Unit 4
Transoceanic Interconnections (c. 1450–1750)
Notes
Technology and exploration
- Maritime technology from many places made ocean voyages possible: the caravel (Portugal), the astrolabe, the magnetic compass, and better maps. Knowledge of wind patterns improved.
- Portugal explored Africa's coast (Henry the Navigator) and reached India (Vasco da Gama, 1498). Spain sponsored Columbus (1492). Motives: wealth, spices, and spreading Christianity.
The Columbian Exchange
- To the Americas: horses, cattle, pigs, wheat, sugar, and diseases like smallpox, which killed most of the Native population.
- From the Americas: maize, potatoes, cassava, tomatoes and tobacco, which fed population growth in Afro-Eurasia.
- Environmental changes: deforestation, new livestock grazing.
Maritime empires
- Portugal built a trading-post empire in the Indian Ocean; the Dutch and British used joint-stock companies (the Dutch East India Company / VOC, the British East India Company) to fund trade.
- Spain conquered the Aztecs (Cortés) and Inca (Pizarro). Silver from Potosí (Peru) and Mexico flooded world markets; much of it went to China, which required silver for taxes (Ming single whip reform).
- Mercantilism: colonies existed to enrich the home country; nations wanted a favorable balance of trade.
Labor systems
- Encomienda and the Spanish use of the mit'a for silver mines.
- Chattel slavery in the Atlantic: millions of Africans were forced across the Middle Passage to work on sugar and other plantations.
- Indentured servitude in the British colonies.
- The Atlantic slave trade strengthened some African states (like Dahomey) that sold captives.
Society and resistance
- Spanish colonies had a racial casta system (peninsulares, creoles, mestizos, mulattoes, Native people, Africans).
- Syncretism blended faiths, like the Virgin of Guadalupe.
- Resistance: the Pueblo Revolt (1680), maroon communities of escaped enslaved people, and the Cossack and other revolts in Eurasia.
Practice
Its design let ships sail into the wind.
Native people had no immunity.
China's demand for silver drove global trade.
Shareholders pooled money to fund voyages.
It was the middle leg of the triangular trade.
Peninsulares were at the top.
It blended Catholic and Native traditions.
Wealth was measured in gold and silver.
Free response
Write your answer first, then open the scoring guide.
Free-response question
Answer (a), (b) and (c).
(a) Identify ONE crop from the Americas that changed diets in Afro-Eurasia.
Show the answer and scoring guide
Potatoes (or maize or cassava) became staple foods and supported population growth.
Check off the points you earned:
(b) Explain ONE way the Atlantic slave trade affected West African societies.
Show the answer and scoring guide
It caused population loss and gender imbalances, and states like Dahomey grew powerful by capturing and selling people.
Check off the points you earned:
(c) Explain ONE way European states financed or managed overseas trade.
Show the answer and scoring guide
They chartered joint-stock companies, like the Dutch East India Company, which raised money from investors and had powers to trade, build forts and make treaties.
Check off the points you earned: