Transformation in
Europe
1400-1800
Objectives
 How did exploration and the convergence of the old and new
world’s contribute to the rise of European power?
 How did the migration of peoples affect different areas of the
world politically, socially, and economically?
 How did new ways of thinking challenge traditional authority
and usher in the “Age of Revolutions?”
 How did the governments of Europe change and affect conflict
between the social classes?
 How did mercantilism and capitalism drive the slave trade and
create a new global interdependence and political tensions?
Why Explore?
 With a partner address the following:
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Define discovery
What are the benefits and costs of exploration?
What are the top three reasons for exploration?
Would you have decided to go explore?
 Crash Course Video- 15th Century Maritime Explorers
Exploration: Reasons to
Explore
Benefits
Costs
 Gold, Glory, and God
 Getting lost, possible death
 Direct route to Asia for
 New technology not perfect
spices=direct access to
goods=lmore profitable
 Weather
 Humanism and curiosity
 Unknown inhabitants
 European monarchs competed to
 Disease and death
find new routes, territory
 Communication nonexistent
 Desire to spread Christianity
 Lack of food and resources
 Rewards for explorers
 Political support and
 Possible boom in economy=trade
and jobs
financing=risk and possible failure
Comparing Ming China and Europe
 Ming China (1368-1644)
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Disrupted by Mongols and plague
Eliminate signs of foreign rule
Promotion of Confucian learning
Reestablish civil service exam
Created highly centralized gov’t
Maritime venture
 Important sailors and traders in
region-Zheng He
 Launched fleet in 1405
 28 years of expeditions
 No intention of conquering or
establishing settlements
 Abruptly stopped in 1433
 Waste of resources
 Lost gov’t support
 Western Europe
 Cultural renewal and state building
 Independent and competitive states
 Renaissance traditions
 Humanism
 Challenge to traditional ideas
 Curiosity
 Patrons finance endeavors
 Maritime voyaging
 Portuguese begin c. 1415
 1492-Columbus reaches Americas
 1497-1498-Da Gama sails around Africa to India
 Small compared to Chinese
 Unlike Chinese, Euro. seeking wealth, converts,
territory
 Violence to carve out empires
 Europe’s voyages escalate
 No political authority to stop
 Competition
 Elite support and interested
 Europe needs resources, greater riches, food
production
How does Spain and Portugal differ in their
motives for exploring?
Portugal
Spain
 First to venture into I.O.
 Threes G’s
 GOAL: trade monopoly of I.O.
 GOAL: Colonize and set up
trade (Africa and Asia)=SPICES
 Set up naval bases and trading
forts along coast of Africa and India
 Henry the Navigator-map making,
promoted exploration
 Dias-1497 Cape of Good Hope
 Colonized Brazil
 East of Line of Demarcation
 Sugar, tobacco, coffee,
cotton=slave trade
Spanish settlements, resources,
exploitation
 Conquistadors: Cortes conquers
Aztecs (central Mexico) and
Pizarro conquers Inca (Peru)
 European guns, germs, and
steel
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Decimation of population
Treaty of Tordesillas
Animal hides, sugar, tobacco
SILVER mining
Outline
 Migration of peoples:
 Columbian Exchange
 Slave trade
 Political changes:
 State Development
 Absolutism vs.
Constitutionalism
 Social changes:
 Protestant and Catholic
reformations
 Scientific Revolution
 Enlightenment
 Economic changes:
 Mercantilism and
capitalism
 Global trade
 Rise of the bourgeoisie,
joint stock, and stock
exchanges
Population Growth and
Urbanization
 Rapidly growing population due to Columbian
Exchange
 Improved nutrition
 Role of the potato (considered an aphrodisiac in 16th and 17th
centuries)
 Replaces bread as staple of diet
 Better nutrition reduces susceptibility to plague
 Epidemic disease becomes insignificant for overall
population decline by mid-17th century
Population Growth in Europe
Urbanization
Cause and Effect
 Question: What social and economic changes occurred due to
Europe’s expansion around the globe?
