The West and the World
After the fifteenth century, explorers from western Europe hacked out empires in the Americas and redefined the nature of international exchange. New areas of the world regions of Africa, the Americas, and Polynesia were brought into the system for the first time. The level of exchange between civilizations became so critical that it affected older political and cultural traditions. In some cases, areas of Asia and the Middle East began to emulate developments in the West.
From the Middle Ages, people in the West were increasingly familiar with the luxury goods of Asia. Early European attempts to enter the world trade system suffered from ignorance of trade routes and hesitancy to break the barrier presented by the Atlantic Ocean. Fear of the emergence of the Ottoman Empire and the declining supply of gold in the West spurred renewed efforts to discover routes to Asia. Initial successes in colonizing the islands just off the Atlantic coast of Africa offered encouragement, but technology did not permit more aggressive attempts to cross the open sea.
A number of technological developments made ocean passages possible. New ships designed for ocean traffic and to carry heavier weapons were built. The compass and improved mapmaking allowed more proficient navigation for long voyages. The combination of gunpowder and advanced metallurgy led to the use of ship-borne artillery. Such weaponry was more sophisticated than that used in other civilizations.
A Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator, initiated the first voyages of discovery along the Atlantic coast of Africa during the fifteenth century. By the end of the century, Portuguese sailors succeeded in sailing around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip. Vasco da Gama was the first Portuguese captain to successfully reach India in 1498. Other voyagers soon followed. One such expedition headed to India was blown off course to Brazil. To protect their commercial interests, the Portuguese constructed a series of forts along the Atlantic coast of Africa and the Indian Ocean coast of India. By 1514, the Portuguese had reached as far as the islands of Indonesia and China. Another expedition reached Japan in 1542.
Spanish colonial ventures began with the voyage of the Genoese captain Christopher Columbus in 1492. His early explorations of a direct western route to Asia led to the discovery of the Americas. Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the tip of South America into the Pacific. His ships reached Indonesia and claimed the Philippines for Spain. Portugal held trade forts in Africa and India, rights in Indonesia, China, and Japan, and Brazil as a result of early explorations. Spain claimed the Philippines and most of the Americas.
In the later sixteenth century, northern European nations became more active in sponsoring voyages of discovery. Utilizing lighter and faster vessels, the northern European nations concentrated on lands in the Americas north of the Spanish and Portuguese claims. French explorers first reached Canada in 1534 and pressed inland along the system of waterways to the Great Lakes and Mississippi River valley. England, in search of a northwest passage to Asia, instead established colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America.
The Dutch soon rivaled the Portuguese in the Asian trade network. Their merchants succeeded in displacing the Portuguese from Indonesia. Dutch merchants also established a small way station on the southern tip of Africa. In the cases of the Dutch and English explorations and colonization, private companies played a major role. The Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company received monopolies from their respective governments, but financed their activities from privately raised capital.
Europe's entry into the Atlantic and Pacific created an international exchange of goods, created a new world-wide economy including the Americas, and paved the way for the establishment of colonies.
One of the negative aspects of the new trade system was the dissemination of European diseases such as smallpox and measles to the Americas and Polynesia. The indigenous peoples of these regions suffered massive population loss over a period of a century and a half. On a more positive basis, New World crops particularly corn and potatoes supported population growth in areas as diverse as China and Europe. European and Asian animals were introduced into the Americas, which had previously lacked animal power.
The ability of the West to dominate the seas allowed Western merchants to displace others from the world trade system. Internal or regional trade remained in the hands of Asian or Muslim merchants, but transoceanic voyages were the monopoly of Europeans. Control of the sea lanes improved Europe's profits from trade. Dominance at sea was the result of military and technological advances that made European navies more powerful than the fleets of other civilizations.
Initially, Europeans did not seize much territory as part of their trading initiative, but limited their incursions to fortified trading posts along the coasts of Africa, India, and the islands of Southeast Asia. Where forts could not be constructed, European merchants entered local trade networks through the establishment of enclaves in cities. This pattern was evident in the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and Russia.
The earliest of the colonizers, Spain and Portugal, declined in the face of later competition from England, France, and Holland. These nations exported manufactured goods in return for raw materials to expand their profit margins. Relations with colonies were affected by the policies of mercantilism, which were crafted to benefit the colonizers. Outside of the core region of Europe lay areas that were economically dependent on the world trade system. These regions produced commercial crops sugar, spices, tobacco, cotton, and slaves in return for the manufactured products of Europe. The construction of core and dependent areas was critical the formation of the world trade system.
The division into core and dependent areas lasted until the twentieth century in many cases. Even in dependent areas, however, some were able to take advantage of local trade to grow rich. Some areas of the Americas and Africa managed to remain outside the world trade system for centuries. Nevertheless, in most regions the advantages of trade lay with the merchants of the European core. Involvement in the world trade system increasingly involved dependent regions in reliance on coercive labor.
In the Americas, the economy of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southern British colonies relied on the importation of African slaves. Also in Latin America, many of the indigenous peoples were brought into an estate system that was able to extract labor. Both in the mines and plantation economies of the Americas, coercive labor systems were common. Similar structures existed in the spice plantations of Southeast Asia and the cotton plantations of India. Forced labor and European control of exchange resulted in weaker colonial governments with limited tax revenues.
Huge areas of the world remained outside the trade system and retained indigenous economies with little incentive for rapid technological change or consumption of manufactured products. East Asia largely remained outside the world trade system. China simply ignored European trade in favor of continuation of its traditional reliance on an internal system of exchange. With the exception of some copies of European firearms, the Chinese kept the Europeans at arms' length until the eighteenth century.
Japan initially showed some interest in trade with Europe, but quickly reversed course. From the seventeenth until the nineteenth century, Japan's rulers maintained isolation except for the single Dutch enclave near Nagasaki. The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires within the Islamic world similarly limited European merchants to enclaves within their cities. Russia's trade was oriented toward central Asia. Much of Africa, with the exception of the slave trading kingdoms, remained outside the orbit of European trade.
Over time, the world trade system expanded. Areas of Southeast Asia and India were brought into the system on a more complete basis in the eighteenth century. Both the British and French East India Companies regarded India as suitable for incorporation as a dependent region and a producer of cotton. Britain passed tariffs to prohibit the importation of Indian cotton cloth and suppress the development of manufacturing in South Asia. In this fashion India was slowly introduced to the world trade system as a supplier of raw materials for the looms of Britain. Eastern Europe was drawn into the western European market system as a supplier of grain to feed the growing cities of the West. In return, Western manufactured goods began to infiltrate eastern Europe.
The Western control of the seas permitted Europeans to achieve dominance over a variety of cultures and peoples. Most colonies were immediately reduced to dependent status within the world trade system. Western leaders fostered colonialism as a means of creating controlled markets for manufactured goods.
