Chapter 12 - European Empires

European Encounters

Classical understanding of the earth:

• Ptolemy: spherical world, distorted distances

1. Educated people did not understand the earth as flat despite common mythology and common sense logic

Reasons for increased European Encounters with the rest of the world:

• Technological advances (permissive cause)
• Ottoman expansion (Mehmed II and fall of Constantinople) threatened to cut off Europe’s access to Eastern goods
• Spices and Eastern goods were in high demand at all levels of society
• food preservative & deodorizer
• Looming financial crisis in Western Europe

1. West needed Eastern goods (Spice, silk & cotton), but the East had no need of Western goods (metals & weapons)

• Result: Outflow of capital place Western gold reserves in a dangerously low position, exploration was as much a search for precious metal as it was new trade routes

Portugal: Strong seafaring tradition, weak domestic economy, frozen out of the Mediterranean trade

• Prince Henry the Navigator: Portuguese Prince who actively supported and encouraged exploration (School of Navigation, sharing of data, new charts)

1. Goal: find direct route to Asia

• Initial expansion into Africa brought conflict with traditional Muslim enemies
• Push South and develop first trading ports

1. Slaves and gold for manufactured goods

• Dias: First to reach the Cape of Good Hope
• Expeditions blown off course discover Brazil
• da Gama: First to cross the Indian Ocean, returned to Portugal loaded with spices (huge profit)

1. Opened a trade route which bypassed the Middle East

• Alfonso de Albuquerque: Admiral responsible for subduing Indian resistance to Port. outposts and ensuring cooperation in trade through a great naval victory

1. Portuguese goal was trading outposts, NOT colonization
2. To help establish outposts the Port. often took advantage of native rivalries

Results:

• By 16th Century the Portuguese controlled trade along both coasts of Africa, India and the Spice Islands
• Increased trade of Spices drove down price and profitability
• began to struggle to fund and support outposts (both in terms of $ and people)
• Port.
• European competitors will begin to challenge Portuguese hegemony in the late 16th Century and early 17th Century

Spain

Background: Spain united under the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand, giving them the power to expel the Muslims and rival Port. in exploration

Isabella: Sponsor of Columbus to find a route to the spice Islands.

• Discovered America “Mundus Novus” (New World)

Columbus’s voyages brought the Spanish and Portuguese into direct competition

• Treaty of Tordesillas:

Portugal: Eastern Trade Routes, Africa and Brazil

Spain: Everything west of Cape Verde (at the time completely unknown)
Islands

• Result: Spain became energized in their exploration of the new world

Spanish Exploration

Goals (three G’s): Missionary, extend national sovereignty, profit and personal glory

• Used Caribbean as a base for expansion and conquest

Islands
Explorers:

• Vasco Balboa: Panama and the Pacific Ocean
• Ferdinand Magellan: Circumnavigate the globe (kind of), 280 to 18, all told a rather bad trip

Conquistadores:

• Usually came for the lower ranks of society, or younger children with little hopes of significant inheritance (desperate men)
• Driven by greed and characterized by their ruthlessness
• New World mostly male, very crude society
• Establishment of haciendas (ranches / plantations)
• Class structure: Spanish born, Spanish born in new world, mixed, Native American

1. Tales of a Transvestite Lieutenant Nun

Impact: Destroyed native populations

• Wars of conquest
• Disease: Small Pox, Typhoid & Measles

1. Native Population went from 25 Million to 2 Million
2. Need for African slaves ↑

Results:

• Spanish immigration rose

1. Integration of the new worlds and Europe into a single market place

• Center of European finance shifted from Italy to the Dutch (Italian Wars)

1. Silver used to purchase Asian goods
2. Gold and Slaves came from Africa / silver from South America

Other motivations:

• Reformation drove Christians to new heights of missionary zeal (Jesuits)
• Personal Glory: Lusiads, by Luiz de Camoes illustrates a story of conquistador golry

Geographical Tour of Europe

• 16th Century: A time of expansion of monarchical power, often referred to as the rise of the “New Monarchs”

1. Diplomacy, marriage and warfare

• In 1500 Europe consisted of over 500 independent principalities

Eastern Europe:

• Mongols: Came from the steppes of Asia, conquered central and southern Russia

1. Created political units known are Khanates

• Ottoman Empire: Controlled all of Byzantine, Greece and the Balkan Peninsula
• Russia: Centered in Kiev and extended to Muscovy

1. edge of Europe – usually 50 to 100 years behind the rest of Europe, sometimes they are an integral part of Europe and sometimes not

Northern Europe:

• Scandinavian countries, ruled by a single king in the 15th Century

1. Demark – wealth center of trade

• Poland-Lithuania- Joint Crown (14th Cent.)

