Great Dying: Term used to The Great Dying and the Little Ice Age
describe the devastating ● Europeans acquiring American empires resulted in:
demographic impact of ○ Demographic collapse
European-borne epidemic diseases ○ Great Dying took hold in the Americas
on the Americas; in many cases, ● Little Ice Age
up to 90 percent of the ● General Crisis
pre-Columbian population died. ○ Reminds us that climate often plays an important role in
Little Ice Age: A period of shaping human history.
unusually cool temperatures from
the thirteenth to nineteenth Conversion and Adaptation in Spanish America
centuries, most prominently in the ● Example of the religious revivalist movement in central Peru in the
Northern Hemisphere. 1560s, Taki Onqoy
General Crisis: The near-record ● Cofradias: church-based associations of laypeople
cold winters experienced in much ● Fiscal: Leader of the church staff
of China, Europe, and North
America in the mid-seventeenth Unit 4, Topic 1
century, sparked by the Little Ice Adoption of Maritime Technology
Age; Extreme weather conditions ● Magnetic compass
led to famines, uprisings, and ○ Developed in China
wars. ○ For reckoning direction
● Astrolabe
Taki Onqoy (Dancing sickness): ○ Determines latitude and longitude
A religious revival movement in ● Lateen sail
central Peru in the 1560s whose ○ Triangular-shaped sail
members preached the imminent ○ Takes wind on either side
destruction of Christianity and of ● Astronomical charts
the Europeans and the restoration ○ Detailed diagrams of stars and constellations
of an imagined Andean golden
age. Shipbuilding Innovations
● Caravel (Portugal)
○ More nimble on the water
○ More navigable
● Carrack (Portugal)
○ Larger, could carry more gunpowder armory
● Fluyt (Dutch)
○ Designed for trade
○ Massive cargo hold
○ Cheap to build
Unit 4, Topic 2
State Sponsored Maritime Exploration
● Huge motivator for states sponsoring maritime exploration was the
increasing desire for Asian and Southeast Asian spices, most
notably, pepper.
Causes for Exploration
● Religion
● Good Economy
● Political Rivalry
● Envy
● Desire for Wealth
● Need for Alternative Routes to Asia
, Week 2 Sea-Based Empire Unit 4 | 1450-1750 CE
The West’s First Outreach: Maritime Power
● Technological advances helped improve European power
○ Improved compass and other navigational tools
○ Development of guns and cannons
Philippines: An archipelago of ○ Deep draft, round-hulled vessels
Pacific islands colonized by Spain ● Spain
in a relatively bloodless process ○ Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea
that extended for the century or so ■ Headed West over the Atlantic
after 1565, a process accompanied ■ Believed he reached the Indies
by a major effort at evangelization; ■ Made four voyages
The Spanish named them the ■ Died not knowing he reached a “new” World
Philippine Islands in honor of ○ Hernán Cortés: Spanish conquistador who led the
King Philip II of Spain expedition that conquered the Aztec Empire in modern
Manila: The capital of the colonial Mexico
Philippines, which by 1600 had ○ Philippines: Establish outright colonial rule on these
become a flourishing and islands, rather than imitating Portuguese-style trading post
culturally diverse city; The site of empire
violent clashes between the ○ Manila:
Spanish and Chinese. ● Portugal
○ Prince Henry, the Navigator
■ Established a school for navigation/seamanship
■ Sponsored expeditions down the coast of Africa
○ Vasco de Gama
■ Sailed around the Cape of Good Hope (S. Africa)
■ 1498: Reached India, surprised at what he found
■ Returned with a few spices, came back with
force
■ Used superior weapons to force trade domination
■ Sailed in the Indian Ocean commercial
Indian Ocean commercial network
network: The massive, ■ Trading post empire: Aimed to control
interconnected web of commerce commerce by force of arms
in premodern times between the ● Required all merchant vessels to
lands that bordered the Indian purchase a cartaz, or pass, and pay
Ocean (including East Africa, duties of 6 to 10 percent on their
India, and Southeast Asia); the cargoes
network was transformed as ■ By 1600, Portuguese trading post empire was in
Europeans entered it in the steep decline
centuries following 1500. ○ Pedro Alvares Cabral
Trading post empire: Form of ■ Sailed down Africa by way of Brazil (claimed it)
imperial dominance based on ■ Made his way to India and back
control of trade through military ○ Ferdinand Magellan
power rather than on control of ■ Attempted to find a southern passage to India
peoples or territories ■ Died in the Philippines
■ Crew eventually returned to Spain
■ 1519-1522: First global circumnavigation
● Land Claims of British and French in 15th and 16th centuries
○ 1497: British explore Hudson Bay looking for Northwest
Passage
○ 1534: French claim Canada, expand explorations to the
south
○ 1607: British established first permanent European
settlements in North America (Jamestown)
● Britain