Chapter 16 Transformations In Europe, 1500-1750

CHAPTER 16

Transformations in Europe, 1500–1750
I.

Culture and Ideas
A. Religious Reformation
1.
In 1500 the Catholic Church, benefiting from European prosperity, was building new churches including a new Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Pope Leo X raised money for the new basilica by authorizing the sale of indulgences.
2.
The German monk Martin Luther challenged the Pope on the issue of indulgences and other practices that he considered corrupt or not Christian.
Luther began the Protestant Reformation, arguing that salvation could be by faith alone, that Christian belief could be based only on the Bible and on Christian tradition. 3.
The Protestant leader John Calvin formulated a different theological position in
The Institutes
of the Christian Religion. Calvin argued that salvation was God’s gift to those who were predestined and that Christian congregations should be self-governing and stress simplicity in life and in worship.
4.
The Protestant Reformation appealed not only to religious sentiments, but also to
Germans who disliked the Italian-dominated Catholic Church and to peasants and urban workers who wanted to reject the religion of their masters.
5.
The Catholic Church agreed on a number of internal reforms and a reaffirmation of fundamental Catholic beliefs in the Council of Trent. These responses to the
Protestant Reformation, along with the activities of the newly established Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) comprise the “Catholic Reformation.”
6.
The Protestant Reformation led to a number of “wars of religion,” the last of them being concluded in 1648.
B. Traditional Thinking and Witch-Hunts
1.
European concepts of the natural world were derived from both local folk traditions and Judeo-Christian beliefs. Most people believed that natural events could have supernatural causes.
2.
Belief in the supernatural is vividly demonstrated in the witch-hunts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the witch-hunts over 100,000 people (three-fourths of them women) were tried and about half of them executed on charges of witchcraft.
3.
Modern historians have sought to explain the witch-hunts as manifestations of fear of unattached women or in terms of social stress. Some scholars believe that poor and marginal people may have believed that they were capable of witchcraft and welcomed the notoriety and attention gained from public confession. C. The Scientific Revolution
1.
European intellectuals derived their understanding of the natural world from the writings of the Greeks and the Romans. These writings suggested that everything on earth was reducible to four elements; that the sun, moon, planets and stars were so light and pure that they floated in crystalline spheres and rotated around the earth in perfectly circular orbits.

2.

II.

The observations of Copernicus and other scientists including Galileo undermined this earth-centered model of the universe and led to the introduction of the Copernican sun-centered model.
3.
The Copernican model was initially criticized and suppressed by Protestant leaders and by the Catholic Church. Despite opposition, printed books spread these and other new scientific ideas among European intellectuals.
4.
Isaac Newton’s discovery of the law of gravity showed why the planets move around the sun in elliptical orbits. Newton’s discoveries led to the development of Newtonian physics. However, Newton and other scientists did not believe that their discoveries were in conflict with religious belief.
D. The Early Enlightenment
1.
The advances in scientific thought inspired European governments and groups of individuals to question the reasonableness of accepted practices in fields ranging from agriculture to laws, religions, and social hierarchies. This intellectual movement, which assumed that social behavior and institutions were governed by scientific laws, is called the Enlightenment.
2.
The Enlightenment thinkers were also influenced by the Reformation and by accounts of other cultures (including Jesuit accounts of China).
3.
The new scientific methods provided the enlightened thinkers with a model for changing European society. These thinkers were not a homogeneous group; they drew inspiration from disparate sources and espoused a variety of agendas. Most were optimistic that the application of reason would lead to human progress.
4.
The ideas of the Enlightenment aroused opposition from many absolutist rulers and from clergymen, but the printing press made possible the survival and dissemination of new ideas.
Social and Economic Life
A. The Bourgeoisie
1.
Europe's cities experienced spectacular growth between 1500 and 1700.
2.
The wealthy urban bourgeoisie thrived on manufacturing, finance, and especially on trade, including the profitable trade in grain.
3.
Amsterdam's growth, built on trade and finance, exemplifies the power of seventeenth-century bourgeoisie enterprise.
4.
The bourgeoisie forged mutually beneficial relationships with the monarchs and built extensive family and ethnic networks to facilitate trade between different parts of the world.
5.
Partnerships between merchants and governments led to the development of joint-stock companies and stock exchanges. Governments also played a key role in the improvement of Europe's transportation infrastructure.
6.
The Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth century provide evidence of the growing importance of trade in international affairs.
7.
The bourgeois gentry gradually increased their ownership of land; many entered the ranks of the nobility by marrying into noble families or by purchasing titles of nobility.
B. Peasants and Laborers
1.
While serfdom declined and disappeared in Western Europe, it gained new prominence in Eastern Europe.
2.
African slaves, working in the Americas, contributed greatly to Europe's economy. 3.
It is possible that the condition of the average person in Western Europe declined between 1500 and 1700.
4.
New World crops helped Western European peasants avoid starvation.

5.

III.

High consumption of wood for heating, cooking, construction, shipbuilding, and industrial uses led to severe deforestation in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Shortages drove the cost of wood up.
6.
As the price of wood rose, Europeans began to use coal instead of wood. Some efforts were also made to conserve forests and to plant trees, particularly in order to provide wood for naval vessels.
7.
Deforestation had particularly severe effects on the rural poor who had relied on free access to forests for wood, building materials, nuts and berries, and wild game. 8.
The urban poor consisted of “deserving poor” (permanent residents) and large numbers of “unworthy poor”—migrants, peddlers, beggars, and criminals.
C. Women and the Family
1.
Women's status and work were closely tied to their husbands' and families'.
2.
Common people in early modern Europe married relatively late because young men served long periods of apprenticeship when learning a trade and young women needed to work to earn their dowries. The young people of the bourgeois class also married late, partly because men delayed marriage until after finishing their education. Late marriage enabled young couples to be independent of their parents; it also helped to keep the birth rate low.
3.
Bourgeois parents put great emphasis on education and promoted the establishment of schools.
4.
Most schools, professions, and guilds barred women from participation.
Political Innovations
A. State Development
1.
Between 1516 and 1519 Charles of Burgundy, descendant of the Austrian
Habsburg family, inherited the thrones of Castile and Aragon, with their colonial empires, the Austrian Habsburg possessions, and the position of Holy Roman
Emperor. Charles was able to forge a coalition to defeat the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna in 1529, but he was unable to unify his many territorial possessions. 2.
Lutheran German princes rebelled against the French-speaking Catholic Charles, seizing church lands and giving rise to the German Wars of Religion. When
Charles abdicated the throne, Spain went to his son Philip while a weakened
Holy Roman Empire went to his brother Ferdinand.
3.
Meanwhile, the rulers of Spain, France, and England pursued their own efforts at political unification.
B. Religious Policies
1.
The rulers of Spain and France successfully defended state-sponsored
Catholicism against the Protestant challenge.
2.
In England, Henry VIII challenged papal authority and declared himself head of the Church of England. Later English monarchs resisted the efforts of English
Calvinists to "purify" the Anglican Church.
C. Monarchies in England and France
1.
In England, a conflict between Parliament and king led to a civil war and the establishment of a Puritan republic under Oliver Cromwell. After the Stuart line was restored, Parliament enforced its will on the monarchy when it drove King
James II from the throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and forced his successors, William and Mary, to sign a document, the Bill of Rights, that limited the power of the crown.
2.
In France, the Bourbon kings were able to circumvent the representative assembly known as the Estates General and develop an absolutist style of

D.

