19.1 Reading Guide
- English East India Company: The East India Company, also known as the Honourable East India Company or the British East India Company and informally as John Company, was an English and later British joint-stock company. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with Mughal India and the East Indies, and later with Qing China.
- Dutch East India Company: The Dutch East India Company was an early modern mega corporation, founded by a government-directed amalgamation of several rival Dutch trading companies in the early 17th century.
- Prince Henry the Navigator: Infante D. Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu, better known as Prince Henry the Navigator, was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion.
- Bartolomeu Diaz: Bartolomeu Dias, a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first to do so, setting up the route from Europe to Asia later on.
- Vasco de Gama: Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira, was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and therefore, the West and the Orient.
Questions:
1. Explain the following motives for European exploration:
2. Explain how the following technology made European exploration p. 1052 –
1054:
a. Caravel
The Caravel was a relatively small ship, especially by modern standards. The bottom of the ship protruded below the surface of the water by only a small distance, making it an extremely maneuverable watercraft. For much of its life, the Caravel featured triangular “lateen” sails that, combined with its eminent maneuverability, allowed it to sail into the wind using a zigzagging technique known as “beating to windward.” The Spanish and Portuguese soon recognized the potential of this ship, and transformed it from a simple offshore fishing vessel to the backbone of the European Age of Exploration.
b. Lateen sails
A lateen or latin-rig is a triangular sail set on a long yard mounted at an angle on the mast, and running in a fore-and-aft direction. Dating back to Roman navigation, the lateen became the favorite sail of the Age of Discovery, mainly because it allows a boat to tack “against the wind.”
c. Compass
A compass is an instrument used for navigation and orientation that shows direction relative to the geographic cardinal directions. Usually, a diagram called a compass rose shows the directions north, south, east, and west on the compass face as abbreviated initials. When the compass is used, the rose can be aligned with the corresponding geographic directions; for example, the “N” mark on the rose points northward.
d. Astrolabe
An astrolabe is an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers and navigators to measure the inclined position in the sky of a celestial body, day or night. The word astrolabe means “the one that catches the heavenly bodies.” It can thus be used to identify stars or planets, to determine local latitude given local time, to survey, or to triangulate. It was used in classical antiquity, the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages and the Age of Discovery for all these purposes.
3. Describe and explain the causes and effects of Spanish exploration p. 1057
Spain’s reasons for sponsoring Christopher Columbus’s voyage
Europeans had not been completely isolated from the rest of the world before the 1400s. Beginning around 1100, European crusaders battled Muslims for control of the Holy Lands in Southwest Asia. In 1275, the Italian trader Marco Polo reached the court of Kublai Khan in China. For the most part, however, Europeans had neither the interest nor the ability to explore foreign lands. That changed by the early 1400s. The desire to grow rich and to spread Christianity, coupled with advances in sailing technology, spurred an age of European exploration.
b. The impacts of Columbus’s voyage
Colonization of the Americas
Columbus’s voyages to the Americas are important mainly because of the fact that they “opened” the New World to exploration and to conquest. In other words, Columbus’s four voyages did not have a tremendous impact in and of themselves, but they led the way to other voyages and events that did affect the Americas, Europe, and the world.
Conflict between Spain and Portugal:
Line of Demarcation
The Portuguese believed that Columbus had indeed reached Asia. Portugal suspected that Columbus had claimed for Spain lands that Portuguese sailors might have reached first. The rivalry between Spain and Portugal grew more tense. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI stepped in to keep peace between the two nations. He suggested an imaginary dividing line, drawn north to south, through the Atlantic Ocean. All lands to the west of the line, known as the Line of Demarcation, would be Spain’s. These lands included most of the Americas. All lands to the east of the line would belong to Portugal.
Treaty of Tordesillas
A 1494 agreement between Portugal and Spain, declaring that newly discovered lands to the west of an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean would belong to spain and newly discovered lands to the east of the line would belong to Portugal.
4. Describe and explain Portugal’s trading empire in the Indian Ocean
Control of Straits of Hormuz
Portugal strengthened its hold on the region by building a fort at Hormuz in 1514. It established control of the Straits of Hormuz, connecting the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, and helped stop Muslim traders from reaching India.
b. Goa
In 1510, the Portuguese captured Goa, a port city on India’s west coast. They made it the capital of their trading empire.
c. Control of Strait of Malacca
In 1511, a Portuguese fleet attacked the city of Malacca on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. In capturing the town, the Portuguese seized control of the Strait of Malacca. Seizing this waterway gave them control of the Moluccas. These were islands so rich in spices that they became known as the Spice Islands.
5. Explain how Portugal broke the old Muslim-Italian domination of the trade from the east. P. 1059
They deprived them of their ancient market there because they did not leave them a single port to trade through. They finally sealed the deal when they took Malacca, so all of the merchants would now have to go and purchase things through Portugal.
Chapter 20.1
Ferdinand Magellan: Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who organised the Spanish expedition to the East Indies from 1519 to 1522, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano. Born into a Portuguese noble family in around 1480, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer and was eventually selected by King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward route to the Maluku Islands.
Christopher Columbus: Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. He led the first European expeditions to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, initiating the permanent European colonization of the Americas. Columbus discovered the viable sailing route to the Americas, a continent which was not then known to Europeans.
Los Indios: Thinking he had successfully reached the East Indies, Columbus called the surprised inhabitants who greeted him, los indios. The term translated into “Indian,” a word mistakenly applied to all the native peoples of the Americas.
Colony: a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.
Pedro Alvares Cabral: Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil. In 1500 Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. While details of Cabral’s early life remain unclear, it is known that he came from a minor noble family and received a good education.
Amerigo Vespucci: Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer. Born in the Republic of Florence, he became a naturalized citizen of the Crown of Castile in 1505.Vespucci first demonstrated in about 1502 that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia’s eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus voyages, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to people of the Old World.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa: Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World. He traveled to the New World in 1500 and, after some exploration, settled on the island of Hispaniola.
Montezuma II: Aztec emperor from 1502 to 1520. The last ruler of the Aztec empire in Mexico, he was defeated and imprisoned by the Spanish under Cortés in 1519.
Ponce de Leon: Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer and conquistador born in Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain in 1474. Though little is known about his family, he was of noble birth and served in the Spanish military from a young age. He first came to the Americas as a “gentlemen volunteer” with Christopher Columbus’s second expedition in 1493.
Peninsulares: the context of the Spanish colonial caste system, a peninsular was a Spanish-born Spaniard residing in the New World or the Spanish East Indies. The word “peninsulars” makes reference to Peninsular Spain.
Mestizos: Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Spain, Latin America and the Philippines that originally referred to a person of combined European and Native American descent, regardless of where the person was born. The term was used as an ethnic/racial category in the casta system that was in use during the Spanish Empire’s control of its American and Asian colonies.
Questions:
1. Describe the events leading to the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521
a. Hernando Cortes
In 1519, as Magellan embarked on his historic voyage, a Spaniard named Hernando Cortés landed on the shores of Mexico. After colonizing several Caribbean islands, the Spanish had turned their attention to the American mainland. Cortés marched inland, looking to claim new lands for Spain.
b. Conquistadors
Cortés and the many other Spanish explorers who followed him were known as conquistadors. Lured by rumors of vast lands filled with gold and silver, conquistadors carved out colonies in regions that would become Mexico, South America, and the United States.
c. Conquest of Tenochtitlan
Soon after landing in Mexico, Cortés learned of the vast and wealthy Aztec Empire in the region’s interior. After marching for weeks through difficult mountain passes, Cortés and his force of roughly 600 men finally reached the magnificent Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. The Aztec emperor, Montezuma II, was convinced at first that Cortés was a god wearing armor. He agreed to give the Spanish explorer a share of the empire’s existing gold supply. The conquistador was not satisfied. Cortés admitted that he and his comrades had a “disease of the heart that only gold can cure.” In the late spring of 1520, some of Cortés’s men killed many Aztec warriors and chiefs while they were celebrating a religious festival. In June of 1520, the Aztecs rebelled against the Spanish intruders and drove out Cortés’s forces. The Spaniards, however, struck back. Despite being greatly outnumbered, Cortés and his men conquered the Aztecs in 1521.
2. Explain the causes of the conquest of the Aztecs
Some of the causes for the conquest of the Aztecs included famine, bad ruling, high taxes, and disease brought by the conquistadores. Famine was caused by nobles being able to marry commoners which made more nobles and thus, not having enough commoners to farm and do the grunt work. The Aztecs began to make bad ruling decisions such as ruling by terror and imposing too high of taxes. The final straw was when the conquistadors brought disease with them and the Aztecs were exposed to them, without any immunity.
3. Describe events leading to the Spanish conquest of the Incas:
a. Francisco Pizarro
In 1532, another conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, marched a small force into South America.This force ended up conquering the Incan Empire.
b. Atahualpa
Pizarro and his army of about 200 met the Incan ruler, Atahualpa, near the city of Cajamarca. Atahualpa, who commanded a force of about 30,000, brought several thousand mostly unarmed men for the meeting. The Spaniards waited in ambush, crushed the Incan force, and kidnapped Atahualpa. Atahualpa offered to fill a room once with gold and twice with silver in exchange for his release. However, after receiving the ransom, the Spanish strangled the Incan king.
c. Cajamarca
The city where the king was imprisoned. It is located in Peru’s northern highlands, in the Andes Mountains.
4. Describe and explain the following patterns in Spanish conquest of the Americas
Intermarriage between Spanish settlers and native women
The Spanish settlers to the Americas, known as peninsulares, were mostly men. As a result, relationships between Spanish settlers and native women were common. These relationships created a large mestizo—or mixed Spanish and Native American population.
Encomienda system
In their effort to exploit the land for its precious resources, the Spanish forced Native Americans to work within a system known as encomienda. Under this system, natives farmed, ranched, or mined for Spanish landlords. These landlords had received the rights to the natives’ labor from Spanish authorities. The holders of encomiendas promised the Spanish rulers that they would act fairly and respect the workers. However, many abused the natives and worked many laborers to death, especially inside dangerous mines.
5. Describe and explain the impact of Spain’s conquest on Spain
Wealth increased
Spain’s American colonies helped make it the richest, most powerful nation in the world during much of the 16th century. Ships filled with treasures from the Americas continually sailed into Spanish harbors. This newfound wealth helped usher in a golden age of art and culture in Spain.
Military might increased
Throughout the 16th century, Spain also increased its military might. To protect its treasure-filled ships, Spain built a powerful navy. The Spanish also strengthened their other military forces, creating a skillful and determined army. For a century and a half, Spain’s army seldom lost a battle.
Exploration of North America
Spain enlarged its American empire by settling in parts of what is now the United States. Dreams of new conquests prompted Spain to back a series of expeditions into the southwestern United States. The Spanish actually had settled in parts of the United States before they even dreamed of building an empire on the American mainland. For example, in 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed on the coast of modern-day Florida and claimed it for Spain.
6. Describe and explain the following examples of opposition to Spanish rule:
Criticisms of Las Casas
Spanish priests worked to spread Christianity in the Americas. They also pushed for better treatment of Native Americans. Priests spoke out against the cruel treatment of natives. In particular, they criticized the harsh pattern of labor that emerged under the encomienda system. “There is nothing more detestable or more cruel,” Dominican monk Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote, “than the tyranny which the Spaniards use toward the Indians for the getting of riches”.“The Spanish government abolished the encomienda system in 1542. To meet the colonies’ need for labor, Las Casas suggested Africans. “The labor of one . . . [African] . . . [is] more valuable than that of four Indians,” he said. The priest later changed his view and denounced African slavery.
Pope’s Rebellion
In 1680, Popé, a Pueblo ruler, led a well-organized rebellion against the Spanish. The rebellion involved more than 8,000 warriors from villages all over New Mexico. The native fighters drove the Spanish back into New Spain. For the next 12 years, until the Spanish regained control of the area, the southwest region of the future United States once again belonged to its original inhabitants.
Chapter 20.2
New France: New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris.
New Netherlands: New Netherlands was a 17th-century colony of the Dutch Republic that was located on the east coast of North America. It was founded in 1614 and its capital is New Amsterdam.
Jamestown: On May 14, 1607, the Virginia Company settlers landed on Jamestown Island to establish an English colony 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Discovery of the exact location of the first fort indicates its site was in a secure place, where Spanish ships could not fire point blank into the fort. Within days of landing, the colonists were attacked by Powhatan Indians. The newcomers spent the next few weeks working to “beare and plant palisadoes” for a wooden fort. It was inside this fort that England’s first permanent colony in North America took hold and the seeds for the United States of America grew.
Plymouth Colony: Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691 at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Massachusetts Bay Colony: The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
King Philip’s War: King Philip’s War was an armed conflict in 1675–78 between Indian inhabitants of New England and New England colonists and their Indian allies. The war is named for Metacomet, the Wampanoag chief who adopted the name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Mayflower Pilgrims.
Metacom: Metacom, also known as Metacomet and by his adopted English name King Philip, was chief to the Wampanoag people and the second son of the sachem Massasoit. He became a chief in 1662 when his brother Wamsutta died shortly after their father Massasoit.