Mercantilism
 Extraction and shipment of gold and silver = money from New World
Old World
 Precious metals from Andes and Mesoamerica=rising share of world’s
supply of silver
 England and others want to share in wealth of Spain and Port.
 Failed to find much mining wealth BUT abundance of resources and
fertile lands to cultivate tobacco, sugar cane, rice, indigo
 New economic philosophy
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World’s wealth is fixed
One country’s wealth could be increased at another’s expense
Overseas possessions exist for the benefit of European “motherlands”
Colonies closed to competitors
Hobbes “Wealth is power and power is wealth”
Early Capitalism
 Private parties offer goods and services on a free
market
 Own means of production
 Private initiative, not government control
 Supply and demand determines prices
 Banks, stock exchanges develop in early modern
period
 Joint-Stock Companies (English East India Company)
 Relationship with empire-building
The Bourgeoisie
 Urban bourgeoisie thrived on manufacturing, finance,
and trade
 Netherland’s growth of Amsterdam was built on trade
and finance and exemplifies power of 17th century
bourgeoisie
 Forged mutually beneficial relationships with the
monarchs, built ethnic and family networks=facilitation
of trade around the world
 Partnerships between merchants and gov’t=joint stock
companies
Impact of Capitalism on
Social Order
 Rural life
 Improved access to manufactured goods
 Increasing opportunities in urban centers begins depletion
of the rural population
 Inefficient institution of serfdom abandoned in western
Europe, retained in Russia until 19th century
 Nuclear families replace extended families
 Gender changes as women enter income-earning work
force
 Exploitation of workers ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
Capitalism and Morality
 Adam Smith (1723-1790) argued that capitalism would
ultimately improve society as a whole
 What do you think about this statement??
 But major social change increases poverty in some
sectors
 Rise in crime
 Witch-hunting a possible consequence of capitalist
tensions and gender roles
 Old vs. New World Crops…
 Read the article The Columbian Exchange
 Purpose for reading:
 What is the Columbian exchange?
 What were the major consequences, both + and --?
 How is this event a turning point in history?
 Columbian Exchange Video
Migration: Columbian
Exchange
 New era of interaction
 Catastrophe and opportunity
 Disease
 Intercontinental exchange of plants and animals
Devastation of Amerindian Population
 Western hemisphere: 33-50 million 4.5 million (smallpox, measles,
whooping cough influenza, plague)
 Up to 90% of population dies
Benefits of Columbian exchange
 Exchange of food sources=facilitated pop. Growth
 Cassava, maize, white and sweet potato Africa, China, and Europe
 Domesticated animals to the New World,
 Long run=increase world pop. More than 10x: 500 mill6 bill.
Migration: The Slave Trade
 Enforced migration, captives against their will
 Africa contributed more immigrants to New World than did Europe
 Trading in African slaves not new (Romans, Arabs and Saharan caravans,
Eastern Africa Indian Ocean trade)
 Europeans reoriented the trade routes of Africa to the Atlantic coast
 Trade increased on the Western African coastal cities
 Under 1000 1451-75 7500 per year in first ½ of 17th cent. 50,000
through the 18th and ½ of 19th cent. 10 million or more
 Atlantic Slave Trade Video
Triangular Trade
1. European manufactured goods (especially firearms)
sent to Africa
2. African slaves purchased and sent to Americas
3. Cash crops purchased in Americas and returned to
Europe
The Middle Passage
 African slaves captured by raiding parties, forcemarched to holding pens at coast
 Middle passage under horrific conditions
 4-6 weeks
 Mortality initially high, often over 50%, eventually declined
to 5%
 Total slave traffic, 15th-18th c.: 12 million
 Approximately 4 million killed before arrival
The Middle Passage
African Exports Per Year
Slave Destinations
Regional Differences
 Caribbean, South America: African population unable to
maintain numbers through natural means
 Malaria, yellow fever
 Brutal working conditions, sanitation, nutrition
 Gender imbalance
 Constant importation of slaves
 North America: less disease, more normal sex ratio
 Slave families encouraged as prices rise in 18th century
Slaves and Economic
Importance
 Direct proportion to the expansion of the sugar
plantation economy in Caribbean after 1650
 France held richest, single sugar colony in Caribbean
Haiti
 Cheaper to work them to death and buy replacements
 Fared “better” in North America
Slaves and Africa
 Slave trade influence rise and fall of individual states in
Africa
 Slaves represent main forms of wealth
 Source of labor, a means for their owners to increase wealth
 Trade in slaves means of further increase in wealth, for the
state or private owners
 Africans active participants in slave trade
 African business control trade up to water’s edge
 Europeans lacked military strength, immunity, and
knowledge of interior
 New community of African-Portuguese traders born and had
children
 Debate over full effect of slave trade on
Africa:
 Dire economic consequences or small relative to the
total size of Africa’s population and internal
economy
 Lost opportunities for African development due to
export of so many millions of strongest and most
resilient men and women
 Africa receives new crops maize staple foods
and may actually have sustained population more
than the export of slaves depleted it
 Establishment of new African-American population in
the western hemisphere
Social Changes
 Religious Reformation
 Scientific Revolution
 Enlightenment
Religious Reformation
 1500 Catholic Church benefited from European prosperity
 Selling INDULGENCES to build St. Peter’s basilica
 German Monk, Martin Luther, challenges corruption of church
salvation could only be achieved by FAITH alone
 Writes and posts 95 THESES against sale of indulgences
reproduced quickly with new printing technology
 excommunicated by church in 1521
 Actions paved way for other reformers and began the
Protestant Reformation
 John Calvin Calvinism
 Weakened churches authority and loss of followers to other
branches of Christianity
Martin Luther
95 Theses
Catholic
Reformation
 Roman Catholic church reacts
 Refining doctrine, missionary activities to Protestants, attempt
to renew spiritual activity
 Council of Trent (1545-1563) periodic meetings to discuss
reform
 Society of Jesus (Jesuits) founded by St. Ignatius Loyola
(1491-1556)
 Rigorous religious and secular education
 Effective missionaries
 Series of religious wars ending in 1648
Witch Hunts
 Most prominent in regions of tension between Catholics
and Protestants
 Late 15th century development in belief in Devil and human
assistants
 16th-17th centuries approximately 110,000 people put on
trial, some 60,000 put to death
 Vast majority females, usually single, widowed
 Held accountable for crop failures, miscarriages, etc.
 New England: 234 witches tried, 36 hung
The Copernican Universe
 Reconception of the Universe
 Reliance on 2nd-century Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy
of Alexandria
 Motionless earth inside nine concentric spheres
 Christians understand heaven as last sphere
 Difficulty reconciling model with observed planetary
movement
 1543 Nicholas Copernicus of Poland breaks theory
 Notion of moving Earth challenges Christian doctrine
 Suppressed by church
Scientific Revolution
 New ideas spread by books among European
intellectuals
 Johannes Kepler (Germany, 1571-1630) and Galileo
(Italy, 1564-1642) reinforce Copernican model
 Isaac Newton (1642-1727) revolutionizes study of physics
 Did not believe their ideas were in conflict with religious
belief
Galileo
Newton
The Enlightenment
 "Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world,
for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it." –
Descartes
 “Reason is natural revelation." –John Locke
 “In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty." –
David Hume
 “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in shackles.”Rousseau
 “Common sense is not so common.” –Voltaire
 “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”Voltaire
The Sleep of Reason
Produces Monsters
Francisco de Goya, 1797
“Creates a terrifying scene
challenging a key tenet of the
Enlightenment: that human
reason will produce progress.
Suggests when the mind’s
defenses are down, as in
sleep, we are prey to internal
monsters.”
