Earlier Explorations
1. Islam & the Spice Trade 
Malacca
2. A New Player  Europe
Nicolo, Maffeo, & Marco Polo, 1271
Expansion becomes a state
enterprise  monarchs had the
authority & the resources.
Better seaworthy ships.
3. Chinese Admiral Zheng He & the
Ming “Treasure Fleet”
Viking Exploration
Marco Polo
• (1275)– Italian trader
searching for trade routes
to Asia by land.
• He was received by the
Mongol Chinese Emperor
Kublai Khan.
• The stories of his travels
increased interest in Asia.
Zheng He
• Chinese explorer
• Sent out to extend trade
partnerships for the
empire.
• Traveled with a fleet of
300 and crew of close
to 27,000
• SE Asia, eastern Africa,
and India
A Map of the Known World,
pre- 1492
Causes of European
Exploration
• Reasons for new exploration:
– 1. More Wealth
– 2. Better prices on goods
• 1453
• Muslims/Italians dominated Asian trade
• Often charged high prices
– 3. Faster trade routes
• Needed to bypass Italians/Muslims to get to
Asia (need for a direct route)
– 4. Spread Christianity (Jesuits)
Early Spice Trade
Motives for European Exploration
1. Renaissance  curiosity about other
lands and peoples.
2. Reformation  refugees &
missionaries.
3. Monarchs seeking new sources of
revenue.
4. Technological advances.
5. Fame and fortune.
New Maritime Technologies
Better Maps
[Portulan]
Hartman Astrolabe
(1532)
(calculated latitude)
Mariner’s Compass
Sextant
New Weapons Technology
The new Caravel was much
larger and deeper which
meant more cargo and it
could go into deeper waters
Prince Henry, the Navigator
School for Navigation, 1419
Museum of Navigation
in Lisbon
Bartolomeo Dias, 1487.
(1488) Portuguese captain
who attempted to reach
Asia by sailing south of
Africa at the Cape of Good
Hope.
A storm nearly destroyed
his fleet and they ran out
of supplies so the voyage
returned to Portugal.
Vasco da Gama (1497)
•Continued Dias’ work. He
explored East Africa and
reached India in 1498.
•The goods collected in
India were worth
approximately 60 times the
cost of the entire voyage.
•By this time the Spanish
were jealous of Portugal’s
new wealth
Christófo Colón [1451-1506]
Columbus’ Four Voyages
Other Voyages of
Exploration
Ferdinand Magellan & the First
Circumnavigation of the World:
Early 16c
French Exploration
English and Dutch Exploration
Atlantic Explorations
Looking for “El Dorado”
European Empires in the
Americas
Western European Empires were marked
by maritime expansion
Spaniards in Caribbean, then on to the Aztec
and Inca empires
Portuguese in Brazil
British, French, and Dutch colonies in North
America
Europeans controlled most of the Americas
by the mid-nineteenth century
European
Empires in the
Americas
The European Advantage
• Geography
– Countries on the
Atlantic rim of Europe
(Portugal, Spain,
Britain, and France)
were simply closer to
the Americas than was
any possible Asian
competitor.
– They also understood
winds and currents
much different from
monsoon winds in the
Indian Ocean.
The European Advantage
•Need
•Europeans were aware of their marginal position in Eurasian
commerce and wanted to change it.
•Rivalry
•Interstate rivalry drove rulers to compete.
•Merchants
•Sought access to Asian Wealth
•avoid the reliance on Muslim middlemen that they found so distasteful.
•Wealth
•Colonies were an opportunity for impoverished nobles and
commoners.
•The silver mines in Mexico and Peru needed to buy Asian goods
•Religion
•Crusade Zeal
•Persecuted minorities looking for more freedom.
•Christian saints in many places blended easily with specialized
indigenous gods, while belief in magic, folk medicine, and communion
with the dead remained strong. Many gravitated toward the world of
their conqueror, learned Spanish, and converted to Christianity.
T he First Spanish Conquests:
T he Aztecs
vs.
Fernando Cortés
Montezuma II
Mexico Surrenders to Cortés
T he Death of Montezuma II
T he First Spanish Conquests:
T he Incas
vs.
Francisco
Pizarro
Atahualpa
Cycle of Conquest &
Colonization
Explorers
Official
European
Colony!
European Empires in the Americas
The Great Dying
•Created an acute labor shortage and made
room for immigrant newcomers—colonizers and
enslaved Africans
•Pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere had 60-80
million
•No immunity to Old World Diseases
•Europeans brought European and African
diseases.
•Morality rate of up to 90 percent among Native
American populations
•Native population nearly vanished in the Caribbean
•Central Mexico: population drops from 10-20 million to
around 1 million by 1650.
•Similar mortality in North America
Population decline
Slaves Working in a
Brazilian Sugar Mill
The Columbian Exchange
•It was the enormous network of communication,
migration, trade, the spread of disease, and the transfer
of plants and animals between the Old and New Worlds.
This was an interacting Atlantic world connecting four
continents
•Massive native mortality created labor shortage.
•Migrant Europeans and African slaves created entirely
new societies.
•American food crops( corn, potatoes and cassava)
spread widely in the Eastern Hemisphere.
•Potatoes especially allowed enormous population growth
•Corn and sweet potatoes were important in China and Africa
T he “Columbian Exchange”