Colonization in the Americas, where Europeans enjoyed enormous technological advantages, was particularly attractive. The Spanish seizure of lands in the New World began with the Caribbean islands, then moved to the Central American mainland in 1509. A small expedition succeeded in conquering the Aztec Empire. In South America, the Spaniards defeated the Incas in 1531. Portugal's colonial expansion in Brazil proceeded at a slower pace until the wealth of the interior became more readily apparent. Colonial administrations were established by small groups of adventurers loosely controlled from the mother countries.
As agricultural settlements were made, more formal administrative structures were put in place. Aggressive conversion of Native Americans to Catholicism provided another layer of administration. France, Britain, and Holland established colonies in North America somewhat after the foundation of settlements in Central and South America.
The colonies that more fully adopted Western institutions and culture were located in British and French North America. As late as the eighteenth century, European nations remained largely disinterested in the Atlantic colonies, because they supplied less valuable raw materials than plantation colonies. Although the southern British colonies of the Atlantic coast did develop plantation economies, coercive labor systems, and patterns similar to the Caribbean and Latin America, as a whole, the North American colonies were of less economic value than their Latin American counterparts.
More heavily settled than other areas, the British colonies were closer to European models of government, religion, and political theory. With less direct intervention on the part of the mother countries, the Atlantic colonies produced their own merchant class and engaged in international trade. British attempts to regulate colonial trade came late in the eighteenth century and contributed to rebellion. Atlantic colonists remained abreast of European intellectual movements, such as the Enlightenment. As a whole, the colonists thought of themselves as part of the European world.
Denser settlement led to almost total elimination of the indigenous populations of the Atlantic colonies. European immigration produced a corresponding Indian emigration to the plains. Colonists did not intermarry extensively with indigenous groups, as had occurred in Latin America. In plantation economies, colonists imported African slaves. Interaction with African culture was a characteristic that separated the colonies from the culture of the mother countries.
Colonists reproduced in North America most of the patterns of Western culture. Nuclear families remained the norm. American households tended to be more child-centered as a result of their dependence on young laborers. As the frontiers moved westward, household formation and family patterns more closely approximated the European norms. Even in rebellion, colonists after 1776 couched their resistance in European political theories. Diversities arose between the plantation colonies of the American south and the more mercantile colonies of the north.
Canada was originally founded as a French colony, but the region was ceded to the British in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. Relations between the original French colonists and new British settlers were strained.
The thirteen American colonies of the Atlantic coast all developed representative institutions. Economic equality was greater in the colonies than in Europe, and there was no formal aristocracy. Greater density of population, a sense of political independence from the mother countries, and a sense of identity contributed to the colonial rebellion of 1776.
Although most of the European colonization of Africa was limited to coastal fortification, two more intrusive settlements were attempted by the Portuguese in Angola and the Dutch on the Cape of Good Hope. Dutch settlers fanning out from the trade station created the Cape Colony. Their expansion brought them into conflict with indigenous peoples such as the Bantus. In most cases climate and the prevalence of disease caused Europeans to limit their interests in Africa until the nineteenth century. Actual colonial ventures in Asia were also limited. The Spanish colonized the Philippines and the Dutch controlled the islands of Indonesia. Few Europeans ventured to these settlements.
After 1700 Britain and France began to contest control of the potentially valuable trade with India. Following the decline of the Mughal rulers, the French and British East India Companies were able to construct trade forts along the coasts of the subcontinent. The close cooperation of the British East India Company with the English government, its access to sea power, and its control of the Ganges River valley from Calcutta tilted the contest in favor of the British.
Outright war between the military forces of the two companies broke out during the Seven Years' War. In this conflict, the British emerged as winners and expelled the French from India. British military influence soon extended to the island of Ceylon, as well. In the late eighteenth century, the British government took over the administration of India from the East India Company. The administration operated through a series of alliances and agreements with indigenous rulers. Economically, India was drawn into the world trade system. Nascent manufacturing centers were discriminated against by British tariffs in order to reduce India to economic dependency. Few Europeans settled in Asia other than government administrators, military units, and missionaries. Latin America drew more settlers from Spain and Portugal, who often intermarried with the local population, but Europeans remained a small minority of the total population.
European nations fought many wars over colonial possessions. Colonial production of sugar permitted its use to become widespread among all classes in Europe. In Africa and Asia, Western colonial penetration affected civilizations, but did not attempt to Europeanize them. Western colonialism had a more dramatic effect on Latin America, but even there indigenous cultures survived.
The creation of a world economy largely dominated by the West was a major shift in history. Latin America, Africa, the southern colonies of the American coast, and some other regions were drawn into a system that condemned them to an inferior, dependent status. The global economy created new and more extensive links among civilizations. The emergence of the West called forth responses from other civilizations, creating world-wide change.
The Rise of Russia
Between 1450 and 1750, Russia created a land-based empire. Much of the territory taken was Asian, but its acquisition elevated Russia to the status of chief power in eastern Europe. From a foundation derived from Byzantine culture, Russia embarked on a course of selective Westernization. Despite its willingness to emulate Western civilization, Russia remained outside the global trade system dominated by the West.
The Duchy of Moscow led the movement to free Russia from Mongol influence. Under Ivan III Moscow freed much of Russia by 1462. In the process of expelling the Mongols, Ivan won a vast expanse of land for Russia.
Although Russia had been within the Mongol orbit for a century, Russian culture and government was little affected by their former overlords. Local administration remained in the hands of local princes. The period of Mongol dominance had diminished literacy and economic growth. Russia remained a largely agricultural country. Ivan III reestablished centralized government in Russia, styled himself tsar, and proclaimed Russia the third Rome. His successor, Ivan IV, called the Terrible, continued the policy of territorial expansion and political centralization. Ivan IV killed many of the Russian boyars, or nobility to remove potential challengers to his authority.
Ivan III and Ivan IV pressed Russian expansion into central Asia. Newly conquered lands were settled by peasants, called cossacks. A cross between farmers and warriors, the cossacks provided volunteers to press the frontiers farther eastward. Eventually they moved out of the region of the Caspian Sea into western Siberia. The tsars rewarded loyal followers with grants of land in the area of Asian conquest. Conquered peoples were occasionally reduced to slavery to feed the need for labor. The conquests provided new trade connections for Russia. Russian expansion eliminated the free peoples of Asia, from whom the various nomadic invaders of earlier civilizations had sprung. The conquests also produced great ethnic and religious diversity within the Russian empire.
Both Ivan III and Ivan IV pursued cultural and commercial ties with the West. When Ivan IV died without an heir, boyars attempted to regain their former influence. Sweden and Poland invaded Russia in hopes of seizing territory. In 1613, this Time of Troubles was brought to an end when an assembly of boyars selected the Romanov dynasty to rule Russia. Although the Time of Troubles was temporarily catastrophic for Russia, it did not produce any lasting constraints on the power of the tsars.
Michael Romanov restored order and resumed foreign expansion. He successfully seized part of the Ukraine from Poland. Alexis Romanov restored tsarist autocracy. He abolished the assemblies of boyars and assumed direct state control over the Orthodox Church. After enacting reforms, the tsar exiled the "old believers", those who remained attached to the old rituals, to Siberia.