E.

government. Louis XIV’s finance minister Colbert was able to increase revenue through more efficient tax collection and by promoting economic growth while
Louis entertained and controlled the French nobility by requiring them to attend his court at Versailles.
Warfare and Diplomacy
1.
Constant warfare in early modern Europe led to a military revolution in which cannon, muskets, and commoner foot soldiers became the mainstays of European armies. Armies grew in size, and most European states maintained standing armies (except England, which maintained a standing navy).
2.
In order to manage the large standing armies and in order to use the troops more effectively in battle, Europeans devised new command structures, signal techniques, and marching drills.
3.
Developments in naval technology during this period included warships with multiple tiers of cannon and four-wheel cannon carriages that made reloading easier. England took the lead in the development of new naval technology, as was demonstrated when the English Royal Navy defeated Spain’s Catholic
Armada in 1588, signaling an end to Spain’s military dominance in Europe.
4.
With the defeat of Spain, France rose as the strongest power on continental
Europe, while its rival England held superiority in naval power. During the War of the Spanish Succession, England, allied with Austria and Prussia, was able to prevent the French house of Bourbon from taking over the Spanish throne.
5.
With the War of the Spanish Succession and with Russia’s emergence as a power after the Great Northern war, the four powers of Europe—France, Britain,
Austria, and Russia—were able to maintain a balance of power that prevented any one power from becoming too strong for about two centuries.
Paying the Piper
1.
The rulers of European states needed to raise new revenue to pay the heavy costs of their wars; the most successful made profitable alliances with commercial
elites.
The Spanish, however, undermined their economy by driving out Jews,
Protestants, and the descendants of Muslims so that the bullion they gained from their American empire was spent on payments to creditors and for manufactured goods and food.
2.
The northern provinces of the Netherlands wrested their autonomy from Spain and became a dominant commercial power. The United Provinces of the Free
Netherlands and particularly the province of Holland favored commercial interests, craftsmen, and manufacturing enterprises, and Amsterdam became a major center of finance and shipping.
3.
After 1650 England used its naval power to break Dutch dominance in overseas trade. The English government also improved its financial position by collecting taxes directly and by creating a central bank.
4.
The French government streamlined tax collection, used protective tariffs to promote domestic industries, and improved its transportation network. The
French were not, however, able to introduce direct tax collection, tax the land of nobles, or secure low-cost loans.

CHAPTER 17

The Diversity of American Colonial Societies,
1530–1770
IV. The Columbian
Exchange
A. Demographic Changes
1.
The peoples of the New World lacked immunity to diseases from the Old World.
Smallpox, measles, diphtheria, typhus, influenza, malaria, yellow fever and maybe pulmonary plague caused severe declines in the population of native peoples in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Syphilis was the only significant disease thought to have been transferred from the Americas to Europe.
2.
Similar patterns of contagion and mortality may be observed in the English and
French colonies in North America. Europeans did not use disease as a tool of empire, but the spread of Old World diseases clearly undermined the ability of native peoples to resist settlement and accelerated cultural change.
B. Transfer of Plants and Animals
1.
European, Asian, and African food crops were introduced to the Americas while
American crops, including maize, beans, potatoes, manioc, and tobacco, were brought to the Eastern Hemisphere. The introduction of New World food crops is thought to be one factor contributing to the rapid growth in world population after 1700.
2.
The introduction of European livestock such as cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep had a dramatic influence on the environment and on the cultures of the native people of the Americas.
3.
Old World livestock destroyed the crops of some Amerindian farmers. Other
Amerindians benefited from the introduction of cattle, sheep, and horses.
V. Spanish America and Brazil
A. State and Church
1.
The Spanish crown tried to exert direct control over its American colonies through a supervisory office called the Council of the Indies. In practice, the difficulty of communication between Spain and the New World led to a situation in which the Viceroys of New Spain and Peru and their subordinate officials enjoyed a substantial degree of power.
2.
After some years of neglect and mismanagement, the Portuguese in 1720 appointed a viceroy to administer Brazil.
3.
The governmental institutions established by Spain and Portugal were highly developed, costly bureaucracies that thwarted local economic initiative and political experimentation.
4.
The Catholic Church played an important role in transferring European language, culture, and Christian beliefs to the New World. Catholic clergy converted large numbers of Amerindians, although some of them secretly held on to some of their native beliefs and practices.
5.
Catholic clergy also acted to protect Amerindians from some of the exploitation and abuse of the Spanish settlers. One example is Bartolome de Las Casas, a former settler turned priest who denounced Spanish policies toward the

B.

C.

Amerindians and worked to improve the status of Amerindians through legal reforms such as the New Laws of 1542.
6.
Catholic missionaries were frustrated as Amerindian converts blended Christian beliefs with elements of their own cosmology and ritual. In response, the Church redirected its energies toward the colonial cities and towns, where the Church founded universities and secondary schools and played a significant role in the intellectual and economic life of the colonies.
Colonial Economies
1.
The colonial economies of Latin America were dominated by the silver mines of
Peru and Mexico and by the sugar plantations of Brazil. This led to a dependence on mineral and agricultural exports.
2.
The economy of the Spanish colonies was dominated by the silver mines of
Bolivia and Peru until 1680 and then by the silver mines of Mexico. Silver mining and processing required a large labor force and led to environmental effects that included deforestation and mercury poisoning.
3.
In the agricultural economy that dominated Spanish America up to the 1540s,
Spanish settlers used the forced-labor system of encomienda to exploit
Amerindian labor. With the development of silver-mining economies, new systems of labor exploitation were devised: in Mexico, free-wage labor, and in
Peru, the mita.
4.
Under the mita system, one-seventh of adult male Amerindians were drafted for forced labor at less than subsistence wages for six months of the year. The mita system undermined the traditional agricultural economy, weakened Amerindian village life, and promoted the assimilation of Amerindians into Spanish colonial society. 5.
The Portuguese developed the slave-labor sugar plantation system in the Atlantic islands and then set up similar plantations in Brazil. The Brazilian plantations first used Amerindian slaves and then the more expensive but more productive
(and more disease-resistant) African slaves.
6.
Sugar and silver played important roles in integrating the American colonial economies into the system of world trade. Both Spain and Portugal tried to control the trade of their American colonies through monopolies and convoy systems that facilitated the collection of taxes but that also restricted the flow of
European goods to the colonies.
Society in Colonial Latin America
1.
The elite of Spanish America consisted of a relatively small number of Spanish immigrants and a larger number of their American-born descendants (creoles).
The Spanish-born dominated the highest levels of government, church, and business, while the creoles controlled agriculture and mining.
2.
Under colonial rule the cultural diversity of Amerindian peoples and the class differentiation within the Amerindian ethnic groups both were eroded.
3.
People of African descent played various roles in the history of the Spanish colonies. Slaves and free blacks from the Iberian Peninsula participated in the conquest and settlement of Spanish America; later, the direct slave trade with
Africa led both to an increase in the number of blacks and to a decline in the legal status of blacks in the Spanish colonies.
4.
At first, people brought from various parts of Africa retained their different cultural identities; but with time, their various traditions blended and mixed with
European and Amerindian languages and beliefs to form distinctive local cultures. Slave resistance, including rebellions, was always brought under

control, but runaway slaves occasionally formed groups that defended themselves for years.
5.
Most slaves were engaged in agricultural labor and were forced to submit to harsh discipline and brutal punishments. The overwhelming preponderance of males made it impossible for slaves to preserve traditional African family and marriage patterns or to adopt those of Europe.
6.
In colonial Brazil, Portuguese immigrants controlled politics and the economy, but by the early seventeenth century Africans and their American-born descendants–both slave and free–were the largest ethnic group.
7.
The growing population of individuals of mixed European and Amerindian descent (mestizos), European and African descent (mulattos), and mixed African and Amerindian descent were known collectively as “castas.” Castas dominated small-scale retailing and construction in the cities, ran small ranches and farms in the rural areas, and worked as wage laborers; some gained high status and wealth and adopted Spanish or Portuguese culture.
VI. English and French Colonies in North America
A. Early English Experiments
1.
Attempts to establish colonies in Newfoundland (1583) and on Roanoke Island
(1587) ended in failure.
2.
In the seventeenth-century hope that colonies would prove to be profitable investments, combined with the successful colonization of Ireland, led to a new wave of interest in establishing colonies in the New World.
B. The South
1.
The Virginia Company established the colony of Jamestown on an unhealthy island in the James River in 1606. After the English Crown took over management of the colony in 1624, Virginia (Chesapeake Bay area) developed as a tobacco plantation economy with a dispersed population and with no city of any significant size.
2.
The plantations of the Chesapeake Bay area initially relied on English indentured servants for labor. As life expectancy increased, planters came to prefer to invest in slaves; the slave population of Virginia increased from 950 in 1660 to 120,000 in 1756.
3.
Virginia was administered by a Crown-appointed governor and by representatives of towns meeting together as the House of Burgesses. The House of Burgesses developed into a form of democratic representation at the same time as slavery was growing.
4.
Colonists in the Carolinas first prospered on the fur trade with Amerindian deerhunters. The consequences of the fur trade included environmental damage brought on by over-hunting, Amerindian dependency on European goods, ethnic conflicts among Amerindians fighting over hunting grounds, and a series of unsuccessful Amerindian attacks on the English colonists in the early 1700s.
5.
The southern part of the Carolinas was settled by planters from Barbados and developed a slave-labor plantation economy, producing rice and indigo.
Enslaved Africans and their descendants formed the majority population and developed their own culture; a slave uprising (the Stono Rebellion) in 1739 led to more repressive policies toward slaves throughout the southern colonies.
6.
Colonial South Carolina was the most hierarchical society in British North
America. A wealthy planter class dominated a population of small farmers, merchants, cattlemen, artisans, and fur-traders who, in turn, stood above the people of mixed English-Amerindian or English-African background and slaves.
C. New England

1.

The Pilgrims, who wanted to break completely with the Church of England, established the small Plymouth Colony in 1620. The Puritans, who wanted only to reform the Church of England, formed a chartered joint-stock company (the
Massachusetts Bay Company) and established the Massachusetts Bay colony in
1630.
2.
The Massachusetts Bay colony had a normal gender balance, saw a rapid increase in population, and was more homogenous and less hierarchical than the southern colonies. The political institutions of the colony were derived from the terms of its charter and included an elected governor and, in 1650, a lower legislative house.
3.
Without the soil or the climate to produce cash crops, the Massachusetts economy evolved from dependence on fur, forest products, and fish to a dependence on commerce and shipping. Massachusetts’s merchants engaged in a diversified trade across the Atlantic, which made Boston the largest city in
British North America in 1740.
D. The Middle Atlantic Region
1.
Manhattan Island was first colonized by the Dutch and then taken by the English and renamed New York. New York became a commercial and shipping center; it derived particular benefit from its position as an outlet for the export of grain to the Caribbean and Southern Europe.
2.
Pennsylvania was first developed as a proprietary colony for Quakers, but soon developed into a wealthy grain-exporting colony with Philadelphia as its major commercial city. In contrast to rice-exporting South Carolina’s slave agriculture,
Pennsylvania’s grain was produced by free family farmers, including a substantial number of Germans.
E. French America
1.
Patterns of French settlement closely resembled those of Spain and Portugal; the
French were committed to missionary work, and they emphasized the extraction of natural resources—furs. French expansion was driven by the fur trade and resulted in depletion of beaver and deer populations and made Amerindians dependent upon European goods.
2.
The fur trade provided Amerindians with firearms that increased the violence of the wars that they fought over control of hunting grounds. When firearms reached the horse frontier in the early eighteenth century, they increased the military power and hunting efficiency of the indigenous peoples of the American
West and slowed the pace of European settlement.
3.
Catholic missionaries, including the Jesuits, attempted to convert the Amerindian population of French America, but, meeting with indigenous resistance, they turned their attention to work in the French settlements. These settlements, dependent on the fur trade, were small and grew slowly. This pattern of settlement allowed Amerindians in French America to preserve a greater degree of independence than they could in the Spanish, Portuguese, or British colonies.
4.
The French expanded aggressively to the West and South, establishing a second fur-trading colony in Louisiana in 1699. This expansion led to war with England in which the French, defeated in 1759, were forced to yield Canada to the
English and to cede Louisiana to Spain.
VII. Colonial Expansion and Conflict
A. Imperial Reform in Spanish America and Brazil
1.
After 1713 Spain’s new Bourbon dynasty undertook a series of administrative reforms including expanded intercolonial trade, new commercial monopolies on certain goods, a stronger navy, and better policing of the trade in contraband

B.

goods to the Spanish colonies. These reforms coincided with the eighteenthcentury economic expansion that was led by the agricultural and grazing economies of Cuba, the Rio de la Plata, Venezuela, Chile, and Central America.
2.
The Bourbon policies were detrimental to the interests of the grazing and agricultural export economies, which were increasingly linked to illegitimate trade with the English, French, and Dutch. The new monopolies aroused opposition from creole elites whose only gain from the reforms was their role as leaders of militias that were intended to counter the threat of war with England.
3.
The Bourbon policies were also a factor in the Amerindian uprisings, including that led by the Peruvian Amerindian leader José Gabriel Condorcanqui (Tupac
Amaru II). The rebellion was suppressed after more than two years and cost the
Spanish colonies over 100,000 lives and enormous amounts of property damage.
4.
Brazil also underwent a period of economic expansion and administrative reform in the 1700s. Economic expansion fueled by gold, diamonds, coffee, and cotton underwrote the Pombal reforms, paid for the importation of nearly 2 million
African slaves, and underwrote a new wave of British imports.
Reform and Reorganization in British North America
1.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century the British Crown tried to control colonial trading (smuggling) and manufacture by passing a series of Navigation
Acts and by suspending the elected assemblies of the New England colonies.
Colonists resisted by overthrowing the governors of New York and
Massachusetts and by removing the Catholic proprietor of Maryland, thus setting the stage for future confrontational politics.
2.
During the eighteenth century economic growth and new immigration into the
British colonies was accompanied by increased urbanization and a more stratified social structure.