Squash

Avocado

Peppers

Sweet Potatoes

Turkey

Pumpkin

Tobacco

Quinine

Cocoa

Pineapple

Cassava

POTATO

Peanut

TOMATO

Vanilla

MAIZE

Syphilis

Trinkets

Liquor

GUNS

Olive

COFFEE BEAN

Banana

Rice

Onion

Turnip

Honeybee

Barley

Grape

Peach

SUGAR CANE

Oats

Citrus Fruits

Pear

Wheat

HORSE

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Smallpox

Flu

Typhus

Measles

Malaria

Diptheria

Whooping Cough
Comparing Colonial Societies
in the Americas
•Europeans did not just conquer and govern established societies
•They created wholly new societies.
•All were shaped by mercantilism- This view held that European
countries’ economic interests were best served by encouraging
exports and accumulating silver and gold which represented
prosperity. Colonies provided their mother countries with great
quantities of bullion.
•Colonies should provide closed markets for the mother country’s
manufactured goods.
•But colonies differed widely, depending on native cultures and the
sort of economy that was established
•Three types of economies
–settler-dominated agriculture
–slave-based plantations
–ranching or mining
Comparing Colonial Societies
in the Americas
In the Lands of the Aztecs and the Incas
•Spanish conquest
•The most wealthy, urbanized, and populous regions of the
Western Hemisphere.
•Within a century, the Spaniards established major cities,
universities, and religious and bureaucratic infrastructure.
•A distinctive social order grew up, replicating the Spanish hierarchy
while accommodating the racially and culturally different Indians and
Africans, as well as growing numbers of racially mixed people. The
society was dominated by Europeans.
T he Colonial Class System
Peninsulares
Mestizos
Native Indians
Creoles
Mulattos
Black Slaves
1.
Administration of the
Spanish Empire in the New
Encomienda
World
or forced
labor.
2. Hacienda -landed estates
3. Council of
the Indies.
Viceroy.
New Spain and Peru.
4. Papal agreement. The
Treaty of Tordesillas
T he Influence of the Colonial
Catholic Church
Guadalajara
Cathedral
Spanish Mission
Our Lady of
Guadalupe
Spain vs. Portugal
Death to those who talk
Pope Alexander VI acted as a mediator & drew up a line of
demarcation which split the Atlantic.
Spain got the western part; Portugal got the east.
Portugal wanted a piece of the New World, (1494) Treaty of
Tordesillas granted Brazil to Portugal by moving the line of
demarcation over parts of south America.
The Portugal began conquering major trading cities in the
Arabian Sea, India, & as far east as Indonesia & Malaysia.
The Portuguese made it possible to end Muslim & Italian
domination of trade and brought cheaper prices to Europe.
T he Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 &
T he Pope’s Line of Demarcation
Father Bartolomé de Las Casas
New Laws --> 1542
Connection: The European conquest of
the Americas increased global
connections in all EXCEPT which of the
following ways?
a. It brought new crops and technologies to the Americas.
b. Although no American crops spread beyond Europe to the
rest of Eurasia and Africa, the European conquest did
result in the adoption of several American crops in Western
Europe.
c. It resulted in the extensive mixing of indigenous American,
African, and European peoples.
d. It reshaped the world economy by providing Europeans with
access to large amounts of silver.
Colonies of Sugar V. Settler Colonies in North America
Brazil/Caribbean
British North America
Sugar plantation economy
Plantation economy- tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo
Slave labor/harsh
Slave labor/less harsh
Racial mixing took place;