1. Jagiollon family hereditary monarchs (also Bohemia and Hungary)

Geography: Land less fertile than the west, climate more severe = lower population

• Agriculturally poor, major industries focused on Baltic fisheries, silver mines and Russian forests

Central Europe:

• Holy Roman Empire (HRE) largest population of all Europe

1. Collection of independent principalities, church lands and free towns

• Alps helped ensure independence
• Brandenburg, Bohemia, Bavaria, Austria, Swiss Confed.

1. Church was the glue that held the HRE together

2. Italy: See chapter 11

Geography: Good agricultural lands, good mineral deposits (iron ore) and large forests

• Central to early European industrial production
• Largest market in Europe

Western Europe:

• Iberian Peninsula: (Spain and Portugal)

1. Union of Aragon (Isabella) and Castile (Ferdinand) enabled Spain to drive out the Moors and Jews (1492) and become the preeminent power on the Iberian Peninsula

• France: (2nd largest population in Europe)

1. Richest agricultural lands in Europe, good climate

• British Isles:

1. Wales and Scotland independent (poor agricultural lands)
2. Ireland independent, good lands

This was a starting point for the rise of the New Monarchs, who centralized authority throughout Europe creating the basis of our first Nation States

The Formation of States: General

Monarchs had a different source of power than feudal kings:

• Broad tax base provided greater revenues

1. Kings were expected to live off their lands

• Professional government officials (Bureaucrats)

1. Reflected an increasing centralization of government administration

• Professional armies

1. Increasing importance as technology and tactics became more complicated

Challenges to the unification of the 500 independent principalities

• Difficult transportation
• Difficult and slow communication
• Various dialects and languages
• Varied inheritance patterns
• Fortified Towns
• Popular Assemblies would resist monarchial powers

1. England – Parliament
2. France – Estates General
3. Spain – Cortes
4. Germany – Imperial Diet

Unifying forces:

• Small size of the various principalities
• Nature of dynastic marriages to consolidate lands
• Primogeniture inheritance
• Technological advances

1. Canon / professional military weakened the effectiveness of permanent fortifications

The Formation of States: Eastern Configurations

Muscovy:

• Ivan III (“The Great”): Expanded Muscovite territory through diplomacy and War

Why?

• Decline of Mongols
• Ottoman expansion made Muscovy the headquarters of eastern Christianity
• Marriage to Sophia (niece of last Byzantine Emperor)

1. Brought Western influence to the court of Muscovy

• Created a privileged noble / military class
• Used church authority to control nobles

Ivan IV (“The Terrible”)

• Defeated Mongols for the last time
• Wanted a port on the Baltic Sea
• Series of wars against Poland-Lithuania

1. Allowed Crimean Tartars to sack and burn Moscow

• Created three social classes

1. Boyars: Hereditary nobility
2. Military Service Class
3. Peasantry

• Effectively destroyed the independence of the Boyars through murder and terror

1. Replaced them with loyal members of the military class

• Tied the peasants to the land (serfdom) to ensure stability of the military class

Impact:

• Destroyed all effective local government systems
• Established an effective system of central government in place of Boyars
• Implemented serfdom, when it was ending everywhere else in Europe
• Retarded the social, economic and political development of Russia

Poland – Lithuania

• Opposite of Muscovy
• Ever increasing decentralization of government in response to succession crisis
• Nobility became more powerful than the king, preventing the development of a “New Monarchy”

The Formation of States: Western Powers
England

Background:

• Norman invasion

1. Tightly organized Feudal system, most highly centralized government administration in Europe
2. History will be one of a slow rise of the nobility
3. End result: Constitutionalism / oligarchy of wealthy families

16th Century:

• No threat of foreign invasion (lack of unifying crisis)
• War of the Roses: Civil war over succession, Yorks v. Lancasters

1. Dynastic struggle that pulled in all of the noble families
2. Massive numbers of nobility killed
3. Eventually the House of Tudor won control of the crown at the Battle of Bosworth Field

Henry VII (First Tudor King)

• Faced two problems

1. How to control the nobility?
2. How to get enough money to rule?

• Solution: Use violence, diplomacy, bribery, centralization of government
• Financial Crisis:

1. Centralized management of royal lands and customs taxes to increase revenues
2. Henry VIII seized all church lands and sold them off

• Nobles:

1. Court of the Star Chamber (attack rival nobles)

• Thomas Cromwell (Chief Minister) organized government agencies and created the Privy Council to advise the king

1. Result: King can effectively manage Parliament

France

Background:

• When the last Carolingian King died, nobles selected Hugh Capet (Capetian Dynasty)

1. Weak, poor lands, controlled Paris
2. As Parisian revenues rose so to did the power of the monarchy

• History will be the slow rise of the monarchy over the nobility, culminating in the reign of Louis XIV

16th Century:

• Major challenge in France revolved around overly strong nobility and a cultural distrust of monarchical rule
• Louis XI “the spider king”

1. Cunning and vicious, goal was to increase king's power
2. Continuous warfare with England meant France was running out of nobles

• Louis claimed their lands, increased wealth

1. Gained control of Orleans through the marriage of his son
2. Louis began the process of centralization of government administration

New Taxes:

• Taille: property tax (peasantry / merchant class)
• Gabelle: Tax on salt
• Aide: tax on various commodities (meat, wine, ect.)

Impact:

• New broad base of taxes on the common people removed the king’s reliance on the nobility
• King able to raise a professional army to subdue nobility and defend French lands

Spain

Background:

• Spain was conquered by the Moors
• Remained fragmented with a large Moorish presence

16th Century:

• Ferdinand of Castile and Isabella of Aragon married

1. Created a political unity, cultural divide remained

• Reconquista: the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula

1. Created a sense of national unity
2. Crisis used to centralize government administration

• Spanish Inquisition: Drove Jews and non-Christians out of Spain

1. Conversos – converted Jews, powerful in Spain, also attacked
2. Used terror to coerce confessions, public humiliation and burning at the stake
3. Crippled Spanish economy
4. Helped create a sense of national identity = “most catholic nation”

• Charles V – grandson of Ferdinand

1. Born and raised in Burgundy and the Low Countries
2. Developed a sense of national pride
3. Ushered in golden age of Spain
4. Failed to completely tie the nation together

The Dynastic Struggles
16th Century was a time of constant warfare

• Technology made warfare bloodier
• Valor was seen as an ideal trait of monarchs
• Wars connected to dynastic politics

1. New Monarchs wanted war, had the capability to make war and the money to make war
2. Availability of mercenary troops (Swiss and Germany)
3. Personality of New Monarchs

Italian Wars

• Charles VIII (Fr.) invited by Milan to help subdue their neighbors

1. Eventually expelled

• Charles & Ferdinand (Sp.) ally and invade

1. Fr. got nothing and Sp. got Naples

• Charles V – Hapsburg- (Sp.) and Francis I (Fr.) come to the thrown

• Maximilian I (HRE) died, Charles V had most valid claim to thrown and paid the most in bribes to the electors

1. Angered Francis I and Henry VIII (England)
2. Fr. and HRE compete for control of Milan (strategic importance - Burgundy)

• HRE allied with Henry VIII (Eng.) and crushed Fr.
• Fail to finish off France
• Pressure from Ottoman Empire and Protestants distracted Charles V

1. Treaty of Madrid

• Coerced treaty which Francis I immediately rejected

• France established new allies: England (mad at HRE), Italy and Ottomans against the HRE

1. Germany unable to decisively defeat the Ottomans
2. France unable to push the Germans out of Italy

Impact:

• Some people look at the dynastic wars of the 16th Century as the beginning of a balance of power international security concept
• European monarchies use the resources of the new world to conduct war against one another

1. They become good at warfare

• Battlefield technology developed which furthered aid in the conquest of the new worlds

1. Increased emphasis on national identity