Questions:
1. Describe and explain France’s colonization of North America
a. Jacques Cartier
In 1534, France’s King Francis I authorized the navigator Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) to lead a voyage to the New World in order to seek gold and other riches, as well as a new route to Asia. Cartier’s three expeditions along the St. Lawrence River would later enable France to lay claim to the lands that would become Canada. Born in Saint-Malo, France, Cartier began sailing as a young man. He gained a reputation as a skilled navigator prior to making his three famous voyages to North America.
b. Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain, known as “The Father of New France”, was a French navigator, cartographer, draftsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He made from 21-29 trips across the Atlantic, and founded New France and Quebec City on July 3, 1608.
c. Sieur de La Sallee
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, or Robert de La Salle was a French explorer. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France.
d. Describe the scope of New France by 1760
By 1760, the European population of New France had grown to only about 65,000. A large number of French colonists had no desire to build towns or raise families. These settlers included Catholic priests who sought to convert Native Americans. They also included young, single men engaged in what had become New France’s main economic activity, the fur trade. Unlike the English, the French were less interested in occupying territories than they were in making money off the land.
2. Describe and explain English colonization of North America
The explorations of the Spanish and French inspired the English. In 1606, a company of London investors received from King James a charter to found a colony in North America. In late 1606, the company’s three ships, and more than 100 settlers, pushed out of an English harbor. About four months later, in 1607, they reached the coast of Virginia. The colonists claimed the land as theirs. They named the settlement Jamestown in honor of their king.
3. Describe and explain how the English drove the Dutch out of New Netherlands.
At its peak, only about 9,000 people lived in New Netherland, leaving it vulnerable to attack from the English, who fought three wars against the Dutch, their main commercial rivals, between 1652 and 1674 and who vastly outnumbered them in the New World. The breaking point came in March 1664, when English King Charles II awarded the colony’s land to his brother, the Duke of York, even though the two countries were then technically at peace. A few months later, four warships with several hundred soldiers onboard arrived in New Amsterdam’s harbor and demanded that the Dutch surrender. Though Stuyvesant at least outwardly prepared to fight, prominent city residents persuaded him to stand down, and on September 8 he signed the colony over without any blood being shed.
4. Describe and explain the causes and effects of the French and Indian War.
No sooner had New World colonization began than the world’s imperial powers were at war over territory, resources and trade routes. The most significant of these conflicts involving America started in present-day Pennsylvania in 1753. But what began as a squabble between colonial governors turned into world war. Within two years, the Seven Years’ War involved all of the European powers, with battles or territory at stake in Europe, Africa, India, North America, South America and the Philippines. The colonists called it the French and Indian War, and it permanently shifted the global balance of power.
5. Describe and explain the reasons for conflict between English settlers and Native Americans:
a. Conflicts over land
Relations between English settlers and Native Americans were cooperative. However, they quickly worsened over the issues of land and religion. Unlike the French and Dutch, the English sought to populate their colonies in North America. This meant pushing the natives off their land. The English colonists seized more land for their population—and to grow tobacco.
b. Colonist’s attitudes toward Native Americans
The English settlers considered Native Americans heathens, people without a faith. Over time, many Puritans viewed Native Americans as agents of the devil and as a threat to their godly society. Native Americans developed a similarly harsh view of the European invaders.
Chapter 20.3
Atlantic slave trade: The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
Triangular trade: the trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that involved shipping goods from Britain to West Africa to be exchanged for slaves, these slaves being shipped to the West Indies and exchanged for sugar, rum, and other commodities, which were in turn shipped back to Britain.
The Middle Passage: The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials, which would be transported back to Europe to complete the voyage. Voyages on the Middle Passage were large financial undertakings, generally organized by companies or groups of investors rather than individuals.
Questions:
1. Describe the history of slavery in Africa:
a. Before Islam
Slavery had existed in Africa for centuries. In most regions, it was a relatively minor institution.
b. After Islam
The spread of Islam into Africa during the seventh century, however, ushered in an increase in slavery and the slave trade. Muslim rulers in Africa justified enslavement with the Muslim belief that non-Muslim prisoners of war could be bought and sold as slaves. As a result, between 650 and 1600, Muslims transported about 17 million Africans to the Muslim lands of North Africa and Southwest Asia.
c. What role did Africans play in the slave trade? P. 1131
Africans transported to the Americas were part of a transatlantic trading network known as the triangular trade. Over one trade route, Europeans transported manufactured goods to the west coast of Africa. There, traders exchanged these goods for captured Africans. The Africans were then transported across the Atlantic and sold in the West Indies. Merchants bought sugar, coffee, and tobacco in the West Indies and sailed to Europe with these products.