(Spodek, Howard)
Age of Reason, 18th century
 Advances in science inspired European governments and
individuals to question the reasonableness of accepted
practices: laws, religions, social hierarchies
 Social behavior governed by scientific laws and reason
 Model for changing European society
 Opposition from ABSOLUTE rulers and clergymen
 Printing press was key to survival of movement and spread
of new ideas
 Influence the revolutions in the New World and then spread
into Europe and South America
THINKERS:
 John Locke (England, 1632-1704), Baron de
Montesquieu (France, 1689-1755) attempt to discover
natural laws of politics
 Center of Enlightenment: France, philosophers
 Voltaire (1694-1778), caustic attacks on Roman
Catholic church: écrasez l’infame, “erase the infamy”
 Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau
Activity
 Read the handout and take notes on each of the
philosophers of the enlightenment.
 Write a short reaction:
 Compare 2
 Do you agree or disagree with their ideas? Why or why
not?
 How do these ideas threaten the monarch’s absolute
power? How could they contribute to rebellion?
Political Innovation
 Political changes:
 State Development
 Absolutism vs. Constitutionalism
 Glorious Revolution 1688
th
16
Century Europe
The Consolidation of
Sovereign States
 Emperor Charles V (r. 1519-1556) attempts to revive
Holy Roman Empire as strong center of Europe
 Through marriage, political alliances
 Ultimately fails
 Protestant Reformation provides cover for local princes to
assert greater independence
 Foreign opposition from France, Ottoman Empire
 Unlike China, India, & Ottoman Empire, Europe does not
develop as single empire, rather individual states
 Charles V abdicates to monastery in Spain
New Monarchs
 Italy well-developed as economic power through trade,
manufacturing, finance
 Yet England, France, and Spain surge ahead in 16th
century, innovative new tax revenues
 England: Henry VIII
 Fines and fees for royal services; confiscated monastic
holdings
 France: Louis XI, Francis I
 New taxes on sales, salt trade
Constitutional States
 England and Netherlands develop institutions of
popular representation
 England: constitutional monarchy
 Netherlands: republic
 English Civil War, 1642-1649
 Begins with opposition to royal taxes
 Religious elements: Anglican church favors complex
ritual, complex church hierarchy, opposed by Calvinist
Puritans
 King Charles I and parliamentary armies clash
 King loses, is beheaded in 1649
Glorious Revolution:
England
 Puritans take over, becomes a dictatorship
 Monarchy restored in 1660, fighting resumes
 Resolution with bloodless coup called Glorious
Revolution
 King James II deposed, daughter Mary and husband
William of Orange take throne, 1688
 Shared governance between crown and parliament
 Bill of Rights, 1689
 Limited power of crown
 William and Mary forced to sign
Absolute Monarchies
 Theory of Divine Right of Kings-monarchs have derived
their authority to rule directly from God
 French absolutism designed by Cardinal Richelieu
(under King Louis XIII, 1624-1642)
 Destroyed castles of nobles, crushed aristocratic
conspiracies
 Built bureaucracy to bolster royal power base
 Bourbon kings avoid Estates-General and develop
absolutist style of gov’t
Louis XIV (The “Sun King,”
1643-1715)
 L’état, c’est moi: “The State – that’s me.”
 Magnificent palace at Versailles, 1670s, becomes his
court
 Largest building in Europe
 1,400 fountains
 25,000 fully grown trees transplanted
 Power centered in court, important nobles pressured to
maintain presence
 Symbol of opulence
Louis XIV
Versailles
Versailles Gardens
Hall of Mirrors
Warfare and Diplomacy
 Constant warfare led to military revolution
 Cannons, muskets, foot soldiers became common
 Armies grew in size
 Standing armies maintains
 England standing navy
 Developments in naval technology
 Warships with four wheel cannons=easier reloading
 England’s dominance over Spain in 1588
 Continental Europe
 France rises as new power
 Russia’s emergence of as a power
 Four powers of Europe France, Britain, Russia, and Austria
maintain balance of power for two centuries
Europe in
1648