In Brazil, a person of African or non-African
ancestry was not considered “black,” but some
other mixed-race category. The perception of
color in Brazil changed with the educational or
economic standing of individuals.
A sharply defined racial system (with Black
Africans, red Native Americans, and white
Europeans)
In North America, any African ancestry, no matter
how small or distant, made a person “black.”
Colonies of Sugar
•Lowland Brazil and the Caribbean developed a
different society.
•Regions had not been home to great civilizations and
didn’t have great mineral wealth until the 1690’s
•Sugar was in high demand in Europe.
•Colonies produced almost solely for export.
•Arabs introduced large scale sugar production in the
Mediterranean
•Europeans transferred it to the Atlantic islands and the
Americas.
•Portuguese on Brazilian coast dominated the world sugar
market. 1570-1670.
•British, French, and Dutch in the Caribbean broke the
Portuguese monopoly.
Settler Colonies in North America
•Because the British were the last of the European powers to establish a colonial
presence in the Americas, they found that “only the dregs were left.” Lands they
acquired were regarded as the unpromising leftovers of the New World.
•British society was changing more rapidly than Catholic Spain
•British colonist were trying to escape European society
•British colonist were more numerous and by 1750 outnumbered the Spanish by 5
to 1.
•By 1776 90% of North American colonies were European
•Indians were killed off by disease and military policy.
•Small scale farming did not need slaves.
•Literacy Rates:
•The Protestant emphasis on reading the Bible for oneself led to a much greater mass literacy
than in Latin America whereas the Catholic Church was far more focused on converting the
natives to Christianity.
•British colonies developed traditions of local self government.
•Britain didn’t impose an elaborate bureaucracy like Spain.
•British civil war (seventeenth century) distracted government from involved colonies.
•North America gradually became dominant, more developed than South America.
Impact of Exploration on the
Americas
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Conquest of most territories.
New rulers
Natives pushed from land
Natives used as slave labor
Forced to assimilate
New products and diseases
Population decline
Break down of traditional culture
Influx of Christianity
Discussion Starter: In terms of global
history, which of the following do you consider
the most profound long-term outcome of the
Columbian Exchange?
a. The emergence of the Atlantic slave system
b. The exchange of crops and animals between the Americas
and the Afro-Eurasian world
c. The demographic collapse of Native American societies
d. The establishment of European colonial empires
EXPLAIN
Discussion Starter: Aside from the
creation of European empires in the
Americas, what do you think is the most
profound outcome of empire building during
the early modern era?
a. The expansion of Muslim rule over non-Muslim peoples of
Europe and India
b. The emergence of Russia as a multi-ethnic empire
c. The doubling of the population and size of the Chinese
empire
d. The decline of the power and influence of pastoral
societies on world history
Change: The differences among colonial
societies that emerged in the Americas after
European conquest can be accounted for
through all EXCEPT which of the following
factors?
a. The number of Europeans who settled in a region
b. The type of economy that took shape in the region
c. The rejection of slave holding in the early 1600s by
Portuguese and Dutch rulers
d. Whether a Protestant or Catholic power settled a region