Hist 103-Lecture 6: Empires of Commerce
! Administrivia:
" start early on essays—any questions, contact your tutor
" today’s lecture: preparing you for next week’s tutorial reading (Vincent Brown on
Jamaica)
! Themes for today:
" c.1500-1700: rise of European maritime ‘empires’
" c.1500-1800: creation of dynamic, hybrid Atlantic societies >> built on chattel
slavery
" beginnings of global interdependence in commerce
Europe’s Empires after 1500CE
! What is an ‘empire’, anyway?
" Previously: China, Islamic, Aztec, etc.
" How does Europe differ?
# intense and incessant rivalries, conflicts, wars
! Europe’s maritime turn is critical
" The first movers: Portugal and Spain
" 17th century arrivals: Dutch, English, French
# crucial institutional transformations: joint stock companies (East India
Companies), public debt
" mercantilism? capitalism? ‘war capitalism’?
The New Atlantic Economy
! Wealth that is neither silver nor gold …
! The ‘plantation complex’
" consumable foodstuffs: tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and (above all) … sugar!
" ferocious work conditions … so how to meet labour demands?
! Slavery and the ‘Triangular Trade’
" a global pattern of goods and exchanges
" the largest (and cruelest) forced migration in history
" the ‘Middle Passage’
" wealth, death, and the paradox of property in humans
The Atlantic Slave Trade (Voyages Database): http://www.slavevoyages.org
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_interactive_of
_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html#_jmp0_
Atlantic Cultures, Global Consequences
! Human toll of slave trade + plantation complex
!
1501-1866: 12.5 million embark, 10.7 m disembark
" Why Africa? why Africans? which Africans?
" Extraordinary demographic and cultural consequences >> both for Africa and New
World
! Emergence of hybrid societies in the Americas
" greater ethnic, religious, social diversity than European metropoles >> indigenes,
settlers, ‘creoles’
" reciprocal exchanges, lateral movements, imperial traffic >> ‘worlds in motion’
Conclusion: A Transoceanic World Emerges
! Period from 1500-1700 puts the ‘global’ into ‘global history’ in a new way
" direct rather than mediated connections span the globe
" settlement, commerce, competition produce growing interdependency...
! Europe’s gains built via violence and commerce
" not an aberration, but a challenging legacy to understand
the ‘money cowrie’ (monetaria moneta)
16th-17th century Peru