By the end of the seventeenth century, Russia remained an agricultural nation with limited cultural achievement. Peter I, called the Great, concentrated on emulation of the West as a means of developing a more diverse economy and culture.
Peter retained the autocratic structure of Russian government. He recruited bureaucrats from outside the ranks of the aristocracy and granted titles of nobility to those who served well. He improved the Russian military through the introduction of Western reforms. The tsar created the Secret Police to prevent dissent and oversee the bureaucracy. In foreign affairs, Peter attacked both the Ottoman Empire and Sweden, his rival on the Baltic Sea. Victories over Sweden allowed the tsar to move his capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
Peter the Great streamlined the military and political organization of Russia along Western institutional lines. The army, local administration, and the Orthodox Church were all brought more firmly under autocratic control. Economic reforms concentrated on Russia's mining and metallurgy sectors. Improvement allowed Russia to achieve independence in these areas from the West. In order to cut off the Russian elite from their traditional cultural background, Peter enforced Western styles of dress and personal appearance. Schools emphasizing mathematics and science were constructed to introduce Western intellectual developments. Among the elite, Peter successfully Westernized Russian society. Changes did not extend to peasants or commoners.
New manufacturing sectors in Russia continued to be based on partially coerced labor systems. The intent of the economic development was to strengthen the military, not to enter the global commercial system. Some elements of Russian society bitterly opposed the reforms as attacks on traditional Russian customs.
After the death of Peter the Great in 1724, there were a series of weak rulers dominated by the military. In 1761 the retarded Peter III became tsar, but was rapidly replaced as the effective power by his wife, Catherine the Great. Catherine continued the policy of autocratic centralization and suppressed the uprising of peasants under Emelian Pugachev. Catherine flirted with Enlightenment ideas and attempted legal reforms along Enlightenment concepts.
However, Caterine also favored centralization and a strong tsarist hand, and she strengthened the power of the nobility over the Russian peasantry. The nobility continued to serve as the primary source of recruits for the bureaucracy and military. Landlords gained almost absolute jurisdiction over the peasants who resided on their estates. Catherine turned rapidly against Western ideas during the French Revolution and censored Russian intellectuals who criticized autocracy. Catherine pressed the attack on the Ottoman Empire, gaining lands in the Crimea.
Russia colonized Siberia, and explorers reached Alaska and the California coast. Catherine directed an aggressive foreign policy against Prussia and Poland. In 1772, 1793, and 1795, Russia participated in the partition of Poland, which ceased to exist as an independent state. In some ways, Russian expansion was reminiscent of the early United States.
Unlike the West, Russian economy continued to rely on a coercive labor system and a repressive serfdom. The Russian nobility enjoyed a position of power because of its authority over the peasantry and its service relationship to the state.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Russia saw an intensification of serfdom. After the expulsion of the Mongols, the Russian nobles, with the consent and assistance of the central government, gained almost exclusive ownership of the land. When new conquests were added to the Russian empire, serfdom was extended. By 1800, half of the peasantry was enserfed to the nobility, the other half to the state. An act of 1649 made the status of serfdom hereditary. In much of Russia, the condition of serfdom approached slavery.
Eastern Europe also adopted a coercive labor system based on serfdom. Coerced labor supported the dependent agricultural economy of eastern Europe within the global commercial network dominated by the West. In Russia and most of eastern Europe, it was possible for landlords to sell whole villages of serfs as manufacturing laborers. Serfs were not quite slaves. They remained free to manage their village governments, but they were subject to taxation, owed labor services to lords and the government, and were subject to landlords' jurisdiction. The onerous conditions produced occasional rebellions, such as the Pugachev revolt of the 1770s.
Aside from the nobility and the serfs, there was little social stratification in Russia. There were few artisans and an inadequate merchant class. Without classes directly related to commerce and manufacturing, the state was left to handle trade and industrialization. International trade was handled through Western merchant companies located in the capital city. The Russian economy was sufficiently expansive to support military conquest, a substantial nobility, and population growth. Both agricultural and industrial production lagged behind Western standards. To a certain extent, Russia was self-sufficient and did not fall into total dependence on the West.
Russia's most profitable trade was with central Asia and internal. Russia did become increasingly dependent on exports of raw materials to the West to support its program of acculturation. Russia's political dominance in central Asia set it apart from other dependent regions of the world.
The conditions of Russia did produce intellectual dissatisfaction and criticism of the government. Peasants resented the overweening authority of their landlords, and rebellions were frequent. Both intellectual and peasant dissatisfaction engendered repressive measures on the part of the government. Russia's total dependence on serfdom as a source of labor produced an inflexible economy that eventually challenged the country's political and social stability.
The expansion of Russia reduced eastern Europe to a narrow band separating Russia from the West. Poland, the Czech, and Slovak regions of Europe remained more a part of the Western tradition than part of the Russian cultural milieu. These areas participated in the scientific revolution and the Protestant Reformation of the West. Even those areas that remained outside of Russian political control tended to fall under the aegis of the authoritarian regimes of Prussia and Austria.
Perhaps the most striking political feature of the period was the decline of Poland from the largest entity in eastern Europe to subdivision among Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The existence of a dominant aristocracy, coercive agricultural labor systems, and the absence of a substantial merchant class were common to eastern European nations and Russia. The eclipse of Poland highlighted the emergence of the Russian empire in Europe and central Asia.
Early Latin America
Portugal and Spain imposed dependent colonies on the indigenous peoples of Latin America. Unlike Russia, where leaders were able to selectively borrow from Western culture, the Iberian colonists imposed their forms on their New World possessions. The colonies of Latin America fully demonstrated the
technological advantages enjoyed by Western nations over the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Latin American social hierarchies were deeply affected by the intermarriage of Iberian Europeans with the Indian population and by the importation of African slaves.
In the New World, Europeans tended to draw on their experiences from the West, while Native American peoples struggled to maintain their own ways of life. New World colonies were exploitative. Wherever possible, plantation forms of agriculture based on coercive labor systems were established. The mining of precious metals was another aspect of European exploitation of the New World.
The Iberian peninsula formed a frontier between Christian Europe and Islam. For centuries conflict between different cultures was the basis of life. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile began the process of uniting the small Christian kingdoms of Spain. Under the Catholic monarchs, Spain completed the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Muslims in 1492. The conclusion of the reconquest was contemporary with the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World.
Spain and Portugal were heavily urbanized, a characteristic these nations exported to the New World. Spanish and Portuguese colonists, though commoners at home, often attempted to remake themselves as a colonial elite with Indians as their serfs. Households were patriarchal, a trait carried over to the plantation economy of Latin America. The Spanish state depended on a professional bureaucracy and was closely tied to the Church. Plantation agriculture based on slave labor, already established on the Atlantic islands, was readily transported to the Americas.
There were three phases of the creation of Latin America. In the first, from 1492 to 1570, colonial administrations were established. Between 1570 and 1700, colonial society and economy reached maturity. During the eighteenth century, the American colonies underwent significant reform. Between the first voyages of discovery and 1600, the Indian empires of Latin America were destroyed and African slavery was introduced. Mexico and Peru became the focal points of Spanish settlement.
