The document discusses the significance of commerce during the early modern world, particularly focusing on the Atlantic slave trade and its lasting impact. It highlights the emergence of European powers in global markets, the Portuguese and Spanish monopolies over spice trade, and the development of East India companies, along with the rise of a global silver trade. Additionally, the text explores the consequences of economic globalization and the historical context of slavery and exploitation in the Americas.

1. C O M M E R C E A N D C O N S E Q U E N C E
1 4 5 0 – 1 7 5 0
A P W O R L D H I S T O R Y
W A Y S O F T H E W O R L D
S E C O N D E D I T I O N
R O B E R T W . S T R A Y E R
CHAPTER 14:
ECONOMIC
TRANSFORMATIONS

2. Commerce and Consequence
 The Atlantic Slave trade remind us of the enormous
significance of this commerce in human beings for the
early modern world and of is continuing echoes even in
the 20th century,
 The Slave Trade component of those international
networkds of exchange that shaped human interactions
during centuries.
 European now smashed their way into the ancient spice
trade of the Indian Ocean, developing new relationships
with Asian societies as a result.
 Silver obtained from mines in Spanish America enriched
Europe.

3. Europeans and Asian Commerce
 The voyage (1497-1499) of the Portuguese mariner
Vasco da Gama in which Europeans sailed to India
for the first time was no accident. = outcome of
deliberate effort to explore a sea route to the East by
slowly down the West African coast around the tip of
South Africa to finally across the Indian Ocean in
1498.
 Desire to look for tropical spices: cinammon,
nutmeg, mace, cloves, pepper. (Aphrodisiacs?)
 Chinese Silk and Indian Cotton.

4. Portuguese Commerce
 European popullation was growing again after Black
Death. National monarchies forming – Spain, France,
and England: were learning how to tax their citizens
more effectively and build substantial military forces
equipped with weapons.
 The main italian commercial city Venice was
monopolized the European trade in Eastern goods,
annually sending convoys of ships to Alexandria in
Egypt. Venetians resented Muslim monopoly in the
Indian Ocean.
 Portuguese attempt a sea route to India that both passed
Benetian and Muslim intermediaries.

5. Portuguese Empire of Commerce
 Portuguese soon learned that most Indian Ocean
merchant ships were not heavily armed,
 They had military advantage that made them
establish fortified several key locations within the
Indian Ocean world.
 Mombasa in East Africa, Homuz at the Persian Golf,
Goa on the Coast of India, Macao on the coast of
China.
 Portuguese bases were obtained forcibly against
small and weak states.

6. Portuguese Monopoly
 Portuguese authorities in the East tried to require all
merchant vessels to purchase a CARTAZ or pass to
pay 6 to 10% of their cargoes.
 Monopolized – blocked Red Sea route to
Mediterranean for a century.
 They became heavily involved in carrying Asian
goods to Asia ports.
 Unwilling to accept a dominant Portuguese role in
the Indian Ocean, other European countries
gradually contested Portugal´s efforts to monopolize
the rich spice trade to Europe.

7. Spain and the Philippines
 Spain was the firs to challenge Portugal’s position.
They establish themselves on what became the
Philippine Islands, named after King Philip II.
 These spice islands / small and weak societies
encouraged Spanish to establish colonial rule.
 Eventhough Christendom was spreding, the Islam
gained strength in resistance of Spanish colonial
rule.
 Periodic revolts led by massacres from the Spanish,
soon they left and let Chinese invasions in.

8. East India Companies
 Northern European powers were both military and
economically stronger than Portuguese.
 The British India Company and the Dutch East India
Company received granting from government to
monopolies and govern conquered peoples.
 Dutch controlled spices: Cinnamon, cloves and
nutmeg.
 Much bloodshed, and massacres. Led the islands
that only their production was sold to Dutch.
 Slave labor force to produce nutmeg crop in islands
of Indonesia.

9. British India Company
 British largely excluded from the rich spice islands
by the Dutch monopoly.
 They establish themselves in India, specially with
major power in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.
 British didnt practice the “war by trade” instead
through bribes, then little by little acquire Indian
cotton textiles and the tea, coffee industry.
 British came to rule India and the Dutch controlled
Indonesia.

10. Asians and the Asian Commerce
 European political control was limited to the
philipphines, parts of Java and few other islands.
 Japan was one of the few islands that Europeans
couldnt penetrate. Japan had feudal lords, known as
DAIMYO, and its own warriors SAMURAIS.
 By the early 17th century, remarkable military figures
unified Japan because of the Tokugawa clan.
 Tokugawa shogunate largely closed their country off
from the emerging world of European commerce,
although maintained their trading ties with China
and Korea.

11. Silver and the Global Commerce
 Silver trade gave birth to genuinely global network of
exchange.
 Spanish America alone produced perhaps 85% of the worlds
silver during the early modern era.
 Chinas huge economy, demanded greats amounts of Silver.
 Much of silver shipped across the Atlantic to Spain was spent
in Europe.
 The largest mine in the world was in Bolivia (potosí), with
horrible conditions for the miners.
 Latin America´s silver enriched the Crown, making Spain the
envy of its European rivals only during the 16th centuries.
 The value of silver dropped in early 17th century as Spain lost
its position and countries started lookinf for raw materials,
historians call this a “general crisis”.

12. World Hunt : FUR in Global Commerce
 Furs, had long provided warmth and conveyed status in
colder regions of the world. (North America, Siberia,
Russia).
 European population growth and agricultural expansion
had sharply diminished the supply of fur bearing
animals.
 These conditions pushed prices higher. Led to trapping
and hunting.
 Over 3 centuries enormous quantities of furs and
deerskins found their way to Europe.
 Led to many extintion of animals. 500,000 animals per
year of animals such as deer, bears, beavers, foxes.

13. Commerce in People: The Atlantic Slave Trade
 None had more profound or enduring human consequences
than the Atlantic slave trade.
 12.5 million people from African societies were shipped across
the Atlantic in the infamous Middle Passage.
 1.8 million died during the transatlantic journey.
 This African diaspora injected into these new societies issues
of race that endure still in the 20th centuries,
 Slavery became a metaphor for many kinds of social
oppression, quite different from plantation slavery, in the
centuries that followed.
 Workers protested the slavery of wage labor, colonized people
rejected the slavery of imperial domination and feminists
sometimes defined patriarchy as a form of slavery.

14. Slave trade in Context
 The Atlantic stalve trade and slavery in the Americas
represented the most recent large scale expression of
a very widespread human practice- owning and
exchange of human beings.
 Slavery took form in many places, into their owners
hoseholds, or communities. Children could inherit
the slave status.
 Slavery in Americas was immense size of traffic in
slaves – led economy. = sugar, tobacco, cotton.

15. Reflections: Economic Globalization
 The study of history remind us of contradictory truths.
One is that our lives in the present bear remarkable
similarities of the past. We are pehaps not so unique as
we might think.
 Still our lives have changed substantially, this chapter
about global commerce; long distance trade in spices,
textiles, silber, furs and slaves provides both
perspectives.
 Globalization started when? Circulation of goods,
international currency, production for world market,
private enterprises. We have mention all of these during
this chapter.