Trade
– West Coast of Africa  Caribbean/Latin
America/ North America  Europe
• 13 – 20% died during the trip
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1)
2)
3)
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1)
2)
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Reasons for British
Institutionalization of slavery
Need for cheap, abundant
labor
Viewed Africans as less
human
Natives and European
indentured servants worked
for only a specific amount of
time
Other reasons slavery was so
successful
Seemingly limitless supply
Natural increase allowed for
population maintenance
1660s(VA) – 300
1756 – 120,000
Thousands were brought in daily at
one point
Effects of the Slave Trade
1. Areas of Africa depopulated
•
Took youngest and healthiest
2. Social organization disrupted
3. Local culture suffered (arts and trade)
•
Dependent on European goods
4. African empires lost prominence as power/trade
shifted to the coast
5. Desire for wealth/guns perpetuated the slave
trade
6. View of Africans as an inferior race led to poor
race relations today
Questions to Consider
• What effects would the slave trade have
upon Africa in the future?
• What effects did the slave trade have upon
the New World?