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Europeans explored and settled overseas territories, encountering and interacting with indigenous populations.
From the 15th through the 17th centuries, Europeans used their mastery of the seas to extend their power in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In the 15th century, the Portuguese sought direct access by sea to the sources of African gold, ivory, and slaves. At the same time, the rise of Ottoman power in the eastern Mediterranean led to Ottoman control of the Mediterranean trade routes and increased the motivation of Iberians and then northern Europeans to explore possible sea routes to the East. The success and consequences of these explorations, and the maritime expansion that followed them, rested on European adaptation of Muslim and Chinese navigational technology as well as advances in military technology and cartography. Political, economic, and religious rivalries among Europeans also stimulated maritime expansion. By the 17th century, Europeans had forged a global trade network that gradually edged out earlier Muslim and Chinese dominion in the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific.
In Europe, these successes shifted economic power within Europe from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic states. In Asia, the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch competed for control of trade routes and trading stations. In the Americas, the Spanish and Portuguese led in the establishment of colonies, followed by the Dutch, French, and English. The pursuit of colonies was sustained by mercantilist economic theory, which promoted government management of economic imperatives and policies. The creation of maritime empires was also animated by the religious fervor sweeping Europe during the Catholic and Protestant Reformations. Global European expansion led to the conversion of indigenous populations in South and Central America, to an exchange of commodities and crops that enriched European and other civilizations that became part of the global trading network, and, eventually to encounters and relationships that would have profound effects on Europe. The Columbian Exchange also unleashed several ecological disasters — notably the death of vast numbers of the Americas’ population in epidemics of European diseases, such as smallpox and measles, against which the native populations had no defenses. The new Atlantic trading system led to the establishment of the plantation system in the American colonies and the vast expansion of the African slave trade.
1.3.1: European nations were driven by commercial and religious motives to explore overseas territories and establish colonies.1.3.1.A: European states sought direct access to gold and spices and luxury goods as a means to enhance personal wealth and state power.
1.3.1.B: The rise of mercantilism gave the state a new role in promoting commercial development and the acquisition of colonies overseas.
1.3.1.C: Christianity was a stimulus for exploration as governments and religious authorities sought to spread the faith, and for some it served as a justification for the subjugation of indigenous civilizations.
1.3.2: Advances in navigation, cartography, and military technology enabled Europeans to establish overseas colonies and empires.
1.3.3: Europeans established overseas empires and trade networks through coercion and negotiation.1.3.3.A: The Portuguese established a commercial network along the African coast, in South and East Asia, and in South America in the late 15th and throughout the 16th centuries.
1.3.3.B: The Spanish established colonies across the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, which made Spain a dominant state in Europe in the 16th century. 1.3.3.C: The Atlantic nations of France, England, and the Netherlands followed by establishing their own colonies and trading networks to compete with Portuguese and Spanish dominance in the 17th century. 1.3.3.D: The competition for trade led to conflicts and rivalries among European powers in the 17th and 18th centuries.
1.3.4: Europe’s colonial expansion led to a global exchange of goods, flora, fauna, cultural practices, and diseases, resulting in the destruction of some indigenous civilizations, a shift toward European dominance, and the expansion of the slave trade.1.3.4.A: The exchange of goods shifted the center of economic power in Europe from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic states and brought the latter into an expanding world economy.
1.3.4.B: The exchange of new plants, animals, and diseases — the Columbian Exchange — created economic opportunities for Europeans and in some cases facilitated European subjugation and destruction of indigenous peoples, particularly in the Americas.
1.4.4.C: Europeans expanded the African slave trade in response to the establishment of a plantation economy in the Americas and demographic catastrophes among indigenous peoples.
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