The Beginnings of Our Global

Age: Europe, Africa, and Asia

Why Now?

• 1200-1300s, overland trade; Black Death and breakup of Mongol empire disrupts that

• 1400s Arab and Italian merchants control trade between Asia and Europe

• Others want in on that

The Silk Road Overland Routes

Portugal Sails East • Prince Henry

• 1415 Portugal takes Ceuta

• Map the African Coast; convert the Africans, looking for gold and an easier route to Asia

• 1460 Henry dies; 1488 Dias rounds Cape of Good Hope; 1497 da Gama gets to Calicut

Columbus Sails West

• Ferdinand and Isabella

• Cruises the Caribbean

• 1493 Line of Demarcation

• 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas

• 1519-1522 Magellan circumnavigates the globe

The Slave Trade

• Portugal builds forts

and trading posts

along the coast

• Guns, gold, ivory,

slaves

• Plantation economy

• African rulers and

merchants supply the

slaves

European Expansion

• 1652 Dutch arrive in Cape Town

• Farmers called Boers evict, kill, or enslave the people who live there

• Mid 1600s British and French reach Senegal

• Search for the source of the Nile furthers exploration of Africa

Jan van Riebeeck

landed in 1652 at the

Cape of Good Hope

Europe in South and SE Asia

• Portuguese meet the Mughals in India

• Build outposts in southern India for resupply and repair

• 1510 take Goa; make it a military and commercial base

• 1511 take Malacca; massacre Muslims

Afonso de Albuquerque

The Dutch and the Spanish

• Dutch are the first challengers to the Portuguese

• 1602 Dutch East India Company

• 1641 capture Malacca; open trade with China

• Spain seizes the Philippines; converts and trade

The English in India

• Mughals control India for two centuries

• Europeans build forts, warehouses

• Hindu/Muslim conflict; Civil War

• 1700s British and French fight it out

• British East India Company and its army drives out the French

The East India Company Negotiates

Encounters in East Asia

• 1514 Portuguese arrive in China

• Ming think they’re barbarians; limit trade

• Eventually set up a trading post at Macao

• Ming allow Dutch, English, others to trade at Canton

• Missionaries follow

The Manchu Conquest

• 1602 rebellions against the Ming

• 1644 The Manchus take Beijing; found the Qing Dynasty

• China’s borders expand, economy improves, food surpluses, population growth

• 1793 refuse trade with England

Inauguration Portrait of Qianlong

Korea Chooses Isolation

• 1592 and 1597 Japan

invades Korea

• Famine, disease,

population decrease

• 1636 the Manchus

invade; Korea

becomes tributary

state of the Qing

• Korea goes

isolationist

Japan

• 1543 Portuguese reach Japan; Spanish, Dutch, English follow

• Daimyo welcome their weapons

• Helps Tokugawa shoguns centralize power, impose order

• 1638 expelled Europeans and closed their borders

Priest Francis Xavier