The islands of the Caribbean, the first regions placed under Spanish rule, provided models for subsequent development of the American mainland. The Taino Indians were distributed in grants, or encomienda, to individual Spaniards as agricultural laborers. Disease rapidly decimated the indigenous population, and the islands declined as economic centers until the introduction of sugar plantations and African slavery. Caribbean cities were laid out on grid plans with a central plaza featuring a church and governor's palace. Royal administration included the governorship, the treasury, and a royal court staffed by trained legalists.
Christian missionaries accompanied the first colonists, and Roman Catholicism was rapidly established in the New World. Early attempts to exploit mineral wealth on the islands was supplanted by settlement in the early sixteenth century. New colonists founded ranches and sugar plantations. Settlement led to the destruction of the indigenous population and the importation of African slaves as a source of coercive labor. Movement from island to island was through private investment and initiative.
Individual initiatives consisting of small expeditions of military men led to the conquest of Mexico, Central America, and South America. In Mexico, Hernan Cortes and 600 men toppled the Aztec Empire by 1521. The Spanish colonial capital of Mexico City was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. Much of central Mexico was under Spanish domination by 1535 and incorporated into the colonial government of New Spain.
From New Spain the Spanish expanded into Central America and northward into the American southwest. A second voyage of conquest moved from the Caribbean to Panama and then south to the Inca Empire. Francisco Pizarro, taking advantage of internal strife among the Incas, conquered the Inca capital in 1533. Pizarro completed the conquest of much of Peru by 1540. Voyages of discovery fanned out from the initial conquests. Francisco Vazquez de Coronado explored the American southwest in search of gold, while Pedro de Valdivia pressed Spanish exploration along the Andes from Peru into Chile. Other explorers penetrated the Amazon basin and the plains of South America. By 1570 there were 192 Spanish cities and towns in the new colonies.
In most cases, Spanish conquerors proceeded on the basis of contracts with the Spanish Crown in which they were promised authority in the conquered territories in return for payments of bullion to the royal government. Forces were recruited through grants of shares of booty and profits. Inequitable distribution of the American spoils often led to internal dissatisfaction among the conquerors. Few of the conquerors were professional soldiers. Most were simply men seeking profit from risk and adventure. Europeans were aided in their defeat of Native Americans by advanced technology, possession of horses, and the vulnerability of indigenous peoples to disease. Internal disputes within the Indian empires also weakened their ability to make effective resistance to European invaders. By about 1570, the age of conquest had ended. Royal administrators and bureaucrats began to replace adventurers in the colonial government.
The Conquest created a series of moral and philosophical questions. The Spanish scholar, Gines de Sépulveda, using Aristotle, argued that the enslavement was justified because the Indians were not fully human. The great Dominican, Las Casas, contested Sépulveda뭩 views. The crown backed Las Casas but little changed as the result of the debate.
All Indian peoples suffered a catastrophic decline in population as a result of the European conquest of the Americas. The Spanish attempted to concentrate remaining Indian populations in fewer towns and to seize abandoned communal farmland. Demographic decline made it difficult for survivors to maintain traditional social and economic patterns. In Mexico, in particular, the decline in human population was matched by the dramatic increase in the numbers of European domestic animals brought to the New World.
The Spanish maintained the old Indian nobility as middlemen for their collection of taxation and imposition of labor requirements. Enslavement of Native Americans was forbidden, but labor taxation was common in the form of encomiendas. As the Indian population declined, the value of encomiendas diminished. The institution was much in decline by the 1620s. Colonists thereafter sought grants of land rather than labor. Despite the disappearance of the encomienda, the royal government continued to exact Indian labor as a form of taxation, the mita. During the seventeenth century, Indians began to leave villages and seek private employment as a means of avoiding government labor requirements. Despite European intervention, some Indian culture was retained at the local level.
The majority of colonists and Indians continu ed to derive their living from agriculture, but the colonial commercial system was organized around exploitation of mineral wealth.
Silver was discovered in both Mexico and Peru. The Potosi mine was the greatest silver producer in the Americas. Mining was carried out through a system of coerced labor dependent on first Indian slaves, then the encomienda, and finally the mita. Since extraction of silver required mercury, the discovery of that metal at Huancavelica in Peru accelerated silver production. Mines were owned privately, but owners were required to send one fifth of all production to the royal government. Silver production rose rapidly after 1580 because of the use of mercury in the extraction process. The mining industry stimulated secondary economic activities such as farming and transportation.
As Indian population declined, Spanish farms and ranches were developed. Spanish colonists turned to land with the extinction of the encomienda. Much of the labor force for colonial agriculture continued to be drawn from among the Indian population. Most agricultural production was for consumption in the colonies. Only a small amount of plantation commodities was exported. In areas where Indian villages sustained sufficient population, competition between Spanish haciendas and Indian communal farming existed.
The Spanish colonies did develop a small woolen textile industry that supplied colonial markets. Spanish commercial objectives were directed at exploitation of mineral wealth, specifically silver. All American trade with Spain passed through the Casa de Contratacion of Seville. Strict control of trade allowed Spanish merchants to keep prices high. To discourage piracy and competition from other European nations, Spanish trade with its colonies was shipped in a convoy system composed of galleons. Trade from Europe passed to fortified ports in the Caribbean and along the American mainland.
Although a seemingly endless supply of silver entered Spain, much of it was eventually exported to pay for military service, debts, and a negative balance of trade. Importation of American bullion contributed to sharp inflation in first Spain, then the rest of Europe. Spain's control of the silver trade permitted its monarchs to incur massive debts on the security of American bullion.
Spain's right to its colonial possessions was based on the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the world between Portugal and Spain. The Spanish bureaucracy in the New World was staffed by university-trained lawyers, the letrados, from Spain. The laws of the Spanish possessions were codified in the Recopilacion of 1681. Government in Spain, itself was conducted through a series of councils with the Council of the Indies in charge of the colonies. In America, Spain created two viceroyalties one in Mexico and one in Peru. Viceroys exercised both military and administrative authority over their dominions. Each viceroyalty was subdivided into judicial regions called audiencias. At an even more local level, magistrates in towns and villages enforced decrees, acted as judges, and collected taxes.
Because of the close relationship between the Spanish government and the Church, Catholic orders acted virtually as an arm of the government. Missionaries converted the Indians and in many cases defended their rights and their culture. In some areas, a more formal structure of parishes and bishoprics replaced the original missionary church. The Church served to stimulate the culture of the colonies in many ways.
Construction of buildings offered opportunities for architects and artists. Printing was introduced into the colonies to disseminate religious materials. The Church founded schools and universities to train priests, but their institutions became the primary sources of education for all fields. To control orthodoxy and morality, an office of the Inquisition was established in the New World. Church and state combined to form an ideological and political framework for the new colonies.
Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500. The only initial interest shown by the Portuguese government was in the dyewood found along the coast. After 1532, the Portuguese monarchy granted large holdings, or capitaincies, to nobles. Without sufficient capitalization, little effective colonization of the capitancies proved possible. With difficulty, sugar plantations were established using first Indians, then African slaves as a labor supply. In 1549, the Portuguese government established a more formal colonial administration with its capital at Salvador.