2. Explain the causes of the labor shortage in North America.
In 1616, an epidemic of smallpox ravaged Native Americans living along the New England coast. From South Carolina to Missouri, nearly whole tribes fell to smallpox, measles, and other diseases. One of the effects of this loss was a severe shortage of labor in the colonies. In order to meet their growing labor needs, European colonists soon turned to another group: Africans, whom they would enslave by the millions.
3. Explain the factors that led Europeans to begin using African slaves in the Americas. P. 1139
Over time, both crops became an important and steady part of diets throughout the world. These foods helped people live longer. Thus they played a significant role in boosting the world’s population. This means that they needed slaves to help cultivate these foods.
4. How did England come to dominate the slave trade?
Because England’s presence in the Americas grew, it came to dominate the Atlantic slave trade. From 1690 until England abolished the slave trade in 1807, it was the leading carrier of enslaved Africans. By the time the slave trade ended, the English had transported nearly 1.7 million Africans to their colonies in the West Indies..
5. Describe and explain life for enslaved persons in the Americas
a. Type of work and conditions
Slaves lived a grueling existence. Many lived on little food in small, dreary huts. They worked long days and suffered beatings. In much of the Americas, slavery was a lifelong condition, as well as a hereditary one.
b. Resistance and rebellion:
i. Stono Rebellion
The Stono Rebellion was a slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, with 25 white people and 35 to 50 black people killed.
6. Describe and explain some of the consequences of the slave trade
In Africa, numerous cultures lost generations of their fittest members—their young and able—to European traders and plantation owners. In addition, countless African families were torn apart. Many of them were never reunited. The slave trade devastated African societies in another way: by introducing guns into the continent.
Chapter 20.4
Columbian Exchange: The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries, related to European colonization and trade following Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage. Invasive species, including communicable diseases, were a byproduct of the Exchange. The changes in agriculture significantly altered and changed global populations.
Capitalism: Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets.
Inflation: In economics, inflation is a sustained increase in the price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation reflects a reduction in the purchasing power per unit of money – a loss of real value in the medium of exchange and unit of account within the economy.
Joint stock company: A joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company’s stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares. Shareholders are able to transfer their shares to others without any effects to the continued existence of the company.
Mercantilism: Mercantilism is a national economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports of a nation.
Questions:
1. Describe the items that were part of the Columbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange was the exchange of goods, animals, diseases, technology, and culture between Europe and the newly discovered Americas. Things from Europe include horses, smallpox, spices, sugar, apples, coffee, and bananas; things exchanged by the Americas include tomatoes, potatoes, chocolate (cocoa), cotton, and sunflowers. This is important because so many important goods were exchanged that influenced whole cultures; for example, imagine Italian food like pizza, pasta, and marinara sauce without tomatoes- those foods could not be possible without the Columbian Exchange.
2. Describe and explain the reasons for rise of capitalism in Europe
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership and the investment of resources, such as money, for profit. No longer were governments the sole owners of great wealth. Due to overseas colonization and trade, numerous merchants had obtained great wealth. These merchants continued to invest their money in trade and overseas exploration. Profits from these investments enabled merchants and traders to reinvest even more money in other enterprises. As a result, businesses across Europe grew and flourished.
3. Describe and explain the causes for the development of joint stock companies.
The joint-stock company worked much like the modern-day corporation, with investors buying shares of stock in a company. It involved a number of people combining their wealth for a common purpose. In Europe during the 1500s and 1600s, that common purpose was American colonization. It took large amounts of money to establish overseas colonies. Moreover, while profits may have been great, so were risks. Many ships, for instance, never completed the long and dangerous ocean voyage. Because joint-stock companies involved numerous investors, the individual members paid only a fraction of the total colonization cost. If the colony failed, investors lost only their small share.
4. Describe and explain the growth of mercantilism in Europe:
a. Balance of trade
According to the theory of mercantilism, a nation could increase its wealth and power in two ways. First, it could obtain as much gold and silver as possible. Second, it could establish a favorable balance of trade, in which it sold more goods than it bought. A nation’s ultimate goal under mercantilism was to become self-sufficient, not dependent on other countries for goods.
b. Connection to colonization
The economic changes that swept through much of Europe during the age of American colonization also led to changes in European society. The economic revolution spurred the growth of towns and the rise of a class of merchants who controlled great wealth.
5. Describe and explain the impact of the economic revolution (capitalism and mercantilism) on European society.
Because of the new wealth, towns and cities grew in size. However, much of Europe’s population continued to live in rural areas. And although merchants and traders enjoyed social mobility, the majority of Europeans remained poor. More than anything else, the economic revolution increased the wealth of European nations. In addition, mercantilism contributed to the creation of a national identity.