The Maritime Empires of Early Modern Europe

1. Maritime Empires of
Early Modern Europe

2. Maritime Empires
1. Portuguese
2. Spanish
3. French
4. Dutch
5. Britain
Land Empires
1. Ottoman
2. Safavid Persian
3. Mughal Indian
4. Qing Chinese
5. Russian
6. Hapsburg
Austrian

3. Early Modern Europe:
• Development of nation-states
• The Renaissance
• The Age of Exploration
• The Reformation
• The Scientific Revolution

4. • New nation-
states –
modern warfare
demands new
revenue 
alliance with
merchants,
national
identity and
purpose

5. • New nation-states – Hundred Years War (1337-
1453) created France/England rivalry

6. • British Isles = England, Wales, Scotland, and
Ireland; no “Britain” before 1707 = English

7. • New nation-states – Spanish Reconquista
completed 1492; knights need new purpose =
conquistadors

8. • Dutch Revolt from Spain = United Provinces of the
Netherlands, 1609

9. • Renaissance – new knowledge and rising standard
of living

22. • Age of Exploration – new knowledge, new
products, profit from new trade routes and
European conquest of foreign lands

24. • 1453: Ottoman conquest of Constantinople blocked
European access to Asian trade

25. Map of the World from an 1482 edition of Claudius Ptolemy's Cosmographia

26. Portuguese and Spanish Empires
Castile + Aragon (1469)
+ conquest of Granada (1492)
+ conquest of Navarre (1529)
= Spain

28. 1415: Portuguese conquest of Ceuta

31. 1492: Columbus’ arrival in Caribbean

35. Landing of Columbus (1847)
U.S. Capitol Rotunda

36. Columbian
Exchange
has commercial
implications
but refers to
biological
transfer
between
Afro-Eurasia
and Americas

37. Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

38. Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

40. 1) First use of America on map, after explorer Amerigo Vespucci. 2) The Pacific not confirmed
until six years after map made. 3) Old World shown as the ancients saw it. 4) New eastern sea
route to India. 5) The legendary island of Taprobane. 6) Reference to legendary king Prester
John.
Waldseemuller map of 1507

41. August 10, 1519 – September 6, 1521
1,121 days
26,928 hours

42. Portuguese Explorations

43. Afonso de Albuquerque (1509-1515)

45. Hernán Cortés =
conquest of Aztec Mexico (1519-1521)
Francisco Pizarro =
conquest of Incan Peru (1532-1535)

46. French
Empire

51. Dutch Empire
Netherlands: “Low Country”
People = Dutch
Holland = Hollanders

54. Dutch East India Company

55. British Empire

58. Seven Years’ War, 1756-1763

62. Mercantilism and Global Trade

67. American Indians working in the silver mines at Potosi, Viceroyalty of Peru (present-day Bolivia).
Line engraving by Theodor de Bry, 1601.

68. Triangular Trade in the Atlantic Economy

71. A view of the Portuguese-built Elmina Castle in Ghana, c. 1660

73. • The Reformation – defiance of traditional
authority, self-reliance, religious fervor

74. Causes of the Protestant Reformation:
• Church corruption:
• Indulgences
• Nepotism and Simony
• Clerical Pluralism and
Absenteeism
• Avignon Papacy
• 1/3 of Europe →
church land
• Printing Press

75. Martin Luther

77. John Calvin

78. Henry VIII = Anglicanism,
or Church of England

79. + =
Henry
VIII
Catherine
of Aragon
Mary I
Henry and Catherine had a daughter, Mary.

80. + =
Anne
Boleyn
Elizabeth I
Henry
VIII

81. + =
Jane
Seymour
Edward VI
Henry
VIII

82. 1547:
Henry VIII dies

83. 1553:
Edward VI dies

84. 1558:
Mary I dies

85. Elizabeth I
Queen of England
(r. 1558-1603)

86. Pope Paul III
and the Catholic/
Counter-Reformation
(r. 1534-1549)

95. Henry III,
Valois king
Henry of Guise,
Catholics
(funded by Philip II)
Henry of Navarre,
Hugenots
VS. VS.

97. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648

98. 1618-1648

99. ▪ German towns decimated.
▪ Agriculture collapsed → famine
▪ 8 million dead → 1/3 of the population [from
21 million in 1618 to 13.5 million in 1648]
▪ Massive inflation.
▪ Trade crippled throughout Europe.
▪ Germany remains disunited until 1871
The French Phase, 1635-1648

101. Treaty of Westphalia, 1648

102. • Scientific Revolution – questioning traditional
authority, curiosity, new philosophical approaches
to life
Late 1300s-1500s:
Renaissance and Reformation 
rediscovery of ancient learning and challenges to traditional thinking
+
Late 1400s-1600s:
Age of Exploration  discovery of new lands, people, flora, and fauna
=
Mid-1500s-1700s:
New explanations of nature  Scientific Revolution

105. Renaissance-Era Medical Advances
• Andreas Vesalius conducted dissections to produce the well-illustrated anatomy book
On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543) and was court physician to Charles V.