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Chapter 14 Part I


Chapter 14: Economic Transportation 

Europeans and Asian Commerce 
  • Cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and above all pepper were widely used condiments and preservatives → most immediate motivation 
  • Other products such as Chinese silk, Indian cotton, rhubarb for medicinal purposes, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires → great demand 
  • This growing interest in Asia was the most general recovery of European civilization following the disaster of the Black Death in the early 14th century. 
  • Some of the cities in England, the Netherlands, and northern Italy were becoming centers of international commerce, giving birth to economies based on market change. 
  • The source of supply for much-desired goods came from Muslims. 
  • A problem for Europeans was paying for Eastern goods. They were required to pay cash, gold, or silver for things like Asian spices or textiles. 
  • The shortage of trade played a big part in the intense desire for precious metals, which attracted European explorers, traders, and conquerors. 
  • The Portuguese, then the Spanish, the French, Dutch, and the British found their way into the ancient Asian world of Indian Ocean commerce
A Portuguese Empire of Commerce
  • East Africans, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Malays, Chinese, and many others traded freely
  • Most of them were Muslims, but Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and Chinese, likewise had a role in the commercial network.
  • European trade goods were crude and unattractive in Asian markets 
  • Indian Ocean merchant ships were not heavily armed like Portuguese ships were, so the Portuguese saw an opening so that their ships could outmaneuver and outgun competing for naval forces. The military advantage enabled the Portuguese to quickly establish fortified bases at several key locations within the Indian Ocean
  • What the Portuguese created in the Indian Ocean is known as the “trading post empire” → they aimed to control commerce by force of arms rather than by economic competition
  • When the Portuguese failed to dominate the Indian Ocean commerce, they started to become more involved in carrying Asian goods to Asian ports 
  • Hundreds of Portuguese had escaped the control of their government and settled in Asian or African ports → they learned languages, some even converted to Islam 
  • By 1600 the Portuguese trading post empire was in steep decline 


Spain and the Philippines 
  • Spain was the first to challenge Portugal’s position
  • In an effort to gain access to the riches, the Philippines established themselves on what became the Philippines Island, named after the Spanish king Philip II. The Spanish first discovered this region during the round-the-world voyage from 1519-2521 
  • The distance to China and the spice islands, small and militarily weak societies, and the absence of competing claims, encouraged the Spanish to establish an outright colonial rule on the islands, rather than to imitate a Portuguese-style trading post empire.
  • The Philippines remained a Spanish colonial territory until the end of the 19th century when the United States took control following the Spanish-American War of 1898 
  •  Women who played major roles as ritual specialists, healers, and midwives were replaced by Spanish male priest

The East India Companies 
  • The Dutch and the English both entered the Indian Ocean commerce in the early 17th century → these two quickly replaced the Portuguese, usually by force, but they still competed with each other 
  • The Dutch and the British organized their Indian Ocean commerce through private trading companies, which were able to raise money and share risks among merchant investors 
  • While Dutch profits soared, the local economy of the Spice Islands was shattered and their people were impoverished 
  • The British were largely excluded from the rich Spice Islands by the Dutch monopoly. They fell back on India, where they established 3 major trading settlements during the 17th century: Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras
  • British became more interested in Indian cotton textiles
  • In the second half of the 18th century, both the Dutch and the British trading post empires slowly evolved into a more conventional form of colonial domination, in which the British came to rule India and the Dutch controlled Indonesia 


Asians and Asian Commerce

  • When Portuguese traders and missionaries first arrived in that island nation in the mid-16th century, Japan was plagued by endemic conflict among numerous feudal lords, known as daimyo, each with his own cadre of samurai warriors. 
  • Military figures had unified Japan politically, under the leadership of a supreme military commander known as the shogun, who hailed from the Tokugawa clan 
  • For two centuries, Japanese authorities of the Tokugawa shogunate largely closed their country off from the emerging world of European commerce, although they maintained their trading ties to China, Korea, and Southeast Asia


Silver and Gold Commerce 
  • The sliver trade was what gave birth to a genuinely global network of exchange
  • Spain’s sole Asian colony, the Philippines, provided a critical link in this emerging network of global commerce 
  • This trade was the first direct and sustained link between the Americas and Asia, and it initiated a web of Pacific commerce that grew steadily over the centuries 
  • When the value of silver dropped in the early 17th century, Spain lost its earlier position as the dominant Western European power
  • The Little Ice Age of global cooling contributed to what historians sometimes call a “General Crisis” of upheaval and instability in the 17th century 
  • Japan, another major source of silver production did better 
  • To obtain silver needed to pay their taxes, more and more people had to sell something 


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