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Test Bank For History of World Societies Volume 2 11th Edition By Wiesner Hanks 9781319059330 ALL Chapters .
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Test Bank For History of World Societies Volume 2 11th Edition By Wiesner Hanks 9781319059330 ALL Chapters .
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Contemporary History - Utrecht University 2023/24
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Ludovica Luisa BeriniPeriod 3 – 2022/2023
EARLY MODERN HISTORY
EXPANSION
LECTURE 1
May 18th, 1856: ships set for the voltages of discovery, on board: Jacob van Heemskerk and Willem Barens. Voyage
they had already taken twice. Objective: find a North-Eastern rout to Asia. Started gathering drift woods brought by
currents, used to build a cabin. Winter started in early June, take vessels to find mainland. Arrived in Amsterdam in
early November. Travel journey written by one of the men. Moths before some vessels which had travelled via Cape of
Good Hope had already arrived back safely. Great profit → South-Eastern route became the standard.
Amsterdamse Courant (July 5th, 1792): it show how big the trade was, variety of goods (tea, porcelain, spices, silk…)
Fascination for VOC (Eastern India Company):
• Monopoly and sovereign rights (charters stating the rights that companies had, ex sole trade in Eastern India,
not permission to trade as an independent merchant, could go to war with Asian countries), rights handed over
from the Dutch government to these companies.
• Funding and profits (people could give money and support the funding of these companies, invest, and get
more money back), profits that the companies were making were hefty.
• Large ships and large crews (crew to manage the vessels, vessels started going to war with Asian countries →
needed soldiers, almost 1 million people shipped).
• Vast empire (from Cape of Good Hope to China and Asia).
• Unique position in parts of Asia (in areas like Japan, Japanese only allowed one foreign company for trading,
the Dutch), colonial power remained even when the presence of the VOC started fading.
Big success of the VOC “caused” little attention to trades with the Atlantic (Amsterdamse Courant mention of
Columbus’ ship).
Trade with the Atlantic:
• Open to anyone, no fixed companies like the VOC who also did not keep fixed accounting.
• Jan de Vries, “The limits of globalization in the early modern world” (2010): “weight” of goods imported and
exported on the vertical ax and date on the horizontal ax.
o Atlantic trade numerically important and greater than the Asian trade, increased more rapidly.
o Export of coffee: initially from Asia, increase in demand and importation of coffee to Europe, by the
end of the 18th coffee mainly imported from the West.
• More open than what the textbook shows.
1
, • Northern Atlantic: trade of animal products.
o Whale: they used the fat to make soap and oil for lamps.
o Initially easy to catch these animals, gradually became more complex.
o Colt fish (Iceland and Northern Europe): great source of food.
o Impact on fish and wale stocks → depleted.
• English animal trade in the Atlantic
o Beaver: Henry Hudson, Hudson’s Bay Company (1670).
▪ Hats
▪ Population in Russia decimated.
▪ Population in easter America decimated.
o Three catch areas:
▪ Fort Albany.
▪ York Factory.
▪ Fort Churchill.
o Prices rose in London and Canada due to competition with the French from Montreal
o Closely integrated markets.
▪ Increase catch efforts.
▪ Buy more luxury products.
▪ 1700-1763: 2.748.931 pelts.
▪ Decimate the population of beavers.
o European expansion did not only go to Asia, but also to the Atlantic.
o Atlantic more important than Asia.
How important was the Atlantic trade?:
• Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence (2004):
o Argues a great importance of the Atlantic trade.
o Argues that early modern societies were a resource trap, societies were restrained by the amount of
land they have (land equals people that you can support); if population grows too much → famine.
▪ Solution 1 → get land somewhere else.
• In America big crops of fertile land available because of the large death local
population.
• Problem: fewer people who could do ‘hard’ work, solution go to Africa and get
slaves.
▪ Solution 2 → get access to new sources of energy.
o Critics:
▪ Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009):
• Coal was important but for different reasons.
• England had already entered an era of economic development because of its central
role in Atlantic trade.
• A lot of building projects that took a long time to complete.
• England was leading in wages, prices and living standards.
2
, • Low prices for energy.
• High wages and low coal prices, use machines in order to not pay than high wages.
▪ Jan Luiten van Zanden, The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution (2009)
• What about human capital?
• People married late, Protestantism favored the acquisition of an education.
• Skilled workers were relatively cheap → so many people had received an
education.
▪ Joel Mokyr
• Europe had Enlightenment.
• People in England pushed the revolution were more scientifical people like
engineers.
• Why is economic growth so important?
o Horizontal ax = time, vertical ax = wealth.
▪ With the industrial revolution the wealth skyrocketed.
▪ China as a place from which we can gather sources.
▪ Maddison project database, miss some things (when industrial revolution started UK was
richer than Spain, different within regions), be more precise.
Slave trade in the Netherlands:
• Middleburgsche Commercie Compagnie
• Vrouw Johanna Cores (name of the vessel)
o Slave voyage 1771.
o Voyage to Kaap Lahori (ivory coast).
o Accurate bookkeeping:
▪ 212 heads of slaves purchased during this voyage.
▪ database allows the generation of maps…
o Slave trade grew during the 18th century.
Transatlantic slave trade database:
• Data for 36000 voyages
• 12,5 million embarked and 10,7 millions disembarked → c. 15% death rate.
• We can know the origin and the destination of slaves.
• A lot to the Americas → work in sugar plantations (hard work and conditions, warm weather).
• Impact of love trade on European economy: upwards trend
Energy:
• Coal
o Sometime located too deeply in the ground: hard to reach.
o Coal deposit had to be located near commercial activities (cost of transportation was too high).
o England coal deposits close to the surface.
3
, o China coal deposits near commercial activities but much more deeply into the ground, risk of
explosion, far from colonies, Europe had little demand for chines products.
CHAPTER 16 – THE ACCELERATION OF GLOBAL CONTACT (1450-1600)
Prior to Columbus’s voyages, well-developed trade routes linked the peoples and products of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Overall, Europe played a minor role in the Afro-Eurasian trade world. As the economy and population recovered from
the Black Death, Europeans began to seek more direct and profitable access to the Afro-Eurasian trade world.
Technological innovations, many borrowed from the East, enabled explorers to undertake ever more ambitious voyages.
In the aftermath of their conquests of Caribbean islands and the Aztec and Inca Empires, the Spanish established new
forms of governance to dominate indigenous peoples and exploit their labor. The arrival of Europeans brought
enormous population losses to native communities, primarily through the spread of infectious diseases. Disease was one
element of the Columbian exchange, a complex transfer of germs, plants, and animals between the Old and New
Worlds. These exchanges contributed to the creation of the first truly global economy. Tragically, a major component
of global trade was the transatlantic slave trade, in which Europeans transported Africans to labor in the sugar
plantations and silver mines of the New World. European nations vied for supremacy in global trade, with early
Portuguese success in India and Asia being challenged first by the Spanish and then by the Dutch.
Increased contact with the outside world led Europeans to develop new ideas about cultural and racial differences.
Debates occurred in Spain and its colonies over the nature of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and how they
should be treated. Europeans had long held negative attitudes about Africans; as the slave trade grew, they began to
express more rigid notions of racial inequality and to claim that Africans were inherently suited for slavery. Religion
became another means of cultural contact, as European missionaries aimed to spread Christianity in the New World.
1. At the end of the 15th century, European navigators sent out by the Iberian monarchies Portugal and Spain
reached the American continent. There they encountered various indigenous peoples organized in different
ways. Present and analyze these encounters and the systems of settlement, governance and dominance that
came into being throughout the 16th century.
a. Which were the two most advanced empires on the American continent? How were they taken over by
Europeans? Which factors led to the establishment of this European dominance?
• The Aztecs were taken over by the Spanish under the leadership of Hernán Cortés in
1521. The Spanish used their superior military technology, alliances with local enemies of
the Aztecs, and the introduction of diseases to which the Aztecs had no immunity to defeat
the Aztec empire.
• The Inca Empire was taken over by the Spanish under the leadership of Francisco
Pizarro in 1533. The Spanish also used their superior military technology and the
introduction of diseases to which the Incas had no immunity, along with the capture of the
Inca emperor Atahualpa, who was later executed.
The establishment of European dominance in the Americas was due to several factors:
• Superior military technology.
• She introduction of diseases to which the native peoples had no immunity.
• Alliances with local enemies of the native empires.
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