CHAPTER 18

The Atlantic System and Africa, 1550–1800
VIII. Plantations in the West Indies
A. Colonization Before 1650
1.
Spanish settlers introduced sugar-cane cultivation into the West Indies shortly after 1500 but did not do much else toward the further development of the islands. After 1600 the French and English developed colonies based on tobacco cultivation. 2.
Tobacco consumption became popular in England in the early 1600s. Tobacco production in the West Indies was stimulated by two new developments: the formation of chartered companies and the availability of cheap labor in the form of European indentured servants.
3.
In the mid-1600s competition from milder Virginia tobacco and the expulsion of experienced Dutch sugar producers from Brazil combined to bring the West
Indian economies from tobacco to sugar production.
4.
The Portuguese had introduced sugar-cane cultivation to Brazil, and the Dutch
West India Company, chartered to bring the Dutch wars against Spain to the

New World, had taken control of 1,000 miles of sugar-producing Brazilian coast.
Over a fifteen-year period the Dutch improved the efficiency of the Brazilian sugar industry and brought slaves from Elmina and Luanda (also seized from
Portugal) to Brazil and the West Indies.
5.
When Portugal reconquered Brazil in 1654, the Dutch sugar planters brought the
Brazilian system to the French and English Caribbean Islands.
B. Sugar and Slaves
1.
Between 1640 and the 1680s colonies like Guadeloupe, Martinique, and particularly Barbados made the transition from a tobacco economy to a sugar economy. In the process of doing so, their demand for labor caused a sharp and significant increase in the volume of the Atlantic slave trade.
2.
The shift from European indentured servants to enslaved African labor was caused by a number of factors, including a decline in the numbers of Europeans willing to indenture themselves to the West Indies, the fact that the life expectancy of a slave after landing was longer than the term of the typical contract of indenture, and a rise in sugar prices that made planters more able to invest in slaves.
IX. Plantation Life in the Eighteenth Century
A. Technology and Environment
1.
Sugar plantations both grew sugar cane and processed the cane into sugar crystals, molasses, and rum. The technology for growing and harvesting cane was simple, but the machinery required for processing (rollers, copper kettles, and so on) was more complicated and expensive. The expenses of sugar production led planters to seek economies of scale by running large plantations.
2.
Sugar production damaged the environment by causing soil exhaustion and deforestation. Repeated cultivation of sugar cane exhausted the soil of the plantations and led the planters to open new fields, thus accelerating the deforestation that had begun under the Spanish.
3.
European colonization led to the introduction of European and African plants and animals that crowded out indigenous species. Colonization also pushed the
Arawak and then the Carib people to extinction.
B. Slaves’ Lives
1.
West Indian society consisted of a wealthy land-owning plantocracy, their many slaves, and a few people in between.
2.
A plantation had to extract as much labor as possible from its slaves in order to turn a profit. Slaves were organized into “gangs” for fieldwork, while those male slaves not doing fieldwork were engaged in specialized tasks.
3.
Slaves were rewarded for good work and punished harshly for failure to meet their production quotas or for any form of resistance. On Sundays, slaves cultivated their own food crops and did other chores; they had very little rest and relaxation, no education, and little time or opportunity for family life.
4.
Disease, harsh working conditions, and dangerous mill machinery all contributed to the short life expectancy of slaves in the Caribbean. The high mortality rate added to the volume of the Atlantic slave trade and meant that the majority of slaves on West Indian plantations were born in Africa.
5.
Slaves frequently ran away and occasionally staged violent rebellions such as that led by a slave named Tacky in Jamaica in 1760. European planters sought to prevent rebellions by curtailing African cultural traditions, religions, and languages. C. Free Whites and Free Blacks

1.

X.

In Saint Domingue there were three groups of free people: the wealthy “great whites,” the less-well-off “little whites,” and the free blacks. In the British colonies, where sugar almost completely dominated the economy, there were very few free small landholders, white or black.
2.
Only a very wealthy man could afford the capital to invest in the land, machinery, and slaves needed to establish a sugar plantation. West Indian planters were very wealthy and translated their wealth into political power, controlling the colonial assemblies and even gaining a number of seats in the
British Parliament.
3.
Slave owners who fathered children by female slaves often gave both mother and child their freedom; over time, this practice (manumission) produced a significant free black population. Another source of free black population was runaway slaves, known in the Caribbean as maroons.
Creating the Atlantic Economy
A. Capitalism and Mercantilism
1.
The system of royal monopoly control of colonies and their trade as practiced by
Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries proved to be inefficient and expensive. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the two new institutions of capitalism and mercantilism established the framework within which government-protected private enterprise participated in the Atlantic economy. 2.
The mechanisms of early capitalism included banks, joint-stock companies, stock exchanges, and insurance.
3.
Mercantilism was a number of state policies that promoted private investment in overseas trade and accumulation of capital in the form of precious metals. The instruments of mercantilism included chartered companies, such as the Dutch
West India Company and the French Royal African Company, and the use of military force to pursue commercial dominance.
4.
The French and English eliminated Dutch competition from the Americas by defeating the Dutch in a series of wars between 1652 and 1678. The French and the English then revoked the monopoly privileges of their chartered companies, but continued to use high tariffs to prevent foreigners from gaining access to trade with their colonies. The Atlantic became the major trading area for the
British, the French, and the Portuguese in the eighteenth century.
B. The Atlantic Circuit
1.
The Atlantic Circuit was a clockwise network of trade routes going from Europe to Africa, from Africa to the plantation colonies of the Americas (the Middle
Passage), and then from the colonies to Europe. If all went well, a ship would make a profit on each leg of the circuit.
2.
The Atlantic Circuit was supplemented by a number of other trade routes:
Europe to the Indian Ocean, Europe to the West Indies, New England to the
West Indies, and the “Triangular Trade” between New England, Africa, and the
West Indies.
3.
As the Atlantic system developed, increased demand for sugar in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe was associated with an increase in the flow of slaves from Africa to the New World.
4.
The slave trade was a highly specialized business in which chartered companies
(in the seventeenth century) and then private traders (in the eighteenth century) purchased slaves in Africa, packed them into specially designed or modified ships, and delivered them for sale to the plantation colonies.

5.