From its small beginnings, Brazil became the world's leading sugar producer after 1600. The industry expanded on the backs of African slaves, who became a significant proportion of the colonial population. The plantation economy gave rise to a distinctive social hierarchy based on race. The white plantation owners became an aristocracy linked to the merchants and Portuguese administrators. Artisans, small farmers, and free laborers were drawn from the ranks of people born of marriages between Indians, whites, and African slaves. At the bottom were the slaves, whose condition was marked both by race and servile status.
Portugal eventually established a colonial government consisting of a governor general, though his control over the governors of the individual capitancies was limited. As in the Spanish colonies, the Catholic Church also established an important presence in Brazil. Intellectual life in Brazil lagged behind the Spanish colonies. Neither printing nor universities were established in the Portuguese colony.
By the late seventeenth century, Caribbean colonies of other European nations challenged Brazil's leadership in sugar production. As prices for sugar fell and slaves rose, the plantation economy of Brazil suffered. In 1695, explorers in the interior of Brazil discovered gold in the region of Minas Gerais. The discovery set off a gold rush of immigrants from Portugal. Because labor in the mines was also provided by African slaves, the African population of Minas Gerais also expanded rapidly.
The Portuguese government moved to promote its interests in mining production though the establishment of administration and police. Mining did stimulate the development of the colony's interior, although the impact on Indian populations was typically disastrous. As in Spanish colonies, mining promoted secondary production of food supplies. Rio de Janeiro, the city closest to the mines, grew in importance and replaced Salvador as the capital of Brazil in 1763. The mining regions adopted the hierarchy of color already apparent in the plantation zones. As gold exports paid for luxuries and manufactured goods, Brazil failed to develop an internal industrial capacity. Brazil signed a treaty with Britain in 1703 to obtain manufactured products, while the British imported Portuguese wine. When the gold mines began to peter out in the second half of the eighteenth century, Brazil and Portugal were economically dependent on England.
The American colonies brought together three peoples Indians, Africans, and Europeans in a hierarchy created from conquest. Europeans were conquerors, thus superior. Other groups were subject to various forms of European dominance religious, social, political, and economic.
Spanish social hierarchies were complicated by intermarriage between races. Marriages between Spaniards and Indians resulted in the creation of a group of mixed race, the mestizos, who were regarded as socially superior to the Indians and more acculturated to European patterns. Similar patterns of social hierarchy resulted from Europeans sexual exploitation of African slaves in Brazil. In all of Latin America, social status reflected racial origins. Whites were the elite, blacks or Indians were at the bottom, and peoples of mixed race were in between. Together, people of mixed racial origin were referred to as the castas. Castas found that the higher offices and economic positions were closed to them.
Despite social limitations, peoples of mixed race made up a large proportion of Latin American populations. Social mobility might result in changes in racial categorization, but being white was still the most obvious qualification for elite status. Even among whites, some distinctions were observed between those born in Europe, the peninsulares, and those born in the Americas, Creoles. Peninsulares, about whose racial origins there could be not doubt, were regarded as truly elite. Creoles rapidly developed a sense of identity separate from the European white population. Regardless of racial origin, households remained patriarchal. Women did have rights in dowry, inheritance, and some access to commerce.
During the eighteenth century, the Latin American colonies revived on the basis of the expanded European economy and the increased demand for American goods. Movements for reform spread throughout Latin America.
As Spain lost its dominance in Europe, France, England, and Holland threatened Spain's monopoly over much of Latin America. Assaults on Spanish possessions began as raids and piracy, but in the mid-seventeenth century Spain's rivals seized valuable islands in the Caribbean and converted them to plantation economies. Spanish control of trade with Latin America also suffered. Silver shipments declined, the colonies became more capable of supplying their own manufactured goods, and the local aristocracies who controlled the colonial governments were corrupt. When Charles II of Spain died without an heir in 1701, a French successor was named. Other European nations sought to prevent the diplomatic unification of France and Spain. The War of the Spanish Succession (1702 1713) ended with the concession of Spain to the French Bourbon family, but required that Spain partially open trade to Latin America to the British. Spain's commercial monopoly was officially at an end.
The Enlightened monarchy of the Bourbons undertook to reform both the internal and colonial governments of Spain. Groups that opposed reform, such as the Jesuits, were suppressed. Spanish trade to the New World was regularized and opened to Spanish ports other than Seville. In the colonies, the number of viceroyalties was increased with new regional governments in New Granada and the Rio de la Plata. Royal investigators exposed graft and corruption in colonial administrations resulting in the removal of many Creoles from the governments of Latin America.
The French system of intendancies replaced the older local government. Reforms improved tax collection and economic development, but offended many members of the colonial elite. Often allied with France against England in the later eighteenth century, Spain was forced to improve the military readiness of the colonies. Regular troops were sent and Creole militias were formed. Under military leadership, colonization of the frontiers in such places as California was renewed. Creation of monopolies was one of the major strategies for economic development introduced during the Bourbon reforms. Companies were granted exclusive rights in return for agreements to develop new regions of Latin America.
Commerce within the Caribbean expanded under the terms of more open trade. Buenos Aires on the Rio de la Plata expanded rapidly. Opening Latin America to international trade weakened local manufacturing and created demands for a return to protectionism. Improvements in mining technology allowed the production of silver to improve, particularly in New Spain. The Bourbon reforms strengthened Spain's empire at the expense of Creoles in the New World. Exclusion of Creoles from government and the increasingly dependent position of Latin America in world trade provoked resistance among the colonists.
The Bourbon reforms in Spain's New World empire were paralleled by the Pombal reforms in Brazil. The Marquis of Pombal, Portugal's prime minister, wished to free Portugal from its negative balance of trade with England. As in Spain, Pombal expelled the Jesuits, who resisted his plans for reform. Monopolies were created in Brazil, leading to the opening of new regions.
Cotton and cacao plantations arose in the Amazon basin. In order to ensure a steady supply of slaves to Brazil, Pombal abolished slavery in Portugal. The colony continued to rely on African slaves as their primary labor source. Although Pombal's reforms did reduce Portugal's imbalance of trade with England, it could not revise Brazil's position within the world trade system as a supplier of raw materials.
During the period of reform, the Latin American colonies experienced considerable growth in population and economic development. Despite evident prosperity, reforms disturbed social and political relations in the colonies and led to colonial resistance. Complaints against more aggressive government control led more frequently to rebellion after 1700.
The Comunero Revolt in New Granada (1781) and the Tupac Amaru rebellion in Peru at about the same time produced real threats to colonial governments. In both cases, racial divisions among the revolutionaries allowed government forces to recover from initial defeats. Although there was a plot to overthrow the Brazilian government in 1788, it was discovered and thwarted before violence began. Only social and racial divisions prevented common action against colonial administrations in the later eighteenth century.
