The Expansion of Europe
Theme of discovery central to discourse of sixteenth-century Europe - Bacon, Bodin.
- By 1600 - pursuit of discovery gives way to pursuit of Empire.
- Emergence of overseas empires/ global trade shifts balance of power in Europe: from
Mediterranean to Atlantic seaboard; then from Iberian Peninsular to England, France,
Netherlands.
Physical expansion of Europe part of larger process of economic expansion – originates
in late Medieval world.
- Linked to rise of urban environment; rise of the merchant class.
- Eastern/ Mediterranean trade imperilled by Ottoman outgrowth/emergence of the Barbary
corsairs: merchants start exploring new routes and new markets.
- Portuguese explorations – increase knowledge of African commerce; Bartholomeu Dias and
Vasco de Gama chart the sea-route through to India.
Linkage between commerce and empire
- Merchants sailing in larger fleets, supported by royal patronage and military assistance,
representing states and kingdoms outside Europe.
- Portuguese commercial and territorial outgrowth in Asia - Francisco de Almeida made
viceroy over Indian possessions (1505), taking of Goa (1510), string of acquisitions centred
on capture of spice markets e.g. Malacca, the Moluccas.
- Pursuit of trade shapes further Portuguese expansion in Africa (Anglo, Mozambique) and
Middle East (Bahrain).
‘Imperial’ potential to commercial expansion intensified by rise of the joint-stock
company.
- Companies pioneer English, Dutch and French expansion in India, South-East Asia, North
America,
- John Evelyn (1664), ‘whoever commands the ocean commands the trade of the world,
whoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and whoever is
master of that commands the world itself’.
- Imperial impulses within the companies: Josiah Child aims ‘to make all Persons know, that
there is an English Politicall Government in India’ (1684).
Limits of Eastern and African Empires:
- Focus on capture of marketplaces over territorial acquisition: willingness to rely on leases
from local rulers e.g. phirmaund grants in India.
- Settlements often fragile and settlers vulnerable to local powers e.g. collapse of Portuguese
rule in Bahrain (1602), loss of Mangalore (1640), English driven out of Tangier (1684), East
India Company defeated in war on the Moghul (1686-8).
- Josiah Child – critique of ‘fortified towns and castles upon the sea coasts’ no basis for
lasting empire.
- European territorial empires based on settlement and plantation largely centred on the
Americas.
Spanish Empire in the Americas:
- political and ideological influence of re-conquest of Moorish Spain.
- Confessional justification – 1493 Bulls of Donation to Ferdinand and Isabella by Pope
Alexander VI: duty of Spanish to establish Christian missionary kingdoms.
- Conquistadores bring about collapse of Aztec Empire (1521), Incas (1535).
- Foundation of new cities - - Lima ( 1535), Buenos Aires (1536), Santiago (1541), rule over
25 million subjects.
- Spanish conquests powered by extraction of gold and silver – rise of Potosi a mining city;
Castilian annual revenue rises from 847,000 ducats (1504) to c. 13 million by 1600.
- Columbus – pursuit of gold the spur that can ‘drive souls into paradise’.
Iberian conquests overturn ‘balance of Europe’:
- 1494 – Spanish-Portuguese Treaty of Tordesillas = attempted division of the world.
- Richard Johnson, English merchant (1604): ‘How strange a thing it is that all the States of
Europe have been asleep so long that for a hundred years and more, the... riches of the East
and West should run... but into one coffer’.
- American bullion makes possible Spanish expansion closer to home: Walter Raleigh, ‘It is
his Indian Gold that endangereth and disturbeth all the Nations of Europe’.
- Tommaso Campanella, Monarcha Messiae (1605) – possibility of ‘universal monarchy’.
English/ British expansion in America underpinned by moral and political critique of
Spanish Empire:
- William Paterson (1696): ‘the mitred and boosted apostles... pretended to draw certain
Imaginary Mathematical Lines through heaven and Earth... as if they thereby meant to
Incroach upon God in heaven as well as upon Men on Earth’.
- Protestant calls for a religious war in America: John Cotton (1648), James Harrington
(1654),
- But English crown financially constrained – reliant upon initiative of companies in
providing basis for settlement e.g. Dorchester Company, Virginia Company, Massachusetts
Bay Company.
- c. 400,000 people leave England for America 1600-1700.
Different political and religious cultures shape key contrasts between English and
Spanish Empires in America:
1. Spanish America – missionary kingdoms governed by Viceroys, supported by organised
church and supervised by Council of the Indies in Madrid.
- English America – limited crown finances = reliance on companies, individual proprietors
to run empire: therefore political and religious diversity and decentralisation.
- English Empire co-ordinated by Council/ Board of Trade – commercial imperative.
2. Competing ideological justifications – Bulls of Donation mean Spanish have claim over
people as well as land; duty to spread the faith.
- English hindered by absence of Protestant missionising tradition - imperial authors e.g. John
Locke justify ‘plantations’ by organisation and improvement of ‘vacant’ and ‘empty’ land.
3. Relations with indigenous Americans – Spanish: model of close incorporation; English:
greater segregation between colonial settlements and local populations.
By 1700 – Spanish decline due to inflation, excess reliance in bullion, imperial
overstretch.
- James Harrington – Spanish ‘drunk the poison’ of gold; William Paterson: ‘the Indies hath
rather conquered Spain than Spain has conquered the Indies’.
- But international competition means other countries have taken up pursuit of territory:
Anglo-French conflicts increasingly fought out in North America and India.