Disease, maltreatment, suicide, and psychological depression all contributed to the average death rate of one out of every six slaves shipped on the Middle
Passage. Disease was the single most important cause of death, killing the
European crewmen of the slave ships at roughly the same rate as it killed the slaves themselves.
XI. Africa, the Atlantic, and Islam
A. The Gold Coast and the Slave Coast
1.
European trade with Africa grew tremendously after 1650 as merchants sought to purchase slaves and other goods. The growth in the slave trade was accompanied by continued trade in other goods, but it did not lead to any significant European colonization of Africa.
2.
African merchants were discriminating about the types and the amounts of merchandise that they demanded in return for slaves and other goods, and they raised the price of slaves in response to increased demand. African governments on the Gold and Slave Coasts were strong enough to make Europeans observe
African trading customs, while the Europeans, competing with each other for
African trade, were unable to present a strong, united bargaining position.
3.
Exchange of slaves for firearms contributed to state formation in the Gold and
Slave Coasts. The kingdom of Dahomey used firearms acquired in the slave trade in order to expand its territory, while the kingdoms of Oyo and Asante had interests both in the Atlantic trade and in overland trade with their northern neighbors. 4.
The African kings and merchants of the Gold and Slave Coasts obtained slaves from among the prisoners of war captured in conflicts between African kingdoms. B. The Bight of Biafra and Angola
1.
There were no sizeable states—and no large-scale wars—in the interior of the
Bight of Biafra; kidnapping was the main source of people to sell into slavery.
African traders who specialized in procuring people for the slave trade did business at inland markets or fairs and brought the slaves to the coast for sale.
2.
In the Portuguese-held territory of Angola, Afro-Portuguese caravan merchants brought trade goods to the interior and exchanged them for slaves, whom they transported to the coast for sale to Portuguese middlemen, who then sold the slaves to slave dealers for shipment to Brazil. Many of these slaves were prisoners of war, a byproduct generated by the wars of territorial expansion fought by the federation of Lunda kingdoms.
3.
Enslavement has also been linked to environmental crises in the interior of
Angola. Droughts forced refugees to flee to kingdoms in better-watered areas, where the kings traded the grown male refugees to slave dealers in exchange for
Indian textiles and European goods that they then used to cement old alliances, attract new followers, and build a stronger, larger state.
4.
Although the organization of the Atlantic trade varied from place to place, it was always based on a partnership between European traders and a few African political and merchant elites who benefited from the trade while many more
Africans suffered from it.
C. Africa's European and Islamic Contacts
1.
In the centuries between 1550 and 1800 Europeans built a growing trade with
Africa but did not acquire very much African territory. The only significant
European colonies were those on islands; the Portuguese in Angola, and the
Dutch Cape Colony, which was tied to the Indian Ocean trade rather than to the
Atlantic trade.

2.

3.

4.
5.

6.

7.

Muslim territorial dominance was much more significant, with the Ottoman
Empire controlling all of North Africa except Morocco and with Muslims taking large amounts of territory from Ethiopia. In the 1580s Morocco attacked the subSaharan Muslim kingdom of Songhai, occupying the area for the next two centuries and causing the bulk of the trans-Saharan trade in gold, textiles, leather goods, and kola nuts to shift from the western Sudan to the central Sudan.
The trans-Saharan slave trade was smaller in volume than the Atlantic slave trade and supplied slaves for the personal slave army of the Moroccan rulers as well as slaves for sugar plantation labor, servants, and artisans. The majority of slaves transported across the Sahara were women destined for service as concubines or servants and children, including eunuchs, meant for service as harem guards.
Muslims had no moral objection to owning or trading in slaves, but religious law forbade the enslavement of fellow Muslims. Even so, some Muslim states south of the Sahara did enslave African Muslims.
Muslim cultural influences south of the Sahara were much stronger than
European cultural influences. Islam and the Arabic language spread more rapidly than Christianity and English, which were largely confined to the coastal trading centers. The European and Islamic slave trade could not have had a significant effect on the overall population of the African continent, but they did have an acute effect on certain areas from which large numbers of people were taken into slavery.
The higher proportion of women taken across the Sahara in the Muslim slave trade magnified its long-term demographic effects.
The volume of trade goods imported into sub-Saharan Africa was not large enough to have had any significant effect on the livelihood of traditional African artisans. Both African and European merchants benefited from this trade, but
Europeans directed the Atlantic system and derived greater benefit from it than the African merchants did.

CHAPTER 19

Southwest Asia and the Indian Ocean,
1500–1750
XII. The Ottoman Empire, to 1750
A. Expansion and Frontiers
1.
Osman established the Ottoman Empire in northwestern Anatolia in 1300. He and his successors consolidated control over Anatolia, fought Christian enemies in Greece and in the Balkans, captured Serbia and the Byzantine capital of
Constantinople, and established a general border with Iran.
2.
Egypt and Syria were added to the empire in 1516–1517, and the major port cities of Algeria and Tunis voluntarily joined the Ottoman Empire in the early sixteenth century. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) conquered
Belgrade (1521) and Rhodes (1522) and laid siege to Vienna (1529), but withdrew with the onset of winter.

3.

B.

C.

D.

The Ottoman Empire fought with Venice for two centuries as it attempted to exert its control over the Mediterranean. The Ottomans forced the Venetians to pay tribute but continued to allow them to trade.
4.
Muslim merchants in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean requested Ottoman naval support against the Portuguese. The Ottomans responded vigorously to
Portuguese threats against nearby ports such as Aden, but saw no reason to commit much effort to the defense of non-Ottoman Muslim merchants in the
Indian Ocean.
Central Institutions
1.
The original Ottoman military forces of mounted warriors armed with bows were supplemented in the late fourteenth century when the Ottomans formed captured
Balkan Christian men into a force called the “new troops” (Janissaries), who fought on foot and were armed with guns. In the early fifteenth century the
Ottomans began to recruit men for the Janissaries and for positions in the bureaucracy through the system called devshirme—a levy on male Christian children. 2.
The Ottoman Empire was a cosmopolitan society in which the Osmanlispeaking, tax-exempt military class (askeri) served the sultan as soldiers and bureaucrats. The common people—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—were referred to as the raya (flock of sheep).
3.
During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman land forces were powerful enough to defeat the Safavids, but the Ottomans were defeated at sea by combined Christian forces at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The Turkish cavalrymen were paid in land grants, while the Janissaries were paid from the central treasury.
4.
In the view of the Ottomans, the sultan supplied justice and defense for the common people (the raya), while the raya supported the sultan and his military through their taxes. In practice, the common people had little direct contact with the Ottoman government, being ruled by local notables and by their religious leaders (Muslim, Christian, or Jewish).
Crisis of the Military State, 1585–1650
1.
The increasing importance and expense of firearms meant that the size and cost of the Janissaries increased over time while the importance of the landholding
Turkish cavalry (who disdained firearms) decreased. At the same time, New
World silver brought inflation and undermined the purchasing power of the fixed tax income of the cavalrymen and the fixed stipends of students and professors at the madrasas.
2.
Financial deterioration and the use of short-term mercenary soldiers brought a wave of rebellions and banditry to Anatolia. The Janissaries began to marry, went into business, and enrolled their sons in the Janissary corps, which grew in number but declined in military readiness.
Economic Change and Growing Weakness, 1650–1750
1.
The period of crisis led to significant changes in Ottoman institutions. The sultan now lived a secluded life in his palace, the affairs of government were in the hands of chief administrators, the devshirme had been discontinued, and the
Janissaries had become a politically powerful hereditary elite who spent more time on crafts and trade than on military training.
2.
In the rural areas, the system of land grants in return for military service had been replaced by a system of tax farming. Rural administration came to depend on powerful provincial governors and wealthy tax farmers.

3.