The creation of colonies in Latin America produced temporary benefits for the mother countries in terms of valuable imports and bullion. The culture of the Iberian peninsula was imposed on the Latin American colonies in the course of creating empires. Despite the cultural homogeneity implied in the term "Latin America," there were great variations from one region to the next in the Americas. Indian cultures continued to survive. In addition, the importation of large numbers of African slaves in some regions produced a hierarchic society based on wealth, ethnicity, and race.
Although the Latin American colonies produced products that remained in demand on the European markets, the New World economy was largely defined by outside control and dependence on a coercive labor system. Latin America was another of the dependent economic zones subject to dominance by Europeans in the global trade system.
The Muslim Empires
Between 1450 and 1750, the growth of three great empires, continued trading contacts, and the dissemination of the Islamic faith typified the Islamic zone. Although the growth of the Western trade system had relatively little internal impact on the Muslim empires, the Western nations were establishing the commercial bases for economic dominance after the eighteenth century.
In the wake of the nomadic incursion of the Mongols and the armies of Timur, three great empires coalesced: the Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid. These three empires were characterized by military power based on gunpowder, political absolutism, and a cultural renaissance. The empires differed in the ethnic complexity of their territories and their allegiance to Shi'ism or Sunni Islam.
The Mongols destroyed both the Abbasid empire and the Seljuk dominance of the Middle East. In the aftermath of the Mongol withdrawal, the Ottomans under Osman became the dominant force in Asia Minor. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the Ottomans had extended their control over the lands of the Balkans. Temporarily untracked by the advance of Timur's forces, the Ottomans recovered under Mehmed I. In 1453, Mehmed II besieged and conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. In the two hundred years after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans extended their control over much of the Middle East and North Africa. Ottoman navies seized control of the eastern Mediterranean while land forces pressed into southeastern Europe.
Ottoman society was based on war. The original Turkic cavalry developed into an aristocracy with much control over land and resources. The aristocracy yielded Constantinople to the sultans, but built up local power bases. By the mid- fifteenth century, the sultans came to rely on infantry forces, the Janissaries, forcibly conscripted from among the conquered Christian populations of the Balkans. Given control over firearms and artillery, the Janissaries became the most potent part of the Ottoman military and became involved in court politics.
Sultans maintained power by balancing other sources of authority the Janissaries, the military aristocracy, and the religious scholars. Ottoman administration, although brutal, was often efficient. Over time, the elaborate Ottoman court grew isolated from the people. A vizier headed the central bureaucracy of the empire and often wielded the real authority within the government. Sons of sultans got experience through posts as regional military commanders or governors. Without a principle of succession, deaths of sultans often led to civil and external strife among the rival claimants.
Following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, sultans restored the city and began a campaign of building. The most spectacular additions were mosques, such as the Suleymaniye. Sultans also sponsored the construction of schools, hospitals, and rest houses. Bazaars and markets did business in international goods. Coffee houses provided a public forum for debate and religious discussion. The artisans of Constantinople formed guilds. Unlike the West, the Ottoman government retained close supervision of commerce and guild organization. By the seventeenth century, the primary language of the Ottoman court was Turkish.
The Ottoman Empire managed to maintain its vigor into the late seventeenth century. At that time the empire, which was overextended, began to retreat from its most distant borders in Europe and the Middle East. Once the Ottoman Empire began to contract, its administrative structure, which had always depended on military expansion, began to deteriorate. Venality and corruption became more apparent at all levels of the bureaucracy. Oppressive taxation sparked resistance and flight among the peasantry. The ability of individual sultans also declined after the seventeenth century. Later sultans were often reduced to puppets dominated by viziers or the Janissaries.
The Janissaries resistance to any military technology that might threaten their dominance caused the Ottoman Empire to fall behind Western nations. Ottoman armies became less threatening to the West. On the seas, the Ottoman defeat at Lepanto in 1571 signaled the end of their dominance of the Mediterranean. The Portuguese feat of reaching the Indian Ocean ended Muslim monopoly of trade with Asia. The influx of Bullion from the New World in the sixteenth century unsettled the stagnant Ottoman economy and introduced inflation. Competent sultans temporarily halted the Ottoman decline, but technological and cultural conservatism continued to cause the Ottoman Empire to disregard important changes in Europe. The Ottomans became progressively weaker in comparison to their Western rivals.
Like the Ottomans, the Safavids emerged following the political wreckage of the Mongols. Of the Muslim empires, the Safavids alone adopted Shi'ite theology. The dynasty had its origins in a family of Sufi mystics. The first prominent member of the family, Sail al-Din was an evangelist among the Turkish tribes near the Caspian Sea. The family achieved military success under Isma'il. In 1501, Isma'il was proclaimed shah at Tabriz, the first capital. Although the Safavid successor of Isma'il extended their control to Iran and what is now Iraq, they were turned back by the Ottomans at the battle of Chaldiran in 1514 from attempts to penetrate farther west.
Following the defeat at Chaldiran, Isma'il's government deteriorated into a succession crisis. Order was restored under Tahmasp I, and Shah Abbas I extended Safavid territories to their greatest extent. The Turkic cavalry was, as in the Ottoman Empire, eventually established as a regional aristocracy that exploited the agrarian population. Increasingly, positions at the Safavid court were held by Persians to offset the Turkish aristocratic influence. Also like the Ottomans, Tahmasp I began the practice of recruiting a military force from among slaves captured in southern Russia. Shah Abbas I used the slave regiments and even elevated members of the unit to provincial governorships. Abbas imported European technology and military advisors to aid the Safavids in their conflicts with the Ottomans.
After Chaldiran, Persian became the primary language of the court. Shahs also developed elaborate court rituals based, in part, on their claims to be descendants of one of the Shi'ite imams. The state officially supported Shi'ite theology and supervised education of religious leaders. Much of the Safavid population was converted to Shi'ism, occasionally by force. Shi'ism thus became a critical aspect of Iranian culture. When the rulers weakened, religious leaders, or mullahs, became an alternative source of authority, although never strong enough to challenge the shahs.
Shah Abbas I was most heavily involved in cultural patronage and commercial expansion. Abbas encouraged trade with Asia and Europe. He engaged in a program of public works, particularly at his capital of Isfahan. His financial support for the construction of mosques in Isfahan resulted in a series of spectacular architectural designs.
The social hierarchy of the Ottoman and Safavid Empires was similar. The elite consisted of the military aristocracy in the countryside and the shahs and their courts. As the central government weakened, depredation of the regional aristocracy led to discontent and flight in the countryside among the peasantry. Both dynasties encouraged the growth of artisan organizations and craft production. Rulers in both governments fostered international trade, although the Safavid economy remained more constricted and less market oriented. Women in Ottoman societies faced legal and social restrictions. Households were patriarchal. There is some evidence that women of the Islamic heartlands opposed the increasing social restrictions. Many women remained active in trade.
The Safavid decline after the reign of Abbas I was rapid. Abbas removed all obvious successors during his lifetime. Following his death, there was no capable heir. Subsequent rulers proved ineffective. Internal disorder plagued the empire, despite occasional able shahs. In 1722, the capital at Isfahan fell to Afghan tribesmen, effectively ending the dynasty. Order was temporarily reestablished under Nadir Khan Afshar, who proclaimed himself shah in 1736.
In 1526 Babur, who had lost his kingdom in central Asia to other Turks, invaded India from Afghanistan. The booty from his raids in India supported unsuccessful campaigns to recover his initial kingdom. Babur's troops defeated the last of the Lodi rulers of Delhi at the battle of Panipat. Within two years of his entry into India, Babur controlled much of the Indus and Ganges River valleys. He established a capital at Delhi, but did little to reform the previous Lodi administration. He was succeeded in 1530 by his son Humayan. Within a decade rival forces drove Humayan into exile with the Safavids. Only in 1556 was Humayan able to restore the Mughal rule in India. He died within a year of his restoration.
Humayan's successor, Akbar, was the most successful of the Mughal rulers. Akbar rapidly developed a more centralized military and administrative system to govern India. After consolidating his hold on the government by 1560, Akbar expanded Mughal control over the Indian subcontinent. He attempted to join the Hindu and Mughal aristocracies of India through intermarriage. As a further incentive for Hindus to support the Mughal regime, Akbar abandoned the traditional Islamic tax on unbelievers. Hindu advisors and bureaucrats filled the Mughal administration. Akbar's most imaginative attempt to bridge the cultural differences between the Islamic elite and Hindus was his introduction of a new religion, the Din-i-Ilahi, which sought to combine beliefs of many faiths. The Muslim and Hindu aristocracy were granted lands in the countryside in return for pledges of military support. Local administration remained in the hands of local Hindu rulers who promised loyalty to the Mughals.
Akbar sought to improve living conditions through public works, living quarters for the urban poor, and regulation of alcohol. The ruler attempted to improve the condition of women in India. He permitted remarriage of widows, discouraged child marriages, and prohibited the practice of sati. Akbar encouraged merchants to establish separate market days for women.
Despite his administrative and military successes, Akbar's attempts to unify Muslims and Hindus failed. Mughal India reached the peak of its prosperity under Akbar's successors, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. The Mughal cities and military power impressed European visitors, although the more perceptive noted the poverty of the masses and the lack of military discipline and advanced technology. Europeans came to India with products from Asia to exchange for the valuable cotton textiles of the subcontinent. Indian cotton became fashionable among all classes in Britain.
Neither Jahangir nor Shah Jahan attempted much administrative reform. Fundamental alliances between the Mughals and the Hindu elite remained unchanged. Both rulers favored an elaborate court. Jahangir and Shah Jahan were renowned patrons of the arts. Miniature painting and building were two of the areas that received much royal largesse. The Taj Mahal is only one of the famous structures completed during this era.
In the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, royal women played an important role. Outside of the elite, the position of women in Indian society declined during the later Mughal era. Child marriage once again became popular, and widow remarriage effectively died out. Seclusion and veiling were common. Sati spread among upper-class Hindus.
The last of the powerful Mughals, Aurangzeb, inherited an empire in which expenditures for art and architecture rivaled military outlay. He determined to extend Mughal control to the entire Indian subcontinent and purify Islam of its Hindu influences. His successful campaigns to enlarge the Mughal Empire drained his treasury and increased his enemies. Even during his successful campaigns in the south, rebellions broke out in the north. Local rulers became increasingly autonomous.
Aurangzeb's religious policies threatened to break the long established alliance between the Mughal administration and the Hindu elite. Attempts to halt construction of Hindu temples and reimpose the tax on unbelievers increased resistance to his regime. Following Aurangzeb's death in 1707, rebellions tore the Mughal Empire apart. Islamic invaders, Hindu separatists, and Sikh revolutionaries caused centralized political control to break down. Regional political control under various rulers became the norm in India. Instability opened the door for European intervention.
Internal weaknesses were sufficient to destroy the Muslim empires, but each also failed to recognize the threat to their dominance posed by the rise of the West. In technology and science, the Muslim regions fell behind as European nations advanced. Failure to take account of Europe also resulted in economic weakness. European trade empires in Asia removed one of the sources of profits for Islamic merchants. Inflation assaulted the regional price structure. What commerce that existed was often in the hands of religious minorities with contacts in Europe. Muslim contempt for what they regarded as the barbaric West proved to be a dangerous underestimation of European power.
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Asian Transitions in an Age of Global Change
Vasco da Gama's voyages into the Indian Ocean opened up Asia for European commercial development through the control of the sea. Not sufficiently powerful to conquer the great Asian civilizations, the European nations fit themselves relatively peacefully into the Asian commercial network.
European nations worked along the interstices of Asian civilizations and introduced little external change. When the Europeans posed a threat, the Asian civilizations isolated themselves from the West.
Vasco da Gama's initial trip to India revealed one of the most problematic aspects of European trade with Asia, which was that Asian merchants were interested in little from Europe other than bullion. The Portuguese also discovered that Muslim rivals had already established themselves within the Asian markets. One weakness was also discovered. The Asian and Muslim raiders were politically divided.
The Asian trading network was composed of three main zones: an Arab zone in the west based on carpets, tapestry and glass; an Indian zone in the center based on cotton textiles; and a Chinese zone to the east based on silks, paper, and porcelain. On the fringes of the system lay Japan, the Southeast Asian islands, and East Africa. The most valued of the raw materials within the system were spices, which were traded over great distances. Less valuable products were normally exchanged within each of the subordinate zones.
Because much of the trade was carried along the coasts, it tended to concentrate in certain well-defined ocean straits. These geographical features -- the mouth of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Straits of Malacca -- the Portuguese rapidly discovered. No single power controlled the Asian trading network, and military force was virtually absent.
The Portuguese rapidly decided that exportation of bullion to Asian markets was not desirable and that force could obtain what peaceful trade could not. No Asian fleets were prepared to defend the trading network against European power. The Portuguese defeated a combined Egyptian and Indian naval force at Diu in 1509. It was the last Asian attempt to halt European naval depredations. After 1507, the Portuguese began a program of capturing towns and building fortifications at strategic points along the commercial network. Such fortified trading centers included Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Goa on the western coast of India, and Malacca on the Malaysian peninsula.
The Portuguese sought to establish a monopoly over key trade items within the Asian system, particularly spices. In addition to a trade monopoly over critical commodities, the Portuguese attempted with less success to license all ships trading in the Indian Ocean.
The Portuguese were never able to enforce their monopoly schemes. Corruption, lack of numbers, and resistance among Asian peoples weakened the system. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch and English penetrated the Asian trade system. Initially, the Dutch were more successful. The Dutch captured the Portuguese fort at Malacca and built a new trade post at Batavia on the island of Java in 1620. The English lost the struggle to dominate the spice trade and were forced to retreat to India. Like the Portuguese, the Dutch trade empire consisted of fortified trading centers, warships, and control of the spice trade. More successful than the Portuguese, the Dutch still abandoned forcible monopolization in favor of peaceful incorporation into the Asian trade system. The British adopted the Dutch approach to Asian trade.