In the context of disorder and decline formerly peripheral places like Izmir flourished as Ottoman control over trade declined and European merchants came to purchase Iranian silk and local agricultural products. This growing trade brought the agricultural economies of western Anatolia, the Balkans, and the
Mediterranean coast into the European commercial network.
4.
By the middle of the eighteenth century it was clear that the Ottoman Empire was in economic and military decline. Europeans dominated Ottoman import and export trade by sea, but they did not control strategic ports or establish colonial settlements on Ottoman territory.
5.
During the “Tulip Period” (1718–1730), the Ottoman ruling class enjoyed
European luxury goods and replicated the Dutch tulip mania of the sixteenth century. In 1730, the Patrona Halil rebellion indicated the weakness of the central state; provincial elites took advantage of this weakness to increase their power and their wealth.
XIII. The Safavid Empire, 1502–1722
A. The Rise of the Safavids
1.
Ismail declared himself shah of Iran in 1502 and ordered that his followers and subjects all adopt Shi’ite Islam.
2.
It took a century of brutal force and instruction by Shi’ite scholars from Lebanon and Bahrain to make Iran a Shi’ite land, but when it was done, the result was to create a deep chasm between Iran and its Sunni neighbors.
B. Society and Religion
1.
Conversion to Shi’ite belief made permanent the cultural difference between Iran and its Arab neighbors that had already been developing. From the tenth century onward, Persian literature and Persian decorative styles had been diverging from
Arabic culture—a process that had intensified when the Mongols destroyed
Baghdad and thus put an end to that city’s role as an influential center of Islamic culture. 2.
Although Islam continued to provide a universal tradition, local understandings of Islam differed, as may be seen in variations in mosque architecture and in the distinctive rituals of various Sufi orders. Under the Safavids, Iranian culture was further distinguished by the strength of Shi’ite beliefs including the concept of the Hidden Imam and the deeply emotional annual commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn.
C. A Tale of Two Cities: Isfahan and Istanbul
1.
Isfahan and Istanbul were very different in their outward appearance. Istanbul was a busy port city with a colony of European merchants, a walled palace and a skyline punctuated by gray domes and soaring minarets. Isfahan was an inland city with few Europeans, unobtrusive minarets, brightly tiled domes, and an open palace with a huge plaza for polo games.
2.
Both cities were built for walking (not for wheeled vehicles), had few open spaces, narrow and irregular streets, and artisan and merchant guilds.
3.
Women were seldom seen in public in Istanbul or in Isfahan, being confined in women’s quarters in their homes; however, records indicate that Ottoman women were active in the real estate market and appeared in court cases. Public life was almost entirely the domain of men.
4.
Despite an Armenian merchant community, Isfahan was not a cosmopolitan city, nor was the population of the Safavid Empire particularly diverse. Istanbul’s location gave it a cosmopolitan character comparable to that of other great seaports in spite of the fact that the sultan’s wealth was built on his territorial possessions, not on the voyages of his merchants.

D.

Economic Crisis and Political Collapse
1.
Iran’s manufactures included silk and its famous carpets, but overall, the manufacturing sector was small and not very productive. The agricultural sector
(farming and herding) did not see any significant technological developments, partly because the nomad chieftains who ruled the rural areas had no interest in building the agricultural economy.
2.
Like the Ottomans, the Safavids were plagued by the expense of firearms and by the reluctance of nomad warriors to use firearms. Shah Abbas responded by establishing a slave corps of year-round professional soldiers armed with guns.
3.
In the late sixteenth century inflation caused by cheap silver and a decline in the overland trade made it difficult for the Safavid State to pay its army and bureaucracy. An Afghan army took advantage of this weakness to capture
Isfahan and end Safavid rule in 1722.
4.
The Safavids never had a navy; when they needed naval support, they relied on the English and the Dutch. Nadir Shah, who briefly reunified Iran between 1736 and 1747, built a navy of ships purchased from the British, but it was not maintained after his death.
XIV. The Mughal Empire, 1526–1761
A. Political Foundations
1.
The Mughal Empire was established and consolidated by the Turkic warrior
Babur (1483–1530) and his grandson Akbar (r. 1556–1605). Akbar established a central administration and granted nonhereditary land revenues to his military officers and government officials.
2.
Akbar and his successors gave efficient administration and peace to their prosperous northern heartland while expending enormous amounts of blood and treasure on wars with Hindu rulers and rebels to the south and Afghans to the west. 3.
Foreign trade boomed, but the Mughals, like the Safavids, did not maintain a navy or merchant marine, preferring to allow Europeans to serve as carriers.
B. Hindus and Muslims
1.
The violence and destruction of the Mughal conquest of India horrified Hindus, but they offered no concerted resistance. Fifteen percent of Mughal officials holding land revenues were Hindus, most of them from northern Rajput warrior families. 2.
Akbar was the most illustrious of the Mughal rulers: he took the throne at thirteen and commanded the government on his own at twenty. Akbar worked for reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims by marrying a Hindu Rajput princess and by introducing reforms that reduced taxation and legal discrimination against Hindus.
3.
Akbar made himself the center of a short-lived eclectic new religion (“Divine
Faith”) and sponsored a court culture in which Hindu and Muslim elements were mixed. 4.
The spread of Islam in India cannot be explained by reference to the discontent of low-caste people, nor does it appear to have been the work of Sufi brotherhoods. Islam was established in the Indus Valley region from the eighth century; the spread of Islam in east Bengal is linked to the presence of Muslim mansabdars and their construction of rice-agriculture farming communities on newly cleared land.
5.
In the Punjab (northwest India), Nanak (1469–1539) developed the Sikh religion by combining elements from Islam and Hinduism. The Sikh community was reorganized as a militant “army of the pure” after the ninth guru was beheaded

for refusing to convert to Islam; the Sikhs posed a military threat to the Mughal
Empire in the eighteenth century.
C. Central Decay and Regional Challenges, 1707–1761
1.
The Mughal Empire declined after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. Factors contributing to the Mughal decline include the land grant system, the failure to completely integrate Aurangzeb’s newly conquered territory into the imperial administration, and the rise of regional powers. The real power of the Mughal rulers came to an end in 1739 after Nadir Shah raided Delhi; the empire survived in name until 1857.
2.
As the Mughal government lost power, Mughal regional officials bearing the title of nawab established their own more or less independent states. These regional states were prosperous, but they could not effectively prevent the intrusion of Europeans such as the French, whose representative Joseph Dupleix captured the English trading center of Madras and became a power broker in southern India until he was recalled to France in 1754.
XV. Trade Empires in the Indian Ocean, 1600–1729
A. Muslims in the East Indies
1.
It is not clear exactly when and how Islam spread in Southeast Asia. It appears that conversion and the formation of Muslim communities began in port cities and royal courts in the fourteenth century and was transmitted to the countryside by itinerant Sufis.
2.
In the places where it had spread, Islam functioned as a political ideology that strengthened resistance to European incursions in places such as the Sulu archipelago, Mindanao, Brunei, and Acheh.
3.
The rulers and the people of Southeast Asian kingdoms appear to have developed understandings of Islam that deviated from the standards of scholars from Mecca and Medina.
4.
Royal courts and port cities began to adopt the more orthodox practices advocated by pilgrims returning from Arabia, while the rural people developed forms of Islam that incorporated some of their pre-Muslim religious and social practices. B. Muslims in East Africa
1.
The Muslim-ruled port cities of the Swahili Coast were not well connected with each other, nor did they have much contact with the people of their dry hinterlands. Cooperation was hindered by the thick bush country that separated the tracts of coastal land and by the fact that the cities competed with each other for trade.
2.
The Portuguese conquered all of the Swahili ports except for Malindi, which cooperated with Portugal. Between 1650 and 1729 the Arabs of Oman drove the
Portuguese out of the Swahili Coast and created a maritime empire of their own.
3.
The better-organized Dutch drove the Portuguese out of the Malacca in 1641, conquered local kingdoms on Sumatra and Java, and established a colonial capital at Batavia (now Jakarta).
4.
When European merchants from other countries began to come to Southeast
Asia, the Dutch found it impossible to maintain monopoly control over the spice market. Instead, they turned to crop production, focusing on lumber and coffee.

CHAPTER 20

Northern Eurasia, 1500–1800
XVI. Japanese Reunification
A. Civil War and the Invasion of Korea and Manchuria, 1500–1603
1.
In the twelfth century, with imperial unity dissolved, Japan came under the control of a number of regional warlords called daimyo.
2.
Warfare among the daimyo was common, and in 1592 the most powerful of these warlords, Hideyoshi, chose to lead an invasion of Korea.
3.
Although the Korean and Japanese languages are closely related, the dominant influence on Yi dynasty Korea was China.
4.
Despite the creative use of technological and military skill, the Koreans and their
Chinese allies were defeated by the Japanese.
5.
After Hideyoshi's death in 1598, the Japanese withdrew their forces and, in 1606, made peace with Korea.
6.
The Japanese withdrawal left Korea in disarray and the Manchu in a greatly strengthened position.
B. The Tokugawa Shogunate, 1603–1800
1.
In the late 1500s Japan’s Ashikaga Shogunate had lost control and the country had fallen into a period of chaotic wars between local lords; a new shogun,
Tokugawa Ieyasu, brought all the local lords under the administration of his
Tokugawa Shogunate in 1600.
2.
The Tokugawa Shogunate gave loyal regional lords rice lands close to the shogunal capital in central Japan, while those lords who had not been supporters of the Tokugawa were given undeveloped lands at the northern and southern extremes of the islands. The Japanese emperor remained in Kyoto but had no political power. This political structure had an important influence on the subsequent development of the Japanese economy.
3.
The decentralized system of regional lords meant that Japan developed wellspaced urban centers in all regions, while the shogun’s requirement that the regional lords visit Edo frequently stimulated the development of the transportation infrastructure and the development of commerce, particularly the development of wholesale rice exchanges.
4.
The samurai became bureaucrats and consumers of luxury goods, spurring the development of an increasingly independent merchant class whose most successful families cultivated alliances with regional lords and with the shogun himself. By the end of the 1700s the wealthy industrial families were politically influential and held the key to modernization and the development of heavy industry. C. Japan and the Europeans
1.
Jesuits came to Japan in the late 1500s, and while they had limited success in converting the regional lords, they did make a significant number of converts among the farmers of southern and eastern Japan. A rural rebellion in this area in the 1630s was blamed on Christians; the Tokugawa Shogunate responded with persecutions, a ban on Christianity, and, in 1649, the closing of the country.

2.

The closed country policy was intended to prevent the spread of foreign influence, but not to exclude knowledge of foreign cultures. A small number of
European traders, mainly Dutch, were allowed to reside on a small island near
Nagasaki, and Japanese who were interested in the European knowledge that could be gained from European books developed a field known as “Dutch studies.” 3.
Some of the “outer lords” at the northern and southern extremes of Japan relied on overseas trade with Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, China, and Southeast Asia for their fortunes. These lords ignored the closed country policy, and those in the south, in particular, became wealthy from their control of maritime trade, giving them an advantage over the shogunate and the “inner” lords.
D. Elite Decline and Social Crisis
1.
Patterns of population growth and economic growth also contributed to the reversal of fortunes between the “inner” and “outer” lords. Population growth in central Japan put a strain on the agricultural economy, but in the outer provinces, economic growth outstripped population growth.
2.
The Tokugawa system was also undermined by changes in rice prices and in interest rates, which combined to make both the samurai and the regional lords dependent on the willingness of the merchants to give them credit.
3.
The Tokugawa shoguns accepted the Confucian idea that agriculture should be the basis of the state and that merchants should occupy a low social position because they lacked moral virtue, but the decentralized political system made it difficult for the shogunate to regulate merchant activities. In fact, the decentralized system stimulated commerce so that from 1600 to 1800 the economy grew faster than the population and merchants developed relative freedom, influence, and their own vibrant culture.
4.
The ideological and social crisis of Tokugawa Japan’s transformation from a military to a civil society is illustrated in the “Forty-seven Ronin” incident of
1702. This incident demonstrates the necessity of making the difficult decision to force the military to obey the civil law in the interests of building a centralized, standardized system of law with which the state could protect the interests of the people. XVII. The Late Ming and Early Qing Empires
A. The Later Ming Empire, to 1644
1.
The cultural brilliance and economic achievements of the early Ming continued up to 1600. But at the same time, a number of factors had combined to exhaust the Ming economy, weaken its government, and cause technological stagnation.
2.
Some of the problems of the late Ming may be attributed to a drop in annual temperatures between 1645 and 1700, which may have contributed to the agricultural distress, migration, disease, and uprisings of this period. Climate change may also have driven the Mongols and the Manchus to protect their productive lands from Ming control and to take more land along the Ming borders. 3.
The flow of New World silver into China in the 1500s and early 1600s caused inflation in prices and taxes that hit the rural population particularly hard.
4.
In addition to these global causes of Ming decline, there were also internal factors particular to China. These included disorder and inefficiency in the urban industrial sector (such as the Jingdezhen ceramics factories), no growth in agricultural productivity, and low population growth.
B. Ming Collapse and the Rise of the Qing

1.

C.

D.

E.

F.