Once away from the sea, the European military advantage rapidly dissipated. Large Asian populations minimized the European technological edge. On the Asian islands, however, Europeans attempted to extend their control inland from the coastal fortifications. On Ceylon and Java, the Dutch were able to reduce local rulers to subservience. In the 1560s, the Spanish invaded the northern islands of the Philippines, but failed to conquer the more unified southern island of Mindanao. In cases where Europeans penetrated inland, they permitted indigenous governments to remain in return for payment of tribute. Tribute was normally calculated in agricultural products, often produced under conditions of coerced labor.
The spread of Roman Catholicism was part of the Portuguese and Spanish approach to colonization. Because Islamic missionaries had already appeared in much of Southeast Asia prior to the European arrival, the Iberian powers enjoyed limited success in converting local populations. The only region where wholesale conversion occurred was on the northern islands of the Philippines. Friars sent to convert the indigenous population of the northern Philippines both governed and exposed the Filipinos to Western culture. While many Filipinos were technically converted to Catholicism, they often retained traditional beliefs.
The Europeans developed several new routes for the Asian trade network, built trading posts and fortifications, and introduced the principles of sea warfare, which was later abandoned in favor of more peaceful approaches to controlling trade. There were relatively few cultural exchanges. Europeans did introduce New World crops into Asia after 1600, but little else of value was disseminated from one culture to the other.
Zhu Yuanzhang, a peasant, led the armies that overthrew the last of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. In 1368, he declared himself the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. As the Hongwu emperor, he attempted to remove all cultural traces of the Mongol period in Chinese history.
The Hongwu emperor restored the social and political dominance of the scholar-gentry. He ordered the civil examination system restored. The examinations became more important than ever before in determining entry into the imperial administration. A tiered system of examinations determined entry into the various levels of the bureaucracy from prefectural to imperial. Those who passed the most difficult imperial exams were the most highly respected of all Chinese.
Hongwu abolished the post of chief minister and transferred the formidable powers of this official to the emperor. He instituted public beatings for ministers or bureaucrats found guilty of corruption. To end court factionalism, the emperor declared that wives could only come from humble families and sought to limit the influence and numbers of eunuchs. Certain authors, such as Mencius, were stricken from the imperial exams.
Hongwu attempted to support public works to make more lands available to the peasantry and to reduce labor demands. Imperial reforms were offset by the growing power of regional landlords, particularly those who belonged to the scholar- gentry. As the gentry began to control much of the land, the gap between them and the peasantry widened. The Confucian social hierarchy was reinforced under the influence of the Ming scholars. Women continued to have subordinate positions in Chinese society. At the court, women continued to exercise some influence behind the scenes, but most women had little status or respect accorded them. Avenues for escape from labor in the fields were limited to becoming courtesans or entertainers.
During the early period of the Ming dynasty, the commercial prosperity and population increase that had typified the Tang and Song periods continued. New food crops from the Americas supported rapid population growth. Both the internal market of China and overseas connections increased during the early Ming period. As a producer of luxury products, China's trade balance with Europe and the rest of Asia was positive. Trade with foreigners was limited to the ports of Macao and Canton. Despite the growth of trade, most commercial profits went to the state in taxes or were invested in land. Ming prosperity was reflected in patronage of the fine arts, which flourished during the dynasty. During this epoch, Chinese authors introduced the novel to literary genres.
During the reign of the third Ming emperor, an imperial eunuch, Zhenghe, led seven major commercial and diplomatic expeditions overseas. The expeditions reached as far away as Persia, Arabia, and Africa. In fact, despite the adventuresome nature of the voyages, they produced little of significance. The scholar-gentry argued that the minimal profits did not justify the expense. The voyages were abandoned in the 1430s.
By 1390, the Chinese had begun to embark on an official policy of isolation from the rest of the world. As the Chinese withdrew, the Europeans sought greater access to the Middle Kingdom. Christian missionaries attempted to move from the coastal regions to the imperial court. In particular, the Jesuits hoped to convert China by making inroads within the imperial family. The Jesuits who sought to penetrate the imperial court were aware that scientific and technological knowledge were more highly prized than religious theology. In the sixteenth century, Matteo Ricci and Adam Schall maintained themselves at the court through scientific contributions. Most members of the imperial bureaucracy remained hostile to external cultural influences, including the missionaries. When the Ming were overthrown, a few Jesuits were able to keep their precarious position at the imperial court.
By the late 1500s, the Ming were in obvious dynastic decline. Under mediocre rulers, the more centralized government structure of the Ming foundered. The deterioration of necessary public works led to widespread famine in China. Despite the problems, the gentry's stranglehold on land was tightened. The Ming bureaucracy was unable to halt internal disorder or Japanese piracy along the coast. Rebel forces overthrew the last Ming emperor in 1644. Without a stable imperial government, China was vulnerable to external attack. The Manchus seized power under Nurhaci and established the Qing dynasty.
The centralization of Japan began when Nobunaga, one of the regional daimyo lords, successfully unified central Honshu prior to his assassination in 1582. Nobunaga deposed the last of the Ashikaga shoguns in 1573. Nobunaga's most successful general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, continued to break the power of other daimyos. By 1590, he became the military overlord of a united Japan. Campaigns launched against Korea were less successful. Following Hideyoshi's death in 1598, the position of military overlord was taken by Tokugawa Ieyasu. In 1603, the emperor granted Ieyasu the title of shogun. The new shogun curtailed daimyo independence and imposed political unity.
After 1543, Europeans attempted to enlarge their presence in Japan. European traders and missionaries brought cultural change and firearms to the island. The importation of modern weapons revolutionized the civil struggles among the daimyos. Increased commercial contact also drew the Japanese into wider experience in the Asian trade system. Particularly during the period of Nobunaga's dominance, Christianity spread in Japan. Christian acceptance began to diminish following Nobunaga's assassination. Alarmed by the potential threat to the Japanese social hierarchy, Hideyoshi proved less amenable to the spread of Christianity.
Official measures to halt foreign activities in Japan commenced in the 1580s. By the 1590s, Hideyoshi began active persecution of Christians. Persecution continued during the Tokugawa shogunate, and the religion was banned totally in 1614. Christianity was successfully reduced to the status of a minor, underground faith. Ieyasu sought even greater isolation from European cultural influences. By the 1640s, foreign contact was limited to a few Dutch and Chinese ships permitted to dock at the port of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay. Western books were banned. By the eighteenth century, even Confucianism began to be replaced by the school of "National Learning." The school placed greatest emphasis on indigenous Japanese culture. Members of the Japanese elite, however, continued to keep track of Western innovations through the Dutch community at Deshima. As a result, the Japanese were aware of the technological sophistication of the West, when demands came to open Japan in the 1850s.
In China and Japan, the West's introduction in the early modern period was brief and largely inconsequential. Trade restrictions and the elimination of Christian influences limited European contacts. Change in these societies was largely generated by internal forces. Even in the Asian archipelagoes, where European commercial intervention was more significant, indigenous elites continued to exist and cultural change was minimal.
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