The Ming also suffered from increased threats on their borders: to the north and west, there was the threat posed by a newly reunified Mongol confederation, and in Korea the Ming incurred heavy financial losses when it helped the Koreans to defeat a Japanese invasion. Rebellions of native peoples rocked the southwest, and Japanese pirates plagued the southeast coast.
2.
Rebel forces led by Li Zicheng overthrew the Ming in 1644, and the Manchu
Qing Empire then entered Beijing, restored order, and claimed China for its own.
3.
A Manchu imperial family ruled the Qing Empire, but the Manchus were only a small proportion of the population, and thus depended on diverse people for assistance in ruling the empire. Chinese made up the overwhelming majority of the people and the officials of the Qing Empire.
Trading Companies and Missionaries
1.
Europeans were eager to trade with China, but enthusiasm for international trade developed slowly in China, particularly in the imperial court.
2.
Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch gained limited access to Chinese trade.
3.
By the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company had become the major European trader in the Indian Ocean.
4.
Catholic missionaries accompanied Portuguese and Spanish traders, and the
Jesuits had notable success converting Chinese elites. The Jesuit Matteo Ricci
(1552–1610) used his mastery of Chinese language and culture to gain access to the imperial court.
Emperor Kangxi (r. 1662–1722)
1.
Kangxi (r. 1662–1722) took formal control over his government in 1669 (at the age of sixteen) by executing his chief regent. Kangxi was an intellectual prodigy and a successful military commander who expanded his territory and gave it a high degree of stability.
2.
During the Kangxi period the Qing were willing to incorporate ideas and technology from Mongolian, Tibetan, Korean, and Chinese sources. The Qing also adapted European knowledge and technology—mapmaking, astronomy, and anatomical and pharmaceutical knowledge—taught by the Jesuits who frequented Kangxi’s court.
3.
The Jesuits were also affected by their contact with China. They revised their religious teaching in order to allow Chinese converts to practice Confucian ancestor worship and they transmitted to Europe Chinese technology including an early form of inoculation against smallpox and the management techniques of the huge imperial porcelain factories.
Chinese Influences on Europe
1.
The exchange of ideas and information between the Qing and the Jesuits flowed in both directions.
2.
The wealth and power of the Qing led to a tremendous enthusiasm in Europe for
Chinese things such as silk, tea, porcelain, other decorative items, and wallpaper.
Jesuit descriptions of China also led Europeans such as Voltaire to see the Qing emperors as benevolent despots or philosopher-kings from whom the Europeans could learn.
Tea and Diplomacy
1.
The Qing were eager to expand trade, but wanted to control it in order to be able to tax it more efficiently and to control piracy and smuggling. In order to do so, the Qing designated a single market point for each foreign sector: the market point for those coming from the South China Sea (including the various

European traders) was the city of Canton. This system worked fairly well until the late 1700s.
2.
In the late 1700s the British East India Company and other English traders believed that China’s vast market held the potential for unlimited profit and thought that the Qing trade system (the “Canton System”) stood in the way of opening up new paths for commerce. At the same time, the British Parliament was at once worried about the flow of British silver into China and convinced that opening the China market would help to bring more English merchants into the trade and bring about the end of the outmoded and nearly bankrupt EIC.
3.
In 1793–1794 the British sent a diplomatic mission led by Lord Macartney to open diplomatic relations with China and revise the trade system. The Macartney mission was a failure, as were similar diplomatic embassies sent by the Dutch, the French, and the Russians.
G. Population and Social Stress
1.
The peace enforced by the Qing Empire and the temporary revival of agricultural productivity due to the introduction of American and African crops contributed to a population explosion that brought China’s total population to between 350 million and 400 million by the late 1700s.
2.
Population growth was accompanied by increased environmental stress: deforestation, erosion, silting up of river channels and canals, and flooding. The result was localized misery, migration, increased crime, and local rebellions.
3.
While the territory and the population of the Qing Empire grew, the number of officials remained about the same. The Qing depended on local elites to maintain local order, but was unable to enforce tax regulations, control standards for entry into government service, or prevent the declining revenue, increased corruption, and increased banditry in the late 1700s.
XVIII. The Russian Empire
A. The Drive Across Northern Asia
1.
Following the dissolution of Mongol power in Russia, the city of Moscow became the foundation for a new state, Muscovy, which absorbed the territory of the former Kievan state and Novgorod in the west and conquered the khanates of
Kazan, and Astrakhan and the northern Caucasus region in the east. The
Muscovite ruler Ivan IV took the title of “tsar” in 1547.
2.
The natural direction for Russian expansion was the east; expansion in Siberia was led by groups of Cossacks who defeated the only political power in the region, the Khanate of Sibir, and took land from the small hunting and fishing groups of native people. Siberia was valued first for its furs and timber, after
1700 for gold, coal, and iron, and as a penal colony.
3.
In the 1650s the expanding Russian Empire met the expanding Qing Empire in
Mongolia, Central Asia, and along the Amur. Treaties between the two powers in
1689 and 1727 had the effect of weakening the Mongols and of focusing Russian expansion eastward toward the Pacific coast and across to North America
B. Russian Society and Politics to 1725
1.
As the empire expanded it incorporated a diverse set of peoples, cultures, and religions. This often produced internal tensions.
2.
The Cossacks belonged to close-knit bands and made temporary alliances with whoever could pay for their military services.
3.
Despite the fact that the Cossacks often performed important services for the
Russian Empire, they managed to maintain a high degree of autonomy.
4.
Threats and invasions by Sweden and Poland and internal disputes among the
Russian aristocracy (boyars) in the seventeenth century led to the overthrow of

the old line of Muscovite rulers and the enthronement of Mikhail Romanov in
1613. The Romanov rulers combined consolidation of their authority with territorial expansion to the east.
5.
As the power of the Romanov rose, the freedom of Russian peasants fell.
6.
In 1649 Russian peasants were legally transformed into serfs.
C. Peter the Great (r. 1689–1725)
1.
Peter the Great fought the Ottomans in an attempt to gain a warm-water port on the Black Sea and to liberate Constantinople (Istanbul) from Muslim rule, but did not achieve either goal. Peter was more successful in the Great Northern War, in which he broke Swedish control over the Baltic and established direct contacts between Russia and Europe.
2.
Following his victory in the Great Northern War, Peter built a new capital, St.
Petersburg, which was to contribute the Westernization of the Russian elites and demonstrate to Europeans the sophistication of Russia. The new capital was also intended to help break the power of the boyars by reducing their traditional roles in the government and in the army.
3.
Peter wanted to use European technology and culture in order to strengthen
Russia and to strengthen the autocratic power of his government; he was not interested in political liberalization. As an autocratic ruler, Peter brought the
Russian Orthodox Church under his control, built industrial plants to serve the military, and increased the burdens of taxes and labor on the serfs, whom the
Russian Empire depended upon for the production of basic foodstuffs.
D. Consolidation of the Empire
1.
Russian expansion in Alaska and the American northwest was driven by the search for furs, which British and American entrepreneurs had also been interested in. Control of the natural resources of Siberia put the Russians in a position to dominate the fur and shipping industries of the North Pacific.
2.
During the reign of Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796), Russia was the world’s largest land empire, built on an economic basis of large territory, agriculture, logging, fishing, and furs.
XIX. Comparative Perspectives
A. Political Comparisons
1.
Between 1500 and 1800, China and Russia grew dramatically, both in territory controlled and population.
2.
In comparison to Russia and China, the seaborne trading empires of the
Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English had less territory, tighter administrations, and much more global sweep.
3.
Despite being headed by an emperor, Japan's size, homogeneity, and failure to add colonies disqualify it from being called a true empire.
4.
Japan and Russia made greater progress in improving their military than did the
Chinese.
5.
Of Japan, Russia, and China, Russia did the most to build up its imperial navy.
B. Cultural, Social, and Economic Comparisons
1.
As they expanded, both China and Russia pursued policies that tolerated diversity, while promoting cultural assimilation.
2.
While both Russian and Chinese leaders were willing to use foreign ideas and technologies, they tended to see their own culture as superior.
3.
Both China and Russia had hierarchical and oppressive social systems.
4.
Merchants occupied a precarious position in both China and Japan.